Tag Archives: silent film

Charlie’s London: Lambeth workhouse

May 28, 2012 PH 8 Comments

This is a guest post for Silent London by Ayşe Behçet

Hi everyone, again thank you for taking time out to read this instalment of Charlie’s London. This segment is going to look at the importance of family with the backdrop of the Lambeth Workhouse. Events that transpired behind the walls of that Victorian institution would change Charlie’s life; but it also holds some personal significance for me too.

I thought long and hard about how to start this piece. The answer to my prayers came in the form of my three-year-old godson Jayden, whose mannerisms and speech are so precociously adult-like you can imagine him starring in The Kid. Jayden is my cousin Em’s little boy, I was there when he was born and have never lived more than three doors away from his mother my entire life. Jay waltzed into my bedroom one afternoon after playing in our joint garden (Em’s parents live next door to us) and pointed at my wall.

“What’s that, Ayşe?” He was referring my two framed Chaplin film posters, one of The Kid and one of The Gold Rush. When I explained to him that they were posters from films made by a very funny man called Charlie Chaplin, Jayden was intrigued.

“Can we watch him?” Well! I don’t need an excuse, so I reached for one of my DVDs.

We snuggled up on the sofa to watch The Kid (I choose this one because I felt Jay could really identify with little Jackie Coogan, both cheeky and comical). I was right; Jayden loved it! He giggled and squealed at every comedy moment, until the scene when the Kid is ripped away from the Tramp. It disturbed him, you could see in his little face the terror and torment; the fear that someone could do that to him, and he would no longer see his mother and father. I have to confess, Coogan’s lips moving to the words “I want my daddy” always causes a lump in my throat. Of course, when the Tramp rescues the boy from the moving orphanage van and holds him the way only a father can, I assured Jay that all little boys have their parents in the end, if they are good little boys.

After he had gone home I sat thinking about the film. Jayden’s reaction had hit a nerve with me that I needed to explore.

Chaplin never hid the fact that he cared about human suffering, and it has been suggested the world over that his own poor upbringing left him with emotional scars. If my godson at three felt moved and distressed at he sight of this in a film, what must a young Chaplin have felt? His whole world, mother and Syd ripped apart from him by a system that was designed to protect but ultimately hindered the welfare of the poorer classes and their children. Initially, a frightened seven-year-old Chaplin, his mother Hannah and brother Sydney went of their own accord to the Lambeth workhouse, once known as the Newington Workhouse because of its location (just off Newington Butts in Lambeth). This was largely because of their mother, who struggled to cope with the financial difficulties the family had to endure. Once the family were admitted their clothes were removed and their heads were shaved; can you imagine the humiliation? I have to be honest: I think Hannah’s decision to admit her sons rather than show defeat actually showed love and strength. She admitted to herself they deserved better, what more can a mother who loves her sons do?

Hannah Chaplin’s breakdown and the family’s arrival at Lambeth Workhouse happened in 1896. By June that same year the two boys were removed from their mother, which caused Chaplin much distress, and sent to Central London District School at Hanwell in west London. The journey seemed like a holiday to the young brothers, who travelled to their new home by horse-drawn bakery van. However, when they arrived, they spent time in an “approbation” ward where Chaplin was separated from his beloved brother and placed in the infants section of the school. Chaplin remembered in his Autobiography many years later how the older girls would bathe the younger boys, recounting in particular the cold and wet all-over flannel wash he received from a fourteen-year-old.

If you have read these blogs before you will know I’ve mentioned my great-grandmother Nanny Harris before. Her daughter Esther, my nan’s sister whom I always lovingly referred to as Auntie Etty, was born in a Lambeth workhouse. My nan’s brother, my uncle Fred, was also born in one too. Family story leads us to believe my great-grandmother literally sat upon the steps of the workhouse each time her waters broke and told them to take her in: “Or I am going to have this bleeding baby in the street.”

The Cinema Museum in south London (formerly Lambeth Workhouse)

What’s more, a family mystery could tie us directly to Chaplin – and we didn’t realise it for many years.

There is a famous picture of Chaplin, huddled against a group of small boys, his seven-year-old face looking at the camera with the same cheeky grin that would later make him a worldwide star. Two rows back is a small boy, his jawline is strong and his face familiar, this boy we believe is the brother of my great-grandmother, who, if records are to be believed was in the Lambeth Workhouse the same time as Chaplin. Unfortunately no other photo of him exists as an adult, no photos of my great-grandmother survive either, so it really is a family mystery that will never be solved. The family would again later return to this building but thankfully in better circumstances.

In the 1960s my mother volunteered at the building when it was still a hospital and institution within the borough, she probably stood in the chapel area, famously linked to the Chaplin family, and never realised the connection that her own daughter would later write about. Now, of course, the workhouse has become the Cinema Museum. Recently it was my turn to return there, to meet David Robinson, a hero I have been reading from the age of 11, for a fantastic presentation on Chaplin, my ultimate hero – I came full circle!

Ayşe Behçet

Blog, Silent Hitchcock

An introduction to silent Hitchcock: The Lodger

May 25, 2012 PH 3 Comments

Each week, as you know, we’ll be looking at a different silent Hitchcock – and this week we have arrived at The Lodger, a bona fide Hitchcock thriller, yet only the third feature he directed. The film he made before this and after The Pleasure Garden, The Mountain Eagle, is sadly a lost film.

The Lodger is a wonderfully atmospheric “is-he-or-isn’t-he?” intrigue starring Ivor Novello as a man suspected of being a serial killer – a ripper who calls himself the Avenger and targets pretty blonde women. Heralded as an early classic and praised for its Expressionist flourishes now, The Lodger was almost never released following a damning assessment by a distributor at an industry screening. Michael Balcon and Film Society member Ivor Montagu both went to bat for the film and after the addition of some elaborate intertitles, The Lodger was finally released, pleasing critics and audiences alike. The Bioscope praised it, saying: “It is possible that this film is the finest British production ever made”.

The Lodger: A Story of the London Fog (1927)

The film bears the evocative subtitle “A Story of the London Fog”, but the peasouper here is really a miasma of suspicion, temptation and guilt. To varying extents, the lodger’s landlord and lady (the Buntings) suspect him of being the killer, as do their daughter Daisy and her steady policeman boyfriend, but still they welcome him into their home. When Daisy first kisses the lodger, she does so with open, watchful eyes. When Mrs Bunting sees some cash on his mantelpiece, her mind immediately turns to theft. Does she not even trust herself?

It’s a grimy, nasty film in so many ways, but there’s humour here of course, most notably in the gallows mode from the wearily pragmatic dancing girls who crowd round the paper to read about the latest murder then go out with brunette ringlets tucked in their hats as a precaution.

Hitchcock has said that he was forced to drop his preferred ending for the film and The Lodger‘s final moments are from convincing. It’s not as audacious as Murnau’s tacked-on happy ending for The Last Laugh (1924), but knowing that Hitchcock saw that film goes a long way to explaining the tone of the final scene.

Synopsis: London is being terrorised by a Jack the Ripper-style murderer, the Avenger, who targets young blond-haired women. A mysterious new lodger arrives at the home of Mr and Mrs Bunting, whose daughter Daisy is courted by a policeman on the case. When the lodger begins behaving strangely, he attracts suspicion, particularly when he shows an interest in Daisy. (BFI Screenonline)

Hitchcock moment: Three minutes in, Joe initiates a very ghoulish conversation over tea, but is interrupted by something apparently terrible happening upstairs.

Watch out for: Hitchcock’s first cameo, as a newspaper editor.

Links worth clicking:

The Lodger screens at the Barbican on 21 July 2012, with the London Symphony Orchestra performing a new score by Nitin Sawhney. The film will then be theatrically released on 10 August 2012. More information here.

Don’t forget that you can still donate to the For the Love of Film Blogathon, to get The White Shadow streamed online with a new score, if you can, please spare some cash for this good cause.

Blog, Podcast

The Silent London podcast: the British Silent Film Festival, Hitchcock and Greed

May 23, 2012 PH 3 Comments

The podcast returns – we love the talkies don’t we? This time around, I’m lucky enough to be joined by Matthew Turner from viewlondon.co.uk and podcaster extraordinaire Pete Baran. We’ll be hearing what you thought of the recent British Silent Film Festival, anticipating the forthcoming silent Hitchcock screenings in London and Matthew will be talking about his favourite silent film. If you haven’t seen Greed (1924), be warned: here be spoilers. There is plenty of suspense, however, in discovering whether we fail The Artist Challenge – and if we do, who the culprit will be.

The Silent London Podcast: the British Silent Film Festival, Hitchcock and Greed

The Silent London Podcast is also on iTunes. Click here for more details. The music is by kind permission of Neil Brand, and the podcast is presented in association with SOAS radio.

If you want to get in touch with us about anything you hear on the podcast, email silentlondonpodcast@gmail.com, tweet @silent_london or leave a message on the Facebook page: facebook.com/silentlondon.

Blog, Silent Hitchcock

An introduction to silent Hitchcock: The Pleasure Garden

May 18, 2012 PH 11 Comments

Hitchcock, Hitchcock, Hitchcock, these days it’s all I ever blinking think about. Specifically silent Hitchcock, ahead of the feast that awaits us this summer. So today I’m kicking off a short introduction to the silent Hitchcocks, taking one film a week, so you’ll be fully up to speed by the time the screenings start in the summer.

As we’re starting on Friday 18 May, there’s just enough time for us to squeeze this first post into the marvellous For The Love of Film blogathon, a noble endeavour to raise funds to get the remaining reels of The White Shadow online, with a freshly composed score, streaming to cinephiles around the world. Here’s a little more explanation from the Self-Styled Siren:

This year, we are raising funds for the National Film Preservation Foundation’s project, The White Shadow, directed by Graham Cutts and written, assistant-directed, and just generally meddled with in a number of different ways by the one and only Alfred Hitchcock. The goal is to raise $15,000 to stream this once-lost, now-found, three-reel fragment online, free to all, and to record the score by Michael Mortilla. Marilyn Ferdinand, Rod Heath and the Siren are pleased to announce that we now have more than 100 bloggers signed up for this hoedown.

Do take a look at some of the posts in the blogathon, including Silent Volume’s elegant appraisal of Hitchcock’s Easy Virtue and some, er, poetry, from Shadowplay. If you like what you see, which you sure as heck will, please dip into your pocket for this good cause.

Now, to business. Each week we’ll be looking at a different silent Hitchcock – there’ll be a short introduction here, a juicy clip, and some carefully selected links. We’re starting with Hitch’s directorial debut, The Pleasure Garden.

This tale of backstage romance and farflung misdeeds may have been Hitchcock’s directorial debut, but he was so proud of it that he put his signature in the credits. “Actors come and actors go,” he told the Film Society, “but the name of the director should stay clearly in the mind of the audiences.” As for the “cattle”, American star Virginia Valli plays the heroine, Patsy, and Miles Mander the brute she is unfortunate enough to fall for. Another US star, Carmelita Geraghty, plays Patsy’s friend and ambitious fellow dancer, and her love interest arrives in the form of popular Scottish actor John Stuart.

The Pleasure Garden was filmed in Germany, but it has a very British feel, from the leery music-hall audiences to our leading ladies’ aspidistra-and-doily lodgings. It may not be a suspense thriller, but The Pleasure Garden opens in fine Hitchcockian style with pretty blonde showgirls (and their legs) being ogled on stage. It’s good old innocent fun to start with, of course, but unless it really is 1925 and this is the first Hitchcock film you’ve ever seen, you’ll sense a sinister frisson in such ardent voyeurism. And you’d be right to.

Poster for The Pleasure Garden (from Hitchcockwiki)

Like so many of Hitchcock’s silents, The Pleasure Garden was adapted for the screen by Eliot Stannard, a towering, if often unsung, figure in British silent cinema. While Hitchcock’s silents are undoubtedly less consistently surefooted than his blockbuster sound films (yer Psychos, yer Vertigos), they are all polished, sophisticated productions, deftly made by a team of film professionals. His debut benefits from the work of Stannard, Hitch’s wife Alma Reville, and producers Michael Balcon and Erich Pommer, nopt to mention its stars, including Valli, whom you may have seen elsewhere in King Vidor’s Wild Oranges (1924) and Mander whom you’ll surely know from his tour de force The First Born. But it’s Hitchcock’s show nonetheless: indeed, when the Spectator’s Iris Barry saw Hitchcock’s bravura debut, she sniffed out “new blood” for the British film industry immediately. This juvenilia is not so juvenile.

It must be said, however, that all reviews were not so enthusiastic. In the States, Variety spluttered: “A sappy chorus picture, probably intended for the sappy sticks where they still fall for this sort of a chorus girl story.” Fair comment, but Jill and Patsy themselves are hardly sappy, chorus girls or no.

Synopsis: “The diverging lives of two dancers from The Pleasure Garden nightspot. Jill rises to the heights and leaves her humble friend Patsy, and her fiancé, behind. Meanwhile, the good-natured Patsy stumbles into marriage with the selfish, dangerous Levet.” (From BFI Screenonline)

Hitchcock moment: Three minutes, 50 seconds into this clip, Jill gets her pocket picked by a couple of no-good hoods.

Watch out for: Patsy’s dog. There’s wisdom in those woofs.

Links worth clicking:

The Pleasure Garden screens at Wilton’s Music Hall on 28 & 29 June 2012 with a new score by Daniel Patrick Cohen. More information here.

Lecture

Neil Brand: The Silent Pianist Speaks at the Cinema Museum, 19 May 2012

May 16, 2012 PH Leave a comment

Neil Brand – and friends

Who do you watch silent movies with? Your friends? Your partner? Toute seule on the front row taking notes? The answer is that we all watch silent films in the company of the musician, who is not just accompanying the movie, but guiding the audience through it as well. Whether composing a score or improvising on the fly, silent cinema musicians are arguably closer to and more involved with the film then anyone else in the auditorium. Which is why it’s always fascinating to hear what they have to say about the movies.

Neil Brand does more to share his wisdom than most, with regular appearances on TV and radio discussing film history and film scores – as well as his work with the British Silent Film Festival too. But for the real skinny on silent cinema as he sees it, you need to catch him on stage, with a projector and a piano, holding forth. The good news is that Brand’s The Silent Pianist Speaks show is back in London on Saturday, at our beloved Cinema Museum.

From the earliest, earthiest comedies and thrillers, through a silent cine-verité classic scripted by a young Billy Wilder, to the glories of Hollywood glamour and the sublime Laurel and Hardy, Neil provides improvised accompaniment and laconic commentary on everything from deep focus to his own live cinema disasters. He investigates how music works with film by inviting the audience to score a love scene, and the show culminates with Neil accompanying a clip ‘sight unseen’ whilst simultaneously describing his reactions to it. The result is a hilarious, sharp and ultimately moving show about cinema and music which pays tribute to the musicians of the silent era through the observations of one the world’s greatest improvising accompanists.

You don’t want to miss this, do you?

The Silent Pianist Speaks is at the Cinema Museum on Saturday 19 May 2012 at 7.30pm. To read more about this particular event, and to buy tickets at the bargainous price of £8.50 or less for concessions, click through to the Cinema Museum website here. Read more about The Silent Pianist Speaks here. If you don’t live in the capital, you;ll be pleased to know that the Silent Pianist Also Speaks Elsewhere. Visit Neil Brand’s website for details of shows around the country (there’s one coming up in Ipswich on 27 May).

Blog, Charlie's London

Charlie’s London: David Robinson at the Cinema Museum

May 14, 2012 PH 1 Comment

This is a guest post by Ayşe Behçet for Silent London.

Welcome back for the next instalment of Charlie’s London. In this segment I am looking at the Lambeth Workhouse, an institution that Chaplin spent some time as a youngster. But unlike in the previous chapters of this blog, which focus on either my connections with Charlie or the places our paths have crossed, I want to look at a fantastic event that really brought home to me the importance of keeping his memory alive.

I have always sworn by the events calendar Silent London offers its readers, and three months ago was no exception. While browsing, I came across a presentation by the much loved and highly accredited film expert and Chaplin scholar David Robinson. Robinson on Robinson, as it was called, promised to be a fascinating insight into a career spanning many years, with many stories. The event, on Saturday night, did not disappoint, with brilliant anecdotes and wonderful tales of the Hollywood elite, and Robinson’s own career as the backdrop. For me this experience meant so much more. The event was held at the Cinema Museum, which holds masses of film memorabilia and regularly hosts film screenings and lectures – and the Cinema Museum is housed in the building that was once the Lambeth Workhouse.

David Robinson with Ayse Behçet — David Robinson with Ayşe Behçet

For me, who had grown up in South London, loving Chaplin, knowing this very building was the old Lambeth Workhouse and of course reading Robinson’s biography of Chaplin since I was 11 years old, this event was really the final piece in the jigsaw. I was 10 when I first saw the biopic Chaplin starring Robert Downey Jnr. I had wanted to read more about Chaplin’s life, and so ventured to the local library with my nan, where I uncovered Robinson’s book. I can remember sitting on a stool in the library stool while my nan browsed, my elbows rested on the table while my hands were placed firmly on my jaw line, head transfixed in the book. Everyone always tells me they know when my concentration level is at its highest: I swing my legs like a crazy person or bite my bottom lip as I read. Well, according to my nan this is exactly what I did.

I borrowed the book for two weeks and read the whole thing. I was hooked. For my birthday I asked for my own copy – Mum couldn’t quite understand why, especially as I had not long finished the library copy. I just knew, even at that age that I would want to read it over and over again. Now, 18 years later, it’s still sitting there on my shelf. I have used it for references, quotes, even to solve arguments – it has always been my true companion on my Chaplin journey. Of course, I understand the book very better now as a grown woman than I did as a child, with life comes greater understanding. Yet I will never forget asking my nan what certain words meant and if she had heard of the actors and actresses mentioned in the books. Did she remember any of the events and of course what was it like to actually see a Chaplin film in the cinema? Her stories always fascinated me!

The first time I met David Robinson was at the 2012 Slapstick Festival in Bristol. It was January and traditionally cold and miserable, but the festival cheered up every dreary day. Robinson gave two presentations that weekend, one on Chaplin’s life and one showing shorts and clips from some of his most memorable films. I watched in fascination at the first event, which I remember being 9am on the Saturday morning. It was everything I loved and adored about Chaplin, his London and how it affected him; his controversies and how he reacted to them. Well, after nearly 20 years and quite a bit of courage I finally got to talk to Robinson, and if I ever felt his book was an inspiration I can promise anyone who reads this that the man himself it so much more. Through him I have met some amazing and interesting people: I have continued a journey I started as a small child and I have felt very privileged in many ways. I wouldn’t have half the material I have in my blog without him, that’s for sure.

So this blog post has been rather sentimental, not that the others have really been anything else! And of course I have quoted Robinson and mentioned him before. But it is no exaggeration that you cannot possibly research Chaplin without having his biography constantly on hand. For me, being sat in the very room where Charlie and Sydney Chaplin spent such hard times, listening to David and remembering my roots, I truly felt I had come home. London never leaves you. Getting off the tube at the Elephant and walking down towards Renfrew Road; seeing the Imperial War Museum in the background; remembering the stories I grew up on – all these things remind me of the person I really am. Your home and your birth make up a large part of who you are. My nan always taught me that, and just as Robinson said in his reminiscence that Chaplin had always been in his life because of his father’s love of his films, so has he (and Robinson) very much always been in mine. I truly hope that this will always continue!

Thank you so much for taking time to read this blog spot, normal Chaplinesque service will be resumed in two weeks’ time when we will venture back to the workhouse once more to give some context to our hero and his life in London, as well as its use now as a fantastic gem of a museum.

Ayşe Behçet

Screening

Robin Hood with the Royal Philharmonic at Cadogan Hall, 12 July 2012

May 2, 2012 PH Leave a comment

I can tell you right now – the 2012 summer blockbusters will have nothing to match Robin Hood (1922). The towering sets, the impossible stunts, the mischievous humour, the prancing Merrie Men and at the heart of it all, handsome lunatic Douglas Fairbanks springing from one perilous situation to the next. In tights. It’s ridiculous, sure, but it’s ridiculously good fun too. Not for nothing did Kevin Brownlow call it “unique in every respect … as legendary as the story which inspired it.”

This July, Robin Hood will be shown in the grand surroundings of Chelsea’s Cadogan Hall, with an equally grand accompaniment – the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra playing a new score composed by John Scott. If you want to introduce your children to silent cinema, I can think of few better ways to do it. This quote from Scott bodes well for a feisty soundtrack and a thrilling night.

The film calls for an action-packed score. There is romance, intrigue, terror, spectacle, suspense, and as the story progresses it demands more and more, culminating in the spectacle of a royal wedding.

Robin Hood screens at Cadogan Hall on 12 July 2012 at 7.30pm. Tickets start at £12.50 and you can buy them here on the Cadogan Hall website.

Blog, Poll

Moroder’s Metropolis – masterpiece or monstrosity?

April 30, 2012 PH 4 Comments

Last year, we reported that Kino Lorber was releasing Giorgio Moroder’s musical re-edit of Fritz lang’s Metropolis on Blu-Ray in America – followed by a limited theatrical release. Now, Eureka Entertainment has announced a UK DVD/DVD steelbook release for the movie on 23 July 2012.

If you need to refresh your memory, Giorgio Moroder’s version came out in 1984 and looks very different to the latest restoration. Working with the most complete version of the film he could find at the time, Moroder added a rock soundtrack, washed some different scenes with bright tints and made the whole thing run faster by removing the intertitles and using the text for subtitles. It’s a strange beast, and perhaps needless to say, a cult favourite.

So – after all the recent excitement over the “complete” Metropolis, are you horrified by the thought of watching Moroder’s hard-rocking version? Or do you have fond memories of this “retro-futurist” experiment? Perhaps it was the the first silent movie you saw and it holds happy memories of your first steps into early cinema? Maybe you’re just a big Freddie Mercury fan. Let us know what you think by completing our poll, or commenting below

Blog, Charlie's London

Charlie’s London: the pub crawl

April 30, 2012 PH 3 Comments

This is a guest post by Ayşe Behçet for Silent London.

Thanks for returning for another instalment of Charlie’s London! This piece is going to look at the pubs in Chaplin’s life. It has always been my intention to show Chaplin’s emotional side, and also how there we can still see the South London of his youth around us. Chaplin appears not to have been much of a drinker, but two significant incidents in his life were connected to public houses that you can visit in London today.

First, we will look at the Three Stags just off the Kennington Road, opposite the fantastic Imperial War Museum. Then we will look at The Coal Hole on the Strand, a beautiful Victorian building.

As an undergraduate student who specialised in the Great War I would often find myself in the Imperial War Museum, studying its vast collection of military artifacts and hours of video footage. It was at this time I first discovered “Chaplin’s Corner”. Myself and three friends decided that, rather than hot chocolate and scones in the museum café we would cross the road to the Three Stags pub. The pub has that hint of Victorian decadence you imagine in the pages of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes stories: dark, almost black interiors with perfectly preserved stained glass. Once we were seated inside, I looked over to my right and a sign caught my eye. It said “Chaplin’s Corner”. As I ventured over I could see a beautiful picture of Chaplin and Jackie Coogan from the 1921 movie The Kid and an explanation for the naming of this little area.

When Charlie was just 10 years old he happened to wander past the pub and for no reason poke his head through the open door. What he saw would go on to be an important moment in his young life. In his Autobiography he wrote:

The Three Stags in the Kennington Road was not a place my Father frequented, yet as I passed it one evening an urge prompted me to peek inside and there he was, sitting in the corner! I was about to leave, but his face lit up and he beckoned me to him. I was surprised at such a welcome, for he was never demonstrative. He looked very ill; his eyes were sunken, and his body had swollen to an enormous size. He rested one hand, Napoleon-like, in his waistcoat as if to ease his difficult breathing. That evening he was most solicitous, inquiring after Mother and Sydney, and before I left took me in his arms and for the first time kissed me. That was the last time I saw him alive. (Charlie Chaplin, My Autobiography, quote reprinted courtesy of the archives of Roy Export Company Establishment)

I then remembered reading this same passage and more in Chaplin’s My Autobiography, so that night I took my well-read and very battered copy from my bookshelf once more. If you have not read this book I really do recommend it. This book has often come under scrutiny from critics for being “overly Dickensian”. I cannot disagree with that enough! What makes this an interesting read is more looking at the man behind the words, why does he mention certain things and not others? Why does he speak of some quite obscure people and now well-known individuals such as Buster Keaton whom we know he had a good friendship with?

It was then that I stumbled across another familiar place, a name I had seen before and could not place, The Coal Hole in the Strand. Well, if I felt the Three Stags screamed Victorian thriller then this pub most definitely howled its heritage from the rooftops. The beautiful glowing red sign above the door reminds you of gas lamps and empty gin beakers. Unlike the Three Stags, which no doubt held sad memories for Chaplin, the Coal Hole was the setting for a very touching moment in which he realised his brother Syd’s true affections for him. Chaplin wrote in his Autobiography:

I had been in the Provinces for six months. Meanwhile Sydney had had little success in getting a job in a theatre, so he was obliged to descend from his Thespian ambition and apply for a job as a bartender at The Coal Hole in the Strand. Out of one hundred and fifty applicants he got the job. But he had fallen ignominiously from his own graces as it were.

He wrote to me regularly and kept me posted of Mother, but I seldom answered his letters; for one reason, I could not spell very well. One letter touched me deeply and drew me very close to him; he reproached me for not answering his letter and recalled the misery we had endured together which should unite us even closer. “Since Mother’s illness,” wrote Sydney, “all we have in the world is each other. Do you must write regularly and let me know I have a brother.” His letter was so moving I replied immediately. Now I saw Sydney in another light. His letter cemented a brotherly love that has lasted throughout my life. (Charlie Chaplin, My Autobiography, quote reprinted courtesy of the archives of Roy Export Company Establishment)

It has always been a belief of mine that Syd gets overlooked when we talk about Chaplin. Well thanks to Lisa K Stein and her truly wonderful biography of Syd Chaplin we can now all see the full story. This book is another must-read, alongside David Robinson’s definitive biography of Chaplin, which I have also mentioned before in my little blog. If you can find My Trip Abroad by Chaplin himself, first published in 1922, I also highly recommend that as another look at this great Londoner’s feelings about his home town.

People often ask me why Chaplin never came back to England to live. Of course, I can’t answer that. Only the great man himself could explain and unfortunately we will never have his answer. That is also only one of the questions I get asked. Half the people I talk to about Chaplin don’t even realise he was English, which to me is extraordinary! The only thing I can say is that in my humble opinion Chaplin didn’t need to make constant pilgrimages to the place of his birth, it never really left him.

Ayşe Behçet

Blog

The Genius of Hitchock: celebrating cinema’s master of suspense

April 25, 2012 PH 2 Comments

The BFI has asked me to share some information about the forthcoming silent Hitchcock screenings with you – so voila!


	The Genius of Hitchcock
					Rescue the Hitchcock 9 Our major campaign to restore all nine of Hitchcock’s surviving silent films.
	Celebrating Cinema’s Master of Suspense Gala screenings of newly restored British silent films with live scores Starting with the London 2012 Festival, the BFI is exploring Alfred Hitchcock’s complete works with a celebration which includes gala screenings of the silent classics and a full retrospective at BFI Southbank. Blackmail One of the best British films of the 1920s, Hitchcock’s ‘Blackmail’ is a true masterpiece of the silent era. A young girl engaged to a stuffy policeman is enticed up to an artist’s studio, laying herself open to the blackmail of the title. Presented outdoors at the British Museum – the location of the film’s thrilling chase sequence – with a specially arranged score by composer Neil Brand, this is a once-in-a-lifetime film experience. B ook now The Ring When boxer Bob Corby hires Jack Sander to be his sparring partner, he has no idea that he will become smitten with Mabel, Jack’s beautiful wife. A love triangle emerges in which the bouts in the ring become more than gamely sparring, leading up to the championship fight (famously set in the Albert Hall) between the two men for the love of Mabel. Features a brand new score by Soweto Kinch, multi-award winning British jazz alto saxophonist, hip hop artist, rapper and MC. Book now The Lodger A strange lodger may be a serial killer in Alfred Hitchcock’s first suspense thriller. With a new score by Nitin Sawhney, performed live with the London Symphony Orchestra at Barbican Hall. Nitin Sawhney’s score for The Lodger is commissioned by independent film distributor Network Releasing in partnership with the BFI. Book now

Join us on Facebook

Screening

A Woman Redeemed at the Cinema Museum, 14 June 2012

April 20, 2012 PH 3 Comments

On 14 June, the Cinema Museum is showing a programme of little-seen British silent films, including a new print of the racy spy thriller A Woman Redeemed (Sinclair Hill, 1927), starring Brian Aherne and Joan Lockton, with musical accompaniment from Stephen Horne. I’ve seen A Woman Redeemed, and it’s a stylish, well-paced film from the latter end of the silent era that deserves a far more exciting title – and a wider audience. Here, to introduce the film more fully, is a guest post from Amy Sargeant, author of British Cinema: a Critical History (BFI, 2005).

'Hollywood taste' – A Woman Redeemed (1927)

Stoll’s 1927 release, A Woman Redeemed, was adapted by Mary Murillo from Frederick Britten Austin’s Strand magazine short story, ‘The Fining Pot is for Silver’. Both scenarios exploit a contemporary appetite for spy fiction – possibly best exemplified by John Buchan’s The Thirty-Nine Steps, Huntingtower and Greenmantle – and the audience for wartime memoirs published by former Secret Service personnel. Basil Thomson, appointed head of the Criminal Investigation Department in 1913, was twice charged with interviewing the alleged spy, Mata Hari. Self-servingly, he concluded:

No drama, no film story yet written has been so enthralling as our daily repertory on the dimly lighted stage set in a corner of the granite building in Westminster. In a century after we … are dead and gone, the Great War will be a quarry for tales of adventure, of high endeavour, and of splendid achievement: when that time comes even some of the humbler actors who play their part in these pages may be seen through a haze of romance.

Both Britten Austin’s story and Sinclair Hill’s film feature an organisation of foreign agents, intent upon power and destruction. Geoffrey Wayneflete (Brian Aherne), an irreproachable young pilot distinguished for his service in the Great War, has designed a wireless controlled, pilotless aeroplane ‘that shall make Britain strong enough to keep peace in the world’. The agents conspire to steal his plans, pressing into service Felice Annaway (Joan Lockton), ordering her to use her ‘charm and beauty’ to seduce Geoffrey. Stella Arbenina, meanwhile, plays the darkly enigmatic and heartless Marta, threatening to expose Felice should she fail to comply with the instructions of a dastardly ‘Twisted Genius’. The Criminal Investigation Department is not to be outwitted and pursues the agents to France; a chase ensues, from Paris to London, the centre of a ‘Proud Empire’.

A foreign agent, 'intent upon power and destruction' – A Woman Redeemed (1927)

A masked ball afforded Walter Murton, Hill’s designer, the opportunity to produce the most spectacular set witnessed to date in British Cinema: spangled bathing belles dive into a pool from tiered platforms. A 1927 Bioscope reviewer commented wryly on the decors provided for Felice’s Paris hotel suite:

The bedrooms with gold and silver draperies seem rather to suggest Hollywood taste, but for anything we know that may be the taste that appeals to ladies in the pay of alien governments.

One guest at the ball has drawn inspiration from Douglas Fairbanks; Geoffrey comes dressed as Harlequin.

'Spangled bathing belles' – A Woman Redeemed (1927)

As an author, Britten Austin was something of a pasticheur, with a range spanning from popular farce to a modish fascination with the occult: Buried Treasure, combining parapsychology, adventure and costume drama, was filmed by Cosmopolitan in 1921 from a Britten Austin short story, as a vehicle for Marion Davies. However, as a prediction of future aerial warfare, A Woman Redeemed bears comparison with Maurice Elvey’s 1929 High Treason, likewise featuring a gang of alien, deracinated mercenaries and idealists.

A Woman Redeemed uses multinational aliases to designate suspect characters. It gestures towards a return to nationalism in Europe in the late 1920s and early 1930s as a guarantor of inner security and the potential incubator of external conflict.

A Woman Redeemed screens at the Cinema Museum in south London on 14 June 2012 at 6.30pm, with musical accompaniment by Stephen Horne. Tickets cost £8.50 or £6.50 for concessions and are available online here.

Images courtesy of the National Film and Television Archive.

Blog, Silent Hitchcock

Scoring Hitchcock’s silent films

April 18, 2012 PH 6 Comments

“This is for now. This is for audiences now” – Neil Brand, composer, Blackmail

Yesterday I was lucky enough to attend the press launch of the BFI’s Genius of Hitchcock season, where the summer’s blockbuster season of screenings was announced. Creative director Heather Stewart made a great case for Leytonstone’s favourite son, calling him a modernist to compare with Picasso and Le Corbusier, and a cornerstone of British culture, laying the adjective Hitchcockian alongside its counterparts Dickensian and Shakespearean. “The idea of popular cinema somehow being capable of being great art at the same time as being entertaining is still a problem for some people. Shakespeare is on the national curriculum, Hitchcock is not,” she says. Furthermore, she argued that Hitchcock’s work demands not just greater study, but wider audiences. The answer the BFI proposes is to show the films – all of them – in the most comprehensive Hitchcock retrospective ever staged – including his silent films.

“We would find it very strange if we could not see Shakespeare’s early plays performed, or read Dickens’s early novels. But we’ve been quite satisfied as a nation that Hitchcock’s early films have not been seen in good quality prints on the big screen.”

Showing the nine extant silents is of course more difficult than screening the later work. The prints require varying degrees of restoration work – and new scores. For me, the most interesting part of launch event was a panel discussion chaired by Nick James, editor of Sight & Sound magazine, which gave an insight into the process of writing new music for the films. Five composers were on stage, each of whom had been tasked with scoring a different Hitchcock silent. It was fascinating to hear about the different approaches they took, how much they felt that the project was a direct way of expressing their admiration for the director, and their readings of the different films.

Neil Brand, whose orchestral score for Blackmail will be arranged for a smaller ensemble and played at a gala screening in the forecourt of the British Museum, described the “party game” of following Hitchcock’s characters’ shifting motivations and vulnerability. His intention, he said, was “bring out the neurosis” in the film. And he was upfront about the fact that he took inspiration from some of Hitchcock’s later musical collaborators. We were shown a clip from the film that precedes the scene excerpted above. Brand wasn’t, he explained, trying to register the heroine’s desire for the artist, but for the frilly dress hanging in the studio. To that end, he “scored the dress”, with a sparkling theme every bit as frothy as the frock.

Hitchcock’s “switching empathies” were also part of the attraction and the complexity of scoring The Lodger for Nitin Sawhney. He started, he said, by working on the titles, those extravagantly designed, animated captions that decorate the film, and pulling the strands of the narrative apart. It must have been complex. Asked by James if the score was as foggy as the film’s vision of London, he replied no, but added self-deprecatingly that his brain was a little fogged during the composition process. Those who have heard Sawhney’s score for A Throw of Dice will doubtless be happy to learn that this new composition will also be performed by the London Symphony Orchestra at the Barbican in June.

Fog or no fog, young composer Daniel Patrick Cohen showed every enthusiasm for the task of soundtracking Hitchcock’s first film. As a long-term fan of the director he described The Pleasure Garden as “a blueprint for all the wonderful films that Alfred Hitchcock went on to make”. Happily for us, we saw a glimpse of the film with Cohen’s score. It was the opening scene in fact, which sets up so many of Hitchcock’s enduring fascinations: blondes, voyeurism and a ribald, but very British sense of humour. Cohen knows his audience will have been brought up on Hitchcock’s grisly thrillers, and that we know where all these fascinations can lead, and so the music was deliberately playful, but with a steely, sinister edge. When it came to the humour in the film, Cohen promised us “one amusing sound effect” in his score. Just one, and he wasn’t telling where it was to be found. Tease.

Can you imagine Betty Balfour as the pinup of the Occupy movement? Mira Calix can, perhaps. She offered an audacious reading of Champagne, which screens in September, as a critique of celebrity culture and a comment on the financial crisis. I see her point, but can’t quite imagine idle heiress de nos jours Paris Hilton with soot on her face, or indeed flying a plane. Still, Champagne is a film with a great deal of style and Calix quite rightly noted that while 1928 may seem to be the long-distant past, this is a film obsessed with modernity, in all its art-deco, cocktail-sipping, drop-waisted deliciousness. Calix aims to bridge the 84-year age gap with a score for Champagne that incorporates traditional instruments alongside the electronica she is renowned for. I think this will be most of the most distinctive scores in the season, and I am certainly intrigued.

Soweto Kinch didn’t just discuss his score for The Ring, he put his saxophone where his mouth was and accompanied a short clip from the film. His finished score will be played by a five-piece band at the Hackney Empire, but he performed solo in NFT1, his sax lines underscoring each small but significant gesture in one of The Ring’s quieter scenes – and drawing a fantastic response from the audience. Like Calix, he is keen to bring out the elements of the film that feel new. Watching The Ring, he said he was suprised to see such a racially hetereogenous vision of 1920s, pre-Windrush London, and impressed by the films’ treatment of sexuality and gender identity. “It reframed how I thought relationships were in the early 20th century,” he said, adding that he would look a little differently on his own grandparents’ courtship from now on! He was confident, that he would be able to “twin the old and the new” in the film, just as he combines jazz and hip-hop in his music. Hip-hop Hitchcock? Bring it on.

Read more about the Genius of Hitchcock season on Silent London here, and on the BFI website here.

Blog, Charlie's London

Charlie’s London: falling in and out of love with Chaplin

April 16, 2012 PH 4 Comments

Ayse in West Square — Ayşe in West Square

This is a guest post by Ayşe Behçet for Silent London.

Thanks again for returning to Charlie’s London with me. First, I want to wish Sir Charles Spencer Chaplin a very happy 123rd birthday! It really is a coincidence that my latest blogpost falls on the anniversary of his birthday, but hopefully it’s a very good blessing.

Today I’m going to be looking at some of the houses in and around Lambeth that Chaplin lived in, and some of those in the same area that my family have called home, too. Unfortunately I can’t say I have ever lived in a house that he graced, but who knows what may happen in the future?

Family was very important to Chaplin, just as it is to me. He entrusted much of his business to Sydney Chaplin, his half-brother who acted wisely on Charlie’s behalf. He was also incredibly close to his mother Hannah, whom he idolised. Contrary to popular belief, he even had a relationship with his father – when he was around. Chaplin spoke fondly of his first meeting with his father during that period in his autobiography.

“The prospect of living with Father was exciting. I had seen him only twice in my life, on stage, and once passing a house in Kennington Road, as he was coming down the path with a lady. I had paused and watched him, knowing instinctively he was my father. He beckoned me to him and asked my name. Sensing the drama of the situation, I had feigned innocence and said ‘Charlie Chaplin’. Then he glanced knowingly at the lady, felt his pocket and gave me half a crown, and without further ado I ran straight home and told Mother that I had met my father.” (Charlie Chaplin, My Autobiography, quote reprinted courtesy of the archives of Roy Export Company Establishment)

Family continued to be important to Chaplin throughout his life, and as you may have realised, I too am very devoted to my own family. The fond memories I have of my own grandmother will never leave me. This is why this personal journey, walking the streets of South London reminiscing, has been a wonderful and emotional experience for me. My grandmother Florence Boakes died on 12 May 1997, and from that time on, it became very painful for me to watch the great silent films, such as Chaplin’s, that we had enjoyed together. If the films were on television or I came across one of our old videos, it was too painful to watch without her there. I had bought her a Chaplin tile on a stand when I went to Hastings for a school trip, and that had to be kept out of sight too.

So what brought me back to Chaplin? In short, my husband-to-be Kieran, and our first date almost 12 years later. We had agreed to meet in a Starbucks in Charing Cross and he was early, which is nothing new. When I arrived I was nervous as we had only met a handful of times before. As he was reading a book, that the topic of conversation we used to break the ice.

“It’s about Buster Keaton, I’m a big silent film fan,” he confessed. I smiled as he showed me the front cover and I handed it back to him.

“I grew up watching Chaplin, I was a Chaplin fan,” I answered. He smiled back.

“Silent films never leave you, you’re still a Chaplin fan.”

Of course, he was right. Our next date involved a bottle of wine, some very good food and The Kid, which at first I was worried about watching. For the first time in years I watched the Tramp and I smiled – then I realised my love affair with Chaplin was very much back on. In January 2011 I found myself watching The Gold Rush with Carl Davis conducting the London Philharmonia orchestra, a wonderful Christmas present from Kieran. And this year he took me to the Slapstick festival – anyone who knows me knows how that has changed my life!

Mum was really happy I’d found Chaplin again, so when I decided to start writing this blog the three of us spent a day wandering around, taking pictures of all the sights involved.

We walked from Waterloo towards the Imperial War Museum and down Lambeth Road, cutting down George Road to find West Square. Children were playing in a communal garden; it really is the most beautiful little piece of London. Mum told me my great uncle Fred had a friend who lived in West Square and they would also play around there as children. In his autobiography, Chaplin remembers the family’s time in West Square as being “moderately comfortable; we lived in three tastefully furnished rooms”. The square itself was built in 1791 and you can see it was considered a plush place to live.

Ayse at 39 Methley Street — Ayşe at 39 West Square, where the Chaplins had ‘three tastefully furnished rooms’

Coming back towards the Imperial War Museum, cutting down Kennington Road, we found ourselves at 287 Kennington Road. This was the home Charlie and Syd shared with their father in 1898. Their mother Hannah was unable to support the family and was institutionalised in Cane Hill Asylum, so Charles Chaplin Senior had care of the two boys instead, along with his very reluctant mistress Louise. What a relief it must have been when their mother finally sent for them. Outside 287 Kennington Road now is a plaque, privately paid for and dedicated to Charlie, reminding passersby that he once lived here. Apparently, the door number is in itself under dispute and even the plaque unfortunately is incorrect. It says that Charlie died in 1978 when he actually died on Christmas Day 1977.

We decided to head back towards the Walworth Road. Getting off the tube at Elephant and Castle we walked to the Walworth Road and of course we couldn’t resist stopping for some pie and mash. I had double of everything and claimed it all as research! Crossing the road we headed down towards Methley Street, another residence for the young Chaplin. No 39 Methley Street was Chaplin’s home between 1898 and 1899. It might look nice now but back then it was a desperate residence with the surrounding area consisting of pickle factories and slaughterhouses.

Looking around this area it is easy to see where Chaplin’s inspirations for films such as The Kid actually came from. To this day, Lambeth is littered with old Victorian streets and houses only recently made fashionable and picturesque. There is a plaque on Methley Street dedicated to Charlie, this time with correct dates, also acknowledging that he was a Water Rat. A Water Rat was a name given to a member of an acting guild who, if in times of hardship could go to the Grand Order of the Water Rats and seek refuge and help. Stan Laurel was a Water Rat too. It is when they were living at Methley Street Hannah began to sew again and for a while they seem to have been quite happy, until her health took a turn for the worse again and she had to send her sewing machine and various garments to the pawnshop to make the rent. Without her sewing machine she could not work, which plunged the little family into further chaos. Charlie would later use a pawnbroker as the backdrop of one of his 1916 films The Pawnshop.

We headed home at this point, and yes, you’ll notice that I haven’t covered the famous Pownall Terrace, the most famous of Charlie’s homes in Lambeth. There is a reason for this, and all will be revealed in a future instalment!

Thanks for reading everyone, and I hope you’ll join me again for next instalment of Charlie’s London in two weeks’ time.

Ayşe Behçet

Blog, Podcast

The Silent London podcast: episode one

April 11, 2012 PH 6 Comments

Josef von Sterberg's The Docks of New York — Josef von Sternberg's The Docks of New York

The coming of sound was always going to be a shock. But bear with me, dear readers, you’ll soon become accustomed to this new-fangled technology. Silent London has branched into the world of podcasting and and the first edition is ready for you to download and listen to now.

Listen now!

Episode one features Ewan Munro and Pete Baran chatting to me in the studio about Carl Theodor Dreyer’s silent films, the forthcoming British Silent Film Festival, their favourite recent DVD and Blu-Ray releases and a lot more. Sight and Sound contributing editor Mark Sinker also takes the time to tell us about his favourite silent movie, Nosferatu. You’ll information about pretty much everything we discuss on the podcast somewhere on this site, but you may also want to click here, to see the BFI YouTube channel. The music is by kind permission of Neil Brand, and the podcast is presented in association with SOAS radio.

UPDATE: The Silent London Podcast is now available on iTunes. Click here for more details.

Screening

The Cabinet of Dr Caligari with Minima at Hackney Attic, 22 April 2012

April 10, 2012 PH 1 Comment

Filmphonics presents The Cabinet of Dr Caligari

Glad tidings from east London. The capital’s newest cinema, the Hackney Picturehouse on Mare Street, also boasts the capital’s newest silent film screening venue. Hackney Attic hosts all kinds of live music and cinema events, scheduled by an outfit called Filmphonics. They have already dipped their toe into the silent waters with a sold-out screening of The Adventures of Prince Achmed, complete with belly dancers. Now Filmphonics are officially launching a series of monthly screenings with an event that is sure to be popular – a screening of the nightmarishly creepy The Cabinet of Dr Caligari, with live accompaniment from rock band Minima. if you’ve never seen Minima accompany a silent film, you’ve been missing out. They’re a rock band, albeit one with a cheeky cello, who specialise in the kind of spine-chilling soundscapes perfect for a film this creepy and strange.

The Cabinet of Dr Caligari screens at Hackney Attic on Sunday 22 April 2012. Doors open at 6.30p and the films begins at 7.50pm. Tickets for the screening cost £9, but less for concessions and members. Alternatively you can buy a dinner ticket, which includes the movie, a meal and a glass of wine for £20. That’s a pretty unbeatable night out, I’d say. Tickets are available online here.

Screening

Argentine silent films at the Ritzy Cinema, 22 April 2012

April 8, 2012 PH 1 Comment

Every so often a groovy film festival sweeps into town and shakes up the schedules a bit, introducing us to some silent movies that were hitherto a mystery to us. This month, the Argentine Film Festival arrives, complete with critical hits such as Las Acacias, but also with a programme of silents and live music at the Ritzy Cinema in Brixton.

I’ll admit, I’m not au fait with Argentine silent cinema. A little reading around tells me that only a handful of films made in the silent era in Argentina are still with us today, and that the films the Ritzy is showing have never been seen in the UK before. So this event should be a surprise to most of us.

These four short films, including the newsreel Film Revista Valle (1926), My Sorrel Horse (Mi alazán tostao -1923), The Return to the Bulin (La vuelta al bulín -1926) and Creole Mosaic (Mosaico criollo -1929) – one of the oldest preserved sound films – form part of the first collection of silent films to be recovered by the Pablo C. Ducrós Hicken Film Museum in Buenos Aires, and have never before been screened in the UK.

Together, they offer an intriguing vignette of life in 1920s Argentina, a country that was very much under Europe’s influence – as could be seen in the leisure pursuits of its upper classes – yet retained its own distinct character, not least through the tango.

The news reels featuring fox-hunts, visits from foreign dignitaries and elegant river cruises present a glamorous world which does much to explain how Buenos Aires acquired its title as the “Paris of South America”. At the same time the comic scenes from the tango underworld in The Return to the Bulin and the lawlessness in the country drama My Sorrel Horse are more reminiscent of North American genre films. Creole Mosaic sees one of the first attempts to include sound in films, using a synchronised gramophone record along with the actual screening. More of a musical review than a movie, it presented audiences with the voices and figures of popular radio artists.

It wasn’t easy to be a film-maker in Argentina in the 1920s. Money was tight, equipment was scarce and directors often found them selves multitasking, working on both sides of the camera, and editing films not on a Moviola but with a pair of scissors. Jose Ferreyra, who directed The Return to the Bulin, managed these challenges better than most. His films were made on the fly, often taking tango lyrics as the inspiration for the story. Sadly, Ferreyra’s films were not very well received, but those directed by one of his actors, Italian-born Nelo Cosimi, picked up better reviews. Cosimi didn’t restrict himself to tango themes, but looked farther afield for his subjects. My Sorrel Horse is one of his first films, and shows the influence of Hollywood cinema of the time.

The Argentine silent film programme screens at 5.05pm on Sunday 22 April 2012 in Screen 3 at the Ritzy Cinema, and will be followed by “a musical tour of Argentine tango history” in the bar afterwards. Tickets are available on this link.

Blog, video

Silent Birmingham – Street Act

April 7, 2012 PH Leave a comment

A few weeks ago, I posted about a competition held by the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra. The task set was to create a short animation, featuring a city landmark, to be accompanied by one of the pieces of silent film music recently unearthed in the archives of Birmingham Library. Now the winner, whose film will be screened at a gala event on 20 April, alongside some Charlie Chaplin classics and accompany by the CBSO, has been announced.

Gareth Hirst’s short film Street Act explores the dark and violent side of slapstick comedy, and the action takes on Birmingham’s Corporation Street. The movie uses the Indian War Dance music from the archive, to great effect – you can listen to eight more extracts here. If you want to find out more about Hirst, his animation work and his prize-winning film, you can read more on his blog. You’ll see that he put an awful lot of work into the film, including a heck of a lot of research. I understand he is a keen silent movie fan and a regular visitor to the Slapstick Festival in Bristol. Congratulations, Gareth!

Tickets for the Charlie Chaplin gala at the Symphony Hall Birmingham on 20 April 2012 are available here.

Screening

Pandora’s Box and People on Sunday at the Classic Film Club, April 2012

April 3, 2012 PH Leave a comment

UPDATE: I have just been informed that the screening of People on Sunday on 20 April 2012 will now have live piano accompaniment. That’s another reason to attend!

Just a year ago, Silent London was very pleased to report the news that a classic film club had been established in Ealing, west London – and they kicked off proceedings with two very fine silent films. The wonderful news is that the club is still going strong, and they are showing two more excellent silents this month. Up with this sort of thing.

Pandora’s Box, (1929), directed by G. W. Pabst, on Friday 13th April at 7.30 pm
A masterpiece of German Expressionism, of cinematic eroticism which depicts the rise and inevitable fall of an amoral but naive young woman, who inspires lust and violence in those around her. The film remains as indelibly strange as ever, capable of reducing some critics to awed silence.

People on Sunday, (1930), directors Robert & Curt Siodmak, Edgar G. Ulmer, on Friday 20th April at 7.30 pm
This effervescent, sunlit silent, about a handful of city dwellers (a charming cast of non-professionals) enjoying a weekend outing, offers a rare glimpse of Weimar-era Berlin. People on Sunday was both an experiment and a mainstream hit that would influence generations of film artists around the world.

The Classic Film Club takes place at Ealing Town Hall, New Broadway, Ealing W5 2BY. The nearest rail and underground station is Ealing Broadway. Tickets £7 (concs £6) Membership £10 for 12 months. One day membership £1.

Blog, Charlie's London

Charlie’s London: music hall memories

April 2, 2012 PH 6 Comments

A young Charlie Chaplin, photograph from the archives of Roy Export Company Establishment

This is a guest post for Silent London by Ayşe Behçet.

Thanks for returning for part three of Charlie’s London; this edition will look at the tradition of the English music hall, the same stages that would form the backdrop to Charlie’s early years. Unfortunately, these such wonderful places do not really exist any more, except for seasonal events or moments of fleeting fashionable curiosity. Happily, those of us who love silent cinema have a greater appreciation for them.

Last week, I looked at the Walworth Road, Charlie’s supposed birthplace. This week looks at the music hall tradition, where both of Chaplin’s parents worked. And I’ll be throwing some family stories into the mix that will hopefully make you all chuckle along the way.

Charles Spencer Chaplin Senior was a butcher’s son who found his niche on the music hall stage with a certain degree of success and credibility. His specialist skills were as a vocalist and actor, talents that no doubt his famous son would inherit. However, Charlie Junior appears to credit his mother Hannah Chaplin as a larger theatrical and musical influence over his life. Hannah Harriet Pedlingham Hill was a smaller star who went by the stage name Lilly Harley. In the late 19th century, the Lambeth and Kennington area was a hotbed for music hall entertainers, including fresh-faced talents looking for their first taste of the stage, just like Hannah and Charles.

Music hall was already a tradition rooted in the working class history of London. Initially established in back rooms of public houses they provided entertainment from songs and plays to recitals and dance troupes. In a future instalment I will be talking about the Coal Hole public house in the Strand as a future place of work for Sydney Chaplin – that pub too had a back room known as a song and supper room. Offering light entertainment and a meal for a set price, song and supper rooms offered a bargain night out for most.

Doing the Lambeth Walk ... — Doing the Lambeth Walk …

In fact, the very first musical hall was established in little old Lambeth. 143 Westminster Bridge road in fact! The theatre was called the Canterbury and designed and built by Charles Morton in 1852. Charlies seem to feature a lot in this little walk around don’t they? Other, large-scale theatres followed, including the South London Music Hall in 1860, and the London Pavilion, which appeared in 1859 and then gave its name to a grander west end establishment in 1885.

Chaplin’s parents separated when he was just three years old, yet throughout his young life he did occasionally have contact with his father who had turned to drink many years before. In his autobiography Charlie blames the music hall culture for his father’s aggressive alcoholism, which would cut his life short at the age of just 37. Drink and song were always hand-in-hand partners in the music halls. My great grandmother used to enjoy both, and the stories live on in family tales to this day.

My Nanny Harris as we called her was, as my grandmother would say, “a blinking nightmare”. She was born in a workhouse, and had two of her children in one, but she was without a doubt the comic of our family. My grandmother would die every Sunday at the sight of her climbing the steps to her Peabody flat in Southwark Street looking like a scene from Chaplin’s film One AM. My grandmother was an amazingly proud person who took care of her home and who looked after her two girls with all the love in the world and never drank. However, my Nanny Harris would sit at the dinner table slightly inebriated and slyly place her false teeth into the gravy boat, waiting for some poor unsuspecting Sunday guest to tip them innocently on to their food. These scenes almost sound like something out of one of Chaplin’s early Keystone comedies, with a poor woman who is really a man in drag unfortunately being the brunt of all the jokes.

Anyone who has seen the Richard Attenborough film Chaplin or more importantly read David Robinson’s definitive biography will know the sad yet almost heroic story of his mother’s ill-fated performance on an Aldershot stage. She lost her nerve and her voice, and her small son Charlie took fearlessly to the stage in an attempt to calm the crowd. After much cheering and coins being thrown in support (Charlie paused and apologised to the crowd while he picked up the coins, leading to further cheers) he felt the rush of performing, admitting he felt completely at home on stage.

Music seems to be a very big part of the working-class community, it definitely can be found in my mother, grandmother’s and my childhood. Four generations of my family play the piano by ear, me included. I remember sitting with my nan, her on the piano and me sat next to her singing The Band Played On. The conversation would turn to Chaplin more times than not as she sat there, her fingers hitting away at the keys. We’d usually end up singing Champagne Charlie in his honour. Looking back on it now it’s hard to believe it was such a long time ago, life always seemed simpler sat on her knee on a cold winter’s afternoon. We’d watch a Chaplin film, usually followed by a bit of Laurel and Hardy, but we always returned to our favourite, good old Charlie! As Nanny would say: “The London boy done good”.

Thanks for reading, everyone! See you all next time, on 16 April.

Ayşe Behçet

Screening

Beggars of Life with the Dodge Brothers, Barbican, 29 April 2012

March 30, 2012 PH 1 Comment

Beggars of Life (1928)

If you were at the British Silent Film Festival last year, you won’t need telling twice to book for Beggars of Life. The gorgeous Louise Brooks, leery Wallace Beery, a hulking great train, ‘Wild Bill’ Wellman at the helm and a soundtrack by the coolest skiffle band in town.

This show is a fine example of how invigorating the combination of a great silent movie and live music can be. The Dodge Brothers, an Americana-drenched quartet featuring none other than bequiffed film critic Mark Kermode on bass and harmonica, will accompany rail-riding rom-com Beggars of Life at the Barbican next month. And their numbers will be swelled by Neil Brand on the piano. Here’s a taster of one of the quieter moments from their score.

And here’s a review of their BSFF performance at the BFI Southbank last year, from the Ithankyou blog. Bryony Dixon herself says: “Never has a film and a band been more perfectly matched”. And if you want more Dodge Brothers action, don’t forget that they’re playing this year’s BSFF too, accompanying Abram Room’s The Ghost That Never Returns.

Beggars of Life screens at the Barbican on 29 April 2012 at 4pm. Tickets start from £7.50 and they’re available here. Please note this screening is rated 12A