Small wonder… Minute Bodies: The Intimate World of F. Percy Smith (2016), BFI, London Film Festival

As you gaze at cellular organisms scuttling across the screen, animalistic plants writhing their way sun-ward and tadpoles gestating you start to get a feel for the character of the person taking such obsessive care over the production of these images. As hobbies go… microcinematography is pretty intense but, what joy in these ever-present but unexpected glimpses of life.

Composer and Big Tinderstick, Stuart A. Staples said in his post-match Q&A that having originally been fascinated by Smith’s images he came to want to tell the story of their creator through this strange and powerful micro-cinema. So, odd as it may seem, Minute Bodies turns out to be a musical biography of the most excellent F. Percy Smith Esquire a man from North London who photographed moss growing in his spare time. A man who, in the interests of scientific discovery, wasn’t afraid of working with small animals and animation.

Staples co-directed the montage of films and tried to stay true to any structures contained within them even though there was some editing used, for example, to create spectacular effects by superimposing and cross-cutting fast-growing crystals: indoor micro-fireworks!

The project took three years of stop-motion musical production between Staples and co-producer David Reeve before the full Tindersticks were convened to record the music.

Staples and the ‘sticks have form having composed no less than six soundtracks for Clair Denis including the marvellous White Material - which I’ve been listening to all day – and there’s a box set with all the scores on it. This is a musically-curious band who long outgrew the limitations of being just a rock group.

So, musically restless band meet obsessive-compulsive film-maker…

Between 1909 and 1943 Percy Smith made a sequence of extraordinary documentaries after the former clerk for the British Board of Education had impressed producer Charles Urban with a close-up of a bluebottle's tongue.

From The Acrobatic Fly (1910), The Birth of a Flower (1910), The Strength and Agility of Insects (1911) to Life Cycle of the Newt (1942) and, my favourite, Life Cycle of the Pin Mould (1943) Smith kept his subjects closer than any film-maker in history.

Take that pin mould: it looks just like a pin as the shiny top grows upwards but then the surface frosts over as the latter stages of its inexplicable life-cycle kick in. It’s like watching alien lifeforms and the way Smith creates his narratives gives his flora and fauna personality. That’s pretty exceptional.

Triffids grow wild next to a ticking clock, strange organic pools consume each other and a spider is force-fed a fly - no animals were harmed in the making of these films but plenty of insects were. From the micro-scope views to extreme close-up all is alien: plants are relentless serpentine stranglers, wrapping their way with deceptive guile around other stems and moss, crystal and mould grow with urgency to smother and enclose.

Staples’ music takes care not to do the same and works sympathetically with his subject to create that new narrative. The music is restrained as you’d expect from such experienced soundtrack performers who deftly combine elements of post rock, electronica and emphatically-acoustic.

More than anything, the score matches the mood and carries the unmistakable joys of these quirky explorations. When nature isn’t enough, Smith used stop-motion animation to make his point and there’s a delightful bee that pops up to demonstrate the art of pollination – it looks straight at the camera: ready for his close-up Mr Smith.

It is only at the end when we see Smith, his profile close-up to a rat and then full-on with four of the rodents climbing around his neck. One nips his throat, he smiles and calmly pulls it back: in his element with his beloved nature; respecting his subject matter.

Smith said that he aimed to provide "the powder of instruction in the jam of entertainment" and tonight Mr Staples did the same. Takes one to know one I suppose!

Frank Percy Smith at play

Minute Bodies was playing as part of the Sonic Strand for the BFI London Film Festival 2016 and is something you should not overlook if given the chance.

There's more detail on the Tindersticks' website and the trailer is on their news page here.

The BFI DVD featuring a number of Smith's films, Secrets of Nature, is available from their online and actual shop.

Restored rainbows… This Is Colour, BFI London Film Festival with Cyrus Gabrysch

As the BFI chappie introducing said, this collection was a mix of the eccentric and the eclectic… only at the BFI my friends can you see a packed house watching such blatantly interesting and “un-commercial” films.

The only them was colour and the fact that all of the films had recently been restored by their respective archives – from Eye to BFI via Il Cineteca Bologna, Lobster Films, George Eastman House, and the Center for Visual Music.

They were loosely in chronological order with the first half a silent section illustrated beautifully by Cyrus Gabrysch nimble piano playing and the second a mix of the sound-tracked and dialogued. All were held together by a focus on colour whether stenciled, technicolored or stripped down to basics. We even had a lesson in dyes and pigments from Imperial Chemical Industries.

It was informative and impressive: exactly what the BFI is here for.

Dutch Types

Le farfalle (1907)

The sequence opened with the monochrome-to-stencil-coloured madness of The Butterfly an Italian mini-epic featuring a battle of the butterflies. The story begins with some Geisha-style movements before the troop pulls back to reveal a colourised “butterfly” who then engages in a dance tot eh death with a black-winged month-man. It culminates in some Loie Fuller-style arm-waving in flowing robes all beautifully tinted… Man, they could have used this on back projection at the UFO Club in 1967…

The film features 3.38 minutes into this compilation of serpentine dancing.

Les grandes eaux de Versailles (1904)/Grand Display of Brock's Fireworks at the Crystal Palace (1904)

Next to this the gently, hand-coloured Fountains of Versailles were a little tame in a short Pathé brothers document but then it was over to Blighty for an outrageous display of fireworks as filmed by George Albert Smith. I expected some colourfully-loud explosions but the fireworks were arranged in the shapes of fire engines, fighting cocks and, gawd-luv-em, the King and Queen. Hurrah!

You can see the fireworks here.

Crystal Palace

Fording the River (1910)

Mr Smith also filmed this fascinating footage of horses and carts crossing a deep stream someone in England in an as yet un-named port. Seeing these colourised-compatriots as they went about their daily inconvenience shows how we should never take the existence of motorised transport and bridges for granted. Smith made the film for the Natural Colour Kinematograph Co.

Dutch Types (1915)

A few years later we were seeing the folk of Veere and Arnemuiden in Zeeland as they walked along canals and went to school. As the schoolgirls smiled the colour dissolved the distance of 101 years.

See it here.

 

Lucio Flamma and Ann Christy

The Love Charm (1928)

The silent section finished off with some light fiction as John Pevere (Lucio Flamma) spied some dancing girls on a south sea island whilst on a boring boat trip with his fiancée (Jean Mann) and her parents.

He becomes enamoured with a pretty local girl, Nita (Ann Christy) who is specified inter-title-y as the daughter of an English trader just to avoid any misunderstanding…

The film ends unresolved but we know from John’s final longing look that he’ll be back.

The film can be found on the excellent National Film Preservation Foundation set AmericanTreasures from the New Zealand Film Archive.

After long applause for Cyrus’ efforts accompanying all of the above we moved on to sound.

Berlin Horse (1970)

In Malcolm Le Grice’s experimental film a horse is shown repeatedly in a haze of filtered motion with an electronic track creating a pleasantly disorientating state as you scan for any variations in motion or music. Only at the end do you see horses being pulled out of a burning stables.  

What does it all mean?

 

Ruins of Palmyra and Baalbek (1938)

Given recent events, this film was all the poignant, showing us King Solomon’s great city as it was still standing after the last invaders who tried to destroy it. Jack Cardiff – the King of Colour, provided cinematography that captured the site’s atmospheres with almost a magical-realist tint.

Palmyra is drenched in atmosphere and hopefully still is…

As with the other clips, this only hints at the loveliness on screen.

Palmyra

Pink Guards on Parade (1934)

An inventive animation advertising toothpaste… they just don’t make them like this anymore.

Divertimento (1968)

This film was made for British Petroleum and features microscopic images taken from their labs and set to Malcolm Arnold's Divertimento for oboe, flute and clarinet. Somehow this captures the optimistic spirit of sixties scientific endeavour.

Divertimento

 Samadhi (1967)

Jordan Belson’s film is abstract in vision and sound with the kind of music much beloved of Broadcast and the Ghost Box ensembles… "It is primarily an abstract cinematic work of art inspired by Yoga and Buddhism. Not a description or explanation of Samadhi." said its creator.

See for yourself.

Landscape and Samadhi

Landscape (1971)

Jules Engel’s experimental short features pulsing colours and electronica bleeping in time to flash and flicker. There’s a trailer here.

In truth Landscape hit us with its flashing minimalism just when the hallucinogens were wearing off: we needed a narrative and with the final film we got one.

This Is Colour (1942)

Directed by Jack Ellitt and featuring Jack Cardiff on camera again, the finale focused on the nature of colour and its practical application by ICI.

The film explained how we see colour and then detailed the process of creating pigments to dye fabrics. Our new world is full of colour from Tupperware to tableware and none of this is possible without the creative application of science.

ICI, once at the forefront of British innovation, was bought by Dutch multi-national AkzoNobel and ceased to exist in 2008.

Science in 1942

All my colours… King of Jazz (1930), BFI, London Film Festival

From a marketer’s perspective there are two major USPs for the London Film Festival one is based on timing – the first chance to see – the other on rarity – the only chance to see (in cinema at least). There are exceptions but given lack of infinite time and resource pone is driven either by one or the other.  So it is that I plump for the old rather than the new with patience being its own reward for most of those modern talkies. In a festival a little light on “archive” the focus is on quality and today’s gem more than delivered on that front.

I’m sure I saw King of Jazz a long time ago on TV, in black and white and far from complete. I was struck by Paul Whiteman and his evident status as the titular monarch of all he conducts – a phenomenon from another reality. It was an emphatic statement of a powerful pop culture a million miles away from my own and a lot brighter than we Bunnymen fans (ask your Dad!) in our dark donkey jackets and black-suede Robot shoes.

The boys in the band

Watching this stunning restoration on the big screen I’m still knocked out even with a greater familiarity with the period’s filmmakers and by the personality of what jazz critic Gary Giddins calls “a Rosetta stone of early American pop”. Some of it is corny as hell but none of it lacks in verve or skill - from the frankly-unhinged Jack White with his song about wanting to sell fish to a punky Bing Crosby and a giant piano impossibly-played for a decidedly green Rhapsody in Blue.

King of Jazz was filmed as a silent with a pre-recorded soundtrack, insisted upon by Whiteman for quality purposes, being matched to performances unfettered by the need to stay close to microphones. Thus liberated, the cameras float around and above the action on a giant stage appropriately controlled by theatre director John Murray Anderson with some uncredited support from Paul Fejos (who had directed the previous year’s revue spectacular Broadway).

The action is a series of sketches, skits and songs all taken from Paul Whiteman’s giant jazz scrap-book all regularly performed by his band, singers and dancers – including Gershwin’s Rhapsody which was written for Whiteman in 1924.

Paul Whiteman - big book, big band!

After the introduction from MC Charles Irwin and a proto-silly symphony cartoon explaining how Paul Whiteman came to be crowned King of his particular blend of heterogeneous Jazz we get introduced to his band it quite thrilling style. There are close ups of all the players from various angles as one by one they show their chops. In the Darwinian world of the big band, only the fastest, fittest and most-musical thrived and these boys can play.

By the same token… only the most versatile and – let’s be honest – leggy dancers could make Whiteman’s troupe and we meet them too - all sixteen sat in a row arms aloft in unison and frills on show for the Dads in the front row.

32 legs

The pace drops for a really slow song about brides which features a lot of processing and the world’s longest bridal train… another age in which marriage was a literal stairway to heaven – well, there was a lady who was sure.

A few sections are still missing and where possible stills feature over the audio. We miss one sketch featuring Laura La Plante but another features her as a newspaper editor demanding coverage of stories as soon as, if not before they happen. She could easily be an online editor and her haircut is a razor-sharp thing of yellow-tinged platinum: colour brings us that little bit closer to the monochrome age.

Talking of which, Bing sings with two others (Al Rinker and Harry Barris), as The Rhythm Boys and let me tell you, this kid (he was 26 at the time) will go places. Apart from the voice, Crosby has the extra zip to pull your eyes towards him in any ensemble: here’s one of the greats in his first film appearance, muscling his way forwards.

Young Bing

Next to these Boys, songs about lost love in Monterey tend to pale although it’s good to see the source material for many of BBC’s Strictly Come Dancing’s cheese.

Then some madness about selling fish from Jack White (yes, I know… is it in the name?!) with Whiteman’s crew, including Bing, as the audience. White has the look of a genuine maniac and is so one the edge he helps put the whole show in better context: this lot were hip they knew what was cool and what was not.

Rhapsody in Green is magnificent and you can see an excerpt on YouTube right now. The kitchen sink is involved in the film’s emotional high-point both in terms of visuals as well as compositional integrity. It opens with a quite outstanding ballet as a black dancer (probably…) dances on a huge drum to illustrate the origins of jazz in the “voodoo drums of Africa”. Cringing conceits aside he’s a fantastic dancer.

Dream on Elton, Liberace...

Happy Feet is enlivened by a contortionist dancer and there’s Nell O'Day and the Tommy Atkins Sextet, a troupe of men who, literally, throw their blonde lead female around – she is spun 180 degrees and only their extended hands catch her and prevent her landing face-first on the boards… How many rehearsals went wrong before this all went right?!

Then there’s The Sisters G (Eleanor and Karla Gutchrlein), a couple of Brooks’ bob-toting twins – also seen in God’s Gift to Women with Louise – who dance and sing with German accents… the faintest echo of Weimar cabaret.

One of the naughtiest skits is entitled All Noisy on the Eastern Front as a French woman keeps all her soldier boy lovers apart until the wall crashes down to reveal fifty or more hidden away.

Eleanor and Karla

We even see Paul Whiteman dance and he is extraordinarily good… until the dancer’s false moustache is removed and – ta-dah! – he’s revealed as not Paul!

Now for the big finale in which a host of national musicians come to play and contribute to the great American Melting Pot from which Jazz is cooked. Sadly, the sounds are entirely European – England, Germany, Ireland, Scotland, France… and the true origins of jazz are obscured by the racial sensitivities of the time. England is represented by D’Ye Ken John Peel and fox hunting (did I hear a boo or two…?) whilst Scottish bagpipes are always welcome.

They used to call it entertainment

A film to lighten your step and an amazing work of restoration that is covered in a new book from James Layton and David Pierce - King of Jazz: Paul Whiteman’s Technicolor Revue - of which more details are available here. Sounds like an ideal Christmas present.

It is a compelling pop document and to see the nods and winks in such colourful detail blows the history away as you connect with the live context that much more. The big screen is the place to be truly impressed though so, hopefully, this won’t be one of the “onlys” from the Festival and there’ll be a wider release.

There's an act-by-act breakdown of the film by Dennis Pereyra on his King of Jazz website - a fascinating labour of love.

Not so easy virtue… The Vortex (1928)

"How can we help ourselves? We swirl about in a vortex of beastliness…”

From out of the gloom of the last surviving 9.5mm print comes another interesting British silent film. America may have had its Flappers and It Girls but in Britain we had the Bright Young Things (BYT as Michael Jackson might have put it…) who took the freedom of a privileged background to a level of excess scarcely seen since the student days of the last Tory government.

This film was based on a play written by the brightest of those young things, Noel Coward and starred one of the prettiest and most outrageously-talented, Ivor Novello. Even with missing footage and a stage play compromised by the cautious sensibilities of the screen, it’s a story heavy with scandalous possibilities: a mother refusing to grow old and who dallies with a young man half her age and a son unnaturally close to his mother who is struggling to form the coupling society demands.

Some bright, young British

“It’s so cheap not to get old gracefully.”

There’s so much unsaid – yes, I know it’s a silent film… and that’s clearly where a lot of the meaning is hidden. Oh Noel, you are so frightfully clever but how much of your play is left in the film?

Reviewing in The New York Times, Mordaunt Hall was confused by these gay Britishers: “It can hardly be called a pleasant or a stirring study. …Mr. Novello, Miss Kershaw and others do rather well considering the direction, but the development of the narrative is extremely feeble. It is at last an uninspiring idea, for everybody is more or less tainted.”

Which, my dear Mordaunt was precisely the point - real people: real problems even if they are posh ones… But even the British press were largely unconvinced with Theatre World calling the film “tedious” with all of Coward’s wit, dialogue and theatricality “going for nothing when translated into cinematic terms”. The playwright himself spoke up for the younger medium during the making of the film and opined that there were still some theatrical people who “regard contemptuously everything connected with film.”

Ivor

“I call this house the laundry, for apart from soiled linen, it exhibits so many wash-outs.”

All this said, what remains is less dramatic than it otherwise could have been. Ivor Novello is a shadow of his usual self, his would be composer Nicky staring mournfully out from arid piano-playing, his spirits crushed by a domineering mother and a girl of wayward affection.

Gary Chapman in his excellent book on Gainsborough films, describes France Doble who’s Bunty Mainwaring is the maker or breaker of Nicky’s heart, as “gracefully ineffective” which is spot on – she looks the part with mannequin (old meaning) poise – lovely arms: total clothes horse - but insufficient plot motivation to engage.

Willette Kershaw connects the most with her Florence Lancaster raging against the dyeing of her hair. It’s a timeless tragedy the march of time and oh to be 45 again… Kershaw’s age during filming.

Alan Hollis and France Doble with her nice arms

"Florence Lancaster’s town house was her own; her complexion was not; but both were entirely renovated at regular intervals.”

The Vortex was Coward’s breakthrough, a scandalous tale of drug addiction, extra-marital affairs, the love that dare not speak and middle aged women behaving very badly. Director Adrian Brunel had his doubts about whether the essentially-slight story could make a good silent film once the story had been toned down and Coward’s furiously-skilled verbal riffs translated to title cards.

The producers checked with the Board of Film Censors and yes, the mother could not be seen to directly have a lover and no the son could not have a drug habit. Naturally Noel was not happy but commercial compromise, not for the first or the last time, won the day.

Mirror, mirror...

Brunel tried to make up for substance with style and there is some interesting cinematography from James Wilson and opulent design by Clifford Pember – all impressive enough now as a symbol of when Britain first really swung.

We can now also read through the gaps in our interpretation of Florence’s lifestyle choices and her exact relationship with young Tom Veryan (Alan Hollis). He’s a kept man who also happens to have previously been in a relationship with his mistress’ son’ fiancée, Bunty… Nicky has brought her to the family pile and things are going to get complicated.

“So amusing watching two people wondering if they dare fall in love with each other.”

But while Bunty and Tom try hard to remember why they split up in the first place, the real sparks fly between mother and son keeping their anger at the potentially double-dumping within the family.

Meanwhile Nicky gets a break as impetuous dancer, Anna Vollof (Julie Suedo) hears his music and dances into his studio. The big time looms but opportunity knocks when Anna’s drug use presents Nicky with a chance to shock some sense into his dearest and nearest.

Opportunity kicks

So… not great but still fascinating. The film flopped and in unrelated comments Coward made a plea for British producers to be more honest with themselves and “… talk less about what the box office is supposed to want.”

The case continues.

I watched the late Sunrise Silents version which does its best with the source material and a patchwork, pre-recorded score. It’s out there in the grey market.

“Patience my dear – the natural refuge of declining years.”

Gary Chapman’s London’s Hollywood - The Gainsborough Studio in the Silent Years is available from EP Publishing or from Amazon in various formats.

Cheers!