Too Much Johnson (1938) George Eastman House/Cinemazero/La Cineteca del Friuli
I have just attended the world premiere of an Orson Welles movie.
The above statement is almost true. What we saw tonight in Pordenone was the restoration of a work print, not even a rough cut, of a theatrical device. The scenes Welles filmed in New York in 1938 were to be shown as part of a Mercury Theatre production of the 1894 play Too Much Johnson. It’s an elegant solution: replacing pages of expository dialogue with silent prologues, shot slapstick-style to suit the on-stage farce and add a wash of nostalgic charm. Welles never completed editing the prologues, and in any case, the theatre the play first appeared in could not accommodate the projector. In fact, Too Much Johnson folded due to bad reviews before it ever came to New York and these 10 reels were abandoned for decades.
And yet, Too Much Johnson is not just a curio from theatre history. These reels are not quite a film, but something far more than fragments. The experience of watching them on a big screen, projected from 35mm, with expert piano accompaniment from Philip Carli, and commentary from Paolo Cherchi Usai, was dream-like, exhilarating and occasionally laugh-out-loud hilarious. Because we don’t have a final cut of Too Much Johnson, the footage includes retakes, gaps and mistakes. The extant material is a hint of what might have been – but also the heights that Welles was to achieve later in his career.
Joseph Cotten in Too Much Johnson (1938) George Eastman House/Cinemazero/La Cineteca del Friuli
This is slapstick, ostensibly of the rowdy Keystone school, but from the off it is enlivened by some decidedly arty touches: this is a very good-looking piece of work. All the footage was shot undercranked to create that Keystone feel, a blanket measure that creates some queasy side-effects. An early argument scene is edited so frenetically, with so many extreme closeups, that it is more Eisenstein with Mack Sennett. An anarchic running gag in those first interior scenes has pot plants bursting into the frame, not least in what I can only describe as an arthouse comedy sex scene, an ultra-high-speed bedroom farce. And as Joseph Cotten (our reckless hero) and Edgar Barrier (the outraged husband of his lover) pursue each other up and down fire escapes and across rooftops, the camera records it all from the acute Expressionist angles Welles was so well known for. A scene of Barrier patrolling Manhattan knocking men’s hats off their heads is shot from high overhead – as Barrier attacks the crowds and the crowds form into mobs to attack back, the effect is of a musical dance sequence, a street ballet. And the sight of the ground after his spree littered with discarded bowlers and boaters is almost surreal, surprisingly poignant. In fact, Barrier’s leering, moustache-twirling closeups, which may be intended to evoke melodramatic early cinema villains, are unsettlingly camp. The scenes set in Cuba (actually a quarry in Tomkins Cove, New York) are exercises in economy – and its limits. With a few rented (and comically precarious) palm trees dotted across the rocky ground, Welles shoots from low angles to transform the quarry slopes into cliff-faces, with his actors tiny stick men brawling on the skyline.
You hate bad dialogue, I hate bad dialogue. And clunky, needless expository dialogue is the worst: the most heinous crime in sound cinema. A good rule of thumb for screenwriters would be to look at each line they want their actors to spout and say: “Would this be an absolutely essential intertitle?” Without all those words, actors have to tell the story physically, by acting, rather than describing: they say a picture tells a thousand words after all. With 24 frames a second, who needs text, by that logic?
This is clearly a pet hate of mine – I rarely see a new movie without wanted to take a red pen to the script here and there. So thank heavens for All is Lost, the tremendous new film from JC Chandor (Margin Call), starring Robert Redford as a sailor lost in the middle of the Indian Ocean. Redford is the only actor in the film – it’s just him, the boat, the water and a series of catastrophes until the bitter end. And he’s fantastic in it – his nicely grizzled features reacting moment by moment to his impending doom. It’s a physical role for sure, as he tackles the high winds and rolling waves – but for the full Ancient Mariner angst, he needs to capture our sympathies too, and let us know what’s going on behind those famous blue eyes.
You’ll have guessed the twist: as Redford helms the movie solo, there’s no real dialogue at all. I don’t want to spoiler the film, but he speaks a few words; wouldn’t you curse a little, in his deck shoes? For most of the film’s 106-minute running time, however, all you’ll hear is the roar of the ocean, the clattering and cracking of his boat and a hell of a lot of weather. The score, by Alex Ebert, appears only sporadically, and there’s no intrusive internal monologue to break the tension either. So with all that space in which to act, and such a simple story, Redford is free to give an indelible, immense performance that’s a pleasure to watch. Or it would be, if one weren’t so terrified for him.
All is Lost wouldn’t qualify as a silent movie, I know that. In fact its stunning sound design is as Oscar-worthy as Redford’s star turn. But it is a rare sound film that has learned the extraordinary power of silents – and it’s really very special indeed.
Alexa Chung is described as an “It Girl” so often that it is safe, with apologies to Clara Bow, to go ahead and call her that. Which means that when she appears on the cover of British Vogue, as she does this month, the fashionistas take note. The Vogue cover story in question is a couture fashion shoot styled by the magazine’s fashion director Lucinda Chambers and photographed by the legendary Patrick Demarchelier. Did I mention that it is inspired by and named after one of our very favourite silent films: Chaplin’s heartbreaking, hilarious The Kid?
According to the pages of Vogue, “Alexa Chung channels her inner Charlie Chaplin in the the season’s most magical designs”. The outfits featured combine couture gowns by houses including Chanel, Valentino (!) and Versace with vintage hats (something of a trademark for Chambers), and classic Chaplinesque touches – oversized boots, baggy pinstripe trousers and even a spindly bamboo cane. It’s a fashion shoot rather than a fancy-dress act, so the source material has been interpreted, not replicated: Chung wears a peaked cap that’s more Jackie Coogan than Little Tramp, for example. But it’s not entirely fast-and-loose. You could view those designer dresses, embellished with pearls and sequins, as a nod to Edna Purviance’s upper-class character in the same film – meaning that Chung encapsulates the whole family. More likely, the Chaplin look has been chosen to offset all that opulence and to capitalise on Chung’s gamine beauty. She has long been celebrated for a certain “street-urchin” look that’s pure The Kid. In fact, she told Glamour magazine in 2012 that Chaplin inspired her dress sense, captioning a selfie with the words: “This is my Charlie Chaplin look – black trousers with suspenders and an Yves Saint Laurent shirt. Putting weird pieces of clothing together is what I’m good at.”
Alexa Chung’s ‘Charlie Chaplin’ look in 2012 (Glamour.com)
If you think it strange to see a woman taking fashion tips from a fictional tramp, played by a bloke nearly 100 years ago … well that does sound odd when you say it loud. But it’s not so off-the-wall as all that. Chaplin’s early years were spent in London music halls – that’s where he first performed, and where his parents had worked too. Male impersonators were popular in the halls, and fashion historian Amber Jane Butchart writes here about the immaculately turned out Vesta Tilley. When Chaplin first picked out his Tramp outfit, he may well have been thinking of this female twist on a masculine suit. The Tramp is in a kind of drag himself – in clothes that don’t quite fit, an outfit with aristocratic pretensions undermined by ragged hems.
Charlie Chaplin’s Little Tramp costume at the V&A museum (aquamarinejo.wordpress.com)
According to Chaplin’s autobiography he created the Tramp’s outfit from deliberately contradictory elements: baggy pants, tight jacket, oversized shoes and small derby hat provided by fellow actors and whangee cane owned by himself. Accessories such as the high-collar shirt, check waistcoat and tie are not accounted for, but Chaplin claims to have added a moustache to make himself appear older. In this first manifestation, the Tramp is scruffier and less affecting than he became later. The cigarette adds to his louche appearance and the cane is a parody of gentleman’s attire. Chaplin gives a professional clown’s performance in the tradition of the North American Tramp/Hobo; his costume is based on a collage of mismatched pieces that appear to have been randomly collected from discarded clothing … While the dissonant parts of the Tramp’s outfit do not cohere into a sartorial whole, their recombination indicates the character’s aspirations to be a dandy.
The Tramp’s clothes draw attention to the social significance of dress as well as to his affectation, which Chaplin developed as a feature of his performance. The collage effect, deriving from popular forms such as the circus and street theatre, resonates with the aesthetic strategies of the Surrealists and others. The pastiche of styles portrays the character as a fabrication, a social type rather than a rounded individual. While the rudiments of psychological motivation are there in the costume’s ridicule of the Tramp’s desire to belong to a higher class, the emphasis on disguise focuses the viewer’s attention on Chaplin’s self-presentation as star performer … The Tramp and his costume become the spectacle.
For a woman to dress up as Chaplin may seem drab (the dark colours, the masculine cut) but that is far from the case. It’s a look that demands attention, and playfully blurs gender and class divisions, which is sexy and provocative in itself. In fact, aspects of the Chaplin look are hugely feminine and easy to wear: tight jackets and baggy trousers are flattering to many women’s body shapes. The tailoring can be softened by the casual fit, or even a buttonhole flower and lots of smudgy eyeliner. Just check out how many women on the fashion site Polyvore are channeling their own inner Chaplins. Female celebrities from Jessica Alba (when pregnant) to Brigitte Bardot have raided the costume box to pay homage to the star. And female Chaplin impersonations multiply on screen – including Gloria Swanson in Sunset Boulevard but going far beyond that. Remember Jeanne Moreau in Jules et Jim? And the ultimate in tomboy-chic, Diane Keaton in Annie Hall – her tennis-date outfit has Chaplin fan written all over it. More recently, Melanie Laurent’s character Anna, having lost her voice, adopts a Chaplinesque costume in the romantic film Beginners.
In 2011, Comme Des Garcons put female models in androgynous cut-up coats and jackets that reminded many onlookers of Chaplin’s Tramp. This spring, Vivienne Westwood called for a Climate Revolution in a sequined oversized bowler and Magic Marker moustache. Supermodel-of-the-moment Cara Delevingne, no less, also claims to be a Chaplin devotee – it must be the eyebrows.
Miss Chaplin by Rio Surya Prasetia for Amica Indonesia
So Chaplin is big news in the fashion world right now, but this look isn’t just for the ladies. In a recent, and typically eloquent, post for Mr Porter, fashion writer Colin McDowell reclaims the silent star as a style leader – offering a neat precis of his career and particular qualities as well as his appreciation for film costume and his fastidious off-duty fashion. From spring/summer 2011, John Galliano presented a menswear collection inspired by the slapstick greats, in particular the urban-industrial attire of the Little Tramp – the models sported silent-era Hollywood makeup reinvented as gothic facepaint, with overalls, boots, prison stripes, moustaches and shocks of dark curly hair.
So why Chaplin in 2013? Well, the extent of Chaplin’s fame means that he will never disappear as a cultural reference point. The fact that his image has been protected by the Chaplin association all these years means that the source of his signature style remains intact and undiluted, no matter how many fashion shoots, fancy-dress parties or street imitators get their hands on it – so he is always ripe for a speedy revival. I need not mention how The Artist nudged the silent era back into mainstream consciousness, nor that 2014 will mark the anniversary of the Little Tramp’s creation. The acting success of Chaplin’s granddaughter Oona Chaplin (who was also photographed by Patrick Demarchelier for a very slinky shoot in Vanity Fair last year) may have given him another boost in fashion circles.
But if you break the Tramp’s look down into its constituent parts, as Cook does in the extract printed above, you’ll see exactly why he resonates in a time of austerity measures, bank bailouts and Occupy camps. These days Chaplin’s bowler hat and pinstripe trousers signify something more specific than “gent” – the modern bogeyman, the City Banker. Just as Chaplin remixed the attire of the upper classes to cock a snook at their pretensions, we can dress up as his character today and thumb our nose at the financial institutions that so often determine our fate. To distort the armour of the City, with rags or sequins, with a smile and knowing wink, is to expose a chink in it. Chaplin would enjoy that, don’t you think?
You may notice the widget on the righthand side of this page, ticking down the days until this blog dispatches itself to Italy, to report from Le Giornate del Cinema Muto in Pordenone. We have many reasons to get excited about the arrival of the world’s most prestigious silent film festival. There’s the debut of the lost-and-found Orson Welles short Too Much Johnson, the premiere of a new restoration of The Freshman with a score by Carl Davis, Italy’s first glimpse of Blancanieves, an Anny Ondra retrospective, a programme of Swedish silents, more treasures from the Corrick collection, Ukrainian classics, Mexican rarities, a strand devoted to Gerhard Lamprecht and much more.
I had a smile on my face this morning, however, when I learned that a documentary co-directed by none other than a fellow classic/silent film blogger – the marvellous David Cairns of Shadowplay – will be showing at the Giornate. Natan takes a look at the controversial life of French film-maker Bernard Natan, and the various scandalous assaults on his name. Natan was a Jewish French-Romanian film produced, who was at one time the head of the Pathé studio. Financial troubles, antisemitism and allegations that he was a pornographer degraded his reputation in the industry. His story ends on an even darker note – he died in 1942, in Auschwitz.
Bernard Natan used to sign his films — literally, his producer credit was an animated signature inscribing itself on the screen. And then, as Natan’s reputation was destroyed and his company taken away from him, a lot of his films were shorn of their signatures. When the movies got re-released, it was considered embarrassing for their executive producer’s name to be seen. And during the Occupation, many Jewish filmmakers were quietly erased from title sequences.
Since then, Natan’s name has been restored to some of his films, and a few historians have attempted to restore his reputation. That’s the effort Paul and I hope to contribute to with our film, which should tell a dramatic and tragic story, shine a light upon some neglected corners of cinema history — but also help give Bernard Natan his good name back ~
Musidora: la dixieme muse
The film has already shown at several festivals, including Edinburgh and Telluride – and it plays at Cambridge film festival this week. The Pordenone festival will also be screening a documentary about another French cinema legend: Musidora: la Dixieme Muse. The documentary, by writer and filmmaker Patrick Cazals, promises to trace the actress’s career right form the early days of Vampires and Judex, to her work in later life as a producer and director as well as at Henri Langlois’ Cinematheque, positioning her as a cornerstone of French cinema as much as a legend.
So that’s a nicely themed double-bill at Pordenone for us to savour, but French cinema pioneers are in vogue right now – you can’t have failed to miss the successful Kickstarter campaign for the Jodie Foster-narrated Alice Guy-Blaché documentary. It has been a massive campaign, conducted enthusiastically and cannily across social media. The line they have been using is that Guy-Blaché’s name is forgotten now because she has been written out of history by her male colleagues and successors. That may be true for many film fans, but just like Musidora, her name is already well-known in silent cinema circles – if Be Natural is to redeem her reputation, it must spread her fame to a far wider audience. While certainly impressive, Be Natural‘s 3,840 Kickstarter backers represent a drop in the ocean. The movie looks like it could be great though – and it’s the popularity of the documentary, rather than the worthiness of its intentions, that will return Guy-Blaché’s name to global renown.
Catch Natan at Cambridge if you can, or if you have already seen it or Musidora, do let me know your thoughts below. There’s a Variety review here. You can also like Natan on Facebook. I have to say, I am looking forward to all three of these films.
PS: I think Lady Gaga, for one, has been mugging up on her early French film – spot the Méliès refs and Musidora costumes in her latest video, Applause
Last night’s Jazz on 3 celebrated the art of live accompaniment to silent film, as part of the BBC’s marvellous Sound of Cinema season. The show, presented by Jez Nelson, features jazz and improvising musicians creating live scores for silent films. Listen again here, or catch up with the sessions by watching these gorgeous clips, with music from the live session by Alison Blunt (violin), Viv Corringham (vocals), John Bisset (guitar) and David Leahy (double bass). Here, they are accompanying an experimental film by Louise Curham called Pararaha, Ruapehu, Mt Clear.
The much-loved 1925 German film A Trip to the Planets was also among the films chosen for the session.
Another modern silent here, Composted Memorial by Sally Golding, an installation and performance artist know for her cine-sculptures. She desecribes the film, which is constructed from vintage 9.5mm home-movie fragments as: “A wonky filmic resurrection, as a cine-essay dissolving in destructive magic.”
It’s an unbelievable discovery, “stranger than fiction” as Paolo Cherchi Usai of the George Eastman House told me. Orson Welles’s 1938 silent movie Too Much Johnson, believed to be lost, destroyed in a fire, has finally turned up. Not only that, the film, which is admittedly just a work print, was discovered in a warehouse in Pordenone, home of the prestigious Giornate del Cinema Muto.
Rejoice, if you are going to Pordenone this year, because Too Much Johnson will have its premiere at the festival, on 9 October 2013, before screening at the George Eastman House (where the film was restored) in the US the following week. Cast your eyes on this lovely video preview of the film – and then click here to read a short piece I wrote for the Guardian about the film and its rediscovery. In it, Cherchi Usai tells me that the Welles film this lost-and-found work reminds him most of … is none other than Citizan Kane.
Scalarama is a far-reaching kind of film festival – one that covers the whole country, and virtually any manifestation of cinema you can think of. It’s dedicated to the spirit of the old Scala screenings in King’s Cross, London in the 80s and now in its third year, has a diverse and fascinating programme, fuelled by the passion of movie fans championing their own, often obscure, favourites. I am delighted to report that silent cinema is very much part of the month-long festival, with several screenings of Dreyer’s masterpiece, The Passion of Joan of Arc lined up, from Leicester to Canterbury. And it’s the gorgeous new Eureka print they’re screening too.
The Scalarama organisers asked me to share some thoughts about why I love silents, and why you (yes, you) should go to see The Passion of Joan of Arc, for the first in their series of podcasts supporting the festival. So listen up. I have listed the screenings below – Visit the Scalarama website for more details and links.
The post rate sure has slowed down around here. Blame the summer. Blame the day job. But that doesn’t mean that there are fewer silent movies being shown in London. Not at all. So this is just a gentle reminder that if you want to keep up to date with what is being shown where and when, take matters into your own hands, like Rin Tin Tin, here, and bookmark the Silent London Calendar page.
Check back regularly and you will find something new each time, we promise. Take next week: Landmark horror-doc Häxan is showing in Peckham, Neil Brand is accompanying a comedy double-bill and there is something mysterious occurring in Kennington – follow the link and all will be revealed.
A still from Mitchell and Kenyon’s Punch & Judy Show in Halifax (1901). Copyright: BFI National Archive
So, last week, I found myself watching some early films in the BFI Southbank. Same old, same old, you might think. But these early films were being shown on massive MTV Cribs-style tellies in the BFI foyer. And while many of them were from the Mitchell and Kenyon archive we know and love, they were unseen treasures, having been gazed upon only by archivists during the past century.
This unexpected alliance of Edwardian content and 21st-century technology has come about via the BFI’s new app, developed as part of the Film Forever project. It’s an app for Samsung Smart TV and Smart Hubs, and it allows viewers access to a treasure chest of film-related content, including a free Film of the Week (kicking off with A Zed and Two Noughts), interviews with film-makers, documentaries, and a whole heap of archival delights, including the M&K films. There will also be footage of events and interviews from the London Film Festival appearing when that all kicks off in October.
The archive goodies are separated into a variety of strands: London Calling and Cabinet of Curiosities, among them. There are silents across most of the ranges – many you’ll be familiar with, such as Daisy Doodad’s Dial or Wonderful London. It’s the Mitchell & Kenyon films that stand out though – they’re in a rather lovely collection called Edwardian Summer. There’s an hour and a half of footage here, a good hour of which is unseen. Robin Baker, the head of the BFI archive, calls these films: “Cinematic gold – you couldn’t get much more important.” What’s so vital about these short films, he explained, is that the “humanise the past”. They certainly captivated the crowd at the BFI.
You can see Blackpool in May 1904, with formally dressed holidaymakers parading on the pier or riding trams. There’s a Punch and Judy show, captured in Halifax in 1901 – your eye may be caught by the frisky puppy getting rather too close to the puppets, but don’t miss the plume of smoke that reveals a train station in the rolling hills behind the main event. A man in drag falls off a donkey (twice) in Hipperholme, West Yorkshire in 1901; Preston celebrates its Whit Fair in 1906. Delightfully, footage of the Chester Regatta delivers shots of boats gliding elegantly down the River Dee in the long hot summer of 1901. Watch a little further and you’ll discover a few courting couples doing what courting couples do in those very boats.
BFI’s Samsung Smart TV app
There’s silent London on show too – elsewhere in the package you can watch street scenes of Hoxton approximately 80 years before it became cool , for example.
I think it’s all gorgeous – I would like to sit down and watch all of the M&K treats in full, and there are some non-silent delights both sublime and ridiculous available too, including a Dufaycolor screen test featuring Audrey Hepburn and a public information film from the 70s starring Keith Chegwin. So this is wonderful news for those of you have, or are thinking of buying, a Samsung Smart TV, Hub or Blu-Ray player. It’s also good news for the rest of us. We may have to be a little patient, but as more of the BFI’s wonderful archive is digitised we can look forward to their films being made available in more ways. BFI apps for everyone please: not just on smart TVs, but on smartphones and tablets, perhaps?
This week, I was lucky enough to attend the launch of Sound of Cinema, a new cross-channel season from the BBC exploring film music in all its variety. The centrepiece of the season, arriving in September, is a three-part documentary on BBC4 by silent film composer Neil Brand called The Big Score. I’ve had a sneak preview of the series and it’s seriously fascinating stuff, with Brand tracing the development of film music from the silent era onwards, explaining exactly how classic scores work their magic on the viewing public and interviewing movie composers and big-name directors. Vangelis discusses the creation of his classic score for the most famous slow-motion sequence of them all in Chariots of Fire; Martin Scorsese talks us through his use of Jumpin’ Jack Flash in Mean Streets. In the first episode, Brand talks to silent film accompanist Bernie Anderson at Loew’s Theatre in Jersey City – and has a go on the magnificent in-house organ there.
Other elements in the season include stars discussing their favourite film music moments on BBC Radio 6; a documentary about the relationship between hip-hop and cinema on BBC Radio 1; Bobby Friction exploring Bollywood music on the BBC Asian Network; and a BBC Radio 2 documentary made by Mark Kermode called Soundtrack of my Life, which promises to be very entertaining. There’s absolutely masses planned on BBC Radio 3, including Sound of Cinema downloads by Brand and a a week of programmes hosted by Matthew Sweet. You can read more here (PDF). Radio1 film critic Rhianna Dhillon talked to me about the intriguing possibility of getting some pop acts to have a stab at scoring a film – perhaps they will get a taste for it and we’ll find some new names added to the list of regular silent film composers!
Because, yes, this all sounds a bit “talkie” for Silent London, but I’m sharing this with you because this series promises “a deep understanding of what music does for film”. It’s a subject that silent cinema fans discuss animatedly after every screening – we’re in the now unusual position of watching the same film again and again with different scores, which can make a huge difference to the experience. Perhaps, after dipping into this season. we’ll have an insight into the influences, theories and ideas rushing through the film accompanist’s mind at the next screening we attend.
Hipster-favoured photo-sharing service Instagram introduced a video option some weeks ago. It soon became clear that the square-format clips, up to 15 seconds in length, are better suited to visual-led material than talkie stuff. It’s not a great medium for recording a monologue, less still a conversation, but it’s a wonderful way to capture the impact of moving pictures. It’s like the early days of film, all over again in 2013.
I have chosen a few Instavids that have caught my eye so far. All of these “work” as silent films, even though most have ambient sound, and occasionally speech. Some of them even tell a story. They’re all pretty gorgeous too – Instagram’s filter options make it easier to put a sheen on your clips – although a few of these are strictly #nofilter.
Waiting for a festival screening to begin at Cinema Arlecchino in Bologna.
Completists, please avert your gaze. During the three days I spent at Il Cinema Ritrovato in Bologna I missed far more than I saw. With four screens, plus lectures, workshops, exhibitions, open-air screenings, and programmes for children all running at once, there is too much here for any one person to take in. It’s a festival that requires endurance, decisiveness and a philosophical approach to the ones that got away. But if you think you’re tough enough, start clearing your diary for summer 2014. And welcome to classic cinema bootcamp.
Ritrovato is all about rediscovery – the films on show here have all been found, restored or reclaimed. They are the work of film-makers whose work deserves a second look, or whose weighty reputation means that their films merit a little extra care and attention. To this end, the festival is woven from many strands – and even if one were to stay for the entire festival, it would require a certain single-mindedness to see one of them through from start to finish. On my flying visit, I didn’t have a hope. This is my way of excusing my scattergun approach to the festival – a programme of early shorts here, a classic Chaplin two-reeler projected in the Piazza Maggiore there, a lush new print of a silent Hitchcock here, a rustic Soviet melodrama there. And sound films too. Lots of them, actually, I cannot tell a lie.
According to my notes, the first film I saw at the festival was a four-minute snippet from 1913 called Hungarian Folklore, which detailed wedding traditions in the country. Good intentions and all that. This was followed by Baby Riazanskie, a chewy melodrama directed by Olga Preobrazenskaja and Ivan Pravov. I never saw another of their films – because I was distracted by other delights, and because I was slightly underwhelmed by this one. Another regret.
Zaza (1923)
My highlights included the Allan Dwan silents, especially Zaza and Manhandled starring the fantastic, feisty Gloria Swanson, and the action-packed East Side, West Side. I enjoyed many of his sound films too: witty sweet-hearted comedies from the 40s and 50s.
I was captivated by the beautiful if overlong city symphony Etudes Sur Paris – catch it for the underground canal sequences alone. I was moved by Victor Sjostrom’s social drama Ingeborg Holm (a 100-year-old Swedish Cathy Come Home) and tickled pink by Chaplin’s The Cure.
The Cure: Charlie Chaplin and Eric Campbell on the big screen in Piazza Maggiore, Bologna
Another highlight was a recently discovered collection of sweet colour films from 1906 screened using carbon light projector in the Piazzetta Pasolini late at night. I didn’t want that to end. The Farmer’s Wife, all gussied up by the BFI as part of the Hitchock 9 project, looked beautiful and its peculiarly English humour translated well to the Bologna audience.
When it comes to talkies, I was emotionally shredded and enthralled by Anna Magnani in Rossellini’s L’Amore – and again in Roma Citta Aperta. Plein Soleil, La Belle et La Bete, Chimes at Midnight … I don’t feel the least bit guilty about watching those.
The main thing I missed during my trip was Bologna itself. I strolled around the Piazza Maggiore one morning, and glimpsed the two tipsy towers, but I was far too distracted by the flickers to do any real sightseeing, or sunbathing in the 30-degree heat. Arrivederci, Bologna.
And if you’re thinking of visiting Il Cinema Ritrovato next year, here are my top five tips for festival newbies. If you’ve been to Ritrovato before, please share your tips below:
Get yourself a map of Bologna. And mark the festival venues on it. Do this before you arrive so you’re not wandering the streets panic-stricken, in search of a Gloria Swanson film, like a certain blogger of our mutual acquaintance.
Patience is a virtue. The screenings run late. And almost every film is prefaced with a long introduction, in at least two languages. Luckily the movies are worth the wait.
Health and safety. Strappy wedge sandals, cobbled streets and ten-minute gaps between screenings led me dangerously close to a few unscripted slapstick moments. There is a shuttle bus in operation between the cinemas, for those who really need assistance. For the rest of us – these strolls are the only exercise you are going to get all week. And drink lots of liquid: caffeine will get you through the schedule, but it’s hot out there, so drink plenty of water too.
See one film you’ve never heard of every day. The best festival experiences are the surprises – and the programme at Ritrovato has plenty of surprises up its sleeve.
Don’t be discouraged by the catalogue. The descriptions of films in the official catalogue are useful, and very detailed, but often a little cool. Trust your instincts – and the festival programmers.
This a fledgling idea, but a fantastic one. Amran Vance has sent up a London-silent-film-going group on Meetup.com. The plan is that silent film enthusiasts can register to join the group and then arrange trips to see silents together. It’s sociable, and there should be some chewy post-screening discussions to savour. Over to Amran:
I hope that we can attract real enthusiasts such as those who read the Silent London and Bristol Silents websites.
The point of all this is partly to introduce a social element into silent film-going in London but primarily to encourage interest in silent film, share knowledge and to support the venues that show silent film.
Clever, huh? Outings are already plotted for Sunrise and Blancanieves, so they’re off to a good start.
We’ve been waiting for this news as patiently as Snow White awaited her kiss of life – and here, in the shape of StudioCanal, is our Prince Charming. Pablo Berger’s utterly gorgeous, slightly twisted, Gothic fairytale Blancanieves gets a UK release on 12 July 2013. I have been intrigued by this film since we first heard about it in March 2012, and in October last year when I saw it at the London Film Festival, I became smitten. If you saw it then, or at the recent Ciné Lumière screening, you’ll know what I mean.
Blancanieves is a silent, black-and-white film – a loose adaptation of Snow White set in 1920s Spain. There is a poisoned apple, a wicked stepmother (brilliantly played by Maribel Verdú) and a coterie of dwarves, but also bull-fighting, flamenco and a pet cockerel called Pépé. It’s a beautifully accomplished homage to European silent cinema (at the screening I attended, the director paid tribute to everyone from Abel Gance to our own Anthony Asquith) and at the same time satisfyingly rich and quirky – this is a very hard film to categorise. The cinematography is at times exquisite, and the score, by Alfonso de Vilallonga, is fantastic. As yet, I don’t know whether we can expect a full or limited release – but if you love silent cinema, and Blancanieves is playing near you, you really should go to see it.
I’ve just got home from the cinema, where I saw Baz Luhrmann’s new adaptation of The Great Gatsby. Sad to say, I was pretty disappointed in the film: the unnecessary “mansplaining” voiceover, the clunky framing device, those rather chilly, stilted lead performances. Oh well, I had been forewarned about some of that, but still retaining fond memories of Romeo + Juliet, I had expected a lot more good old-fashioned fun. I was anticipating orgiastic party scenes, crammed with beauty and vigour – and all filmed in retina-bumping 3D. Somehow, those bashes, from the grand getups in Gatsby’s mansions to the sleazier affairs in speakeasies and hotel rooms, were a letdown to me. Perhaps it’s just because I can’t get get on board with the speed of the editing – I had a similar problem with Moulin Rouge! – or maybe I’m just not cut out for the talkies. Either way, all the time the champagne was flowing and the dancing girls were shimmying I was casting my mind back to some great party scenes I had seen in silent movies. Such as …
Josef von Sternberg’s grizzly gangsters lay down their guns and lift their glasses in this debauched Underworld ball.
A dance craze becomes a collective mania in Ernst Lubitsch’s The Oyster Princess.
This foxtrot in Our Dancing Daughters is especially foxy. Something tells me Joan Crawford could get into trouble …
Blub. Charlie Chaplin misses all the fun at New Year’s Eve in The Gold Rush.
In Metropolis, a seductive dancing girl energises the crowd in a questionable nightspot – but she’s not who she appears to be.
Life appears to be one long party for Colleen Moore – with damning consequences – in these snippets from the lost film Flaming Youth.
Oooh la la. One night in Paris, washed down with a lot of bubbles in Wings.
Feather and tar me if you will, but I loved this moment in The Artist.
And finally, check out the pool parties in this trailer for the first film version of The Great Gatsby – shot in 1926 but sadly lost to the ages. (You can read more about this film in the current issue of Sight & Sound.)
Share your suggestions for the best party scenes in silent movies below.
The Fashion in Film Festival is a movable feast, but one we can always rely on for some wonderful silent film screenings. This year’s event has just begun, and the focus of the festival is the French director Marcel L’Herbier, who worked in both the silent and sound eras, creating captivating, elegant and strange films of staggering beauty. This is what the festival has to say about his silent films:
During the silent period, L’Herbier’s ambition for the cinema was to create a Gesamtkunstwerk, a cinéma totalwhich would synthesise all the arts and draw together architects, artists, set designers, couturiers and costume designers. Among the many major cultural figures he collaborated with were the artists Fernand Léger, Sonia and Robert Delaunay, the composers Darius Milhaud and Arthur Honegger, the architect Robert Mallet-Stevens, designers Alberto Cavalcanti and Claude Autant-Lara, and couturiers Paul Poiret, Lucien Lelong (L’Herbier’s cousin) and Louiseboulanger. Paired with his multi-disciplinary collaborative approach, it was L’Herbier’s desire to legitimise and ennoble cinema as the ‘seventh art’ that helped establish him as a seminal figure within Paris’s vibrant cultural milieu of the inter-war years.
Using art, fashion and design as the prisms through which to examine L’Herbier’s diverse body of work, Fashion in Film’s season highlights his lifelong interest in cinematic style and aesthetics. As the costume designer Jacques Manuel once observed, costume for L’Herbier was so often a way of ‘feeding’ the ‘mechanical eye’ with evocative surfaces and textures, a way of testing the formal elements of cinema itself such as movement, rhythm, light and shadow.
To feed your own eyes, and for a direct lesson in the importance of costume design to L’Herbier’s total vision of cinematic photogénie, watch the festival’s slinky trailer here.
A true multi-disciplinarian, L’Herbier arrived at film-making after considering literature and music as possible careers, and more prosaically, having worked in a uniform factory during the first world war. When Feuillade’s leading lady Musidora took L’Herbier to see Cecil B DeMille’s melodrama The Cheat, he realised the potential of cinema, and starting out in the army’s cinematographic unit, began to learn the art of film-making. However unlikely a start this may seem, even his very first film, a propaganda piece called Rose-France, was ambitiously experimental.
L’Inhumaine
At first, L’Herbier worked for Gaumont, but his artistic dreams soon clashed with the realities of their budgets, and in 1923 he formed his own company, Cinégraphic. You may be familiar with L’Herbier’s silents already, particularly Zola adaptation L’Argent, which is available on DVD from Masters of Cinema. The Fashion in Film Festival is showing L’Argent, as well as sci-fi opera L’Inhumaine (The Inhuman Woman) and doppelganger drama Le Vertige (The Living Image). You can read the full programme of events here. Not showing at the festival, but recently released on Blu-Ray by Flicker Alley in the US, is the Pirandello adaptation Feu Mathias Pascal.
Film-maker Steve Simmons sent me this short film, his second piece of work, and how could I resist sharing it with you? It was shot in south London, in Lambeth in fact, and any hard-working city-dweller will recognise this scene. As a crossword fan, I found Crosswords‘ wry comedy compelling: its premise initially seems simple but spirals into something a touch murkier and more dangerous as events unfold. The witty combination of text and image really caught my attention and I think it’s bound to raise a smile with the readers of this blog.
Steve tells me that he was influenced by the widest possible range of movies, silent or otherwise: “Films that haved inspired me are Metropolis, Once Upon a Time in The West, City Lights,Escape from Alcatraz and I loved The Artist.”
That’s a very diverse list and you’ll notice that although Crosswords is a modern silent, it’s far from an exercise in mimicry. For one thing, it has text, but not intertitles: “I initially considered traditional title cards to display the clues and the man’s thoughts,” says Steve, “but eventually I decided it would work best if the text was incorporated into the action. I think it helps the viewer concentrate on the clues and keeps the story flowing.”
Steve would love to make another silent, he tells me, and not just a short film: “At the moment I’m writing another silent film script but it’s more of a science-fiction based story. One day, if I had the funding I would love to make a feature-length silent – that’s the dream!”
This is a guest post for Silent London by Kelly Robinson.
Sumurun screens with a live score by Amira Kheir at BFI Southbank as part of Birds Eye View Film Festival on Thursday 4 April at 6.10pm. Read more here.
Sumurun is the product of an intensely creative time in the German film industry when an extraordinary range of artistic and entrepreneurial talent emerged: creating ambitious films that challenged American productions for the international market.
Paul Davidson, the director of the German production firm Projektions-AG Union(PAGU), was a film producer unafraid of financial risk-taking and he invested large amounts of capital early on in the industry. In 1918 the company was merged with several other firms under the umbrella of Ufa, with Davidson becoming an executive on its board. Much of Ufa’s success was the result of the absorption of PAGU’s talent, which included directors such as Ernst Lubitsch and Paul Wegener and stars such as Pola Negri and Ossi Oswalda. Indeed because of its established reputation it still produced under the PAGU brand and retained a considerable degree of independence.
With financial support from the German bank, Ufa began a policy of big-budget films aimed at the international market. In 1918, Davidson suggested Lubitsch try making one of these Großfilmes, epic productions indebted to the Italian spectacle films, such as Giovanni Pastrone’s Cabiria (1914) – films which in their budgets and enormous sets were an attempt to compete with Hollywood. Lubitsch assembled a regular production team around him for a series of these ambitious films, including his co-writer Hanns Kräly, the set designer Kurt Richter, and cameraman Theodor Sparkuhl. Famous actors such as Pola Negri added star allure to these films and became a big draw for audiences’ world-wide. Sumurun is one of several extraordinary films that resulted from these collaborations during the late 1910s and early 1920s.
Pola Negri
Pola Negri was born Barbara Appollonia Chalupiec in Yanowa, near Lipno in Poland. She took as her professional name the last name of Ada Negri, an Italian poet she admired and the diminutive form of Apollonia as a first name. She had danced at the Imperial Theatre in St Petersburg and had acted on stage and screen in Poland before being invited by Max Reinhardt to Germany to star in Sumurun (a story derived from The Arabian Nights) after she had appeared in a Polish theatrical version. It was here that Negri met Lubitsch, who was a Reinhardt player and comedy short director at the time, and who was playing the role of the hunchback opposite her in the German theatrical version (a role he would recreate in the film). They became good friends and he made her the star of several of the large-scale costume pictures for Ufa. Lubitsch told her: “We’re going to make a picture of Sumurun. Reinhardt’s letting us have the sets and costumes. We’ll use most of the actors from the stage productions. We’ll hardly even have to rehearse. It’ll cost practically nothing.” (Pola Negri, Memoirs of a Star). Production started in September 1920. It was substantially cut and released by First International in the US in October 1921 with the new title One Arabian Night. Negri remembered its production as: “a very easy and happy chore. Except for a few Lubitsch innovations, it was essentially a photographed stage play.” (Memoirs of a Star)
This kind of dismissive assessment has plagued One Arabian Night, with even relatively recent biographies of Lubitsch granting the film scant attention. However it is an important film, both as an example of Germany’s aesthetic advancements and also in the context of Negri’s and Lubitsch’s career. For instance it was this film that impressed Mary Pickford so much that she brought Lubitsch to the US for Rosita (1923). The film’s critical neglect is most likely a result of viewing the bowdlerised US print, which is missing thirty minutes. Thankfully now we can see the fully restored version.
Sumurun (1920)
Many historians agree that German films improved when Hollywood films began to be seen in Germany from 1921, and yet, interesting approaches to cinematography preceding the American influence are evident in films such Sumurun. For instance, in the opening of the film where the light streaming through blinds in the caravan causes chiaroscuro patterns. Cameraman Sparkuhl also has a tendency to hold closeups from a high angle, which adds variety to some of the scenes. Indeed, most of the closeups of Pola Negri, particularly the scenes of her dancing in Sumurun, are shot in this manner. This may have been a way of singling Negri out from the rest of the characters; similar to the technique of filming stars that was developing in Hollywood.
German film’s reputation for elaborate set design is evident in Sumurun. There is a rhythm both in the set design and also in the movement of figures within that design. Lotte Eisner has noted how the American musical would pattern itself on the “delicate arabesques” in this film (The Haunted Screen). Contemporary reviews often observed how Lubitsch’s films were on a par with the best American productions. Variety reviewing the film in 1921 commented: “The production is colorful throughout, the atmosphere of the East being perfect in detail.” These films were incredibly successful in Germany and abroad. Their settings, such as Sumurun’s Persia, and subject matter, offered audiences an escape from everyday reality. Negri observed that “one of the reasons [for the success of Sumurun] was certainly because its intensely romantic oriental fatalism was precisely the kind of escapism a war-weary people craved for” (Memoirs of a Star).
Pola Negri in Sumurun
Negri and Lubitsch were among the first international celebrities to be brought to the US – later director-star duos included Mauritz Stiller and Greta Garbo. Negri arrived under contract with Paramount in 1922 to a storm of publicity. The press went wild over an affair with Charles Chaplin and supposed spats between her and Gloria Swanson, whose top star status at Paramount she challenged. Her vampish screen persona was conflated with anecdotes about her private life. The press spread rumours about her many lovers and delighted in reporting quirky acts such as her walking a tiger on a leash down Hollywood Boulevard.
Negri had became known abroad for playing roles where women exploited their sexuality for economic and political gain (see also Carmen and Madame Dubarry). Her swaggering sexuality is parodied sublimely by Marion Davies in The Patsy (1926). Diane Negra has observed the transformation that her persona undertook in the move from Germany to Hollywood. In the Hollywood films her femme fatale image was tempered and the films frequently ended happily. The American films also deemphasised the ethnic and class dimensions found in earlier films. Her US films were not as successful as the European ones and Negra argues that this was the result of her ethnic sexuality. Her Italian surname, Polish ethnicity and connections to German film industry meant she could not (or would not) be fully assimilated. In public and private she appeared to resist being Americanised. “As the unassimilatable woman, both in ethnic and sexual terms, she stood for a type that was in fact far more transgressive than the thoroughly American, upper-middle-class flapper who, for all her supposed flouting of social conventions, was nearly always safely married off in the end.” (‘Immigrant Stardom in Imperial America: Pola Negri and the Problem of Typology’, Diane Negra).
Costas Fotopoulos is based in London and works internationally as a concert and silent film pianist, and as a composer and arranger for film, the stage and the concert hall. He regularly provides live improvisations to silent films at BFI Southbank and he has also accompanied films at other major British venues as well as in New York, Warsaw and Italy. I interviewed him after a screening of Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans in Winchmore Hill, north London, organised by Around the Corner Cinema. We also discussed his score for modern silent film The Projectionist.
It’s podcast o’clock once more. This time I’m joined in the studio by the marvellous Pete Baran, and in the pub by Lucie Dutton, who tells us all about British silent film director Maurice Elvey. All that, plus a guest appearance by Otto Kylmälä, film-maker and festival organiser, praising the “subtle brilliance and mature beauty” of his favourite silent movie, Chaplin’s City Lights.
If you want to get in touch with us about anything you hear on the podcast tweet @silentlondon or leave a message on the Facebook page: facebook.com/silentlondon.
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