Die Büchse der Pandora / Pandora's Box (two blu-rays: The Criterion Collection 2024 and Eureka! The Masters of Cinema Series 2024)

G. W. Pabst: Die Büchse der Pandora / Pandora's Box (DE 1929). On Christmas Eve in a London slum in a desolate garret under a broken window Lulu (Louise Brooks) lights a candle and picks up the mistletoe. They have been bestowed on Jack the Ripper by a compassionate maid of the Salvation Army whose brass band plays Christmas carols during the finale. Photo from IMDb. Please click on the image to expand it.

Die Büchse der Pandora. Variationen auf das Thema Frank Wedekinds "Lulu" / Pandoran lipas / Pandoras ask.

    DE 1929. Nero-Film AG (Berliini). Copyright: Praesens-Film AG. P: Seymour Nebenzahl.

    D: G. W. Pabst. Ass D: Mark Sorkin, Paul Falkenberg. SC: Ladislaus Vajda – based on the tragedies Erdgeist (Maahinen, 1895) and Die Büchse der Pandora (Pandoran lipas, 1902) by Frank Wedekind . DP: Günther Krampf – panchromatic emulsion – 1:1,33 – b&w – silent – 8 Akte – 3255 m /20 fps, 19 fps/. AD: Andrej Andrejew, Bohumil Heš. Photos: Hans Casparius.

    C: Louise Brooks (Lulu), Fritz Kortner (Dr. Ludwig Schön), Franz Lederer (Alwa Schön), Carl Goetz (Schigolch), Krafft-Raschig (Rodrigo Quast), Alice Roberts (Countess Geschwitz), Daisy d’Ora (Dr. Schön's fiancée), Gustav Diessl (Jack the Ripper), Michael von Newlinski (Marquis Casti-Piani), Siegfried Arno (stage manager).

    German intertitles

    1929: 3255 m /20 fps/ 141 min, /19 fps/ 149 min

    1998 (Bologna, La Cinémathèque française): 3018 m /20 fps/ 132 min

    2009: 3068 m /20 fps/ 133 min, /19 fps/ 141 min

    Uraufführung 9.2.1929 Gloria-Palast, Berlin – banned in Finland 20.3.1929 – first screened at the Finnish Film Archive 13.3.1962 – first Finnish telecast Yle TV2 17.7.1984.

    Reconstruction and restoration: 

Analogue reconstruction-in-progress Filmmuseum – Münchner Stadtmuseum (Munich 1997).

Digital restoration Deutsche Kinemathek (Berlin 2009). 3068 m

This 2K restoration was created from three duplicate elements from the collections of the Cinémathèque française, Gosfilmofond and Národni filmový archiv. Funded by Hugh M. Hefner, this restoration was a collaboration between the George Eastman Museum, La Cinémathèque française, Národni filmový archiv, Gosfilmofond and the Deutsche Kinemathek - Museum für Film und Fernsehen. Restoration supervisor: Martin Koerber. Restoration: Haghefilm Conservation BV, Amsterdam.

    Blu-rays viewed and Alban Berg's opera Lulu listened to at home in preparation to my lecture "Weimar Cinema / Pandora's Box" at Aalto University, Department of Film, Marsio, Otakaari 2, 30 Oct 2024

G. W. Pabst: Die Büchse der Pandora / Pandora's Box (DE 1929). The 2024 edition of The Criterion Collection. Lulu (Louise Brooks) in funeral dress after the death of Ludwig Schön on their wedding night. Cover art: Eric Skillman. Photo: Hans Casparius.

Blu-ray special edition features:

New 2K digital restoration

Four musical scores, by Gillian Anderson, Dimitar Pentchev, Peer Raben, and Stéphan Oliva

Audio commentary (2005) by film scholars Thomas Elsaesser and Mary Ann Doane

Louise Brooks: Looking for Lulu (1998), a documentary by Hugh Munro Neely

Lulu in Berlin (1971), a rare interview with actor Louise Brooks, by Richard Leacock and Susan Steinberg Woll

Interviews with Leacock and Michael Pabst (2006), director G. W. Pabst’s son

PLUS: An essay by critic J. Hoberman (2006), notes on the scores, Kenneth Tynan’s 1979 “The Girl in the Black Helmet,” and an article by Brooks on her relationship with Pabst (1965).

Optional English subtitles

Region: A

3068 m /19 fps/ 141 min

G. W. Pabst: Die Büchse der Pandora / Pandora's Box (DE 1929). The 2024 edition of Eureka! The Masters of Cinema Series. Cover art: Tony Stella.

SPECIAL FEATURES

Limited Edition Box Set - 3000 Copies

Limited Edition Hardcase featuring artwork by Tony Stella

Limited Edition 60-Page Book featuring new writing on the film by critics Alexandra Heller Nicholas, Imogen Sara Smith, and Richard Combs; alongside archival stills and imagery

1080p HD presentation on Blu-ray from a definitive 2K digital restoration

Orchestral Score by Peer Raben

New audio commentary by critic Pamela Hutchinson

New visual appreciation by author and critic Kat Ellinger

New video essay by David Cairns

New video essay by Fiona Watson

Optional English subtitles

Region: B

3068 m /20 fps/ 133 min

Alban Berg: Lulu (posthumous 1935 / premiered in two acts 1937 / complete in three acts 1979). Orchestration of the third act completed by Friedrich Cerha. The first recording of the complete opera: Deutsche Grammophon 1979 - Teresa Stratas (Lulu) / Franz Mazura (Dr. Schön) / Kenneth Riegel (Alwa Schön) / Yvonne Minton (Countess Geschwitz) - conductor: Pierre Boulez - Opéra de Paris. 3-CD Box Set with a booklet of 222 pages, libretto in German and English, 2000.

AA: It was a thrill to see the 2009 restoration of Pandora's Box for the first time. That restoration has been around all these years, but because I saw in Pordenone in 2007 the previous restoration at the closing gala, and the following year we screened that version in Helsinki ourselves, I felt no urgency to revisit the movie sooner.

I have been mesmerized by Pandora's Box since I saw it for the first time in 1981 at the Filmklubben / Filmstaden / Svenska Filminstitutet in Stockholm. The duration was 150 min, probably because it was presumably screened at 16 fps, and if that was the case, the length of the version must have been around 2770 m.

In all versions the distinction is the timeless presence of Louise Brooks as Lulu. G. W. Pabst had never met her before the filming started, but he knew she was right by her presence in A Girl in Every Port. Still today Louise Brooks is original and unique, a model for countless homages, imitations and influences, but only the exterior can be imitated.

Henri Langlois said that like sculptures of classical Antiquity still project the grandeur of the spirit of the age, Pandora's Box is capable of doing so in the coming millennia.

A key to this is how Louise Brooks transcends conventional sex and gender roles and received notions of identity. Words like "sexual ambivalence" and "bisexuality" have been evoked, but now I feel that she goes beyond even them, to an earlier, more original dimension of identity. Brooks said that she never acted sexy and never thought being sexy, not even while having sex. She was not self-conscious about sex. She was simply being herself.

Lotte H. Eisner, who had met Louise Brooks in Berlin when she was filming with Pabst (and reading Schopenhauer during a break), was the first to give full credit to her presence. That happened in Chapter XVIII "Pabst et le miracle de Louise Brooks" in L'Écran démoniaque (1952) which was translated into English as The Haunted Screen. 

Soon after at the "60 Years of Cinema" exhibition at the Musée National d'Art Moderne in Paris in 1955 there were "two gigantic portraits looming down from wires in positions of co-equal honor" (Barry Paris): Falconetti in The Passion of Jeanne d'Arc and Brooks in Pandora's Box. Since then, Pandora's Box has become a banner film of the 1920s - although it failed during its original run and was censored and cut - even banned in countries like Finland. But since the 1950s its status has kept growing, and it has even become a symbol for cinema itself.

Peter Graham (1939-2020): A Dictionary of the Cinema. A. Zwemmer Limited (London) / A. S. Barnes & Co. (New York), Tantivy Press, 1964. Probably my first film book. Photo: Lulu (Louise Brooks) examines the biceps of Rodrigo Quast (Krafft-Raschig) in G. W. Pabst: Die Büchse der Pandora / Pandora's Box (DE 1929). Photo: Hans Casparius.

Watching the restoration on the Criterion and Eureka blu-rays the Pandora experience turns even more profound than before. Because I hadn't seen the movie in 16 years I cannot reliably compare, but the film feels like new although there is probably nothing new storywise.

Martin Koerber, who was in charge of the restoration, has stressed how particular G. W. Pabst was with the editing. Pabst conducted the editing himself, although on some prints and copies others get credit. For Pabst, every frame counted, and the distinction in this restoration is that now every frame counts again. This was only possible to achieve by digital means. There are no original sources, and the restoration had to happen from duped and battered materials. The smoothness of the transitions and the consistent quality in the definition of light are impressive.

I love to disagree with Siegfried Kracauer on almost every page of From Caligari to Hitler. He fails utterly to comprehend Pandora's Box for starters, yet his discourse is unmissable on Pabst. Here he assesses Pabst's aesthetics of invisible cutting (in contrast to the confrontational and discontinuous montage of the Soviet school): "Pabst departs from them technically, because he ventures into the indefinite world of facts. His insistence upon cutting results from his keen concern with given reality. He utilizes tiny pictorial particles to capture the slightest impressions, and he fuses these particles into a finespun texture to mirror reality as a continuity".

Pabst has been with reason linked with New Objectivity, and his undeniable influences from Expressionism have been registered. But inspired by Kracauer's observation of Pabst utilizing "tiny pictorial particles to capture the slightest impressions" I also feel that Pabst has been influenced by Impressionism. Pabst is fascinated by the fleeting moment, and he takes trouble in covering minutiae. This restoration helps us appreciate this dimension better.

This time I registered how different all eight acts of Pandora's Box are. Each has a different imagery: - Lulu's apartment - Schön's apartment - Backstage - the Wedding - the Trial - the Night Train - the Ship of Gamblers - the London Fog. The movie is a showcase of the full range of the visual mastery of late silent cinema, Weimar cinema and G. W. Pabst.

...

PANDORA'S SECRET

There is a secret in Pandora's Box. In thrall of Louise Brooks, I did not get it at first sight, and in 1995, when I published the first edition of my MMM Film Guide, I still missed it, but in 2005 in the second edition I registered it.

It is implicit in Frank Wedekind's Lulu plays and Alban Berg's opera Lulu. I don't remember how it appears in Leopold Jessner's Earth Spirit.

In Pabst's film it is made explicit in heartbreaking intertitles. Lulu refers to Schigolch: "Er ist mein erster... Mäzen" ("He is my first... patron") and "Er ist mein Vater" ("He is my father").

Pabst has the tendency of turning the main clause into a subclause. It is part of his general drive to introduce an offbeat, unexpected and even contradictory approach into the fabula. For example whenever he employs a genre or a style, he executes it against the grain. 

Pandora's Box is an incest tragedy. However, not told in terms of dramatic emphasis but in the cool detachment of New Objectivity. There are also affinities with the Distancing Effect (Verfremdungseffekt / V-Effekt) of Bertolt Brecht and the Defamiliarization (Ostraneniya) of Russian Formalists such as Viktor Shklovsky.

The most tender sequence of the film is the finale with Jack the Ripper. "It is Christmas Eve, and she is about to receive the gift that has been her dream since childhood: death by a sexual maniac" (Louise Brooks). For Brooks, the only disappointment was that the knife did not hit the vagina.

Louise Brooks was born on 14 November 1906. At age 9, around 1915-1916, she lived in Cherryvale, Kansas. 40 years later Louise's childhood friend Betty sent her a photograph where Louise was together with Mr. Flowers. He was nice to little girls and offered them popcorn. Brooks had forgotten all about it, but now she remembered. One day Louise knocked on his door to ask for more. "I was done in by a middle aged man when I was nine", she wrote to Herman G. Weinberg. She also told Kenneth Tynan that "I was loused up by my Lolita experiences". At the time, Louise also told her mother. She put the blame on Louise for "leading him on".

For Barry Paris in his magnificent 609-page Louise Brooks biography, Mr. Flowers is the "Rosebud" of the star's life.

The insult to the injury is also already implicit in Hesiod's telling of the myth of Pandora's Box from which all the evils were unleashed into the world. There is a parallel to the myth of the Garden of Eden where Eve is the one who eats the forbidden fruit and gives some to the man, and consequently God expels them from Paradise.

D. W. Griffith: The Stolen Jewels (1908) (2017/2024 digital scan 4K)

D. W. Griffith: The Stolen Jewels (US 1908). Restoration comparison photo: Film Preservation Society.

US © 1908 American Mutoscope & Biograph Company.

    Dir: D. W. Griffith. Story: ?. Photog: Billy Bitzer. Cast: Harry Solter, John R. Cumpson, Florence Lawrence, Linda Arvidson, Charles Inslee, George Gebhardt, D. W. Griffith.

    Filmed: 24.8, 15.9.1908 (NY Studio; New York Curb Exchange, NYC). Rel: 29.9.1908.

Copy: DCP (4K), 11'12" (from paper print, 630 ft, 16 fps); titles: ENG. Source: Library of Congress National Audio-Visual Conservation Center, Packard Campus, Culpeper, VA.

    Film Preservation Society (FPS) / Tracey Goessel / Digital scan, 2017. Given the absence of original intertitles, new ones have been written by the Film Preservation Society. 2024 edition.

    43rd Le Giornate del Cinema Muto (GCM), Pordenone: Early Cinema – The Biograph Project.

    Grand piano: Philip Carli.

    Viewed at Teatro Verdi with e-subtitles in Italian, 11 Oct 2024 

There is no credit information in the film itself, just the title card with the year of copyright and the name and the address of the American Mutoscope & Biograph Company, like in The Adventures of Dollie.

Tracey Goessel (GCM/FPS The Biograph Project 2024): "Here is a little film with much to offer: a crime drama with no crime, and a mystery that is no mystery at all. And that is the charm of the thing. A little girl stuffs her mother’s jewels into a candy container/toy dog. The family believes them to be stolen. The market crashes and hard times follow: furniture is repossessed and the father’s brokerage business goes bust." 

"All through these trials, Griffith keeps the jewel-filled toy in our view. We know it is the solution to the family’s crisis, but they do not. Florence Lawrence, at the height of her despair, clutches the toy, and actually twists its head back and forth. One can just picture the audience crying out “Look in the dog!”, the way modern audiences call out to the screen in horror films today."

"The exteriors are also of interest. In the curb market on Broad Street we see Griffith himself, enacting a shoving match with Harry Solter." (Tracey Goessel)

AA: Tom Gunning in his 1997 essay for The Griffith Project registered in The Stolen Jewels an inversion of Betrayed by a Hand Print (released four weeks earlier). In both films, the audience knows where the jewels are and who took them. In The Stolen Jewels, there is no crime, but the loss of the diamond necklace becomes a catalyst to disaster. 

The stockbroker Robert Jenkins loses everything, including his home and all his belongings. Only a chair and the little toy doggie of Baby Jenkins remain. From the doggie's belly the diamond necklace is found. The toy has been in plain sight all the time.

Because The Stolen Jewels is not a whodunit, it becomes a psychological study about a family in catastrophe. Their life is destroyed, but they have each other and true friends like Smithson. There is a happy final plot twist, but their true strength has already been proven. They face disaster together, they find joy together.

Mastery of the plan-séquence. Intimate home scenes are intertwined with epic crowd scenes of market panic. "The curb market" is a piece of fascinating arcana in the history of finance. The sense of cool observation anticipates A Corner in Wheat.

The Stolen Jewels is one of my favourites in the year 1908 of Griffith and his great team.

A copy of nice visual quality has been redeemed from paper print origins.

...

I saw The Stolen Jewels in GCM's Griffith Project (DWG 55), pomeriggio 15 Oct 1997 at Ridotto del Verdi on 16 mm at 630 ft /15 fps/ 9'30" without intertitles and Donald Sosin at the piano.

...

Moving Picture World synopsis from Biograph Bulletin, No. 174, 29 Sep 1908: "It would have taken more than the wonderful powers of deduction of a Sherlock Holmes to dispel the mystery that shrouded the disappearance of a case of jewels at the home of wealthy stockbroker Robert Jenkins, and although they were eventually brought to light, it was through a most remarkable accident."

"Mr. and Mrs. Jenkins are getting ready for an evening at the opera, and as usual Mrs. Jenkins is tantalizingly slow in her preparations, and is almost carried out of the house by the impatient Jenkins. Baby Jenkins is very much in evidence, and requires a bribe to induce her to remain contented with the maid. This Mrs. J. furnishes in the shape of a papier-maché doggie, the head of which is removed to find its interior filled with candy."

"Mrs. Jenkins is inclined to deck herself out in her diamonds, and takes the case from the strong-box, but in her anxiety to appease her husband's flustering, she hurriedly kisses baby and departs, forgetting all about the jewels. They are not long in the theater before the thought of the diamonds comes to her, and the awful possible result of her carelessness. She will not rest until Mr. Jenkins takes her home."

"On arriving there, sure enough her worst fears are apparently confirmed. There on the desk lies the jewel case empty. Good heavens. what's to be done? No one was in the house but the baby and nurse, both of whom are now abed. There is no trace or sign of the entrance of a thief. How did it happen?"

"Well, the detectives are summoned and put to work on the case, but without success, although a reward of $10,000 is offered for the apprehension of the robbers and return of the jewels. The detectives finally give the matter up."

"Poor Jenkins is certainly up against it, for the loss of the jewels is the beginning of a streak of wretched luck. He is beaten on all sides in the stock market until at length he is forced to the wall. Poverty, disgrace and even starvation stare him and his loved ones in the face."

"Forced to sell his house and then the furniture to satisfy his creditors, he is in the depths of despair as he stands and views his precious little one playing on the floor with her doggie, unconscious of the anguish of her father. Piece by piece the household effects are seized, until there remains but a couple of chairs, on one of which Baby places her doggie."

"At that moment the door opens and Smithson, Jenkins' friend, enters to offer his sympathy and aid. Smithson is a good hearted, blustering fellow, and in the enthusiasm of his friendship, flusters about, finally throwing himself into the only chair in the room, not noticing the toy, of course crushing it to atoms."

"Leaping to his feet, he is profuse in apologies, when, lo and behold. there among the fragments of the broken dog lay the diamonds. The clouds that hung over the household are dissipated and the little family may start anew. There are many sensational incidents in the course of the film; one showing the curb market of New York is most unique." —Moving Picture World synopsis from Biograph Bulletin, No. 174, 29 Sep 1908

D. W. Griffith: A Smoked Husband (1908) (2017/2024 digital scan 4K)

 

D. W. Griffith: A Smoked Husband (US 1908).

US © 1908 American Mutoscope & Biograph Company. 

    Dir: D. W. Griffith. Story: Frank E. Woods. Photog: Billy Bitzer. Cast: John R. Cumpson, Florence Lawrence, Arthur Johnson, Linda Arvidson, Charles Inslee, Mack Sennett, Robert Harron, Harry Solter, George Gebhardt. 

    Filmed: 26-27.8.1908 (NY Studio; West 12th Street, NYC). Rel: 25.9.1908. 

    Copy: DCP (4K), 8'22" (from paper print, 470 ft, 16 fps); titles: ENG. Source: Library of Congress National Audio-Visual Conservation Center, Packard Campus, Culpeper, VA.

   Film Preservation Society (FPS) / Tracey Goessel / Digital scan, 2017. Given the absence of original intertitles, new ones have been written by the Film Preservation Society. 2024 edition.

    43rd Le Giornate del Cinema Muto (GCM), Pordenone: Early Cinema – The Biograph Project.

    Grand piano: Philip Carli.

    Viewed at Teatro Verdi with e-subtitles in Italian, 11 Oct 2024

Tracey Goessel (GCM Program Note 2024): "It might be argued that this is not the first “Jones” comedy, as Florence Lawrence and John Cumpson are dubbed “Mr. and Mrs. Bibbs” in the Biograph Bulletin. But it is their first comic pairing as spouses, and why split hairs?"

"Florence Lawrence (Photoplay, January 1915, p. 105) recalled the film as an example of how “the ‘Jonesy’ comedies kept up with the fashions of the times, as was evidenced by the ‘sheath’ gown in A Smoked Husband.” Indeed, the prospect of Miss Lawrence’s stunning gams moves not only her husband to horror, but modern audiences to delight."

"As cinema, this little film does little to advance the craft. The trick shot substitution of Cumpson for his dummy stand-in is a mere expedient; not used to meaningful or comic effect as Méliès had been doing years before. And the trope of having the characters besmudged with black coal or white paint was new when the Dead Sea was only sick."

Tom Gunning in his essay on A Smoked Husband in the Griffith Project (1997) stated (in paraphrase) that in retrospect, A Smoked Husband appears as the first in the Jones series, about eight comedies Griffith directed in 1908–1909 – until Florence Lawrence left Biograph. All starred Lawrence and the rotund comedian John Cumpson as a middle class man and wife and involved a series of marital gags and situations, reminiscent of television sitcoms of decades later. The series was extremely successful. When Lawrence left for IMP company, their publicity described her as "known to 1000's as Mrs. Jones". The idea of a series must have come only after the success of this films. Regardless of the name, the characters and situations are identical to those of the later Jones series. – The idea of a middle class comedy set in bourgeois domesticity may have been an innovation. In these films a sense of bourgeois propriety is essential. – However, the film still has strong ties to the earliest and most lasting gags: the literal besmirching of a character. Early Biograph gag films such as A Black Storm (US 1903) consist of little else, and the tradition goes on in the Golden Age with the custard pie. – The discomfort of Bibbs in the chimney once the fire has been lais is conveyed through alternating editing. – The climax of the film is not only marked by the capture of the real burglar and the embarrassment of the husband, but by a somewhat spectacular fall from the roof and a final besmirching gag. – The final fall into the white cement reverses the black face besmirching (which always takes on racial overtones in American comedies) and recalls the primal scene of all besmirching film comedies, the various versions of "The Miller and the Sweep" in which soot and flour intermingle as the characters fight it out. (End of Tom Gunning paraphrase).

AA: It is fascinating to learn that the Jones comedy series was extremely successful, that a middle class comedy series set in bourgeois domesticity was an innovation, and that A Smoked Husband may be the first in a long and popular tradition.

D. W. Griffith had a lovely sense of humour that he expressed in his great films, from romance to tragedy, from historical epic to temperance drama. He also knew to employ witty screenwriters such as Anita Loos.

But I don't remember a single great comedy by him. A Smoked Husband may be an attempt at a comedy of manners, but it is also a hyperbolic catastrophe farce in the tradition of Georges Méliès, Jean Durand and André Deed. There is a Biograph link from French comedy to Keystone. Griffith is not a great director of a comedy of manners, nor is he a master of the farce. But he paved the way for others.

Nice visual quality in the new restoration. I keep being amazed at the Biograph 1908 discoveries. So many innovations in a short period of time. Amazing grace: I was blind but now can see.

...

I saw A Smoked Husband in GCM's Griffith Project (DWG 48), mattina 15 October 1997 at Ridotto del Verdi on 16 mm at 470 ft / 15 fps / 8 min without intertitles and Antonio Coppola at the piano.

...

Moving Picture World synopsis from Biograph Bulletin, No. 173, 25 September 1908: "GROUNDLESS JEALOUSY GETS ITS JUST DESERTS. This smoked husband, though little better than a smoked herring, more properly belonging to the crustacean type of piscatory, the lobster, for such he was and no mistake. While our friend Benj. Bibbs was not exactly parsimonious still there were times when he kicked most vigorously against his wife's extravagance. Such an occasion opens our story." 

"Milady Bibbs has just had sent home a hat and gown, for which poor Bibbsy has to give up, but when he sees her attired in the duds, he softens, for she certainly does look stunning. All is well until she turns around when, O, horror! It is a sheath gown of a most pronounced type. "You brazen hussy, to appear such!" "

"He could say no more, for he fairly choked with rage, and rushes from the room in a state of turbulent perturbation; but not until he has ruthlessly thrown a floor rug over his shameless wife."

"The maid of the family is in league with a crook, and the pair have plotted to rob the place. To this end the crook has written a note to the maid, telling her to signal when the coast is clear. This note falls into the hands of Bibbs, and as it is simply addressed "Honey" and signed "Lovingly, Tom," his jealous nature at once associates it with his wife."

""Aha! Sheath gown, honey, signal from the window, meet in drawing room, lovingly, Tom. I see it all: You would deceive me, eh? We shall see!" Into the fireplace and up the chimney he goes to hide, intent upon trapping his apparently perfidious spouse and her paramour."

"He is hardly ensconced when the maid, on order of the madam, builds a fire on the hearth, and yon may imagine Bibbs' position is not a pleasant one. To descend is out of the question, and as he ascends he dislodges the soot which covers him from head to foot. The noise induced by his scrambling amid smoke and soot alarms the women folks and several policemen answer their cries, who capture "Lovingly, Tom" 'neath the rose tree in the garden."

"The women insist that the real offender is still in the flue, and a mad rush to the roof brings the coppers there just as poor soot-begrimed Bibbs emerges from the chimney. Chased over the roofs, he in desperation leaps off, coming down on the heads of a couple of Willie boys who are gossiping alongside a mortar box."

"Into the cement tumble the trio, and a sorry sight they present when the police and others arrive. Explanations prove what a colossal fool Bibbs has been, but still it served him right, and his discomfort is the spectators' sport, for the subject is a most hilariously humorous one, with a scream in every foot of length."

—Moving Picture World synopsis from Biograph Bulletin, No. 173, 25 September 1908

D. W. Griffith: Where the Breakers Roar (1908) (2017/2024 digital scan 4K)

 

D. W. Griffith: Where the Breakers Roar (US 1908).

US © 1908 American Mutoscope & Biograph Company.

    Dir: D. W. Griffith. Story: ?. Photog: Arthur Marvin, Billy Bitzer. Cast: Arthur Johnson, Linda Arvidson, Florence Lawrence, Charles Inslee, Mack Sennett, Edward Dillon, Robert Harron, Harry Solter, George Gebhardt.  

    Filmed: 21.8, 25.8.1908 (NY Studio; undocumented beach location). rel: 22.9.1908.

    Copy: DCP (4K), 10'04" (from paper print, 566 ft, 15 fps); titles: ENG. source: Library of Congress National Audio-Visual Conservation Center, Packard Campus, Culpeper, VA.

    Film Preservation Society (FPS) / Tracey Goessel / Digital scan, 2017. Given the absence of original intertitles, new ones have been written by the Film Preservation Society.

    43rd Le Giornate del Cinema Muto (GCM), Pordenone: Early Cinema – The Biograph Project.

    Grand piano: Philip Carli.

    Viewed at Teatro Verdi with e-subtitles in Italian, 11 Oct 2024

There is no credit information in the film itself, just the title card with the year of copyright and the name and the address of the American Mutoscope & Biograph Company, like in The Adventures of Dollie.

Tracey Goessel (GCM/FPS The Biograph Project 2024): " Breakers has that glorious, sunny, by-the-sea quality that gives us the feeling of peeping through a time machine to a late August day in 1908. The presence of enlisted townspeople provides the wonderful sense of reality mixed with melodrama. Granted, the escaped lunatic provides a fly in the ointment (he breaks free of his guards on the only stage-shot scene: a painted backdrop of a stone building, helpfully labeled “Insane Asylum.”) "

" We can see Griffith stretching his creative muscles here. Long before The Musketeers of Pig Alley (1912), he gives us the prospect of the actor (madman Charles Inslee, clutching a knife) coming straight up to the camera. "

AA: Tom Gunning wrote a superb program note about Where the Breakers Roar for the Griffith Project. He registers the impressive use of the beach location shooting and the dynamic relation of actor movement and camera placement. He uses in a systematic manner the exit towards the camera with an effect of enlarging the actors – to express a sense of threat. Such an invasion of the space of the camera/spectator by a movement coming close to the camera was used in the early cinema of attractions, but Griffith uses this motion to create a sense of threat within the world of the story. Griffith thus translates visual attractions into narrative devices. – While the film is not based on actual parallel editing, Griffith does tell the story with two converging plot lines. – Griffith's control of space in the threatening sequences makes this an impressive stage in his mastery of visual storytelling. – "The transformation of the spectator's relation to this threat from the involuntary flinch at the action towards her and the laughter that follows of the cinema of attractions to an anxiety about the characters on the screen represents a key moment in the development of narrative cinema". (End of my Tom Gunning paraphrase).

This simple anecdote is based on the stark contrasts of life and death, love and madness, joy and murder. 

Griffith is inspired by the natural light and beach fun in this outdoors sketch. Love, fun and games at the beach are interrupted by a lunatic on the loose from an insane asylum, armed with a knife.

Griffith's art of visual expression is developing, but the performances feel clumsy.

An ok – fair copy.

...

I saw Where the Breakers Roar in GCM's Griffith Project (DWG 47), mattina 15 October 1997 at Ridotto del Verdi on 16 mm at 566 ft /15 fps/ 9 min without intertitles and Antonio Coppola at the piano.

Moving Picture World synopsis from Biograph Bulletin, No. 172, 22 September 1908: "AN AGONIZING EPISODE IN A SEASIDE ROMANCE. When love is young, all the world seems gay; hence Tom Hudson and Alice Fairchild are carefree and happy as they join the little party for a outing at the beach. Though the young folks find great sport cavorting in the breakers. Tom and Alice are well content to sit on the sand under a sunshade and spoon. This induced their friends to tantalize them a bit, and seizing Tom, carry him into the surf and give him a ducking, promising the same treatment to Alice. She, however, leads them a merry chase."

"During the forenoon, a dangerous lunatic, who was being conveyed by keepers from the train to the asylum nearby, overpowers the keepers and escapes. Coming upon an Italian laborer in the road, assaults him and secures his stiletto. Armed with this he terrorized the neighborhood and comes onto the beach as Alice, playfully pursued by her friends, jumps into a puntboat to row out from shore. Before she is aware of it, she is driven to sea by this maniacal fiend, who is now brandishing the stiletto in a most terrifying manner."

"The keepers have now reached the beach and alarm the party by acquainting them with the real character of the girl's companion. A rowboat is procured, and the keepers, with Tom, start in pursuit. The fanatic makes a strenuous effort to outstrip them, but with poor success, until at length, finding his apprehension inevitable, leaps to his feet and is about to plunge the knife into the breast of the terror-stricken girl, when a well directed bullet from the keeper's gun fells him to the bottom of the boat. The poor girl is then taken to shore by Tom and revived by her girl companions. "

—Moving Picture World synopsis from Biograph Bulletin, No. 172, 22 September 1908

Song (2022 restoration Filmmuseum Düsseldorf)

Richard Eichberg: Song (DE/GB 1928). Anna May Wong (Song).

SONG. DIE LIEBE EINES ARMEN MENSCHENKINDES (Schmutziges Geld) (Show Life) (May Song, la bambola di Shangai) / Kiinalaistyttö Song.

    DE/GB 1928 Eichberg-Film GmbH (Berlin), British International Pictures Ltd. (B.I.P.) (London).

    Dir: Richard Eichberg. Scen: Adolf Lantz, Helen Gosewisch, from the novella by Karl (Carl) Vollmöller (1926?). Photog: Heinrich Gärtner, Bruno Mondi. Des: Willi A. Herrmann. Mus: Paul Dessau. 

    Cast: Anna May Wong (Song), Heinrich George (Jack Houben [DE vers.]; John Houben [ENG vers.]), Mary Kid (Gloria Lee), H. A. [Hans Adalbert] von Schlettow (Dimitri Alexi), Paul Hörbiger (Carletto), J. E. Herrmann (the “director”). 

    Dist: Südfilm A.G. (DE), Wardour Films (GB).

    Rel: 21.8.1928 (Alhambra, Berlin); 19.11.1928 (Capitol Haymarket, London). 

    Helsinki premiere: 3 March 1929 – Olympia – Suomen Biografi Osakeyhtiö – 15435 – 2540 m.

    Copy: DCP, 102', col. (from 35 mm, orig. l. 2739 m, 21 fps, toned; titles: ENG. Source: Filmmuseum Düsseldorf.

    Le Giornate del Cinema Muto (GCM), Pordenone: Anna May Wong.

    Musical commentary: Stephen Horne, Frank Bockius.

    Viewed at Teatro Verdi with e-subtitles in Italian, 9 Oct 2024

Yiman Wang (GCM Catalog 2024): " Anna May Wong’s weeping was “famous among her colleagues. One can travel to Neubabelsberg to witness it,” writes Walter Benjamin in his article “Gespräch mit Anne [sic] May Wong: Eine Chinoiserie aus dem alten Westen” [A Conversation with Anna May Wong: A Chinoiserie from the Old West] (Die Literarische Welt, 6.7.1928). Benjamin met Wong during her initial European visit as she was finishing her first starring vehicle in Germany, Song. Die Liebe eines armen Menschenkindes (Schmutziges Geld), based on Karl Vollmöller’s script written especially for the star (shortly after, Vollmöller wrote Der blaue Engel). Co-produced with British International Pictures and mostly shot in Neubabelsberg, this was Wong’s first collaboration with Richard Eichberg, a German director known for star-making Hollywood-style genre films. Capitalizing upon what I’ve called Wong’s “ethno-cosmopolitanism” (see my book To Be an Actress. Labor and Performance in Anna May Wong’s Cross-Media World, 2024), Song contributed to the “Film Europe” project that combined European resources to make broadly appealing co-productions designed to resist Hollywood dominance."

"Wong arrived in Germany accompanied by Vollmöller in April 1928, leaving behind Hollywood, where she had won fame as “the most beautiful oriental on the screen,” but remained relegated to decorative and doomed supporting roles. Wong later commented sarcastically, “I left America because I died so often. I was killed in virtually every picture I appeared in. Pathetic dying seemed to be the best thing I did.” (Picturegoer Weekly, 17.10.1931) Commenting on Wong’s newly-minted European stardom, British writer-turned-filmmaker Oswell Blakeston wrote: “the little ex-laundry girl, ex-Hollywood actress […] had to go to Germany to be made a star, only to be Americanized, for Show Life is full of the stock movie situations punctuated by large heads of the star.” (Close Up, 12.1928)"

"Even as a star, Wong’s protagonist meets yet another gruesome death in Song (the name echoes Wong’s Chinese name Wong Liu Tsong; Wong referred to the film as “Tsong” in an 1931 interview with Ciné-Miroir, 11.1931)."

"Set in Istanbul, the film opens with beautiful stock footage. Song, “one of Fate’s castaways,” is harassed by local ruffians, and then rescued by John Houben (Jack Houben in the German version), a music-hall knife-thrower. With “the devotion of a dog and the soul of a woman” as proclaimed in the French Odéon programme (2.1930), Song clings to John, who recruits her as the human target in his knife-throwing act. John’s suspenseful to-rabid knife-throwing prompted a French reviewer to wonder how the German censor could “freely allow the expression of this sadism or recklessness.” (Maurice Mairgance, Anna May Wong Clippings, 10.1929) Yet the sado-masochistic partnership is broken when John’s old flame, the now-famous ballerina Gloria Lee (Mary Kid), comes to town, rendering Song disposable. Many twists and turns later (including Song’s fur-coated white masquerade for the temporarily blinded John), John finally recognizes the value of Song, who has ascended from the human-target-cum-hula-dancer to a glamorous dancing star. His sudden appearance startles her in the middle of her scimitar dance routine, causing her to fatally fall on the knife-studded rotating stage. She dies “beautifully” in a haloed close-up shot, tears glistening. For Blakeston (Close Up, 12.1928), this exemplified Wong’s Americanized stardom, wrought by the cameraman Heinrich Gärtner, who used white gauzes to smudge the frame and a strong spotlight to create the halo effect. Cynthia Walk, in her essay “Anna May Wong and Weimar Cinema: Orientalism in Postcolonial Germany” (in Beyond Alterity: German Encounters with Modern East Asia, 2014), discusses how the story “replicates the reassuring orientalist fantasy of a dependent and gratefully submissive East.” "

"What animated the film’s aesthetics and defied the sado-masochistic narrative was Wong’s tour-de-force performance, catapulting her to celebrity stardom in interwar Europe. German Expressionist painters Willy Jaeckel and Max Pechstein sketched her on set, and at the December 1928 Berlin artists costume ball she basked in her newfound aura, playfully posing with two German newcomers – Marlene Dietrich and Leni Riefenstahl – captured by photographer Alfred Eisenstaedt. Her star debut won positive reviews around the globe. The Bioscope (London, 19.9.1928) celebrated Wong’s “veritable triumph.” An Italian reviewer resorted to Orientalism, misidentifying Wong as “the interesting Japanese actress … with slanted eyes,” but praised her “intelligence and grace. To watch her is a joy, and so satisfying: she nobly engages art on a truly serious level, a quality only rarely found among the great screen actresses. (Cinema-teatro, 15.1.1930) Upon its 1929 release in Shanghai’s first-run Grand Theatre, Wong’s “pure artistry” was credited for making the film “one of the greatest pictures we have seen in many a long day.” (“Anna May Wong’s Starring Vehicle at Grand Theatre,” The China Press, 29.3.1929)"

"Propelled by this resoundingly successful “Film Europe” project, Wong signed an 18-month contract with British International Pictures for four films (Variety, 31.10.1928), while venturing into the London legitimate theatre and onto the Viennese stage, emerging as “the most popular stage star in years.” (Evening Star [Washington, D.C.], 28.9.1930)"

"The present restoration from Filmmuseum Düsseldorf is derived from the best surviving material available. The main sources are an original nitrate negative from the British Film Institute (2301 m), and a contemporary nitrate print from the National Film and Sound Archive of Australia (2556 m), both with English intertitles. The version screening at the Giornate is the English language one. For the German-language version, intertitles have been recreated based on the censorship cards kept at the Bundesarchiv. The sepia tinting [AA: should read: toning] is based on the Australian distribution print." – Yiman Wang

AA: Anna May Wong is luminous in Song, in which she gives a marvellous and deeply moving performance. The director Richard Eichberg in this film, considered perhaps his best, is very competent  indeed, but little more than that. Three times Anna May Wong had a great director - Raoul Walsh in The Thief of Bagdad, Herbert Brenon in Peter Pan (she was Tiger Lily) and Josef von Sternberg in The Shanghai Express - and she also had good ones like Chester M. Franklin in The Toll of the Sea and E. A. Dupont in Piccadilly - but Richard Eichberg, who directed her in Song and Grossstadtschmetterling is not in their class. Still Song is very much worth seeing because we can enjoy a great star in a memorable role.

The screenplay by Adolf Lantz and Helen Gosewisch is heart-breaking in its sado-masochism. Acts of brutal violence display racism and misogyny of the most atrocious kind. Willi A. Hermann as art director creates a vivid and exciting world of the music hall. The cinematography by Heinrich Gärtner and Bruno Mondi is powerful and expressive in the best Weimar mode. The sabre dances and knife-throwing numbers are dangerous and thrilling. But if we compare Song with E. A. Dupont's Varieté and Josef von Sternberg's Der Blaue Engel, we notice that something is missing inside, an inner compelling urge, and unfortunately Song remains too much on a surface level of the decorative and sensational.

Song is essential viewing from the viewpoint of Anna May Wong and the complexities of Orientalism in the history of the cinema. We see the great talent and lament a great unfulfilled potential.

The restoration by Filmmuseum Düsseldorf is wonderful. It does justice to the film's visual glory and the radiation of its stars, also including Heinrich George at the height of his powers. I enjoyed the subtle definition of light and the sepia toning.

Vanina (1922) (2024 restoration)

Arthur von Gerlach: Vanina (DE 1922). The finale with Asta Nielsen as Vanina Vanini. Photo: Deutsches Filminstitut & Filmmuseum.

Die Galgenhochzeit (AT) / Notte di fuoco / La Noce au pied de la potence / Verihäät Turinissa / Blodsbröllopet i Turin.

    DE 1922 Union-Projektions A.-G. 

    Dir: Arthur von Gerlach. scen: Carl Mayer, based on the novella by Stendhal [Marie-Henri Beyle], Vanina Vanini (1829). photog: Frederik Fuglsang, Willibald Gaebel. des: Walter Reimann. 

    Cast: Paul Wegener (Governatore/The Governor), Asta Nielsen (sua figlia/His Daughter), Paul Hartmann (Octavio), Fritz Blum (aiutante del Governatore/The Adjutant), Bernhard Goetzke (sacerdote/The Priest), Raoul Lange (boia/The Executioner), Hans Waßmann, Hans Studen (due soldati/Two Soldiers), Sigmund Nunberg (domestico/A Servant). 

    Dist: Ufa. Première: 6.8.1922 (Sedlingertor-Lichtspiele, München). 

    Finnish premiere: 30 Oct 1922 - 11867 - 1450 m - Astoria - distributed by: Ab Maxim Oy.

    Copy: DCP (4K), 73', col. (from 35 mm, 1450 m, orig. l. 1550 m, 18 fps, tinted); titles: GER. Source: Det Danske Filminstitut, København. Restored by Cinémathèque royale de Belgique, Filmmuseum München, Det Danske Filminstitut.

    Le Giornate del Cinema Muto (GCM), Pordenone: Rediscoveries.

    Grand piano: Daan van den Hurk.

    Viewed at Teatro Verdi with e-subtitles in English/Italian, 9 Oct 2024

Stefan Drössler (GCM Catalogue 2024): "Featuring a prominent cast by combining for the first time the top stars Paul Wegener and Asta Nielsen, Vanina marked the film directing debut of Arthur von Gerlach. He came from the theatre and had spent ten years as the artistic director of the Elberfelder Stadttheater. In 1919, he joined Union-Film in Berlin and succeeded Paul Davidson as General Director. Today his name is largely forgotten, as he died of a heart attack in 1925 at the age of 49 while preparing his third film. The obituary in Der Kinematograph (Nr. 964, 9.8.1925) noted his tenure at Union-Film: “He arrived at a time of trials and tribulations and, in his own way, could hardly assert himself as an administrative man. He was an artist, perhaps too straightforward for the complex world of film.” "

"The screenplay for Vanina was written by Carl Mayer (1894-1944), at the time already one of Germany’s most respected film authors. He freely adapted Stendhal’s novella into a dark kammerspiel (chamber drama) ballad exploring themes of revolution and resistance, love, hatred, and death, all unfolding over the course of a single night. Illustrierte Filmwoche (Nr. 42/43, 1922) described Vanina as an experiment blending theatre and film: “Director von Gerlach has created excellent cinematic images here with stage-like means. Throughout this night of fate, an incessant battle rages between insurgents and the vassals of Governor Paul Wegener. Bombs, gunshots, detonations, weapons swaying back and forth explode incessantly. Lovers Vanina (Asta Nielsen) and Octavio (Paul Hartmann) are thrown into the middle of this chaotic scene and must inevitably perish that night.” "

"Vanina premiered on 6 August 1922, as part of the German Film Art Week in Munich, and was promoted as an “art film”. Münchner Neueste Nachrichten (9.8.1922) wrote, “The way in which the director has brought together all the gestures from the mimic (Wegener, Nielsen, Hartmann) and architectural realms to create dramatic expression touches on genius.” Der Kinematograph (Nr. 808, 13.8.1922) commented, “Technically, the film offers the highest level imaginable; the lighting, elaboration of the images, photography, settings, and tinting are master pieces!” However, when the film was released in German cinemas on 6 October, some reviews were less positive. In the Berliner Lokal-Anzeiger (9.10.1922), Alfred Rosenthal gleefully enumerated all the improbabilities of the plot’s logic: “The whole story now appears exceedingly improbable on film, losing interest, especially towards the end.” In an open letter to Arthur von Gerlach published in Film-Kurier (Nr. 222, 8.10.1922) under the title “Der Irrweg von Vanina” [The Wrong Path of Vanina], Paul Ickes called Vanina “stylized kitsch” [“stilisierter Kitsch”]: “The images are uninteresting because they leave you cold, because no life lives in their mannerism, no pulse pulsates, no breath breathes.” "

"Vanina was exported to many countries. In France it was appreciated as “a film that tells us a great deal about cinematographic developments in Germany, and proves to us not only a willingness to make an effort, but a strength of personal, original expression, which has nothing to do with sentimental nonsense.” (Léon Moussinac in Le Crapouillot, 16.2.1923)"

"Today only differently abridged and edited foreign-language versions have survived, sourced from two different camera negatives. The reconstruction is based on a tinted nitrate print with French and Flemish intertitles and a black & white nitrate dupe negative with French intertitles, both from the collection of the Cinémathèque royale de Belgique. Filmmuseum München provided the internegative of a tinted and hand-colored fragment with French titles. The wording of the original intertitles was taken from the German censorship card dated 26 July 1922. Contemporary reviews and articles helped to sort out details of the continuity."

"The greatest difficulty was the editing, which was designed like a piece of music, with recurring motifs and repetitions. Single shots were shifted concealing jumps in time and plot continuity caused by cuts. Determining which shots and intercuts were alternatives or variants of repetitions was challenging, and remains somewhat speculative until further prints, the original script, or detailed production documents are found. The restoration of Vanina is a collaborative project involving the Cinémathèque Royale de Belgique, Det Danske Filminstitut, and Filmmuseum München. In Brussels, the three film materials were scanned in 4K including color grading and coloration. In Munich, the philological work was carried out, the editing plan was created, and the German intertitles were designed. In Copenhagen, image restoration and retouching were done. The restored version is 100 metres shorter than the German censorship length of 1550 metres, which corresponds to about 5 minutes." – Stefan Drössler

AA: It was with great anticipation that I visited the screening of the restored Vanina. Arthur von Gerlach directed only two films: Vanina and Zur Chronik von Grieshuus. Both are masterpieces. Of Vanina I had previously only seen and programmed in 1988 the surviving colour fragments that Enno Patalas made available at Filmmuseum München.

But those fragments were unforgettable in their visual poetry, enhanced by their fantastic, incandescent colour world.

Carl Mayer completely changed Stendhal's plot and transformed it into a cinematic ballad. Arthur von Gerlach created a mise-en-scène with an irresistibly operatic drive. Each shot is like a painting charged with Stimmung. Von Gerlach excels both in crowd scenes and intimate encounters.

What emerged was an archetypal Weimar classic. Paul Wegener embodies the crippled governor of Turin with furious, atavistic abandon. Yet again, he creates a sadistic monster in the lineage of the épouvante.

This is the age of the Counter-Revolution. To crush the people's rebellion in Turin, the governor instils a bloodbath and sentences the leader, Octavio (Paul Hartmann) to death. But his daughter Vanina (Asta Nielsen) loves Octavio and tries to save him by marrying him. The governor agrees to the marriage – only to order the sentence to be carried out anyhow. 

The escape in the labyrinthine castle transforms into a nightmarish psychic journey, in which "every new passage is another mysterious and ghostly mark of destiny" (Béla Balázs). The sense of space in the castle built by Hans Reimann is haunting. With her anti-realistic pantomime, Asta Nielsen is at the height of her powers as the bride of the blood wedding. Arthur von Gerlach brings everything together in his vivid visual tapestry, conveying an unrelenting landscape of terror. Forces of freedom and love never die, but this time the battle is lost. The final images convey infinite sorrow and pain.

Thanks to this restoration, for the first time in my lifetime, von Gerlach's masterpiece makes full sense again.

...

Stendhal published the short story "Vanina Vanini" in 1829 in Revue de Paris. After his death, it was collected in Chroniques italiennes (1855).

Roberto Rossellini filmed Vanina Vanini in Technicolor in 1961, starring Sandra Milo (Vanina Vanini), Laurent Terzieff (Pietro Missirilli) and Paolo Stoppa (Prince Vanini).

[Liebestragödie] GCM 2024 Sine Nomine 7

Film non identificato n. 7 / Unidentified film #7

[LIEBESTRAGÖDIE] (titolo assegnato/assigned title) [Tragedia dell’amore/Love Tragedy] (DE?, ca 1923?) (fragment) dir: ? cast: ? prod: ? copy: DCP, 8'30", col. (from 35 mm pos. nitr., 176 m, 18 fps, tinted & toned); titles: GER. source: DFF – Deutsches Filminstitut & Filmmuseum, Frankfurt am Main (Archive no. DFF Nr. 20.028).

    Edge code: AGFA with flat-topped A, extending over half a frame (pre-1925). No company markings on film edges or in titles. Digital duplication 2015 at ARRI in shorts programme “Frühe Farbfilme”, from a tinted & toned nitrate print of unknown provenance; no archival arrival date recorded.

    Le Giornate del Cinema Muto (GCM), Pordenone: Sine Nomine – Film da identificare / Unseen and Unidentified

    Grand piano: Daan van den Hurk

    Viewed with English / Italian e-subtitles at Teatro Verdi, 9 Oct 2024

Anke Mebold (GCM Catalogue 2024): " This “Weimar Street Film”-style fragment looks like a Berlin based film industry production. It shows interesting dynamics regarding power and abuse, family and workplace environment, and gender roles and stereotypes. The central characters are a working-class mother, Frau Hart, employed in the packing department of a factory. She has two children, a girl around 5 years old and a happy-go-lucky wayward daughter, Magda, probably in her late teens, who is in charge of the household while her mother is at work. "

" Magda is an avid reader of sentimental novels, and is deeply in love with Paul, whom she seems to have recently met. He belongs to a family of better financial standing and higher social class. Magda comes home late at night, after enjoying cake and sweet wine at Paul’s place. A man of somewhat ominous demeanor, perhaps the husband of Mrs. Hart or her eldest son, lives in the Hart household and works in the same factory. To curb Magda’s excessive evening excursions and keep her occupied, he and mother Hart decide to get Magda employment at the factory, and approach the factory owner about it. Meanwhile Paul is torn between his liaison with Magda and his affiliation with a woman from his own class, whose father is expecting to meet him. " – Anke Mebold

AA: Scenes from the éducation sentimentale of Magda Hart, a teenage daughter of a working-class family, in a budding love affair with Paul, a son of a more upscale family, expected to marry comme il faut. Romantic illusions on a crash course with social reality. Moments of urban solitude.

D. W. Griffith: The Girl and the Outlaw (1908) (2017/2024 digital scan 4K)

D. W. Griffith: The Girl and the Outlaw (US 1908) with Florence Lawrence and Harry Solter.

Florence Lawrence (1899-1938), the "Biograph Girl". Internet Movie Database registers 299 films in her filmography, from 1906 through 1937. The Girl and the Outlaw was her first starring role.

US © 1908 American Mutoscope & Biograph Company.

    Dir: D. W. Griffith. Story: ?. Photog: Arthur Marvin. Cast: Florence Lawrence, Harry Solter, George Gebhardt, Arthur Johnson, Mack Sennett, Charles Inslee.

    Filmed: 31.7, 2.8, 4.8.1908 (Fort Lee, New Jersey). Rel: 8.9.1908.

    Copy: DCP (4K), 14'51" (from paper print, 835 ft, 15 fps); titles: ENG. Source: Library of Congress National Audio-Visual Conservation Center, Packard Campus, Culpeper, VA.

    Film Preservation Society (FPS) / Tracey Goessel / Digital scan, 2017. Given the absence of original intertitles, new ones have been written by the Film Preservation Society.

    43rd Le Giornate del Cinema Muto (GCM), Pordenone: Early Cinema - The Biograph Project.

    Grand piano: José Maria Serralde Ruiz.

    Viewed at Teatro Verdi with e-subtitles in Italian, 9 Oct 2024

There is no credit information in the film itself, just the title card with the year of copyright and the name and the address of the American Mutoscope & Biograph Company, like in The Adventures of Dollie.

Tracey Goessel (GCM/FPS The Biograph Project 2024): "The Girl and the Outlaw is most notable as the first Biograph with Florence Lawrence."

"As with many of the 1908 Biographs, the plot is hard to understand without an opening explanatory intertitle. The first shot gives us a distressed Lawrence, at the base of a cliff, an Indian lookout by her side. Is she a hostage? Only to love, it seems, as the Biograph Bulletin informs us that she was a woman in love with “a heartless road-agent, too despicable for the association of white men.”"

"Seen through a modern (and in this instance, feminine) lens, it becomes a tale of women’s friendship, and – if not an exploration of the fact that some women return to their abusers, at least the documentation of it. In all fairness, such a complex phenomenon could hardly be explained in 14 minutes in the summer of 1908. But, watching Florence Lawrence’s loose tresses sway hither and yon as she endures her beating, her clear star power requires no explanation." Tracey Goessel

AA: I had "seen" this film before, but only now realized the full power and fascination of the tragedy. The visual quality is acceptable in contrast to the dismal print screened in 1997. The Girl and the Outlaw is a direct, concise, ballet-like account of a sado-masochistic love affair between a brutal bandit and a frontier woman. In the course of 15 minutes it is also a tale of a heartfelt friendship between women, and the compassion of an Indian who races to the rescue too late. There are stunning moments of atavistic violence, and a memorable mise-en-scène in the finale. Florence Lawrence excels instantly in her first role as Griffith's leading lady, and she would from now on be known as the "Biograph Girl". Tom Gunning registers distinctions of The Girl and the Outlaw as an early Western: the emphasis on female solidarity and the positive role of the Indian. Gunning also praises the dynamic and purely cinematic use of space in the chase sequences.

...

I saw The Girl and the Outlaw in GCM's Griffith Project (DWG 41), mattina 13 October 1997 at Ridotto del Verdi on 16 mm at 835 ft /15 fps/ 14 min, a rotten print without intertitles and Neil Brand at the piano.

...

Moving Picture World synopsis from Biograph Bulletin, no. 168, 8 September 1908: "SAD OUTCOME OF A PRETTY GIRL'S LOVE FOR A BRUTE. The persistant, unalterable love of a woman is at times amazing, and although the story of this Biograph film may seem a bit overdrawn, yet we know that such cases have existed, even to a greater degree."

"Bill Preston, a heartless road-agent about too despicable to associate with white men, had gathered about him a little band of low-down redskins whom he ruled by extreme despotism. At any rate, they all feared him, as he, with them, terrorized the whole country 'round by acts of pillage, arson, and worse."

"Despite his black nature, Bill was a handsome fellow who, under different conditions, might be called attractive. There is reason why Nellie Carson, a girl of the frontier, should fall violently in love with him and cast her lot with his. She soon finds out his true nature, but even then she seems to be held by an irresistible power."

"He tries to cast her off, leaving her lying wounded and insensible in the road after a stormy scene between them. She is discovered by a girl of the mountains who offers to help her to her mountain home. Though moved by the girl's kindness, she rejects her offer, choosing to go her own way on the road of life she has chosen."

"The mountain girl drives off and is waylaid by Bill, who seizes her and drags her to his camp. Nellie, coming along later, discovers evidence of what has taken place, and with a feeling of pity for the girl, and jealousy of Bill, resolves to save her. She arrives at camp at nightfall and manages to release the girl and get away, but unfortunately her revolver drops to the ground, and exploding, awakens the gang."

"The girl's plight looks bad, and would have been disastrous had not one of the Indians, who had always shown a weakness for Nellie, handicapped Bill. This enabled the girls, who mounted the one horse, to get a lead. However, Bill and his red devils are fast gaining on them, and several of his bullets have taken effect in poor Nellie's body, who has sacrificially placed herself between the mountain girl and Bill."

"The girl's apprehension seems inevitable, when the Indian rides up, and Bill, with a dagger wound in the breast, falls from his horse, thereby closing his contemptible career. This in a measure demoralizes the gang, and the girls reach the mountaineer's cabin, but Nellie is mortally wounded and expires as she is taken from the horse, the good Indian driving up just in time to claim her body that he might bury it. This subject is an exceptionally thrilling one, with photography of the highest order, and many of the scenes tinted." —Moving Picture World synopsis from Biograph Bulletin, no. 168, 8 September 1908

D. W. Griffith: Monday Morning in a Coney Island Police Court (1908) (2017/2024 digital scan 4K)

US © 1908 American Mutoscope & Biograph Company.

    Dir: D. W. Griffith. Story: ?. Photog: Billy Bitzer. Cast: John R. Cumpson, Harry Solter, Anthony O’Sullivan, Mack Sennett, George Gebhardt, Robert Harron. 

    Filmed: 7.8.1908 (NY Studio). Rel: 4.9.1908. 

    Copy: DCP (4K), 7'22" (from paper print, 414 ft, 15 fps); titles: ENG. Source: Library of Congress National Audio-Visual Conservation Center, Packard Campus, Culpeper, VA.

    Film Preservation Society (FPS) / Tracey Goessel / digital scan, 2017. Given the absence of original intertitles, new ones have been written by the Film Preservation Society. 2024 edition.

    43rd Le Giornate del Cinema Muto (GCM), Pordenone: Early Cinema - The Biograph Project.

    Grand piano: José Maria Serralde Ruiz.

    Viewed at Teatro Verdi with e-subtitles in Italian, 9 Oct 2024

There is no credit information in the film itself, just the title card with the year of copyright and the name and the address of the American Mutoscope & Biograph Company, like in The Adventures of Dollie.

Tracey Goessel (GCM/FPS The Biograph Project 2024): "If Griffith’s early efforts can be fairly described as two steps forward; one step back, Monday Morning in a Coney Island Police Court represents one step forward; 27 miles back. It was produced in a single shot. A burlesque act, statically recorded; no more."

"It is hard to conceive that this was the product of a director who had already made such progress as early cross-cutting and even insert shots. Granted, such steps were primitive, but he had taken them. Why go backwards? Simple. The pressures of the production schedule meant that Griffith had to keep grinding them out."

"And so he ground this one out. An argument can be made that the action is almost too fast, too well-polished for a simple day’s rehearsal and shooting, suggesting that Billy Bitzer might have employed the early comedy cameraman’s trick of undercranking, speeding things up just a touch."

"Which is a virtue: for our money, this film could not end quickly enough."

AA: The visual quality of the new digital scan is quite appealing, and the intertitles with their colourful descriptions of the suspects (Happy Hooligan, Serpentine Sue the snake charmer, Flossie the pride of the boardwalk, Scrappy Rosenberg and Izzy McManus) help make better sense of the comedy.

Tom Gunning's 1997 remarks in The Griffith Project register his initial disappointment ("could Griffith have ever made a less 'Griffithian' film"?) but also his grudging acknowledgement: "the film retains a great deal of charm as both a record of one sort of burlesque performance and as an image of social history". Gunning also registers "Mack Sennett as Clarence the Cop, possibly the first screen appearance as a policeman of the man who invented the Keystone Kops".

I agree with Gunning. This is not a good film, but a rewarding one. We are in the heart of comedy, in the heart of cinema itself as the subversive art. The court of justice as a gong show. And the craft (though not the art) of the plan-séquence. 

...

I saw Monday Morning in a Coney Island Police Court in GCM's Griffith Project (DWG 42), mattina 14 October 1997 at Ridotto del Verdi on 16 mm at 414 ft /15 fps/ 7 min without intertitles and Neil Brand at the piano.

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Moving Picture World synopsis from Biograph Bulletin, No. 167, 4 September, 1908: " Socrates said "Four things belong to a judge: to hear courteously, to answer wisely, to consider soberly and to decide impartially". These four qualifications were most assuredly possessed by the Hon. Patrick Henry McPheeney, Justice of the Police Court of the world's greatest playground. 

Sunday night is a most busy one for the coppers, and the cooler on Monday morning is jammed with a fascinated mob of law breakers. Quiet reigns as we enter the Hall of Justice, for Bobby, the page, is in the land of nod, while Clarence the cop, who is addicted to the habit of smoking cigarettes in his sleep, is snoring that beautiful sonata. "Please go away and let me sleep." 

Regina, the scrubwoman, arouses them, and Bobby, with the bell, opens court. The first to arrive are Mr. Ignatius O'Brien and Mr. Diogenes Cassidy, the attorneys. The gentlemen are bosom friends and get along together like monkey and parrot. Then, ta-ta-ta-tah! The Hon. Patrick Henry McPheeney enters. He is awfully brutal to Clarence, and snatches the cigarette from his mouth, hurling, yes hurling it to the floor, curse him! The Judge has a large gavel with which he calls the court to order; also using it upon occasions on the heads of the learned attorneys, when they become too demonstrative. 

The first prisoner to be tried is Happy Hooligan. He is sent up so high it makes him dizzy; next comes Serpentine Sue, the snake charmer, arrested for exercising her subtle contortions on a frankfurter in lieu of the delinquent basket. She is sentenced for life, and should she make it out, is to be hanged. Two small boys are then brought in, charged with having shot the chutes. Diogenes' plea in their behalf brings forth such a flood of tears that the urchins float out on the tide. 

"O! Look who's in our midst." Flossie, the pride of the boardwalk, has been so indiscreet as to wear a sheath-gown and an overzealous cop pinches her: but it is easy for Floss, as his Honor's hitherto flinty heart melts like an ice cream block perched on the equator, and he himself escorts her to her auto. Scrappy Rosenberg and Izzy McManus are next hauled in for prize fighting, so are allowed to give a sample of their talents. A spirited bout now takes place, which concludes with the pugs knocking out everyone in the court and then beating it. " — Moving Picture World synopsis from Biograph Bulletin, No. 167, 4 September, 1908

D. W. Griffith: Betrayed by a Handprint (1908) (2017/2024 digital scan 4K)

 

D. W. Griffith: Betrayed by a Handprint (US 1908). Florence Lawrence (Myrtle Vane).

US © 1908 American Mutoscope & Biograph Company. 

    Dir: D. W. Griffith. Story: ?. Photog: Arthur Marvin, Billy Bitzer. Cast: Florence Lawrence, Harry Solter, George Gebhardt, Linda Arvidson, Mack Sennett. 

    Filmed: 6.8, 19.8.1908 (NY Studio). Rel: 1.9.1908. 

    Copy: DCP (4K), 14'49" (from paper print, 833 ft, 15 fps); titles: ENG. Source: Library of Congress National Audio-Visual Conservation Center, Packard Campus, Culpeper, VA.

    Film Preservation Society (FPS) / Tracey Goessel / digital scan 2017. Given the absence of original intertitles, new ones have been written by the Film Preservation Society. 2024 edition.

    43rd Le Giornate del Cinema Muto (GCM), Pordenone: Early Cinema - The Biograph Project.

    Grand piano: José Maria Serralde Ruiz..

    Viewed at Teatro Verdi with e-subtitles in Italian, 9 Oct 2024

There is no credit information in the film itself, just the title card with the year of copyright and the name and the address of the American Mutoscope & Biograph Company, like in The Adventures of Dollie.

Tracey Goessel (GCM/FPS The Biograph Project 2024): "Here is a detective film with no detective. Yet we know who the culprit is from the start. In fact, we get to see lovely and desperate Florence Lawrence commit the crime. We discover, by way of two close-up cut-in shots, both how she hid the jewels and how her identity was uncovered by the victim. In The Griffith Project, Vol. 1 (pp. 103-104), Tom Gunning notes these insert shots are isolated from their setting by a pitchblack background, arguing that each serves an explanatory purpose, but not a dramatic one."

"Still, Griffith is effectively moving his characters through and about contiguous spaces. The audience has a clear sense of the layout, and the dangerous distance Lawrence has to travel across the second-floor exterior ledge. Soon he will move his actors, like frightened chess pieces, through a series of telescoping rooms as danger threatens. But for now he is learning the rudiments of manipulating his tight little spaces (most, of necessity, the size of the Biograph stage.)"

Tom Gunning (GCM 1997): " A fascinating early detective film, in which both the methods and the detection of a crime are detailed. Rather than further exploring the devices off parallel editing that Griffith had just begun to make use of this film relies on editing between contiguous spaces bridged by simple actions." (DWG Project # 46)

AA: Memorable images: the dynamic blocking in the opening scene of the bridge party with 11 characters. The jolt experienced by Myrtle Vane (Florence Lawrence) as she loses everything. Her midnight journey in pyjamas on the dangerous ledge to steal Mrs. Wharton's (Kate Bruce) diamonds. The pre-Langian impact of the two handprints (qf. the giant fingerprint enlargement in M). There are elements of a true thriller, but all in all the performance resembles too much a Sunday school play or a Kindergarten play. The pantomime, the language of gestures, is not always convincing.

...

I saw Betrayed by a Handprint in GCM's Griffith Project (DWG 46), pomeriggio 14 October 1997 at Ridotto del Verdi on 16 mm at 330 ft /15 fps/ 14 min without intertitles and Ulrich Rügner at the piano.

...

Moving Picture World synopsis from Biograph Bulletin, No. 166, September 1908: "The art of palmistry is decried and we may say tabooed by many, still we must admit that it at times has its use, as this Biograph subject will show."

"While spending the night at wealthy widow Wharton's home, Myrtle steals a pearl necklace and cleverly hides the loot. Little does she know the widow knows a thing or two about fingerprinting."

"Dashing widow Mrs. Wharton gives a party at her beautiful villa in honor of the presentation to her of a handsome diamond necklace by her fiancé, during the evening bridge party participated in by a number of the guests. "

"One, Miss Myrtle Vane, is having wretched luck and Mrs. Wharton advises her several tomes to desist, but she plays on in the vain hope of fortune's tide turning, until finally, in extreme desperation, she stakes her all--and loses. Shame and disgrace stare her in the face. What can she do to recoup her depleted fortune?"

"Another guest is eminent palmist Professor Francois Paracelsus, who of course, was called upon to read the palms of those present. Sheets of paper were prepared and each imprinted their hand on a sheet to be read by the erudite soothsayer at his leisure, so were left on the drawing room table. All have now retired to the apartments assigned them by Mrs. Wharton, but there seems to be a sleepless night before Myrtle, and she suffers mental agony until the thought of the necklace flashes before her mind's eye--if she only possessed those treasures all would be well. "

"The more she thought of it the more unconquerable became her covetousness, until the inimitable determination to secure them seized her, but how? To enter her room by the door would not only arouse the hostess, but maybe the guests as well. "

"There was but one way, by the window, and this undertaking was decidedly hazardous, for it meant that she must crawl along the narrow ledge between her window and that of Mrs. Wharton, a distance of 20 feet, and one slight misstep would result in her being dashed to death on the walk below. "

"But she makes the trip without mishap, and entering the room she searches noiselessly for the top of the dresser, finds it, secures the necklace, and makes her way back to her apartment. Now to hide the jewels. An ingenious idea strikes her. She cuts in two a bar of soap, and hollowing it out, places the treasure inside and joins the parts together. "

"Meanwhile Mrs. Wharton, aroused from her slumber, intuitively looks to her diamonds, but finds them gone. "What's this? A clue!" On the dresser there is a sheet of the palmister's paper on which there is a handprint of dust. Down to the drawing room for the corresponding imprint. There it is, and signed "Myrtle Vane." "

"To Miss Vane's room goes the furious Mrs. Wharton, and during the scene that transpires the soap is brushed from the table and breaks open, exposing the necklace, at the same time convicting the poor girl."

"Upon the recovery of her jewels, Mrs. Wharton's anger subsides and she is inclined to be charitable towards the unfortunate girl kneeling at her feet, so she not only forgives her, but insists upon aiding her financially."  —Moving Picture World synopsis from Biograph Bulletin, No. 166, September 1908

The Pride of the Clan (2024 restoration in progress, David Pierce for the Mary Pickford Foundation)

Maurice Tourneur directs Mary Pickford in The Pride of the Clan (US 1917). Photo: Mary Pickford Foundation / Marc Wanamaker – Bison Archives.          

Den sista av sin ätt.

Working titles: The Lass of Killean; The Reeds of the Clan.

    US 1917 Mary Pickford Film Corporation. Dist: Artcraft Pictures Corporation. 

    Dir: Maurice Tourneur. Scen, adapt: Elaine Stern[e] [Carrington], Charles E. Whittaker. Photog: John van den Broek, Lucien Andriot; [asst. Charles Van Enger]. Des: Ben Carré (scenery). Ed: Clarence Brown.

    Cast: Mary Pickford (Marget MacTavish), Matt Moore (Jamie Campbell), Warren Cook (Robert, Earl of Dunstable), Kathryn Browne Decker (Countess of Dunstable), Ed Roseman (David Pitcairn), Joel Day (The Dominie), [Leatrice Joy (extra)].

    Loc: Marblehead (Massachusetts).

    Première: 1.7.1917 (Strand Theatre, NY). Rel: 8.1.1917. Copy: DCP (2K), 87' (from 35 mm pos. acet., 4100 ft, + 16 mm pos., 2800 ft [7 rls.], 19 fps); titles: ENG. Source: The Mary Pickford Foundation, Los Angeles.

    First preserved 1956 by the Library of Congress as a 16 mm master positive from Pickford’s nitrate camera negative; new 35 mm safety master positive created by the Mary Pickford Company in the 1960s; 16 mm edition created 1970 by David Shepard using both sources.

    Restoration in progress; narrative assembly prepared 2024 by David Pierce for the Mary Pickford Foundation using scans provided by the Library of Congress National Audio-Visual Conservation Center.

    43rd Le Giornate del Cinema Muto (GCM), Pordenone 2024: Ben Carré. 

    Musical commentary: Donald Sosin, Elisabeth-Jane Baldry. 

    Viewed at Teatro Verdi with e-subtitles in Italian, 8 Oct 2024

Thomas A. Walsh, Catherine A. Surowiec (GCM 2024): "Kevin Brownlow, in Mary Pickford Rediscovered (1999), sets the scene: “Originally entitled The Lass of Killean, it was the first of two productions for Mary Pickford that Maurice Tourneur was obliged to make when he signed with Artcraft. … Shot on location in Marblehead, this film had a remarkable authentic look. … [Tourneur] brought to his pictures a sense of composition and lighting so striking that you can recognize a Tourneur film by a single frame. The story of Scottish fisherfolk provided him with his favorite elements – sea, storms, birds, boats – and he made a richly atmospheric production. … Tourneur makes no attempt to glamorize the characters with makeup or lighting. The little community, with its low thatched cabins, the pigs and geese wandering in the street, has a documentary reality. … The art director was Ben Carré, … whose attitude towards his craft was revolutionary. … The Pride of the Clan looks so authentic it might have been made in Scotland.”"

"In 1916 it was not common for a Fort Lee production to mount a full expedition to a distant location for extended shooting, but such was the case for the making of The Pride of the Clan. An open touring car was hired, with cameraman John van den Broek in the front seat next to the driver, and Maurice Tourneur and production manager Sam Mayer in the back seat with Ben Carré sandwiched between them. Off they went to scout the ocean coastline of New England from Connecticut to Maine, at which point they boarded a night train in Portland to return to Fort Lee."

"En route they stopped in Salem, Massachusetts. There they hired another car to take them to the small coastal village of Marblehead, and it was here that they found what would become the location for Killean, their story’s Scottish fishing village. It was on a rocky peninsula, Marblehead Neck, just east of the central village, that all the exterior sets were built, requiring a large amount of experienced crew and logistical support. “I had to requisition everyone, stagehands, carpenters, propmen, painters, and electricians,” Ben recalled. “I was very enthusiastic about the possibilities; I could build a village street leading to the rocky promontory dominating the view of the ocean. There below was a cove where Mary Pickford’s 40-foot boat would be beached.” According to reports, the film crew was there for 5-6 weeks."

"Drama wasn’t always scripted. On Sunday 12 November 1916, there was a near-tragedy. The old fishing schooner that had been towed out to sea to film some key scenes, containing Pickford, Tourneur, several cast members, and the cameramen, sprang a leak. Two cameras were lost as the schooner went down. Almost everyone jumped and swam for their lives. But Pickford and Tourneur were still on board; he saved her after a wave knocked her down, and they were lucky to escape with their lives. Crowds of spectators watched the filming daily; they witnessed the drama from the shore, and it was reported in Moving Picture World (2.12.1916). The company had to return for retakes."

"Pickford’s fans flocked to see the film when it opened in New York in January 1917, eager to see their favorite as a feisty Scottish lass who becomes chieftain of a clan. Variety (5.1.1917) enumerated the film’s strengths: “[It] is marked by many incidental details, which perhaps are not essential to the tale itself, but enrich the picture and go to the building of atmosphere. There is nothing sensational about the offering, but it has the strength of simplicity in the telling and picturesqueness of locals and character types. … The kirk of the village is made the centre of an interesting series of character scenes, the religious life of the community supplies good genre studies, [and] the local customs are worked nicely into the betrothal and courting scenes…” Local color is also added by lavish helpings of Scots dialect in the artwork intertitles."

"In her autobiography (Sunshine and Shadow, 1956) Pickford dismissed the film as a “disastrous failure,” recounting her close call. Brownlow notes that “Mary had forgotten one review [from Exhibitors Trade Review, 13.1.1917], which stated, ‘There is every possibility that the versatility she exhibits throughout the production will cause it to be listed by critics as the best film in which she appeared during her extraordinarily successful career as a star of silent drama.’” Following a screening in 1969, Richard Koszarski wrote in Film Quarterly (Winter 1969-1970, “Lost Films from the National Film Collection”): “Tourneur’s eye for composition is flawless, equaling or surpassing Griffith’s work of the same period, and the performances are more restrained than in much of Intolerance. Clearly this film was ten years ahead of its time.”" – Thomas A. Walsh, Catherine A. Surowiec (GCM 2024)

AA: The most popular film in Finland this year is Tiina Lymi's Stormskärs Maja which belongs to a current of stories of Finnish "Storm Cliff Women" usually set in the Åland archipelago. There is also an international trend of young women's Bildungsromane where the protagonist living by the sea faces extreme hardship, often losing to the sea her father / brother / husband / son, or all of them. The Pride of the Clan is Mary Pickford's contribution. (The Ur-protagonist may be Penelope).

Maurice Tourneur conveys the formidable power of the elements, substituting the North Shore of Massachusetts for Scotland. The film starts in a raging storm. The father of Margie MacTavish (Pickford), a fisherman, perishes, regardless of desperate efforts to save him. To her great shock, Margie must accept the responsibility of the chieftain of the clan. In one of the most stirring moments we see her literally grow to the occasion when she rises to the stand to address the community.

Like in Stormskärs Maja, religion is of particular importance when people are waging a war against the elements and facing matters of life and death every day. Secularization is gaining room also on the Island of Killean, but Margie will have none of it. Wielding a whip she guides all to the church to sustain the sense of the community. Only the loner David Pitcairn stays outside, thinking that religion is meaningless.

Marget is dating a young fisherman, Jamie Campbell, and they are engaged in a traditional ceremony. But Jamie's foster mother, originally his nurse, now reports to the true mother, the Countess of Dunstable, that Jamie is alive and that she had reported his death so that she could raise him. When the Countess returns it seems obvious that they do not want Marget to be a part of their life. Jamie objects, but Marget with the chieftain's authority declares the case is closed. She has been living in a houseboat and lets it loose. Incredibly it may seem because there is a leak and the boat starts to sink. But perhaps there is a motive that is unconscious or even conscious, although it might seem out of character for the fighter type that Marget is. David Pitcairn the curmudgeon alerts the community. Jamie races to the rescue, and everything is settled.

In this film we meet the two sides of Mary Pickford's star persona: the eternal child and the woman growing up to face the hardest facts of life. For me, Mary Pickford is one of the greatest in the history of the cinema, but she is far from being recognized as widely as she would deserve. One reason is in the promotional material. In the publicity photos, her childish side is overdone in a way that may seem dated. In the films themselves there is no such problem.

Maurice Tourneur and Ben Carré provide a rich, dense and vivid sense of life on the Scottish island. I was thinking about a prominent recent film, The Outrun, with two great talents, Nora Fingscheidt & Saoirse Ronan (as the biologist Rona), set on the Orkney but failing to fully exploit the poetic possibilities of the Scapa Flow as the oceanic reflection of Rona's inner storm. In my viewing charts it gets outrun by Pickford & Tourneur I'm afraid.

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P.S. 26 March 2025. Please read a superior comment: Paul Cuff in his The Realm of Silence.