Maximin ovenvartija / Eräs yö Maximissa
FR 1927. PC: Films Albatros. P: Alexandre Kamenka; D: Nicolas Rimsky, Roger Lion; SC: Nicolas Rimsky, Roger Lion, based on the play by Yves Mirande and Gustave Quinson (1920); intertitles: Raoul Ploquin; DP: Maurice Desfassiaux, Paul Guichard, [Nicolas Roudakoff]; AD: Lazare Meerson,Constantin Bruni; filmed: Marseille, Studio Montreuil, Studio Gaumont; CAST: Nicolas Rimsky (Julien Pauphilat), Pepa Bonafé (Totoche), Simone Vaudry (Mimi), Valeska Rimsky (Aunt Clara), Olga Barry (Cricri), Lou Davy, Eric Barclay (La Guérinière), Émile Royol (Candebec), Max Lerel (Octave), Yvonneck (Florent Carambagnac), Alexis Bondireff (the man with the packages),Guy Ferrant (Nioky Hagagayana), Léon Courtois (a majordomo); 2613 m /18 fps/ 127 min
From: La Cinémathèque française. Restored in 1987. E-subtitles in English + Italian, grand piano: Neil Brand. Viewed at Teatro Verdi, Pordenone, 9 Oct 2009.
From the GCM Catalogue: "The 1920 stage comedy by Yves Mirande (1875-1954) and Gustave Quinson (1863-1943) has proved a durable war-horse of French cinema: since the silent Albatros version of 1927, there have been four screen adaptations, in 1933, 1939, 1953, and 1976 (when the belles of Maxim’s included Sabine Azéma and Marie-Hélène Breillat, sister of Cathérine). Albatros in fact took over the property after the death of Max Linder, who had planned to direct himself in the role of Julien Pauphilat. Some modern sources credit Linder, as well as the Russian humorous writer Michel Linsky, with the scenario, but neither name appears on the original credit titles of the film.
The doorman of Maxim’s is the antithesis of Emil Jannings’ humiliated doorman in The Last Laugh. Julien, after 40 years in the job, is a skilled fixer and shameless procurer. He has invested the fortune he has acquired in tips in a château and estate, where he keeps his family in style and in ignorance of his true occupation. But when his daughter meets and falls in love with the fastest roué in Maxim’s, trouble begins…
The role of Julien marks the final stage in Nicolas Rimsky’s self re-creation as comedian after a long career of dramatic roles. His first essay was Ce Cochon de Morin. In L’Heureuse mort he has developed into a more versatile and subtle comic actor. But between that and Le Chasseur de chez Maxim’s, it is clear that he has diligently studied the American comedians, particularly Keaton, Lloyd, and Chaplin, from whom he has learned much about reaction, eccentric walks, and the comic potential of the rear view.
This time Rimsky directs himself; and as with his other films as director (Le Nègre blanc, Paris en quinze jours, Jim la Houlette, and Pas sur la bouche) he works with a co-director, in this case Roger Lion. Contemporary critics commented that the film gained greatly from the direction à l’américain. Rimsky is unable, however, to restrain his enthusiasm for his new comic discoveries, and the film is undeniably too long – longer by half an hour than any of the subsequent sound versions. A 15-minute drunk sequence, for instance, is in itself a fine virtuoso show, but virtually an unrelated 2-reeler, superfluously interpolated.
Despite such shortcomings, the film still demonstrates Albatros’ particular skill in emancipating adapted vaudeville pieces from their stage origins. A contemporary, Edmond Epardaud, commented shrewdly on this achievement in Cinéa-Ciné pour tous (No. 88, 1 July 1927): "Crushed under the flattest vulgarities and smelling of bad theatre – theatre is always bad on the screen – the ‘vaudevillesque’ film succeeds only in Hollywood, where it is treated as cinema in a really distinguished way. But here Albatros – once again outstanding – totally rehabilitates a worn-out genre … Mirande and Quinson’s vaudeville is treated with imaginative detail, humour in the style of Charlie Chaplin and Harold Lloyd, perfect technique and photography, actors who play without grimacing or gesticulating, décors not necessarily inspired by pre-war concierges’ lodges …. Le Chasseur de chez Maxim’s is a very nice film, light, amusing, elegant where appropriate (why not?). It is played seriously (comedy demands more seriousness than the serious genre). Every scene – well-staged, well-timed, well-managed in ensemble and in detail – counts." Epardaud could have numbered among the excellences he lists Lazare Meerson’s design, and in particular the labyrinthine studio set for Maxim’s itself (much larger than the real Maxim’s).
The film was restored in 1987 from an original nitrate black-and-white print acquired by the Cinémathèque Française in 1958. – David Robinson".
The best sophisticated comedies of Hollywood in the 1920s were often set in Paris, but they did such comedies in Paris, as well. - This film does seem like a virtuoso show, full of movement, but perhaps lacking in profundity (in the sense of even the lightest Lubitsch films having a sense of gravity underneath)? I cannot judge, as I saw the beginning only of this film.
Friday, October 09, 2009
Ein Mädel und 3 Clowns
[The film was not released in Finland] Ein Mädel und 3 Clowns (Die drei Zirkuskönige) / The Three Kings / (Die Beute der Männer)
GB/DE 1928. PC: British and Foreign, Orplid. D: Hans Steinhoff; SC: Henry Edwards, based on an idea by Curt J. Braun; DP: Nikolaus Farkas; AD: Franz Schroedter; M Hansheinrich Dransmann; AST: Henry Edwards (Edgar King), Evelyn Holt (Maria), Warwick Ward (Frank King), Evelyn Holt (Maria), John Hamilton (Charlie King), Clifford McLaglen (Fredo), Ilka Grüning (Mrs. Smith, landlady), Maria Forescu (Maria’s mother); orig: 6824 ft (GB), 2141 m (DE); 2057 m /20 fps/ 90 min; from: Bundesarchiv-Filmarchiv, Berlin. Reconstructed in 2009. Deutsche Fassung. Presented by Horst Claus. E-subtitles in English + Italian, grand piano and violin: Günter Buchwald. Viewed at Teatro Verdi, Pordenone, 9 Oct 2009.
From the GCM Catalogue: "The circus film The Three Kings / Ein Mädel und 3 Clowns was British and Foreign Film’s first production following this rather speculative London-based venture’s founding in May 1928 and its acquisition of the German production and distribution partners Orplid and Messtro. Shooting in Berlin’s Grunewald Studios lasted from 1 August until mid-September, interrupted (from 27 August onwards) by 10 days of location work in the streets and the famous Tower Circus and Ballroom of Blackpool, the popular holiday resort in North-West England. The film was marketed in the UK as an English production, highlighting matinee idol Henry Edwards as the person responsible for the script, while in Germany it was presented as a German picture authored by the highly prolific Curt J. Braun, who by the end of the silent era had about 40 films to his credit. Similarly, the German censorship card identifies Orplid’s director Georg M. Jacoby as producer, ignoring the fact that Sidney Morgan served in that function for the English side of what was clearly an Anglo-German co-production (with the Germans dominating in the technical departments).
The Bundesarchiv-Filmarchiv’s reconstruction of 2009 is based on three nitrate prints, all of which have at least one act missing – one with French and two with English intertitles (in which the final sequence of a circus fire is tinted red, while the French print is in black-and-white only). Originating from private sources, these are held by the Centre National de la Cinématographie (Bois d’Arcy), the British Film Institute (London), and Film and Photo Ltd. (Tony Scott, London). As no German print seems to have survived, the German censorship card and the French print (which adheres to the title-sequence of the censorship card) served as point of departure and guide for the final version. Though in finer details the French material seems to have been more tightly edited than the English, the main difference between the German/French and English versions (apart from the inclusion of different circus acts) is in the opening sequence. For spectators on the Continent the film began with the title “Artisten sind wie Vögel...” (“Artistes are like birds...”), followed by a shot of flying birds, and then a high-angle shot from the sky descending onto the Blackpool Tower and dissolves that finish with the arrival of new circus acts at the artistes’ entrance. The English version opens with the title “Behind the scenes”, followed by the sequence in which the lion tamer Fredo accuses his stepdaughter Maria of stealing his money and brutally forces her to work for him (which in the Continental version comes much later, as a flashback related to Edgar by Maria). – Horst Claus". - The quality of the image is beautiful whenever the source material allows in this restoration produced by tender care from difficult sources by the Bundesarchiv. I saw the beginning with the introduction of "artists are like birds", the camera descending from the birds' eye viewpoint to the ground, to the bustle of the circus artists, the three clowns who rescue a mysterious girl sleeping in a cab. - The fascination of the circus and the clowns during the silent era was immense. Often the stories were tragic. This story is a comedy. - I watched just the beginning.
GB/DE 1928. PC: British and Foreign, Orplid. D: Hans Steinhoff; SC: Henry Edwards, based on an idea by Curt J. Braun; DP: Nikolaus Farkas; AD: Franz Schroedter; M Hansheinrich Dransmann; AST: Henry Edwards (Edgar King), Evelyn Holt (Maria), Warwick Ward (Frank King), Evelyn Holt (Maria), John Hamilton (Charlie King), Clifford McLaglen (Fredo), Ilka Grüning (Mrs. Smith, landlady), Maria Forescu (Maria’s mother); orig: 6824 ft (GB), 2141 m (DE); 2057 m /20 fps/ 90 min; from: Bundesarchiv-Filmarchiv, Berlin. Reconstructed in 2009. Deutsche Fassung. Presented by Horst Claus. E-subtitles in English + Italian, grand piano and violin: Günter Buchwald. Viewed at Teatro Verdi, Pordenone, 9 Oct 2009.
From the GCM Catalogue: "The circus film The Three Kings / Ein Mädel und 3 Clowns was British and Foreign Film’s first production following this rather speculative London-based venture’s founding in May 1928 and its acquisition of the German production and distribution partners Orplid and Messtro. Shooting in Berlin’s Grunewald Studios lasted from 1 August until mid-September, interrupted (from 27 August onwards) by 10 days of location work in the streets and the famous Tower Circus and Ballroom of Blackpool, the popular holiday resort in North-West England. The film was marketed in the UK as an English production, highlighting matinee idol Henry Edwards as the person responsible for the script, while in Germany it was presented as a German picture authored by the highly prolific Curt J. Braun, who by the end of the silent era had about 40 films to his credit. Similarly, the German censorship card identifies Orplid’s director Georg M. Jacoby as producer, ignoring the fact that Sidney Morgan served in that function for the English side of what was clearly an Anglo-German co-production (with the Germans dominating in the technical departments).
The Bundesarchiv-Filmarchiv’s reconstruction of 2009 is based on three nitrate prints, all of which have at least one act missing – one with French and two with English intertitles (in which the final sequence of a circus fire is tinted red, while the French print is in black-and-white only). Originating from private sources, these are held by the Centre National de la Cinématographie (Bois d’Arcy), the British Film Institute (London), and Film and Photo Ltd. (Tony Scott, London). As no German print seems to have survived, the German censorship card and the French print (which adheres to the title-sequence of the censorship card) served as point of departure and guide for the final version. Though in finer details the French material seems to have been more tightly edited than the English, the main difference between the German/French and English versions (apart from the inclusion of different circus acts) is in the opening sequence. For spectators on the Continent the film began with the title “Artisten sind wie Vögel...” (“Artistes are like birds...”), followed by a shot of flying birds, and then a high-angle shot from the sky descending onto the Blackpool Tower and dissolves that finish with the arrival of new circus acts at the artistes’ entrance. The English version opens with the title “Behind the scenes”, followed by the sequence in which the lion tamer Fredo accuses his stepdaughter Maria of stealing his money and brutally forces her to work for him (which in the Continental version comes much later, as a flashback related to Edgar by Maria). – Horst Claus". - The quality of the image is beautiful whenever the source material allows in this restoration produced by tender care from difficult sources by the Bundesarchiv. I saw the beginning with the introduction of "artists are like birds", the camera descending from the birds' eye viewpoint to the ground, to the bustle of the circus artists, the three clowns who rescue a mysterious girl sleeping in a cab. - The fascination of the circus and the clowns during the silent era was immense. Often the stories were tragic. This story is a comedy. - I watched just the beginning.
Gunnar Hedes saga
Gunnar Heden taru (Il vecchio castello / The Blizzard [US] / The Judgement [GB]). SE 1923. PC: AB Svensk Filminspelning (Stockholm). P: Charles Magnusson; D: Mauritz Stiller; SC: Mauritz Stiller, Alma Söderhjelm, freely adapted from the novel En herrgårdssägen (From a Swedish Homestead) by Selma Lagerlöf (1899), translated into Finnish as Herraskartano (translated in 1900 by Maija Halonen / WSOY); DP: Henrik Jaenzon, Julius Jaenzon; AD: Axel Esbensen; CAST: Einar Hanson (Gunnar Hede), Mary Johnson (Ingrid), Pauline Brunius (Gunnar’s mother), Hugo Björne (Gunnar’s father), Adolf Olschansky (Blomgren), Stina Berg (Mrs. Blomgren), Thecla Åhlander (Stava), Gösta Hillberg (lawyer), Gustaf Aronson (inspector), Albert Christiansen (Gunnar as a child); orig: 2083 m; 1370 m /17 fps/ [70 min announced] actual duration 75 min, Svenska Filminstitutet, a new restored version straight from the lab (2009). E-subtitles in English + Italian, grand piano: John Sweeney. Viewed at Teatro Verdi, Pordenone, 8 Oct 2009.
Theme tune: Charles Gounod: the waltz "Ainsi que la brise légère" ["Like A Light Breeze"] from Faust (1859).
From the GCM Catalogue: "In 1939 the Swedish film critic and historian Bengt Idestam-Almquist (1895-1983), writing under his pseudonym of “Robin Hood”, published a book entitled Den svenska filmens drama: Sjöström-Stiller, with a preface by Victor Sjöström himself. Since Idestam-Almquist’s pioneering work in the 1930s, which apart from this book includes two volumes co-written with Ragnar Allberg in 1932 and 1936, the homegrown narrative concerning Swedish silent cinema has been virtually uncontested. The story – or “drama”, as Idestam-Almquist aptly termed it – features two canonical directorial titans, Victor Sjöström and Mauritz Stiller; a visionary producer in the background, Charles Magnusson; and a company with humble origins in the provinces. After moving to Stockholm in 1912, Svenska Biografteatern gradually emerged as a force to be reckoned with after alliances and subsequent breakups with both Pathé and Nordisk Films Kompagni.
Besides the three protagonists in this drama, everyone else has been pushed off-frame, apart from a few famous authors who became poster figures for a downsized quality production. Terje Vigen (1917), based on Henrik Ibsen’s epic poem, marked the sea change, but Selma Lagerlöf soon emerged as the prime provider of literary material. The cut-off year for this national production is 1923, with Gösta Berlings saga (1924) as a last, disputed hurrah before international co-productions allegedly drove the Golden Age down into a bland abyss. This coincided with the country’s two most celebrated directors leaving Sweden for Hollywood; Stiller only reluctantly, after an unsuccessful detour to Berlin. The former glory of Swedish cinema would not be fully resurrected until the rise of Ingmar Bergman – so the received story goes. The key link between these stellar film domains was Bergman’s casting of Sjöström in Wild Strawberries (Smultronstället, 1957), as a gesture of apotheosis.
Another intervention from Ingmar Bergman brought Georg af Klercker briefly into the limelight. The programming of several af Klercker titles at the Pordenone Silent Film Festival in 1986 placed him on the scholarly map and in the international textbooks. Hasselblad, Georg af Klercker’s studio, was awarded its film series in 1983, and in 1992 Stockholm’s first retrospective in af Klercker’s name was programmed. This was followed in 1993 by a screening of the then-newly restored Nattliga toner (1918), which was shown in conjunction with the opening of Ingmar Bergman’s play Sista skriket.
Gunnar Hedes saga (1923), screened 13 times between 1974 and 2001, is a second-tier film. It has generally been programmed as part of Stiller or Lagerlöf retrospectives. The film has been awarded short shrift in scholarly discourse, perhaps partially due to the preserved print’s incomplete status. This is the film’s first showing in Pordenone. The screen is thus set for a premiere-cum-discovery for this incomplete torso. The element for all extant material is a copy from the Cinémathèque Française; about 1300 metres remain of the original’s approximately 2,000 metres – which coincidentally mirrors the preservation ratio for Ingeborg Holm (1345 out of 2006 metres).
Gunnar Hedes saga opened to mixed reviews in 1923. Stiller’s free adaptation of Lagerlöf’s text put off some critics, while other voices pronounced it the best Swedish film ever. This production marked the beginning of a strained relationship between Stiller and Selma Lagerlöf which culminated with Gösta Berlings saga, due to his lack of respect for the integrity of her literary source material when preparing the shooting scripts.
After long deliberation, Stiller elected to cast the inexperienced Einar Hanson in the title role and not his customary star, Lars Hanson. This was Einar Hanson’s second film, and his breakthrough. He lived fast and died young, in an automobile crash on the Pacific Coast Highway in 1927, after having faced a much-publicized trial for reckless driving in Sweden before leaving for Hollywood.
In the film, the boy Gunnar idolizes his grandfather and the mythic, very Nordic feat that originally brought wealth to the family. After his father’s premature death, Gunnar’s mother forcefully tries to take away the boy’s romantic notions, symbolized by his violin, and instead aims to prepare him for managing the family business and estate. Gunnar refuses, and leaves home after an altercation with his mother. While trying to replicate his grandfather’s feat and quick monetary remuneration, Gunnar is severely injured, and loses his grip on reality. He is eventually nursed back to sanity by love and music, which, contrary to Mrs. Hede’s career plan for Gunnar, proves to be the path for salvaging the family’s fortunes.
Criticized by some for being Americanized due to its overly stately grand interiors, Gunnar Hedes saga is built around a spectacular attraction with roots in Nordic culture – a Stiller trademark. This time it’s a daring exploit in the snow seemingly involving a zillion reindeer. The attraction emerges from a clash between commerce and art, with art’s redeeming powers eventually winning the day. Stiller creatively balances high-art claims by placing the performance in the humblest imaginable artistic setting, which also movingly offers comedy relief. In this attempt to set cinema apart from literature, intermediality is key. The storytelling strategy inspires an unprecedented reliance on trick effects, with dreams, memories, and hallucinations as motivating features, until the power of music restores sanity and happiness, with prosperity thrown in for good measure. In the initial intermedial stance, music is embedded in an evocative painting.
The next assignment for the film’s photographer, Julius Jaenzon, was as cameraman for Svensk Filmindustri’s first international production. Karusellen (1923), directed by Dimitri Buchowetzki and largely shot in Berlin, received rave reviews in Stockholm, and, more importantly, paved the way for novel production practices. – Jan Olsson
A tinted nitrate print of Gunnar Hedes saga was duplicated by the Archival Film Collections of the Swedish Film Institute in the mid-1970s. The nitrate source no longer exists, but single frames were at one point extracted from it and kept in an uncatalogued file of colour records. Using these frames as a colour reference, a Desmet print was struck from the black-and-white negative in 2009.
In the process of comparing the existing film material with the original list of intertitles – submitted to the Swedish board of censors before the film’s release in 1923 – it was clear that some of the titles in the negative had been erroneously placed. While correcting the editing, it was also established that only 107 of the film’s original 133 intertitles had been used; the reason of course being that the film was incomplete, and no corresponding visuals existed for the remaining titles. However, since some of these intertitles include significant narrative information (most importantly on the misfortune of the family estate after the death of Gunnar Hede’s father), all the additional intertitles were inserted in the duplicate negative in 2009, using the original title cards in the library collections of the Swedish Film Institute. – Jon Wengström".
It was a thrill to see a new print of Gunnar Hedes saga with the missing intertitles added, bringing a more full experience of a big Mauritz Stiller film that has survived in an incomplete form. - The reindeer stampede sequence is probably unique in the history of the cinema. - The most moving performance is by Pauline Brunius as Gunnar's stern mother, who experiences a transformation as Gunnar descends into madness. - The new print has been produced with tender care by Svenska Filminstitutet. - It has been restored from very difficult source material, which suffers from a softness and a weak definition in the image. - It is a matter of taste, but I would prefer to see this restoration without tinting. As we can no longer see a print struck from the negative, I would now prioritize to see a maximum brilliance of light, and I would sacrifice colour, especially tinting, preferring a simulation of toning. - This is a film about the power of music: music brings Gunnar and Ingrid together, and Ingrid heals Gunnar back to sanity with music. John Sweeney acknowledged this and introduced the original theme tune, Charles Gounod's Faust waltz, in his performance. This film would be a good candidate for a special musical film event.
Theme tune: Charles Gounod: the waltz "Ainsi que la brise légère" ["Like A Light Breeze"] from Faust (1859).
From the GCM Catalogue: "In 1939 the Swedish film critic and historian Bengt Idestam-Almquist (1895-1983), writing under his pseudonym of “Robin Hood”, published a book entitled Den svenska filmens drama: Sjöström-Stiller, with a preface by Victor Sjöström himself. Since Idestam-Almquist’s pioneering work in the 1930s, which apart from this book includes two volumes co-written with Ragnar Allberg in 1932 and 1936, the homegrown narrative concerning Swedish silent cinema has been virtually uncontested. The story – or “drama”, as Idestam-Almquist aptly termed it – features two canonical directorial titans, Victor Sjöström and Mauritz Stiller; a visionary producer in the background, Charles Magnusson; and a company with humble origins in the provinces. After moving to Stockholm in 1912, Svenska Biografteatern gradually emerged as a force to be reckoned with after alliances and subsequent breakups with both Pathé and Nordisk Films Kompagni.
Besides the three protagonists in this drama, everyone else has been pushed off-frame, apart from a few famous authors who became poster figures for a downsized quality production. Terje Vigen (1917), based on Henrik Ibsen’s epic poem, marked the sea change, but Selma Lagerlöf soon emerged as the prime provider of literary material. The cut-off year for this national production is 1923, with Gösta Berlings saga (1924) as a last, disputed hurrah before international co-productions allegedly drove the Golden Age down into a bland abyss. This coincided with the country’s two most celebrated directors leaving Sweden for Hollywood; Stiller only reluctantly, after an unsuccessful detour to Berlin. The former glory of Swedish cinema would not be fully resurrected until the rise of Ingmar Bergman – so the received story goes. The key link between these stellar film domains was Bergman’s casting of Sjöström in Wild Strawberries (Smultronstället, 1957), as a gesture of apotheosis.
Another intervention from Ingmar Bergman brought Georg af Klercker briefly into the limelight. The programming of several af Klercker titles at the Pordenone Silent Film Festival in 1986 placed him on the scholarly map and in the international textbooks. Hasselblad, Georg af Klercker’s studio, was awarded its film series in 1983, and in 1992 Stockholm’s first retrospective in af Klercker’s name was programmed. This was followed in 1993 by a screening of the then-newly restored Nattliga toner (1918), which was shown in conjunction with the opening of Ingmar Bergman’s play Sista skriket.
Gunnar Hedes saga (1923), screened 13 times between 1974 and 2001, is a second-tier film. It has generally been programmed as part of Stiller or Lagerlöf retrospectives. The film has been awarded short shrift in scholarly discourse, perhaps partially due to the preserved print’s incomplete status. This is the film’s first showing in Pordenone. The screen is thus set for a premiere-cum-discovery for this incomplete torso. The element for all extant material is a copy from the Cinémathèque Française; about 1300 metres remain of the original’s approximately 2,000 metres – which coincidentally mirrors the preservation ratio for Ingeborg Holm (1345 out of 2006 metres).
Gunnar Hedes saga opened to mixed reviews in 1923. Stiller’s free adaptation of Lagerlöf’s text put off some critics, while other voices pronounced it the best Swedish film ever. This production marked the beginning of a strained relationship between Stiller and Selma Lagerlöf which culminated with Gösta Berlings saga, due to his lack of respect for the integrity of her literary source material when preparing the shooting scripts.
After long deliberation, Stiller elected to cast the inexperienced Einar Hanson in the title role and not his customary star, Lars Hanson. This was Einar Hanson’s second film, and his breakthrough. He lived fast and died young, in an automobile crash on the Pacific Coast Highway in 1927, after having faced a much-publicized trial for reckless driving in Sweden before leaving for Hollywood.
In the film, the boy Gunnar idolizes his grandfather and the mythic, very Nordic feat that originally brought wealth to the family. After his father’s premature death, Gunnar’s mother forcefully tries to take away the boy’s romantic notions, symbolized by his violin, and instead aims to prepare him for managing the family business and estate. Gunnar refuses, and leaves home after an altercation with his mother. While trying to replicate his grandfather’s feat and quick monetary remuneration, Gunnar is severely injured, and loses his grip on reality. He is eventually nursed back to sanity by love and music, which, contrary to Mrs. Hede’s career plan for Gunnar, proves to be the path for salvaging the family’s fortunes.
Criticized by some for being Americanized due to its overly stately grand interiors, Gunnar Hedes saga is built around a spectacular attraction with roots in Nordic culture – a Stiller trademark. This time it’s a daring exploit in the snow seemingly involving a zillion reindeer. The attraction emerges from a clash between commerce and art, with art’s redeeming powers eventually winning the day. Stiller creatively balances high-art claims by placing the performance in the humblest imaginable artistic setting, which also movingly offers comedy relief. In this attempt to set cinema apart from literature, intermediality is key. The storytelling strategy inspires an unprecedented reliance on trick effects, with dreams, memories, and hallucinations as motivating features, until the power of music restores sanity and happiness, with prosperity thrown in for good measure. In the initial intermedial stance, music is embedded in an evocative painting.
The next assignment for the film’s photographer, Julius Jaenzon, was as cameraman for Svensk Filmindustri’s first international production. Karusellen (1923), directed by Dimitri Buchowetzki and largely shot in Berlin, received rave reviews in Stockholm, and, more importantly, paved the way for novel production practices. – Jan Olsson
A tinted nitrate print of Gunnar Hedes saga was duplicated by the Archival Film Collections of the Swedish Film Institute in the mid-1970s. The nitrate source no longer exists, but single frames were at one point extracted from it and kept in an uncatalogued file of colour records. Using these frames as a colour reference, a Desmet print was struck from the black-and-white negative in 2009.
In the process of comparing the existing film material with the original list of intertitles – submitted to the Swedish board of censors before the film’s release in 1923 – it was clear that some of the titles in the negative had been erroneously placed. While correcting the editing, it was also established that only 107 of the film’s original 133 intertitles had been used; the reason of course being that the film was incomplete, and no corresponding visuals existed for the remaining titles. However, since some of these intertitles include significant narrative information (most importantly on the misfortune of the family estate after the death of Gunnar Hede’s father), all the additional intertitles were inserted in the duplicate negative in 2009, using the original title cards in the library collections of the Swedish Film Institute. – Jon Wengström".
It was a thrill to see a new print of Gunnar Hedes saga with the missing intertitles added, bringing a more full experience of a big Mauritz Stiller film that has survived in an incomplete form. - The reindeer stampede sequence is probably unique in the history of the cinema. - The most moving performance is by Pauline Brunius as Gunnar's stern mother, who experiences a transformation as Gunnar descends into madness. - The new print has been produced with tender care by Svenska Filminstitutet. - It has been restored from very difficult source material, which suffers from a softness and a weak definition in the image. - It is a matter of taste, but I would prefer to see this restoration without tinting. As we can no longer see a print struck from the negative, I would now prioritize to see a maximum brilliance of light, and I would sacrifice colour, especially tinting, preferring a simulation of toning. - This is a film about the power of music: music brings Gunnar and Ingrid together, and Ingrid heals Gunnar back to sanity with music. John Sweeney acknowledged this and introduced the original theme tune, Charles Gounod's Faust waltz, in his performance. This film would be a good candidate for a special musical film event.
Der Fürst von Pappenheim
Naisia kaikkialla / Kaikkialla naisia. (GB: The Masked Mannequin) DE 1927. PC: Eichberg-Film GmbH, An Ufa Eichberg Production. D: Richard Eichberg; SC: Robert Liebmann, based on the libretto by Franz Robert Arnold and Ernst Bach (1923); DP: Heinrich Gärtner, Bruno Mondi; AD: Jacques Rotmil; COST: Modehaus Hermann Gerson, Berlin (women’s fashions); CAST: Curt Bois (Egon Fürst von Pappenheim / Egon Duke of Pappenheim), Mona Maris (Princess Antoinette / Elizabeth), Dina Gralla (Diana / Diddi), Lydia Potechina (Camilla Pappenheim), Hans Junkermann (Prince Ottokar / Otto), Werner Fuetterer (Prince Sascha), Julius von Szöreghy (Count Katschkoff / Whiskerados), Albert Paulig (Count Ganitscheff); orig: 2306 m; 2062 m /24 fps/ [99 min announced] actual duration 102 min; from: Bundesarchiv-Filmarchiv, Berlin. Restored in 2007. English intertitles. E-subtitles in Italian, grand piano: Donald Sosin. Viewed at Teatro Verdi, Pordenone, 8 Oct 2009.
(When there are two character names, the first is that of the original German version, the second that of the English version.)
From the GCM Catalogue: "Boys are girls, and girls are boys in this sparkling and happily hedonist Konfektionskomödie (fashion farce) made by one of Weimar cinema’s foremost experts in popular cinema, the Berlin producer and director Richard Eichberg. It features Curt Bois in the role of Egon Duke, the male shop assistant in the exclusive Berlin fashion house Pappenheim. Egon is surrounded by ten beautiful mannequins, and literally acts as the cock of the hen roost – earning him the nickname “Duke of Pappenheim”. (In the original German the character’s last name is Fürst, so the play on words has been carried over into English, “Fürst von [Duke of] Pappenheim”.) When a runaway princess asks for shelter, she too is engaged as a mannequin. However, she only performs with a mask on her face. The action culminates in what was probably the longest and most lavish fashion show seen on German screens during the 1920s. Here, in a wonderful cross-dressing scene, Egon turns into the ultimate object of male desire.
Though critical attention to the “fashion farce” has only recently resurfaced, at the time of this production it was considered an established sub-genre of German cinema. Among its early exponents was Ernst Lubitsch, whose films made the fashion farce a playground for Jewish humour, slapstick, and travesty. But it was Curt Bois who developed it to perfection. Cast as the German Harold Lloyd in 1924, here the sad-eyed Bois brings a combination of elegance, hyperactivity, and acrobatic qualities to a picture that exudes sheer happiness and delight.
Der Fürst von Pappenheim was originally a hit Berlin stage musical, with a score by Hugo Hirsch (a celebrity in his time) and a libretto by the highly successful comedy writing team of Franz Robert Arnold and Ernst Bach. However, the screen version’s tremendous energy and musical quality may also be traced back to the enthusiastic director Richard Eichberg, who since the 1910s had made a name for himself as the creator of adventure movies, costume dramas, crime films, melodramas, and subsequently light comedies, operettas, and musical films. Though critics tended to prefer “art films”, audiences loved Eichberg’s films, in which they recognized a new, modern style of cinema, characterized by constant motion and excessive emotions. – Philipp Stiasny". - A brilliant print, the most brilliant during the Festival. - The cross-dressing sequence is very funny, with Mona Maris as a man and Curt Bois as a woman. - It is a comedy of switched identities, not very profound, but with a consistent light touch. - The definitive Curt Bois film.
(When there are two character names, the first is that of the original German version, the second that of the English version.)
From the GCM Catalogue: "Boys are girls, and girls are boys in this sparkling and happily hedonist Konfektionskomödie (fashion farce) made by one of Weimar cinema’s foremost experts in popular cinema, the Berlin producer and director Richard Eichberg. It features Curt Bois in the role of Egon Duke, the male shop assistant in the exclusive Berlin fashion house Pappenheim. Egon is surrounded by ten beautiful mannequins, and literally acts as the cock of the hen roost – earning him the nickname “Duke of Pappenheim”. (In the original German the character’s last name is Fürst, so the play on words has been carried over into English, “Fürst von [Duke of] Pappenheim”.) When a runaway princess asks for shelter, she too is engaged as a mannequin. However, she only performs with a mask on her face. The action culminates in what was probably the longest and most lavish fashion show seen on German screens during the 1920s. Here, in a wonderful cross-dressing scene, Egon turns into the ultimate object of male desire.
Though critical attention to the “fashion farce” has only recently resurfaced, at the time of this production it was considered an established sub-genre of German cinema. Among its early exponents was Ernst Lubitsch, whose films made the fashion farce a playground for Jewish humour, slapstick, and travesty. But it was Curt Bois who developed it to perfection. Cast as the German Harold Lloyd in 1924, here the sad-eyed Bois brings a combination of elegance, hyperactivity, and acrobatic qualities to a picture that exudes sheer happiness and delight.
Der Fürst von Pappenheim was originally a hit Berlin stage musical, with a score by Hugo Hirsch (a celebrity in his time) and a libretto by the highly successful comedy writing team of Franz Robert Arnold and Ernst Bach. However, the screen version’s tremendous energy and musical quality may also be traced back to the enthusiastic director Richard Eichberg, who since the 1910s had made a name for himself as the creator of adventure movies, costume dramas, crime films, melodramas, and subsequently light comedies, operettas, and musical films. Though critics tended to prefer “art films”, audiences loved Eichberg’s films, in which they recognized a new, modern style of cinema, characterized by constant motion and excessive emotions. – Philipp Stiasny". - A brilliant print, the most brilliant during the Festival. - The cross-dressing sequence is very funny, with Mona Maris as a man and Curt Bois as a woman. - It is a comedy of switched identities, not very profound, but with a consistent light touch. - The definitive Curt Bois film.
Special Event: The Rink. Premio “Strade del Cinema” 2009
The Rink / Rullaluistimilla. US 1916. PC: Lone Star Mutual. D, P, SC, ED: Charles Chaplin; DP: Roland Totheroh; second camera: George C. Zalibra; AD: George (Scotty) Cleethorpe; tech. D: Ed Brewer; filmed: Lone Star Studios, Hollywood; CAST: Charles Chaplin (waiter and skating enthusiast), Edna Purviance (society girl), James T. Kelly (her father), Eric Campbell (Mr. Stout), Henry Bergman (Mrs. Stout and angry diner), Lloyd Bacon (guest), Albert Austin (chef and skater), Frank J. Coleman (restaurant manager), John Rand (waiter), Charlotte Mineau, Leota Bryan (Edna’s friends); 545 m /18 fps/ [26 min announced] 24 min; from: Cineteca di Bologna / this version (c) 2007 Film Preservation Associates, Inc.
Accompagnamento dal vivo di The Federico Missio Movie Kit (Federico Missio, saxophone; Juri Dal Dan, grand piano). E-subtitles in Italian. Viewed at Teatro Verdi, Pordenone, 8 Oct 2009.
From the GCM Catalogue: "With the comparative independence of his own studio, the Lone Star, by 1916 Chaplin was progressively taking longer to perfect each new 2-reel film – to the chagrin of his distributors, the Mutual Company. Exceptionally, however, The Rink was released a mere 3 weeks after Behind the Screen. This is the more remarkable since the two roller-skating scenes, respectively 5 and 3 minutes in length, represent some of the most elaborate, elegant, and polished physical comedy in all cinema. Chaplin’s own virtuosity on roller-skates is dazzling, and his impeccable by-play with Mr. Stout (the giant Eric Campbell) and his rotund spouse (a delectable female impersonation by Henry Bergman), as well as the ensemble rink choreography, is faultless in execution and timing. Like all of Chaplin’s 2-reelers, the film is conceived in two halves, though here they are more than usually interwoven. While the skating sequences dominate the second reel of the film, the first concentrates on the misadventures of Charlie the skating enthusiast in his day-job of restaurant waiter. Among the classic gags are Charlie’s making up Mr. Stout’s bill by checking off the food-stains on his lapels. The musical accompaniment performed at this screening won first prize at the 2009 edition of “Strade del Cinema”, the Aosta festival of live accompaniment for silent film. The winning duo, “The Federico Missio Movie Kit”, are both from Friuli – saxophonist Federico Missio from Udine and pianist Juri Dal Dan from Pordenone. The other nine festival contestants were from all parts of Europe. The Aosta jury announced the motivation for its award: “For the fine musical sensibility in relation to the images and a musical structure respectful of the narrative line. Characterization and choice of themes very appropriate to the mood of the film, yet capable of allowing to shine through an interpretation that is personal, intimate, and at the same time easily accessible. Appreciated is the masterly use of melodic composition and its development, rendering viewing of the film fluid and never obvious.” Juri Dal Dan adds, “Federico Missio succeeded in adding poetry to a film in which Chaplin is never sad: this is the unpredicted element which won the victory... The biggest compliment we received from the Jury was, ‘We forgot you were there.’” – David Robinson".
A delightful performance, and a fine, complete print in full frame. The film is a throwback to the more primitive Chaplin, but, as David Robinson says, it's a balletic tour de force.
Accompagnamento dal vivo di The Federico Missio Movie Kit (Federico Missio, saxophone; Juri Dal Dan, grand piano). E-subtitles in Italian. Viewed at Teatro Verdi, Pordenone, 8 Oct 2009.
From the GCM Catalogue: "With the comparative independence of his own studio, the Lone Star, by 1916 Chaplin was progressively taking longer to perfect each new 2-reel film – to the chagrin of his distributors, the Mutual Company. Exceptionally, however, The Rink was released a mere 3 weeks after Behind the Screen. This is the more remarkable since the two roller-skating scenes, respectively 5 and 3 minutes in length, represent some of the most elaborate, elegant, and polished physical comedy in all cinema. Chaplin’s own virtuosity on roller-skates is dazzling, and his impeccable by-play with Mr. Stout (the giant Eric Campbell) and his rotund spouse (a delectable female impersonation by Henry Bergman), as well as the ensemble rink choreography, is faultless in execution and timing. Like all of Chaplin’s 2-reelers, the film is conceived in two halves, though here they are more than usually interwoven. While the skating sequences dominate the second reel of the film, the first concentrates on the misadventures of Charlie the skating enthusiast in his day-job of restaurant waiter. Among the classic gags are Charlie’s making up Mr. Stout’s bill by checking off the food-stains on his lapels. The musical accompaniment performed at this screening won first prize at the 2009 edition of “Strade del Cinema”, the Aosta festival of live accompaniment for silent film. The winning duo, “The Federico Missio Movie Kit”, are both from Friuli – saxophonist Federico Missio from Udine and pianist Juri Dal Dan from Pordenone. The other nine festival contestants were from all parts of Europe. The Aosta jury announced the motivation for its award: “For the fine musical sensibility in relation to the images and a musical structure respectful of the narrative line. Characterization and choice of themes very appropriate to the mood of the film, yet capable of allowing to shine through an interpretation that is personal, intimate, and at the same time easily accessible. Appreciated is the masterly use of melodic composition and its development, rendering viewing of the film fluid and never obvious.” Juri Dal Dan adds, “Federico Missio succeeded in adding poetry to a film in which Chaplin is never sad: this is the unpredicted element which won the victory... The biggest compliment we received from the Jury was, ‘We forgot you were there.’” – David Robinson".
A delightful performance, and a fine, complete print in full frame. The film is a throwback to the more primitive Chaplin, but, as David Robinson says, it's a balletic tour de force.
L'heureuse mort
[The film was not released in Finland]. FR 1924. PC: Films Albatros. D: Serge Nadejdine; SC: Nicolas Rimsky, from the comedy by La Comtesse de Baillehache; intertitles: Jean Faivre; DP: Fédote Bourgassoff, Gaston Chelles, [Nicolas Roudakoff]; filmed: Étretat, Honfleur, Le Havre, Studio Montreuil; CAST: Suzanne Bianchetti (Lucie Larue), Nicolas Rimsky (Théodore Larue / Anselme Larue), Pierre Labry (Capitaine Mouche), René Maupré (Fayot), Léon Salem (theatre manager); 1731 m /18 fps/ 83 min; from: La Cinémathèque française. Reconstituée en 1985 par Renée Lichtig. E-subtitles in English + Italian, grand piano and violin: Günter Buchwald, clarinets: Lee Mottram. Viewed at Teatro Verdi, Pordenone, 8 Oct 2009.
From the GCM Catalogue: "The elusive Serge Nadejdine’s brief, brilliant career in films lasted less than two years. Born in Moscow in 1880, until the Revolution he was apparently a director and maître de ballet at the Alexandrinsky Theatre in St. Petersburg. Press reports during his period in France state that he had directed films in Tsarist Russia and in the interim period before nationalization of the cinema: but the very comprehensive records of the Russian cinema of those years provide no evidence to support these claims. After emigration he seems to have lingered in Constantinople to work in theatre and ballet, but eventually arrived in Paris, where he was recruited to Albatros. His first work was as assistant to Volkov on Kean and Les Ombres qui passent (1924). That same year he directed his own first film, Le Chiffonnier de Paris, starring Nicolas Koline, which proved a major success. In his two succeeding films for Albatros he was closely associated with Nicolas Rimsky, who collaborated on the scenario of La Cible (1924) as well as acting alongside Koline. Then came L’Heureuse mort. Some sources also credit Nadejdine as co-director on Rimsky’s Le Nègre blanc. He left Albatros to take over direction of Naples au baiser du feufrom Jacques Robert, for Films Legrand.
In 1928 Nadejdin (now adopting an Anglo-Saxon transliteration of his name) reappears as director of an ambitious but short-lived production, Ballet Moderne, at the Gallo Opera House (today Studio 54) on West 54th St., New York City. In 1932 he was invited to take over the Russian Imperial Ballet School in Cleveland, Ohio, to succeed its founding director, Nikolai Semenov, who had thrown himself over Niagara Falls in protest against the ugliness of modern dance. Under Nadejdin, the school produced some excellent artists, and provided a rehearsal centre for visiting ballet companies. Nadejdin, who took American nationality in 1942, shortly after the U.S. entered World War II, directed the school practically until his death in 1958, in Cuyahoga Falls, Ohio.
L’Heureuse mort reveals an exceptional gift for comedy. The source, credited on the film as “from the comedy by the Comtesse de Baillehache” and elsewhere “from the libretto …”, remains untraced, but it provides a fine comic premise. Théodore Larue is a Parisian dramatist whose latest premiere is a disaster. His reputation gone, he is persuaded to take a sea voyage, in the course of which, in the throes of acute mal de mer, he is swept overboard and lost. The press and the literary world react with an abrupt revaluation of his work, elevating him to the stature of France’s greatest dramatist. His widow finds herself in possession of a hugely valuable literary property… At which point, Larue, not drowned at all, inopportunely returns home. But, dramatist above all, he decides to masquerade as his colonialist brother Anselme, while industriously turning out posthumous works by Théodore. But then the real Anselme turns up with his Senegalese wife…
The sharply distinguished dual roles of Théodore and Anselme afford Rimsky’s finest comic performance. Cinémagazine (12 December 1924) noted that “his reactions of stupefaction enrapture audiences. His gifts of characterization are truly astonishing. He is able, with scarcely perceptible physical changes, to transform himself completely”. Rimsky is admirably partnered by the enchanting Suzanne Bianchetti (1889-1936), who, in the words of Cinémagazine again, “this time abandons the roles of empresses [to become] the most gracious in the world, the pretty and witty Lucie Larue”.
Particularly in the scenes of the “fatal” storm, as dramatically recalled by Lucie for the benefit of the French literary élite, Nadejdine seizes upon the current directorial mannerisms of the avant-garde, to use them with witty irony. Exceptionally for a French film, the intertitle writer, Jean Faivre, is specifically listed in the credit titles. A further oddity of the film is the interpolation of a somewhat redundant sequence of a duel between Larue and an opportunist literary agent, entirely done in rather elementary animation. The most likely explanation of this is that it was inserted in post-production to build up the running time of an otherwise admirably economical film.
The film was restored in 1986, from an original nitrate negative for French distribution deposited with the Cinémathèque Française in 1949 by the producer Alexandre Kamenka. The copy shown was made in 1986 on black-and-white stock. – David Robinson".
I watched the beginning. There is a satirical look into the theatrical life of Paris and the fiasco that sends the protagoist to recuperate to the seaside for months. There we see comic scenes of gardening and relaxation on the beach. - There is a beauty of light in this print which I prefer to heavy tinting.
From the GCM Catalogue: "The elusive Serge Nadejdine’s brief, brilliant career in films lasted less than two years. Born in Moscow in 1880, until the Revolution he was apparently a director and maître de ballet at the Alexandrinsky Theatre in St. Petersburg. Press reports during his period in France state that he had directed films in Tsarist Russia and in the interim period before nationalization of the cinema: but the very comprehensive records of the Russian cinema of those years provide no evidence to support these claims. After emigration he seems to have lingered in Constantinople to work in theatre and ballet, but eventually arrived in Paris, where he was recruited to Albatros. His first work was as assistant to Volkov on Kean and Les Ombres qui passent (1924). That same year he directed his own first film, Le Chiffonnier de Paris, starring Nicolas Koline, which proved a major success. In his two succeeding films for Albatros he was closely associated with Nicolas Rimsky, who collaborated on the scenario of La Cible (1924) as well as acting alongside Koline. Then came L’Heureuse mort. Some sources also credit Nadejdine as co-director on Rimsky’s Le Nègre blanc. He left Albatros to take over direction of Naples au baiser du feufrom Jacques Robert, for Films Legrand.
In 1928 Nadejdin (now adopting an Anglo-Saxon transliteration of his name) reappears as director of an ambitious but short-lived production, Ballet Moderne, at the Gallo Opera House (today Studio 54) on West 54th St., New York City. In 1932 he was invited to take over the Russian Imperial Ballet School in Cleveland, Ohio, to succeed its founding director, Nikolai Semenov, who had thrown himself over Niagara Falls in protest against the ugliness of modern dance. Under Nadejdin, the school produced some excellent artists, and provided a rehearsal centre for visiting ballet companies. Nadejdin, who took American nationality in 1942, shortly after the U.S. entered World War II, directed the school practically until his death in 1958, in Cuyahoga Falls, Ohio.
L’Heureuse mort reveals an exceptional gift for comedy. The source, credited on the film as “from the comedy by the Comtesse de Baillehache” and elsewhere “from the libretto …”, remains untraced, but it provides a fine comic premise. Théodore Larue is a Parisian dramatist whose latest premiere is a disaster. His reputation gone, he is persuaded to take a sea voyage, in the course of which, in the throes of acute mal de mer, he is swept overboard and lost. The press and the literary world react with an abrupt revaluation of his work, elevating him to the stature of France’s greatest dramatist. His widow finds herself in possession of a hugely valuable literary property… At which point, Larue, not drowned at all, inopportunely returns home. But, dramatist above all, he decides to masquerade as his colonialist brother Anselme, while industriously turning out posthumous works by Théodore. But then the real Anselme turns up with his Senegalese wife…
The sharply distinguished dual roles of Théodore and Anselme afford Rimsky’s finest comic performance. Cinémagazine (12 December 1924) noted that “his reactions of stupefaction enrapture audiences. His gifts of characterization are truly astonishing. He is able, with scarcely perceptible physical changes, to transform himself completely”. Rimsky is admirably partnered by the enchanting Suzanne Bianchetti (1889-1936), who, in the words of Cinémagazine again, “this time abandons the roles of empresses [to become] the most gracious in the world, the pretty and witty Lucie Larue”.
Particularly in the scenes of the “fatal” storm, as dramatically recalled by Lucie for the benefit of the French literary élite, Nadejdine seizes upon the current directorial mannerisms of the avant-garde, to use them with witty irony. Exceptionally for a French film, the intertitle writer, Jean Faivre, is specifically listed in the credit titles. A further oddity of the film is the interpolation of a somewhat redundant sequence of a duel between Larue and an opportunist literary agent, entirely done in rather elementary animation. The most likely explanation of this is that it was inserted in post-production to build up the running time of an otherwise admirably economical film.
The film was restored in 1986, from an original nitrate negative for French distribution deposited with the Cinémathèque Française in 1949 by the producer Alexandre Kamenka. The copy shown was made in 1986 on black-and-white stock. – David Robinson".
I watched the beginning. There is a satirical look into the theatrical life of Paris and the fiasco that sends the protagoist to recuperate to the seaside for months. There we see comic scenes of gardening and relaxation on the beach. - There is a beauty of light in this print which I prefer to heavy tinting.
On Strike
US 1920. PC: Bud Fisher Films Corporation, orig. dist: Fox Film Corporation. D, SC: Charles Bowers (?); 550 ft /18 fps/ 9 min. Preserved by The MoMA with funds provided by The Film Foundation and Film Connection: Australia-America. From: MoMA. Dialogue balloons in English. Introduced by Meg Labrum. E-subtitles in Italian, grand piano and violin: Günter Buchwald, the clarinets: Lee Mottram. Viewed at Teatro Verdi, Pordenone, 8 Oct 2009.
From the GCM Catalogue: "On Strike is one of more than 300 animated “half-reelers” produced between 1913 and 1926 starring the popular American comic-strip characters Mutt and Jeff – and is unusual in featuring live-action shots of its creator, Bud Fisher. Although not the first daily newspaper comic strip to use an ongoing narrative, Mutt and Jeff was by far the most successful, and made Fisher a small fortune from syndication and merchandizing. A shrewd entrepreneur, he kept the copyright and remained in the spotlight after he expanded his characters into film and farmed out the animation work to the studio of Raoul Barré and Charles Bowers.
Launched in San Francisco in 1907, the original Mutt and Jeff strip often commented on politics. This film episode continues the tradition by working into the storyline parallels to the 1919 Actors’ Equity Association strike, which spread to eight cities before the actors won a settlement. On Strike offers an alternative version from the producer’s point of view. When Mutt (the tall one, his diminutive name notwithstanding) and Jeff see how lavishly the celebrated Fisher lives off their labors, the duo demand a bigger cut. With the battle cry of “Arbitrate me eye!!!” they decide to strike and make cartoons on their own. What follows is a fascinating demonstration of the time-intensive animation process then in use. “About 3000” cels later, Mutt and Jeff’s production bombs with the movie audience and the actors return to their “boss” as grateful employees.
The cartoon comes to Pordenone via the Film Connection, a collaboration among the National Film and Sound Archive of Australia, which generously lent the nitrate source material, the American archival community, and the National Film Preservation Foundation, which funded the preservation work at Haghefilm Conservation B.V. Through this project, eight American shorts were preserved and copies made for archives in both countries.
Thanks to Nancy McVittie and Eric Hanna, graduate students of Richard Abel at the University of Michigan, for their invaluable research on this cartoon. – Annette Melville".
A fascinating animated meta-film combining some live action with the animation. Bud Fisher appears in the live footage. Mutt and Jeff go on strike, create their means of production themselves, and produce an animated cartoon of 3000 frames. The parodical matchstick style "animation within the animation" is delicious. Their film is a flop and they resign to return to Bud Fisher for nothing. - Quite an anti-trade-union parody and a glorification of the employer.
From the GCM Catalogue: "On Strike is one of more than 300 animated “half-reelers” produced between 1913 and 1926 starring the popular American comic-strip characters Mutt and Jeff – and is unusual in featuring live-action shots of its creator, Bud Fisher. Although not the first daily newspaper comic strip to use an ongoing narrative, Mutt and Jeff was by far the most successful, and made Fisher a small fortune from syndication and merchandizing. A shrewd entrepreneur, he kept the copyright and remained in the spotlight after he expanded his characters into film and farmed out the animation work to the studio of Raoul Barré and Charles Bowers.
Launched in San Francisco in 1907, the original Mutt and Jeff strip often commented on politics. This film episode continues the tradition by working into the storyline parallels to the 1919 Actors’ Equity Association strike, which spread to eight cities before the actors won a settlement. On Strike offers an alternative version from the producer’s point of view. When Mutt (the tall one, his diminutive name notwithstanding) and Jeff see how lavishly the celebrated Fisher lives off their labors, the duo demand a bigger cut. With the battle cry of “Arbitrate me eye!!!” they decide to strike and make cartoons on their own. What follows is a fascinating demonstration of the time-intensive animation process then in use. “About 3000” cels later, Mutt and Jeff’s production bombs with the movie audience and the actors return to their “boss” as grateful employees.
The cartoon comes to Pordenone via the Film Connection, a collaboration among the National Film and Sound Archive of Australia, which generously lent the nitrate source material, the American archival community, and the National Film Preservation Foundation, which funded the preservation work at Haghefilm Conservation B.V. Through this project, eight American shorts were preserved and copies made for archives in both countries.
Thanks to Nancy McVittie and Eric Hanna, graduate students of Richard Abel at the University of Michigan, for their invaluable research on this cartoon. – Annette Melville".
A fascinating animated meta-film combining some live action with the animation. Bud Fisher appears in the live footage. Mutt and Jeff go on strike, create their means of production themselves, and produce an animated cartoon of 3000 frames. The parodical matchstick style "animation within the animation" is delicious. Their film is a flop and they resign to return to Bud Fisher for nothing. - Quite an anti-trade-union parody and a glorification of the employer.
The Rose of Rhodesia
Die Rose von Rhodesia
ZA 1918. PC: Harold Shaw Film Productions. D, P, SC: Harold Shaw; DP: Henry Howse, Ernest G. Palmer; CAST: Edna Flugrath (Rose Randall), Marmaduke A. Wetherell (Jack Morel), Chief Kentani (Chief Ushakapilla), Prince Yumi (Mofti, his son), Howard Wyndham (Bob Randall? Fred Winters?); 1479 m /16 fps/ 80 min
From: NFM. Restored in 2006. Deutsche Zwischentitel. E-subtitles in English + Italian. Grand piano: Philip Carli. Viewed at Teatro Verdi, Pordenone, 8 Oct 2009.
From the GCM Catalogue: "An African chief named Ushakapilla requests more land for his people from the colonial authorities. Denied for a third time, the chief decides to plan an uprising that will make his son Mofti ruler of Africa. To raise funds for buying weapons, he instructs his subjects to work in the white men’s diamond and gold mines. Meanwhile, in a distant city, the gigantic Rose Diamond is stolen from the directorial office of the Karoo Diamond Mines Syndicate. The police quickly identify the thief as Fred Winters, an overseer at the company, who manages to escape into the desert. After collapsing from exhaustion, Winters is found by one of Ushakapilla’s men, who steals the diamond but saves Winters by giving him water.
Arriving in Green Willows, a Rhodesian settlement, Winters teams up with Bob Randall, a failing gold prospector who spends most of his time in the local bar drowning his sorrows. Randall is living with his novelette-reading daughter Rose (played by Edna Flugrath). Initially interested romantically in the villain Winters, Rose eventually falls for Jack Morel, son of a local missionary. Jack is a close friend of Mofti, with whom he enjoys hunting. On one such safari, Mofti is fatally injured. Devastated, Ushakapilla abandons his plans for an uprising and gives the Rose Diamond to Jack and Rose as a wedding present. The couple return the diamond to its rightful owner, who in turn rewards them handsomely for their exemplary honesty. The film ends with a glimpse into the future: a vignette of Jack, now a clergyman, and his wife Rose, with their four infant children.
American-born Harold M. Shaw (1877?-1926) started out directing films for Edison in 1911 before leaving with his wife-to-be, the actress Edna Flugrath, for England, where both found success with the London Film Company. In 1916 Shaw and Flugrath signed contracts with South African entertainment mogul I.W. Schlesinger and his African Film Productions. Their first project was De Voortrekkers (1916), also known as Winning a Continent, a lavish historical epic intended to be the South African equivalent of Griffith’s The Birth of a Nation. The film proved an immediate commercial success, and with time emerged as a central text in the political mythology of the country’s Dutch-speaking white Afrikaners. After falling out with Schlesinger, Shaw completed at least two more films as an independent director in South Africa, The Rose of Rhodesia and Thoroughbreds All (both 1918).
Shot at a Cape Town studio and in the Eastern Cape, The Rose of Rhodesia premiered as a 7-reel melodrama at Cape Town’s City Hall on 23 March 1918, where it was received badly. Its local distributor later called it “the biggest flop in the Cinema world”. Shaw likely re-edited the film and shortened it to 5 reels before releasing it in Britain, where it found a warmer reception. Reviewers particularly praised its “gorgeous African landscapes” and “the acting of the natives”. Promotional materials in Britain emphasized that the roles of Chief Ushakapilla and Mofti were played not by actors but by real “native” royalty: “Chief” Kentani and “Prince” Yumi.
The Rose of Rhodesia was thought lost until 1985, when an intact print with German intertitles was donated to the Nederlands Filmmuseum. The film was restored in 2006 by Elif Rongen-Kaynakci at Haghefilm for the NFM. The restored version is available for viewing online, together with a special issue of the film journal Screening the Past (No. 25, September 2009) edited by the authors of this note, in which the background of this unique cinematic find is further explored. – Vreni Hockenjos, Stephen Donovan".
I watched the beginning of this assured and interesting film. It is a professional production with a firm sense of narration and a white settler's viewpoint into the African situation. I saw the first scene with the African tribe and the ingenious robbery scene of the giant diamond. A film worth revisiting. - The restoration looks fine, and it is apparently based on a used screening print.
ZA 1918. PC: Harold Shaw Film Productions. D, P, SC: Harold Shaw; DP: Henry Howse, Ernest G. Palmer; CAST: Edna Flugrath (Rose Randall), Marmaduke A. Wetherell (Jack Morel), Chief Kentani (Chief Ushakapilla), Prince Yumi (Mofti, his son), Howard Wyndham (Bob Randall? Fred Winters?); 1479 m /16 fps/ 80 min
From: NFM. Restored in 2006. Deutsche Zwischentitel. E-subtitles in English + Italian. Grand piano: Philip Carli. Viewed at Teatro Verdi, Pordenone, 8 Oct 2009.
From the GCM Catalogue: "An African chief named Ushakapilla requests more land for his people from the colonial authorities. Denied for a third time, the chief decides to plan an uprising that will make his son Mofti ruler of Africa. To raise funds for buying weapons, he instructs his subjects to work in the white men’s diamond and gold mines. Meanwhile, in a distant city, the gigantic Rose Diamond is stolen from the directorial office of the Karoo Diamond Mines Syndicate. The police quickly identify the thief as Fred Winters, an overseer at the company, who manages to escape into the desert. After collapsing from exhaustion, Winters is found by one of Ushakapilla’s men, who steals the diamond but saves Winters by giving him water.
Arriving in Green Willows, a Rhodesian settlement, Winters teams up with Bob Randall, a failing gold prospector who spends most of his time in the local bar drowning his sorrows. Randall is living with his novelette-reading daughter Rose (played by Edna Flugrath). Initially interested romantically in the villain Winters, Rose eventually falls for Jack Morel, son of a local missionary. Jack is a close friend of Mofti, with whom he enjoys hunting. On one such safari, Mofti is fatally injured. Devastated, Ushakapilla abandons his plans for an uprising and gives the Rose Diamond to Jack and Rose as a wedding present. The couple return the diamond to its rightful owner, who in turn rewards them handsomely for their exemplary honesty. The film ends with a glimpse into the future: a vignette of Jack, now a clergyman, and his wife Rose, with their four infant children.
American-born Harold M. Shaw (1877?-1926) started out directing films for Edison in 1911 before leaving with his wife-to-be, the actress Edna Flugrath, for England, where both found success with the London Film Company. In 1916 Shaw and Flugrath signed contracts with South African entertainment mogul I.W. Schlesinger and his African Film Productions. Their first project was De Voortrekkers (1916), also known as Winning a Continent, a lavish historical epic intended to be the South African equivalent of Griffith’s The Birth of a Nation. The film proved an immediate commercial success, and with time emerged as a central text in the political mythology of the country’s Dutch-speaking white Afrikaners. After falling out with Schlesinger, Shaw completed at least two more films as an independent director in South Africa, The Rose of Rhodesia and Thoroughbreds All (both 1918).
Shot at a Cape Town studio and in the Eastern Cape, The Rose of Rhodesia premiered as a 7-reel melodrama at Cape Town’s City Hall on 23 March 1918, where it was received badly. Its local distributor later called it “the biggest flop in the Cinema world”. Shaw likely re-edited the film and shortened it to 5 reels before releasing it in Britain, where it found a warmer reception. Reviewers particularly praised its “gorgeous African landscapes” and “the acting of the natives”. Promotional materials in Britain emphasized that the roles of Chief Ushakapilla and Mofti were played not by actors but by real “native” royalty: “Chief” Kentani and “Prince” Yumi.
The Rose of Rhodesia was thought lost until 1985, when an intact print with German intertitles was donated to the Nederlands Filmmuseum. The film was restored in 2006 by Elif Rongen-Kaynakci at Haghefilm for the NFM. The restored version is available for viewing online, together with a special issue of the film journal Screening the Past (No. 25, September 2009) edited by the authors of this note, in which the background of this unique cinematic find is further explored. – Vreni Hockenjos, Stephen Donovan".
I watched the beginning of this assured and interesting film. It is a professional production with a firm sense of narration and a white settler's viewpoint into the African situation. I saw the first scene with the African tribe and the ingenious robbery scene of the giant diamond. A film worth revisiting. - The restoration looks fine, and it is apparently based on a used screening print.
Thursday, October 08, 2009
Der gestreifte Domino
[The Striped Domino] DE 1915. PC: Stuart Webbs-Film Company Reicher und Reicher (Berlin). Series: Stuart Webbs-Detektivserie, Nr. 5. P: Ernst Reicher; D: Adolf Gärtner; SC: ?; DP: Max Fassbender; CAST: Ernst Reicher (Stuart Webbs), Emmerich Hanus (Bennett, Ganady’s son), Ludwig Trautmann (Paul, Ganady’s stepson), Beatrice Altenhofer (Ganady’s niece, Bennett’s fiancée); filmed: Stuart Webbs-Atelier, Berlin-Weissensee; orig: 1302 m; 1250 m /18 fps/ 60 min; from: Deutsche Kinemathek, Berlin. E-subtitles in English + Italian, grand piano: Antonio Coppola. Viewed at Teatro Verdi, Pordenone, 8 Oct 2009.
From the GCM Catalogue: "The influx of cheap pulp mysteries from abroad (especially the Nick Carter stories) was a cause for dire warnings from Germany’s arbiters of moral uplift The public’s demand for such sensationalism, with its concomitant hand-wringing, was equally great for detective films of the foreign and domestic varieties, the latter tending either towards gratuitous thrill-seeking with no psychological complexity or sleuthing movies in a comic vein. The problem wasn’t that the genre itself was inherently downmarket, but rather that the authors chosen for adaptation (when originating from a published source) were outside the canon of respectable literature. Considering the cross-class popularity of Sherlock Holmes, it’s not surprising that members of the film industry looked to Conan Doyle as a model for a new type of cinema detective who could appease the critics and censors while attracting a more upscale audience, always with an eye towards a larger pool of ticket buyers. To meet this challenge, the actor and scriptwriter Ernst Reicher, together with Joe May, created the character of Stuart Webbs, a private detective whose adventures would be logical (a relative term), striking a balance between Holmes-like deduction and requisite thrills.
The formula was an enormous success, leading to approximately 50 Stuart Webbs films between 1914 and 1926. Sebastian Hesse, in his essay on the series, quotes a reviewer from Licht-Bild-Bühne in 1915 comparing the new model with what came before: “The Stuart Webbs Film Company has managed to bring about reforms and improvements in this field; all of its films to date constitute a document of the fact that the detective film no longer has to be viewed with the usual suspicion.” Reicher and May produced their first Webbs film, Die geheimnisvolle Villa, through Continental-Kunstfilm, premiering in March 1914, three months before the Rudolf Meinert/Richard Oswald Der Hund von Baskerville. Their choice of an Anglo-Saxon protagonist was dictated not merely by Holmes but an exploding field of German-born, English-sounding sleuths in both fiction and film, including Harry Dickson, Detective Frank, Percy Stuart, and Miss Nobody. When war broke out many of the new detectives, such as Tom Shark, were deliberately coded as American, but by then Stuart Webbs, and his cinema rival Joe Deebs (created by May when he and Reicher ended their partnership in 1915), were generally thought of as English, and their popularity was such, like Holmes, that they largely escaped the strict censorship suffered by other British characters.
Der gestreifte Domino was the fifth film in the series, directed by Adolf Gärtner and made after Reicher broke with Continental and formed the Stuart Webbs-Film Company. At the start Webbs takes a break from the sleuthing business but gets pulled back in when he becomes involved with the unjustly disinherited son of Ganady, an American millionaire (before the War this figure would probably have been English).
As was increasingly common at the time, the detective is placed in an environment that fairly screams studious middle-class masculinity, complete with heavy, solid furniture and the imagined trappings of an English gentleman that continued to be a vital part of the detective persona (think too of the Inscrutable Drew’s office, though Webbs certainly is more active than Drew, and has more of a sense of humour). Here the plot gives Webbs plenty of opportunities to indulge in a Holmes-like love of disguise, but unlike Conan Doyle’s hero, Webbs exhibits a marked deference for authority figures that has led some later commentators to theorize about the specifically German nature of the character. A crucial scene in an opium den fits nicely into our Yellow Peril sub-theme, while the villain’s black henchmen add a further twist to the demonization of the “other”.
Ernst Reicher (1885-1936) wrote many of the Webbs stories, though it’s not certain if he was involved in that capacity here (Fritz Lang is said to have written one film of the series, Die Peitsche, 1916, before moving on to Joe Deebs). A child of the stage, Reicher continued with the Webbs character until 1926, but by the beginning of sound he appeared further down the credit listings, and soon after the Nazis came to power he fled to Prague, where he died. Director Adolf Gärtner (1870-1958) also came from the theatre, entering films in 1910 thanks to Oskar Messter, for whom he directed Henny Porten in at least two dozen films. – Jay Weissberg". - The detective series were extremely popular in Germany, and I have hardly seen them at all. This was probably the first Stuart Webbs film that I have seen. - I remember from Kracauer's book that he finds it very interesting that detectives in German films were almost always English private detectives, as in Germany there was such a respect and fear for authority that solving crimes was official business and private investigation was somewhat un-German. - This film is a piece of professional entertainment from the assembly line. The solution of the crime and the exposure of the criminal take place cleverly during a masked ball. Stuart Webbs manages to switch the glass with poisoned drink. He gives the exposed villain a loaded gun, and in the final scene of this silent film the protagonists hear the off-screen shot.
From the GCM Catalogue: "The influx of cheap pulp mysteries from abroad (especially the Nick Carter stories) was a cause for dire warnings from Germany’s arbiters of moral uplift The public’s demand for such sensationalism, with its concomitant hand-wringing, was equally great for detective films of the foreign and domestic varieties, the latter tending either towards gratuitous thrill-seeking with no psychological complexity or sleuthing movies in a comic vein. The problem wasn’t that the genre itself was inherently downmarket, but rather that the authors chosen for adaptation (when originating from a published source) were outside the canon of respectable literature. Considering the cross-class popularity of Sherlock Holmes, it’s not surprising that members of the film industry looked to Conan Doyle as a model for a new type of cinema detective who could appease the critics and censors while attracting a more upscale audience, always with an eye towards a larger pool of ticket buyers. To meet this challenge, the actor and scriptwriter Ernst Reicher, together with Joe May, created the character of Stuart Webbs, a private detective whose adventures would be logical (a relative term), striking a balance between Holmes-like deduction and requisite thrills.
The formula was an enormous success, leading to approximately 50 Stuart Webbs films between 1914 and 1926. Sebastian Hesse, in his essay on the series, quotes a reviewer from Licht-Bild-Bühne in 1915 comparing the new model with what came before: “The Stuart Webbs Film Company has managed to bring about reforms and improvements in this field; all of its films to date constitute a document of the fact that the detective film no longer has to be viewed with the usual suspicion.” Reicher and May produced their first Webbs film, Die geheimnisvolle Villa, through Continental-Kunstfilm, premiering in March 1914, three months before the Rudolf Meinert/Richard Oswald Der Hund von Baskerville. Their choice of an Anglo-Saxon protagonist was dictated not merely by Holmes but an exploding field of German-born, English-sounding sleuths in both fiction and film, including Harry Dickson, Detective Frank, Percy Stuart, and Miss Nobody. When war broke out many of the new detectives, such as Tom Shark, were deliberately coded as American, but by then Stuart Webbs, and his cinema rival Joe Deebs (created by May when he and Reicher ended their partnership in 1915), were generally thought of as English, and their popularity was such, like Holmes, that they largely escaped the strict censorship suffered by other British characters.
Der gestreifte Domino was the fifth film in the series, directed by Adolf Gärtner and made after Reicher broke with Continental and formed the Stuart Webbs-Film Company. At the start Webbs takes a break from the sleuthing business but gets pulled back in when he becomes involved with the unjustly disinherited son of Ganady, an American millionaire (before the War this figure would probably have been English).
As was increasingly common at the time, the detective is placed in an environment that fairly screams studious middle-class masculinity, complete with heavy, solid furniture and the imagined trappings of an English gentleman that continued to be a vital part of the detective persona (think too of the Inscrutable Drew’s office, though Webbs certainly is more active than Drew, and has more of a sense of humour). Here the plot gives Webbs plenty of opportunities to indulge in a Holmes-like love of disguise, but unlike Conan Doyle’s hero, Webbs exhibits a marked deference for authority figures that has led some later commentators to theorize about the specifically German nature of the character. A crucial scene in an opium den fits nicely into our Yellow Peril sub-theme, while the villain’s black henchmen add a further twist to the demonization of the “other”.
Ernst Reicher (1885-1936) wrote many of the Webbs stories, though it’s not certain if he was involved in that capacity here (Fritz Lang is said to have written one film of the series, Die Peitsche, 1916, before moving on to Joe Deebs). A child of the stage, Reicher continued with the Webbs character until 1926, but by the beginning of sound he appeared further down the credit listings, and soon after the Nazis came to power he fled to Prague, where he died. Director Adolf Gärtner (1870-1958) also came from the theatre, entering films in 1910 thanks to Oskar Messter, for whom he directed Henny Porten in at least two dozen films. – Jay Weissberg". - The detective series were extremely popular in Germany, and I have hardly seen them at all. This was probably the first Stuart Webbs film that I have seen. - I remember from Kracauer's book that he finds it very interesting that detectives in German films were almost always English private detectives, as in Germany there was such a respect and fear for authority that solving crimes was official business and private investigation was somewhat un-German. - This film is a piece of professional entertainment from the assembly line. The solution of the crime and the exposure of the criminal take place cleverly during a masked ball. Stuart Webbs manages to switch the glass with poisoned drink. He gives the exposed villain a loaded gun, and in the final scene of this silent film the protagonists hear the off-screen shot.
Justice d'abord!
Recht voor alles [the title of the print] / Lain ja rakkauden välissä. FR 1921. PC: Ermolieff-Cinema. D: Jacob Protazanoff; SC: Ivan Mosjoukine; DP: Fedote Bourgassoff (?); AD: Alexandre Lochakoff; CAST: Ivan Mosjoukine (Prosecutor Octave Granier), Nathalie Lissenko (Yvonne), Viatcheslav Tourjansky (Eduard Gravitch), ? (Granier’s mother), ? (Granier’s sister), Paul Ollivier (a magistrate), Jeanne Bérangère (condemned man’s mother), Gilbert Sambon (the child); filmed: Studio Ermolieff-Montreuil, winter 1920-21; dist: Pathé Consortium-Cinema; orig. 1650 m; 1177 m /18 fps/ 57 min; tinted; from: NFM. Dutch intertitles. E-subtitles in English + Italian. Grand piano: Touve Ratovondrahety. Viewed at Teatro Verdi, Pordenone, 8 Oct 2009.
From the GCM Catalogue: "Justice d’abord was the Ermolieff group’s only remake of one of its Russian productions. Prokuror (Vo imya dolga/The Public Prosecutor /In the Name of Duty) was released 20 February 1917. An alternative title was Golos Sovesti (The Voice of Conscience). Both Russian and French versions were directed by Protazanov, with Mozhukhin and Lissenko in their original roles, though the character names were changed: in the original, no doubt to avoid any risk with censorship, the main characters were given distinctly non-Russian names – the prosecutor was named Eric Olsen, and the doomed heroine, “Betty Clay, a chanteuse”. The Russian historian Benjamin Vishnevski regarded this as one of Protazanov’s best works and rated Mozhukhin’s performance very highly. The length of the Russian film was 1750 metres, about 5 minutes longer than the remake.
In the French version, the Prosecutor is Octave Granier, a ferocious orator, who falls in love with Yvonne, an artist’s model, for whom he finds work with his friend Eduard Gravitch, a sculptor. Yvonne finds documents proving that Gravitch is a foreign spy, plotting to ruin Granier. In self-defence she shoots Gravitch. Granier must now bring all his oratorical power to condemn the woman he loves, who refuses to defend herself by producing documents that would prove her innocence but might be detrimental to Granier…
The film survives only in a Dutch distribution print, shorter than the original release version by more than 20 minutes. However, the story is essentially intact, and some bridging titles suggest that this was a version severely but not unintelligently re-edited for commercial convenience. The final shots however are missing, as a result of emulsion decay, which also affects the third reel. The necessary clue for viewers to the missing action is that what Granier is about to pull out of his pocket at the point where the film abruptly breaks off is a pistol, which he will use before the end of his journey.
Since Ermolieff had managed to bring a quantity of negatives out of Russia, it is tempting to think that Prokuror was among them, and that parts of the original might have been used for the French remake, but there is no evidence for this. The few surviving stills from the Russian version show quite different set-ups for the court scenes; while the costumes of police and lawyers are unquestionably French.
Conceived by Mozhukhin himself, and developed through the two versions, the role of Granier is one of his most powerful interpretations, reaching its most extraordinary heights at the moments when he violently rejects Yvonne’s effort at reconciliation, his self-struggles before launching into his prosecution speech against her, his devastating discovery of the truth as he stands beside her corpse, or the crazed grin he flashes at his chauffeur in the last awful moments. No one seeing this film and Feu Mathias Pascal could question his stature as one of the greatest actors of silent film. This is, too, one of Lissenko’s best performances, quite free of diva affectations: her own visible struggle in the courtroom to resist producing the crucial evidence is impressive. The film also marked one of Tourjansky’s last appearances as an actor, in the role of the charming villain Gravitch.
A curious footnote is that in three successive films, L’Angoissante aventure, Justice d’abord, and L’Enfant du Carnaval, Mozhukhin and Lissenko had the same character names, Octave [de] Granier and Yvonne.
There is evidence that Ermoliev had taken precautions, in the form of an opening intertitle and a framing scene – both now lost – to avoid any kind of trouble with the censors, who were still holding up the release of La Nuit du 11 Septembre (filmed in the winter of 1919-20, but not released until September 1922). Cinémagazine (31 March 1922) noted that in its original version Justice d’abord was preceded by a title “explaining that the author’s sole purpose was to emphasize that events which may seem very clear can be deceptive, and for this purpose he had exaggerated incidents of the story”. An earlier, somewhat unfavourable review by Lucien Doublon in Cinémagazine (28 October 1921) enlarges on this: “The author has so well anticipated criticism, that he has preceded his film with a title saying that he has treated his subject in a deliberately exaggerated way. Let us accept this, and note that in the first scene, the actors are assembled, listening to a reading of the script. Suddenly the characters live the drama, in which rear up revolvers, fights, anger, tears, and finally the guillotine. Is it dream, is it reality? But no; with the last scene we know that the drama has never existed and that we are only at the casting of a very vague melodrama. It’s an old idea, and has already often been used in the theatre. As to the work, I doubt its success, because few people would consent – voluntarily at least – to take on such ample stuff for nightmares.”
The existence of this framing scene (or scenes) might in part explain the considerable difference in the film’s length at original release and in the surviving version. It is interesting that Protazanov uses a comparable framing device in L’Angoissante aventure.
The earlier writer in Cinémagazine also revealed: “Towards the end of the film we see the guillotine, then a shroud which is supposed to conceal the body of a woman executed shortly before. In certain cinemas they have managed to suppress this scene, in which a magistrate comes to view the dead woman. They are afraid of frightening some spectators, male and female.” – David Robinson". - I agree with David Robinson that Ivan Mosjoukine's powerful performance carries the film, and Nathalie Lissenko is also very good as the female lead. - The story resembles the Hall Caine novels that were filmed by Victor Sjöström (Name the Man) and Alfred Hitchcock (The Manxman); it also has some connections with the stories of The Girl from the Marsh Croft and The Scarlet Letter. - Today a situation such as in Justice d'abord! would be impossible as the prosecutor would be officially disqualified and incapacitated in a case where he has (had) personal relations with the defendant. - The print seems to stem from difficult source material. The quality was ok and often good-looking.
From the GCM Catalogue: "Justice d’abord was the Ermolieff group’s only remake of one of its Russian productions. Prokuror (Vo imya dolga/The Public Prosecutor /In the Name of Duty) was released 20 February 1917. An alternative title was Golos Sovesti (The Voice of Conscience). Both Russian and French versions were directed by Protazanov, with Mozhukhin and Lissenko in their original roles, though the character names were changed: in the original, no doubt to avoid any risk with censorship, the main characters were given distinctly non-Russian names – the prosecutor was named Eric Olsen, and the doomed heroine, “Betty Clay, a chanteuse”. The Russian historian Benjamin Vishnevski regarded this as one of Protazanov’s best works and rated Mozhukhin’s performance very highly. The length of the Russian film was 1750 metres, about 5 minutes longer than the remake.
In the French version, the Prosecutor is Octave Granier, a ferocious orator, who falls in love with Yvonne, an artist’s model, for whom he finds work with his friend Eduard Gravitch, a sculptor. Yvonne finds documents proving that Gravitch is a foreign spy, plotting to ruin Granier. In self-defence she shoots Gravitch. Granier must now bring all his oratorical power to condemn the woman he loves, who refuses to defend herself by producing documents that would prove her innocence but might be detrimental to Granier…
The film survives only in a Dutch distribution print, shorter than the original release version by more than 20 minutes. However, the story is essentially intact, and some bridging titles suggest that this was a version severely but not unintelligently re-edited for commercial convenience. The final shots however are missing, as a result of emulsion decay, which also affects the third reel. The necessary clue for viewers to the missing action is that what Granier is about to pull out of his pocket at the point where the film abruptly breaks off is a pistol, which he will use before the end of his journey.
Since Ermolieff had managed to bring a quantity of negatives out of Russia, it is tempting to think that Prokuror was among them, and that parts of the original might have been used for the French remake, but there is no evidence for this. The few surviving stills from the Russian version show quite different set-ups for the court scenes; while the costumes of police and lawyers are unquestionably French.
Conceived by Mozhukhin himself, and developed through the two versions, the role of Granier is one of his most powerful interpretations, reaching its most extraordinary heights at the moments when he violently rejects Yvonne’s effort at reconciliation, his self-struggles before launching into his prosecution speech against her, his devastating discovery of the truth as he stands beside her corpse, or the crazed grin he flashes at his chauffeur in the last awful moments. No one seeing this film and Feu Mathias Pascal could question his stature as one of the greatest actors of silent film. This is, too, one of Lissenko’s best performances, quite free of diva affectations: her own visible struggle in the courtroom to resist producing the crucial evidence is impressive. The film also marked one of Tourjansky’s last appearances as an actor, in the role of the charming villain Gravitch.
A curious footnote is that in three successive films, L’Angoissante aventure, Justice d’abord, and L’Enfant du Carnaval, Mozhukhin and Lissenko had the same character names, Octave [de] Granier and Yvonne.
There is evidence that Ermoliev had taken precautions, in the form of an opening intertitle and a framing scene – both now lost – to avoid any kind of trouble with the censors, who were still holding up the release of La Nuit du 11 Septembre (filmed in the winter of 1919-20, but not released until September 1922). Cinémagazine (31 March 1922) noted that in its original version Justice d’abord was preceded by a title “explaining that the author’s sole purpose was to emphasize that events which may seem very clear can be deceptive, and for this purpose he had exaggerated incidents of the story”. An earlier, somewhat unfavourable review by Lucien Doublon in Cinémagazine (28 October 1921) enlarges on this: “The author has so well anticipated criticism, that he has preceded his film with a title saying that he has treated his subject in a deliberately exaggerated way. Let us accept this, and note that in the first scene, the actors are assembled, listening to a reading of the script. Suddenly the characters live the drama, in which rear up revolvers, fights, anger, tears, and finally the guillotine. Is it dream, is it reality? But no; with the last scene we know that the drama has never existed and that we are only at the casting of a very vague melodrama. It’s an old idea, and has already often been used in the theatre. As to the work, I doubt its success, because few people would consent – voluntarily at least – to take on such ample stuff for nightmares.”
The existence of this framing scene (or scenes) might in part explain the considerable difference in the film’s length at original release and in the surviving version. It is interesting that Protazanov uses a comparable framing device in L’Angoissante aventure.
The earlier writer in Cinémagazine also revealed: “Towards the end of the film we see the guillotine, then a shroud which is supposed to conceal the body of a woman executed shortly before. In certain cinemas they have managed to suppress this scene, in which a magistrate comes to view the dead woman. They are afraid of frightening some spectators, male and female.” – David Robinson". - I agree with David Robinson that Ivan Mosjoukine's powerful performance carries the film, and Nathalie Lissenko is also very good as the female lead. - The story resembles the Hall Caine novels that were filmed by Victor Sjöström (Name the Man) and Alfred Hitchcock (The Manxman); it also has some connections with the stories of The Girl from the Marsh Croft and The Scarlet Letter. - Today a situation such as in Justice d'abord! would be impossible as the prosecutor would be officially disqualified and incapacitated in a case where he has (had) personal relations with the defendant. - The print seems to stem from difficult source material. The quality was ok and often good-looking.
Der Golem, wie er in die Welt kam
Golem: miten hän tuli maailmaan
DE 1920. PC: Projektions-AG “Union” [PAGU]. P: Paul Davidson; D: Paul Wegener; SC: Paul Wegener, Henrik Galeen; DP: Karl Freund; AD: Hans Poelzig; CAST: Paul Wegener (Golem), Albert Steinrück (Rabbi Löw), Lyda Salmonova (Mirjam, daughter of Rabbi Löw), Ernst Deutsch (Famulus), Otto Gebühr (Kaiser Rudolf II), Lothar Müthel (Count Florian), Loni Nest (little girl); 1954 m /20 fps/ 85 min
From: Münchner Filmmuseum.
Score: Betty Olivero; performed by: Cynthia Treggor (violin), Melissa Majoni (violin), Lorenzo Rundo (viola), Serena Mancuso (violoncello), Lee Mottram (clarinets); Conducted by Günter A. Buchwald. - E-subtitles in English + Italian. Viewed at Teatro Verdi, 7 Oct 2009.
From the GCM Catalogue: "THE MUSIC. Betty Olivero’s music for Der Golem was commissioned in 1997 for Argentinian “klezmer king” Giora Feidman and the famous Arditti String Quartet, responsible for countless world premieres of works by leading composers. The choice of orchestration is programmatic, involving the musical liaison of klezmer with contemporary chamber music. Olivero’s score unites both genres: “It is a combination of popular folk music with contemporary music, but in a natural way.”
Various sources of Jewish music serve as original material: the music of Eastern European Ashkenazi, as well as the Sephardic Spanish music tradition and Middle Eastern Jewish music. Olivero uses these to create – mainly with the principal clarinet – all the scenes in the Jewish ghetto, as well as shaping the character of the Golem. Undoubtedly her music sees the Golem more as an unpolished human creature than a Frankenstein monster! As she says, “I wanted to emphasize the human side of the Golem,” so for the scene of his creation she chose a familiar melody, “Place Me Under Thy Wing”, which she sees as “a symbolic message of love”.
The music avoids the traditional “bim bam” of klezmer accompaniment by underlaying alienated chords and rhythms of the string section. “There are a lot of traditional melodies, mostly for scenes of crowds. But the transcription of those melodies is mine. So you can recognize the melody, but the dressing of the music is my own.”
The entire clarinet family is brought into play. The bass clarinet, with its dark colours, somehow becomes the fifth string instrument when the strings take the lead over dramatic scenes, such as the animation of the Golem or the destruction of the shtetl. In others scenes the bass clarinet is the voice of Rabbi Löw. The basset horn is used for the atmospheric morning scenes. The clarinets in B-flat and C represent the joy of life; they are used in all scenes of Jewish ghetto activities, as well as for the good-natured Golem. The E-flat clarinet, with its grotesque colour, evokes a caricature of Emperor Rudolph II and his court in Prague.
The string quartet is always on a par with the clarinet. This creates an enormous space and a highly differentiated field of sound. The cello seldom plays on the low strings; most of the time it moves in the key of the violin, even above the viola. Both the viola, in the love scenes, and the cello, in the most dramatic parts, are equal partners in the dialogue with the clarinet.
“It’s a very complex tradition,” Olivero says. “I was born into this reality. In Israel, this is the music that I heard from morning till night. It had already arrived as a synthesis, a mixture. I didn’t create it. I just have to expose it. Add to that not only Western musical tradition, but also contemporary Western music, avant-garde music. For me, contemporary music was a means of expression – but into that I can easily put my roots.”
This synthesis is very important, because it is music for film in the best sense of the term, music which functions as a part of a Gesamtkunstwerk. The music has to perform many tasks: represent the protagonists’ emotions, create atmosphere, represent onscreen music, characterize periods and locations, create dramatic curves, mark the ends of acts and pauses, and much more. But despite all these functions, the music always remains autonomous, in the sense that it can be listened to without the visuals. – Günter A. Buchwald
Betty Olivero was born in Tel Aviv in 1954, where she studied piano and composition at the Samuel Rabin Academy of Music. In 1982 she began to study with Luciano Berio at the Berkshire Music Center in Tanglewood, and pursued her studies and collaboration with him in Italy until 1986. In 1991 she graduated from the Yale School of Music, where she studied composition with Jakob Druckman and Gilbert Amy. Her works have been performed by the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, the New York Philharmonic, the Israel Philharmonic, the Berlin Radio Symphony Orchestra, the Cologne Radio Symphony Orchestra, the London Sinfonietta, and many other groups. Olivero currently lives in Israel, where she is an Associate Professor of Composition at Bar-Llan University in Ramat Gan, and was composer-in-residence with the Jerusalem Symphony Orchestra from 2004 to 2008.
Lee Mottram is a 22-year-old musician who was discovered internationally after winning the prestigious Blue Riband prize at the 2008 Welsh Eisteddfod, recognizing him as the best young instrumentalist in Wales. Born and brought up in the west Wales countryside, he is currently studying at the Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama.
THE FILM
Der Golem is a classic film – doubly so.
First, it has long nestled comfortably within the list of titles that make up the German Expressionist movement of the 1920s. Teachers of survey history courses are more likely to show Das Cabinet des Dr. Caligari, but a serious enthusiast will make a point of seeing Der Golem as well.
From the start, reviewers recognized Der Golem as Expressionist. In 1921 the New York Times’ critic wrote, “Resembling somewhat the curious constructions of THE CABINET OF DR. CALIGARI, the settings may be called expressionistic, but to the common man they are best described as expressive, for it is their eloquence that characterizes them.” (Spellbound in Darkness, p. 362) In 1930, Paul Rotha’s The Film Till Now, the most ambitious world history of cinema in English to date, appeared. Highly influential in establishing the canon of classics, Rotha adored Weimar cinema, including Der Golem.
In 1936, the Museum of Modern Art obtained a large number of notable European films. The core collection of the young archive contained such prestigious titles as Caligari, Battleship Potemkin, Metropolis, and Der Golem. These films soon became part of the museum’s 35mm and 16mm circulating programs. With MoMA’s sanction as historically important classics, they remained the most widely accessible older films available to researchers and students alike for many decades.
There is, however, a second, largely separate audience: monster-movie fans. Starting in the 1950s, German Expressionist films were promoted as horror fare by Forrest J. Ackerman in his magazine Famous Monsters of Filmland. In 1967 Carlos Clarens included Der Golem in his An Illustrated History of the Horror Film. Really dedicated horror devotees pride themselves on their expertise across a wide variety of films, including foreign and silent ones. Der Golem became a certified horror classic.
In the 1950s and 1960s, companies offering public-domain 8mm and 16mm copies for sale allowed both film-studies departments and movie buffs to start their own film libraries. Ultimately home-video made previously rare silent classics easily obtainable – including a restored Golem from the Friedrich-Wilhelm-Murnau-Stiftung, with new tinting and a musical score, on DVD. Such a presentation reconfirms the film’s status as a classic.
But what sort of classic is it? An undying masterpiece that one must see immediately? A film one should definitely watch someday if the chance arises? On the occasion of Der Golem being presented on the big screen with live musical accompaniment, we have a chance to specify what distinguishes it from its fellow exemplars of Expressionism.
I suspect that horror-film fans won’t feel that a reevaluation is necessary. Der Golem is a forerunner of Frankenstein, and hence an important early contribution to the genre. It’s an impressive film to look at, and obscure enough to impress one’s friends during a late-night program in the home theatre.
But for film historians returning to Der Golem in the early 21st century, after nearly 90 years of taking it for granted, what is there to say?
Some would deny that Der Golem is truly Expressionistic. If one has a very narrow view of the style, insisting that only films with flat, jagged, Caligari-style sets qualify for membership in the movement, then Der Golem doesn’t pass muster. Neither do Nosferatu, Die Nibelungen, Waxworks, and a lot of other films typically put into the Expressionist category.
It’s a subject susceptible to endless quibbling. To avoid that, it’s helpful to accept historian Jean Mitry’s simple, useful distinction between graphic Expressionism, with flat, jagged sets, and plastic Expressionism, with a more volumetric, architectural stylization. If Caligari introduced us to graphic Expressionism in 1920, Der Golem did the same for plastic Expressionism later that year.
For me, seeing Der Golem again doesn’t much affect its status as an historically important component of the German Expressionist movement. It’s not the most likeable or entertaining of the group. Caligari has more suspense and daring and black humor. Die Nibelungen has a stately blend of ornamental richness with a modernist austerity of overall composition, as well as a narrative that sinks gradually into nihilism in a peculiarly Weimarian way.
Moreover, Der Golem’s narrative has its problems. None of the characters is particularly sympathetic. Petty deceits and jealousies ultimately are what allow the Golem to run amuck. The narrative momentum built up in the first half of the film is inexplicably vitiated for a stretch. Initially the emperor’s threat to expel Prague’s Jews from the ghetto drives Rabbi Löw to his dangerous scheme of creating the Golem to save his people. Yet after the creation scene, the dramatic highpoint that ends the first half, we see the magically animated statue chopping wood and performing other household tasks that make his presence seem almost inconsequential. The imperial threat has to be revved up again to get the Golem-as-savior plot going once more.
But putting aside Der Golem’s minor weaknesses, it has marvelous moments that summon up what cinematic Expressionism could be: the opening shot, which instantly signals the film’s style; the black, jagged hinges that meander crazily across the door of the room where Löw sculpts the Golem; the juxtaposition of the Golem with a Christian statue as he stomps across the crooked little bridge heading toward the palace.
Hans Poelzig was perhaps the greatest architect to design Expressionist film sets. He designed only 3 films, and Der Golem is the most important of them. Once the monster has been created, Poelzig visually equates the lumpy, writhing towers and walls of the ghetto and the clay from which the Golem is fashioned. The sense that sets and actors’ performances constitute a formal, even material whole became one of the basic tactics of Expressionism in cinema.
Speaking of performances: A lot of the actors in German Expressionist films were movie or stage stars who didn’t specialize in Expressionism. There were, however, occasional roles that preserve the techniques the great actors of the Expressionist theatre. There’s Fritz Kortner in Hintertreppe and Schatten. There’s Ernst Deutsch, who acted in only two Expressionist films, as the protagonist in the stylistically radical Von Morgens bis Mitternachts and as the rabbi’s assistant in Der Golem. Just watching his eyes and brows during his scenes in this film conveys something of the radical edge that Expressionism had when it was fresh – before its films had become canonized classics. – Kristin Thompson".
Der Golem is a film which I love, and I revisited it also to experience this print and this music. On display was a Lumière Project print from ca 1995 with heavy tinting, which makes it impossible to appreciate the quality of the cinematography. The experience was that of a long distance to a visually wonderful film. - The catalogue remarks about the music sounded very promising, too. We did not get to hear the original score but a new composition by Betty Olivero. It is very modern, very imposing, with klezmer aspects, but I failed to discover the connection between the music and the film. - The film itself is a masterpiece in my book (MMM Film Guide), and it keeps resonating as an early Frankenstein and Faust story, more and more relevant in an age when mankind is able to self-destruct via technology. It is also an important, and unfortunately still topical, tale about the persecution of the Jews.
DE 1920. PC: Projektions-AG “Union” [PAGU]. P: Paul Davidson; D: Paul Wegener; SC: Paul Wegener, Henrik Galeen; DP: Karl Freund; AD: Hans Poelzig; CAST: Paul Wegener (Golem), Albert Steinrück (Rabbi Löw), Lyda Salmonova (Mirjam, daughter of Rabbi Löw), Ernst Deutsch (Famulus), Otto Gebühr (Kaiser Rudolf II), Lothar Müthel (Count Florian), Loni Nest (little girl); 1954 m /20 fps/ 85 min
From: Münchner Filmmuseum.
Score: Betty Olivero; performed by: Cynthia Treggor (violin), Melissa Majoni (violin), Lorenzo Rundo (viola), Serena Mancuso (violoncello), Lee Mottram (clarinets); Conducted by Günter A. Buchwald. - E-subtitles in English + Italian. Viewed at Teatro Verdi, 7 Oct 2009.
From the GCM Catalogue: "THE MUSIC. Betty Olivero’s music for Der Golem was commissioned in 1997 for Argentinian “klezmer king” Giora Feidman and the famous Arditti String Quartet, responsible for countless world premieres of works by leading composers. The choice of orchestration is programmatic, involving the musical liaison of klezmer with contemporary chamber music. Olivero’s score unites both genres: “It is a combination of popular folk music with contemporary music, but in a natural way.”
Various sources of Jewish music serve as original material: the music of Eastern European Ashkenazi, as well as the Sephardic Spanish music tradition and Middle Eastern Jewish music. Olivero uses these to create – mainly with the principal clarinet – all the scenes in the Jewish ghetto, as well as shaping the character of the Golem. Undoubtedly her music sees the Golem more as an unpolished human creature than a Frankenstein monster! As she says, “I wanted to emphasize the human side of the Golem,” so for the scene of his creation she chose a familiar melody, “Place Me Under Thy Wing”, which she sees as “a symbolic message of love”.
The music avoids the traditional “bim bam” of klezmer accompaniment by underlaying alienated chords and rhythms of the string section. “There are a lot of traditional melodies, mostly for scenes of crowds. But the transcription of those melodies is mine. So you can recognize the melody, but the dressing of the music is my own.”
The entire clarinet family is brought into play. The bass clarinet, with its dark colours, somehow becomes the fifth string instrument when the strings take the lead over dramatic scenes, such as the animation of the Golem or the destruction of the shtetl. In others scenes the bass clarinet is the voice of Rabbi Löw. The basset horn is used for the atmospheric morning scenes. The clarinets in B-flat and C represent the joy of life; they are used in all scenes of Jewish ghetto activities, as well as for the good-natured Golem. The E-flat clarinet, with its grotesque colour, evokes a caricature of Emperor Rudolph II and his court in Prague.
The string quartet is always on a par with the clarinet. This creates an enormous space and a highly differentiated field of sound. The cello seldom plays on the low strings; most of the time it moves in the key of the violin, even above the viola. Both the viola, in the love scenes, and the cello, in the most dramatic parts, are equal partners in the dialogue with the clarinet.
“It’s a very complex tradition,” Olivero says. “I was born into this reality. In Israel, this is the music that I heard from morning till night. It had already arrived as a synthesis, a mixture. I didn’t create it. I just have to expose it. Add to that not only Western musical tradition, but also contemporary Western music, avant-garde music. For me, contemporary music was a means of expression – but into that I can easily put my roots.”
This synthesis is very important, because it is music for film in the best sense of the term, music which functions as a part of a Gesamtkunstwerk. The music has to perform many tasks: represent the protagonists’ emotions, create atmosphere, represent onscreen music, characterize periods and locations, create dramatic curves, mark the ends of acts and pauses, and much more. But despite all these functions, the music always remains autonomous, in the sense that it can be listened to without the visuals. – Günter A. Buchwald
Betty Olivero was born in Tel Aviv in 1954, where she studied piano and composition at the Samuel Rabin Academy of Music. In 1982 she began to study with Luciano Berio at the Berkshire Music Center in Tanglewood, and pursued her studies and collaboration with him in Italy until 1986. In 1991 she graduated from the Yale School of Music, where she studied composition with Jakob Druckman and Gilbert Amy. Her works have been performed by the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, the New York Philharmonic, the Israel Philharmonic, the Berlin Radio Symphony Orchestra, the Cologne Radio Symphony Orchestra, the London Sinfonietta, and many other groups. Olivero currently lives in Israel, where she is an Associate Professor of Composition at Bar-Llan University in Ramat Gan, and was composer-in-residence with the Jerusalem Symphony Orchestra from 2004 to 2008.
Lee Mottram is a 22-year-old musician who was discovered internationally after winning the prestigious Blue Riband prize at the 2008 Welsh Eisteddfod, recognizing him as the best young instrumentalist in Wales. Born and brought up in the west Wales countryside, he is currently studying at the Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama.
THE FILM
Der Golem is a classic film – doubly so.
First, it has long nestled comfortably within the list of titles that make up the German Expressionist movement of the 1920s. Teachers of survey history courses are more likely to show Das Cabinet des Dr. Caligari, but a serious enthusiast will make a point of seeing Der Golem as well.
From the start, reviewers recognized Der Golem as Expressionist. In 1921 the New York Times’ critic wrote, “Resembling somewhat the curious constructions of THE CABINET OF DR. CALIGARI, the settings may be called expressionistic, but to the common man they are best described as expressive, for it is their eloquence that characterizes them.” (Spellbound in Darkness, p. 362) In 1930, Paul Rotha’s The Film Till Now, the most ambitious world history of cinema in English to date, appeared. Highly influential in establishing the canon of classics, Rotha adored Weimar cinema, including Der Golem.
In 1936, the Museum of Modern Art obtained a large number of notable European films. The core collection of the young archive contained such prestigious titles as Caligari, Battleship Potemkin, Metropolis, and Der Golem. These films soon became part of the museum’s 35mm and 16mm circulating programs. With MoMA’s sanction as historically important classics, they remained the most widely accessible older films available to researchers and students alike for many decades.
There is, however, a second, largely separate audience: monster-movie fans. Starting in the 1950s, German Expressionist films were promoted as horror fare by Forrest J. Ackerman in his magazine Famous Monsters of Filmland. In 1967 Carlos Clarens included Der Golem in his An Illustrated History of the Horror Film. Really dedicated horror devotees pride themselves on their expertise across a wide variety of films, including foreign and silent ones. Der Golem became a certified horror classic.
In the 1950s and 1960s, companies offering public-domain 8mm and 16mm copies for sale allowed both film-studies departments and movie buffs to start their own film libraries. Ultimately home-video made previously rare silent classics easily obtainable – including a restored Golem from the Friedrich-Wilhelm-Murnau-Stiftung, with new tinting and a musical score, on DVD. Such a presentation reconfirms the film’s status as a classic.
But what sort of classic is it? An undying masterpiece that one must see immediately? A film one should definitely watch someday if the chance arises? On the occasion of Der Golem being presented on the big screen with live musical accompaniment, we have a chance to specify what distinguishes it from its fellow exemplars of Expressionism.
I suspect that horror-film fans won’t feel that a reevaluation is necessary. Der Golem is a forerunner of Frankenstein, and hence an important early contribution to the genre. It’s an impressive film to look at, and obscure enough to impress one’s friends during a late-night program in the home theatre.
But for film historians returning to Der Golem in the early 21st century, after nearly 90 years of taking it for granted, what is there to say?
Some would deny that Der Golem is truly Expressionistic. If one has a very narrow view of the style, insisting that only films with flat, jagged, Caligari-style sets qualify for membership in the movement, then Der Golem doesn’t pass muster. Neither do Nosferatu, Die Nibelungen, Waxworks, and a lot of other films typically put into the Expressionist category.
It’s a subject susceptible to endless quibbling. To avoid that, it’s helpful to accept historian Jean Mitry’s simple, useful distinction between graphic Expressionism, with flat, jagged sets, and plastic Expressionism, with a more volumetric, architectural stylization. If Caligari introduced us to graphic Expressionism in 1920, Der Golem did the same for plastic Expressionism later that year.
For me, seeing Der Golem again doesn’t much affect its status as an historically important component of the German Expressionist movement. It’s not the most likeable or entertaining of the group. Caligari has more suspense and daring and black humor. Die Nibelungen has a stately blend of ornamental richness with a modernist austerity of overall composition, as well as a narrative that sinks gradually into nihilism in a peculiarly Weimarian way.
Moreover, Der Golem’s narrative has its problems. None of the characters is particularly sympathetic. Petty deceits and jealousies ultimately are what allow the Golem to run amuck. The narrative momentum built up in the first half of the film is inexplicably vitiated for a stretch. Initially the emperor’s threat to expel Prague’s Jews from the ghetto drives Rabbi Löw to his dangerous scheme of creating the Golem to save his people. Yet after the creation scene, the dramatic highpoint that ends the first half, we see the magically animated statue chopping wood and performing other household tasks that make his presence seem almost inconsequential. The imperial threat has to be revved up again to get the Golem-as-savior plot going once more.
But putting aside Der Golem’s minor weaknesses, it has marvelous moments that summon up what cinematic Expressionism could be: the opening shot, which instantly signals the film’s style; the black, jagged hinges that meander crazily across the door of the room where Löw sculpts the Golem; the juxtaposition of the Golem with a Christian statue as he stomps across the crooked little bridge heading toward the palace.
Hans Poelzig was perhaps the greatest architect to design Expressionist film sets. He designed only 3 films, and Der Golem is the most important of them. Once the monster has been created, Poelzig visually equates the lumpy, writhing towers and walls of the ghetto and the clay from which the Golem is fashioned. The sense that sets and actors’ performances constitute a formal, even material whole became one of the basic tactics of Expressionism in cinema.
Speaking of performances: A lot of the actors in German Expressionist films were movie or stage stars who didn’t specialize in Expressionism. There were, however, occasional roles that preserve the techniques the great actors of the Expressionist theatre. There’s Fritz Kortner in Hintertreppe and Schatten. There’s Ernst Deutsch, who acted in only two Expressionist films, as the protagonist in the stylistically radical Von Morgens bis Mitternachts and as the rabbi’s assistant in Der Golem. Just watching his eyes and brows during his scenes in this film conveys something of the radical edge that Expressionism had when it was fresh – before its films had become canonized classics. – Kristin Thompson".
Der Golem is a film which I love, and I revisited it also to experience this print and this music. On display was a Lumière Project print from ca 1995 with heavy tinting, which makes it impossible to appreciate the quality of the cinematography. The experience was that of a long distance to a visually wonderful film. - The catalogue remarks about the music sounded very promising, too. We did not get to hear the original score but a new composition by Betty Olivero. It is very modern, very imposing, with klezmer aspects, but I failed to discover the connection between the music and the film. - The film itself is a masterpiece in my book (MMM Film Guide), and it keeps resonating as an early Frankenstein and Faust story, more and more relevant in an age when mankind is able to self-destruct via technology. It is also an important, and unfortunately still topical, tale about the persecution of the Jews.
Ballets Russes 100
Teatro Verdi, Pordenone, 7 Oct 2009. - From the GCM Catalogue: "It is just one hundred years since Serge Diaghilev introduced his Ballets Russes in Paris, bringing a shock to the worlds of music, theatre, and the visual arts which still reverberates today. That first company included dancers whose names are legendary – Pavlova, Nijinsky, Karsavina – along with hardly less brilliant stars like Adolph Bolm, Theodore Kosloff, Alexandra Baldina, and Vera Karalli. Diaghilev’s passion for the arts sadly excluded cinema. As the old Russian Imperial Theatres had done, he expressly forbade his dancers to appear for the camera, and to risk dissolving their enchantments in flickering, mute, monochrome travesties. Hence there is not one metre of film to show us how Nijinsky moved: all images of him are frozen.
It seems then like a small miracle that precisely in this centenary year two fragments of film shot during that 1909 season have emerged from the archives of France’s Centre National du Cinéma. They were first introduced by Mariann Lewinsky in her “Cento anni fa” (“One Hundred Years Ago”) presentation at Bologna’s Cinema Ritrovato festival in July of this year. Then only just discovered, there had been no time to find out exactly what the dances were, and what music was intended to accompany them. Thanks to the expertise of Roberta Lazzarini, Andrew Foster, and John Sweeney in the succeeding months, we are now able to match music to image, to evoke at least the shadow of the magic of that season of 1909.
We are also reprising the Fairbanks film of Anna Pavlova, shot in 1924 and perhaps the most haunting of all records of the dance. This was given only limited screening for dance specialists in last year’s Shiryaev presentation. – David Robinson". -
La Danse du flambeau. (Les Films du Lion, FR 1909). D: Jules de Froberville; CAST: Tamara Karsavina; 31 m, 1'40" (16 fps); from: AFF/CNC. Senza didascalie. Grand piano: John Sweeney. From the GCM Catalogue: "Tamara Platonovna Karsavina (1885-1978) was trained at the Imperial Ballet School in St. Petersburg and was a ballerina at the Mariinsky Theatre from 1902 to 1918. Joining Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes in 1909, she provided Nijinsky’s ideal partner, until his departure from Diaghilev, and remained the company’s leading ballerina until 1922. In later years she taught in Britain, and was to coach Margot Fonteyn and Rudolph Nureyev in Le Spectre de la Rose, which she had created with Nijinsky.
The original Bakst design for the costume that she wears in this film still survives, revealing that the working title for the ballet was Karsavina’s Assyro-Egyptian Dance. The dance seems to come from Fokine’s ballet based on Anton Arensky’s “Egyptian Nights”, op. 50 (1900). Most dances in the ballet are around 5 minutes long, but one, specifically called “Egyptian Dance”, is 1'40", so almost certainly the one in the film (information from Andrew Foster). This is the music to be played by John Sweeney at the Giornate performance.
Roberta Lazzarini writes, “The Torch Dance was first performed 22 December 1907 at a charity gala in the Mariinsky Theatre, St. Petersburg. Years later Karsavina recalled the occasion but not what she danced. Confusion has arisen as to the title as the Imperial Theatres yearbook, 1907-08, incorrectly referred to it as ‘Assyrian Dance’.
“In Paris on 19 June 1909, at an important gala in the Théâtre de l’Opéra, Feodor Koslov replaced the indisposed Nijinsky in Les Sylphides, which was given with Le Festin … originally Pavlova and Nijinsky were to have performed Giselle. Le Festin was a series of divertissements and was a moveable feast – depending on which dancers were available, injured, etc. The highlight in Paris was the pas de deux “L’Oiseau d’or” performed by Karsavina and Nijinsky (also called “L’Oiseau de feu”, it was simply the “Bluebird” pas de deux from Sleeping Beauty). I suspect that as Nijinsky was ill and as Karsavina wished to dance, she substituted La Danse du flambeau.
“On the following day M. and Mme Ephrussi hosted a lavish garden party at their home in the Avenue du Bois, when the Russian dancers, again without Nijinsky, repeated the programme of the previous evening. Karsavina received 1000 francs – a vast sum in 1909. I suspect the film was made at this time.”
The dance is filmed against an apparently improvised background of luxurious curtains suspended from a pole, which could indicate that the film was shot in a private house, though the companion film with Kosloff and Baldina appears to have been made on a theatre stage, with backdrops. – David Robinson". -
Pas de deux et soli. (Les Films du Lion, FR 1909). D: Jules de Froberville; CAST: Alexandra Baldina, Theodore Kosloff; 86 m, 4'40" (16 fps); from: AFF/CNC. Senza didascalie. From the GCM Catalogue: "Theodore Kosloff (Fyodor Mikhailovich Koslov, 1882-1956) graduated from the Moscow Imperial Ballet School in 1901 and joined Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes in their first season. In 1917 he was introduced by the writer Jeanie Macpherson, who had taken lessons with him in 1911, to Cecil B. DeMille, whose 12-year-old niece Agnes was desperate to have Kosloff as her teacher – he was indeed to be the inspiration of the future American dance innovator. The encounter led DeMille to cast Kosloff in The Woman God Forgot, and he went on to act in some 26 Hollywood films throughout the rest of the silent period. At the same time he directed a number of Broadway musical shows.
In 1914 a young dancer, Winifred Shaughnessy, had joined Kosloff’s ballet company: Kosloff renamed her Natascha Rambova, and the two embarked on a torrid love affair. This came to an end after 4 years, when Kosloff’s philandering and habit of passing off Natascha’s stage designs as his own proved too much for the future Mrs. Rudolph Valentino. Natascha left him, in the process suffering a parting shot in her leg from Kosloff’s hunting rifle. When sound films put an end to Kosloff’s acting career, he opened several schools – most notably in Los Angeles – with great success. He had also sagely taken his film salaries in Paramount stock. The link with DeMille remained: Kosloff staged the dances for the 1949 Samson and Delilah.
Karsavina recalled in her memoirs how the Diaghilev ballerinas vied for his attention, but that she and Lydia Lopokova were spurned in favour of Alexandra Baldina, whom he had made pregnant, with a child who was to prove a permanent invalid.
Alexandra Vasilievna Baldina (1885-1977) graduated along with her sister Ekaterina from the Imperial Ballet School and joined the Mariinsky company. In 1905 she was transferred to Moscow, where Kosloff was a fellow member of the company. After the Diaghilev period, virtually abandoned by her husband, she also emigrated to the United States, and taught in San Francisco. A former pupil, Victor Anderson, recalls that in the late 1940s, despite their long estrangement, Baldina recommended him to study with Kosloff in Los Angeles.
The film shows them at their peak, as superb dancers, in Valse Caprice, a popular pas de deux created by Nikolai Legat, to music by Anton Rubinstein, which will be played by John Sweeney at the Giornate performance: the solos which follow have not yet been confidently identified.
Although clearly in series with the Karsavina film, and credited by the Archives of the CNC to the same director, Jules de Froberville, this film bears a title card evidently intended for German distribution, though retaining the original French title for the dance. – David Robinson". -
Anna Pavlova. (Douglas Fairbanks, US 1924). D: ?; CAST: Anna Pavlova; orig.:1032 ft; DigiBeta, 18' (/from 35mm original, transferred at 16 fps), synchronized music track; from: BFINA.
Dances: Christmas (Tchaikovsky); The Swan (Saint-Saëns); Oriental Dance; [La Rose mourante (Drigo) NOT SHOWN]; Die Puppenfee [The Fairy Doll] (Bayer); [Columbine NOT SHOWN]; Variations (mus: Delibes). *No 35mm print of this film is currently available for screening. From the GCM Catalogue: "In 1924 Pavlova (1881-1931) visited the Fairbanks studios, where The Thief of Bagdad was in production, and was filmed on the set in 7 short dances (not 6 as is stated on the original title, which may have been intended for a shortened version of the film). It seems unlikely that this was just an improvisational filming session: the dancer changed costumes for each of the numbers. Beautifully shot, these represent the finest record of the legendary dancer, who, alongside Nijinsky and Karsavina, astounded Paris in the first Ballets Russes season.
In 1954, with the support of the then National Film Archive, the ballet historian and sometime director of the Royal Academy of Dancing, Peter Brinson (1923-1995), and the composer and conductor Leighton Lucas (1903-1982) set out to recreate the original musical accompaniment for these dances. They were only able to accomplish this with the help of a number of still-surviving former Pavlova collaborators: today it would be impossible to match the dance and music – played by the pianist Viola Tucker (1921-2005) – as impeccably as on this historic track.
There are no recorded music tracks for “Oriental Dance” and “Columbine”: at the Giornate performance they will be accompanied live by John Sweeney. – David Robinson". - A wonderful Ballets Russes tribute. I had seen the first two films in Bologna, and now John Sweeney played the piano admirably well to them. Two of the Anna Pavlova pieces announced were not shown.
It seems then like a small miracle that precisely in this centenary year two fragments of film shot during that 1909 season have emerged from the archives of France’s Centre National du Cinéma. They were first introduced by Mariann Lewinsky in her “Cento anni fa” (“One Hundred Years Ago”) presentation at Bologna’s Cinema Ritrovato festival in July of this year. Then only just discovered, there had been no time to find out exactly what the dances were, and what music was intended to accompany them. Thanks to the expertise of Roberta Lazzarini, Andrew Foster, and John Sweeney in the succeeding months, we are now able to match music to image, to evoke at least the shadow of the magic of that season of 1909.
We are also reprising the Fairbanks film of Anna Pavlova, shot in 1924 and perhaps the most haunting of all records of the dance. This was given only limited screening for dance specialists in last year’s Shiryaev presentation. – David Robinson". -
La Danse du flambeau. (Les Films du Lion, FR 1909). D: Jules de Froberville; CAST: Tamara Karsavina; 31 m, 1'40" (16 fps); from: AFF/CNC. Senza didascalie. Grand piano: John Sweeney. From the GCM Catalogue: "Tamara Platonovna Karsavina (1885-1978) was trained at the Imperial Ballet School in St. Petersburg and was a ballerina at the Mariinsky Theatre from 1902 to 1918. Joining Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes in 1909, she provided Nijinsky’s ideal partner, until his departure from Diaghilev, and remained the company’s leading ballerina until 1922. In later years she taught in Britain, and was to coach Margot Fonteyn and Rudolph Nureyev in Le Spectre de la Rose, which she had created with Nijinsky.
The original Bakst design for the costume that she wears in this film still survives, revealing that the working title for the ballet was Karsavina’s Assyro-Egyptian Dance. The dance seems to come from Fokine’s ballet based on Anton Arensky’s “Egyptian Nights”, op. 50 (1900). Most dances in the ballet are around 5 minutes long, but one, specifically called “Egyptian Dance”, is 1'40", so almost certainly the one in the film (information from Andrew Foster). This is the music to be played by John Sweeney at the Giornate performance.
Roberta Lazzarini writes, “The Torch Dance was first performed 22 December 1907 at a charity gala in the Mariinsky Theatre, St. Petersburg. Years later Karsavina recalled the occasion but not what she danced. Confusion has arisen as to the title as the Imperial Theatres yearbook, 1907-08, incorrectly referred to it as ‘Assyrian Dance’.
“In Paris on 19 June 1909, at an important gala in the Théâtre de l’Opéra, Feodor Koslov replaced the indisposed Nijinsky in Les Sylphides, which was given with Le Festin … originally Pavlova and Nijinsky were to have performed Giselle. Le Festin was a series of divertissements and was a moveable feast – depending on which dancers were available, injured, etc. The highlight in Paris was the pas de deux “L’Oiseau d’or” performed by Karsavina and Nijinsky (also called “L’Oiseau de feu”, it was simply the “Bluebird” pas de deux from Sleeping Beauty). I suspect that as Nijinsky was ill and as Karsavina wished to dance, she substituted La Danse du flambeau.
“On the following day M. and Mme Ephrussi hosted a lavish garden party at their home in the Avenue du Bois, when the Russian dancers, again without Nijinsky, repeated the programme of the previous evening. Karsavina received 1000 francs – a vast sum in 1909. I suspect the film was made at this time.”
The dance is filmed against an apparently improvised background of luxurious curtains suspended from a pole, which could indicate that the film was shot in a private house, though the companion film with Kosloff and Baldina appears to have been made on a theatre stage, with backdrops. – David Robinson". -
Pas de deux et soli. (Les Films du Lion, FR 1909). D: Jules de Froberville; CAST: Alexandra Baldina, Theodore Kosloff; 86 m, 4'40" (16 fps); from: AFF/CNC. Senza didascalie. From the GCM Catalogue: "Theodore Kosloff (Fyodor Mikhailovich Koslov, 1882-1956) graduated from the Moscow Imperial Ballet School in 1901 and joined Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes in their first season. In 1917 he was introduced by the writer Jeanie Macpherson, who had taken lessons with him in 1911, to Cecil B. DeMille, whose 12-year-old niece Agnes was desperate to have Kosloff as her teacher – he was indeed to be the inspiration of the future American dance innovator. The encounter led DeMille to cast Kosloff in The Woman God Forgot, and he went on to act in some 26 Hollywood films throughout the rest of the silent period. At the same time he directed a number of Broadway musical shows.
In 1914 a young dancer, Winifred Shaughnessy, had joined Kosloff’s ballet company: Kosloff renamed her Natascha Rambova, and the two embarked on a torrid love affair. This came to an end after 4 years, when Kosloff’s philandering and habit of passing off Natascha’s stage designs as his own proved too much for the future Mrs. Rudolph Valentino. Natascha left him, in the process suffering a parting shot in her leg from Kosloff’s hunting rifle. When sound films put an end to Kosloff’s acting career, he opened several schools – most notably in Los Angeles – with great success. He had also sagely taken his film salaries in Paramount stock. The link with DeMille remained: Kosloff staged the dances for the 1949 Samson and Delilah.
Karsavina recalled in her memoirs how the Diaghilev ballerinas vied for his attention, but that she and Lydia Lopokova were spurned in favour of Alexandra Baldina, whom he had made pregnant, with a child who was to prove a permanent invalid.
Alexandra Vasilievna Baldina (1885-1977) graduated along with her sister Ekaterina from the Imperial Ballet School and joined the Mariinsky company. In 1905 she was transferred to Moscow, where Kosloff was a fellow member of the company. After the Diaghilev period, virtually abandoned by her husband, she also emigrated to the United States, and taught in San Francisco. A former pupil, Victor Anderson, recalls that in the late 1940s, despite their long estrangement, Baldina recommended him to study with Kosloff in Los Angeles.
The film shows them at their peak, as superb dancers, in Valse Caprice, a popular pas de deux created by Nikolai Legat, to music by Anton Rubinstein, which will be played by John Sweeney at the Giornate performance: the solos which follow have not yet been confidently identified.
Although clearly in series with the Karsavina film, and credited by the Archives of the CNC to the same director, Jules de Froberville, this film bears a title card evidently intended for German distribution, though retaining the original French title for the dance. – David Robinson". -
Anna Pavlova. (Douglas Fairbanks, US 1924). D: ?; CAST: Anna Pavlova; orig.:1032 ft; DigiBeta, 18' (/from 35mm original, transferred at 16 fps), synchronized music track; from: BFINA.
Dances: Christmas (Tchaikovsky); The Swan (Saint-Saëns); Oriental Dance; [La Rose mourante (Drigo) NOT SHOWN]; Die Puppenfee [The Fairy Doll] (Bayer); [Columbine NOT SHOWN]; Variations (mus: Delibes). *No 35mm print of this film is currently available for screening. From the GCM Catalogue: "In 1924 Pavlova (1881-1931) visited the Fairbanks studios, where The Thief of Bagdad was in production, and was filmed on the set in 7 short dances (not 6 as is stated on the original title, which may have been intended for a shortened version of the film). It seems unlikely that this was just an improvisational filming session: the dancer changed costumes for each of the numbers. Beautifully shot, these represent the finest record of the legendary dancer, who, alongside Nijinsky and Karsavina, astounded Paris in the first Ballets Russes season.
In 1954, with the support of the then National Film Archive, the ballet historian and sometime director of the Royal Academy of Dancing, Peter Brinson (1923-1995), and the composer and conductor Leighton Lucas (1903-1982) set out to recreate the original musical accompaniment for these dances. They were only able to accomplish this with the help of a number of still-surviving former Pavlova collaborators: today it would be impossible to match the dance and music – played by the pianist Viola Tucker (1921-2005) – as impeccably as on this historic track.
There are no recorded music tracks for “Oriental Dance” and “Columbine”: at the Giornate performance they will be accompanied live by John Sweeney. – David Robinson". - A wonderful Ballets Russes tribute. I had seen the first two films in Bologna, and now John Sweeney played the piano admirably well to them. Two of the Anna Pavlova pieces announced were not shown.
La Dame masquée
[The film was not released in Finland]. FR 1924. PC: Films Albatros. D, SC: Viatcheslav Tourjansky; DP: Joseph-Louis Mundwiller, Nicolas Toporkoff, Albert Duverger; AD: Alexandre Lochakoff, Édouard Gosch; cost. (for Nathalie Kovanko): Lucie Schwob; filmed: Studio de Montreuil, Studio Lewinsky (Joinville); CAST: Nathalie Kovanko (Hélène Tesserre), Nicolas Koline (Uncle Michel), Nicolas Rimsky (Li), Jeanne Brindeau (Madame Doss [Mathilde Kern]), René Maupré (Jean [Kern]), Sylvio de Pedrelli (Girard), Boris de Fast (Robin); 2192 m /18 fps/ 106 min; from: La Cinémathèque française. E-subtitles in English + Italian, grand piano: Neil Brand. Viewed at Teatro Verdi, Pordenone, 7 Oct 2009. - From the GCM Catalogue: "La Dame masquée must be one of the darkest and most misanthropic films in silent cinema, far exceeding proverbial Russian "morbidity". The opening scene finds the carefree country girl and would-be actress Hélène deliriously performing for an unimpressed audience of village children. This is her only moment of happiness. Even while it is continuing, her house burns down and her mother is killed. She seeks refuge in Paris with her rich aunt, who abuses and humiliates her, until, discovering that Hélène is an heiress, she forces her into marriage with her dissolute son Jean. Hélène seeks consolation in an affair with Jean’s friend Girard, but he proves to be an adventurer and blackmailer. From bad, things go to worse, as she is subjected to the attentions of the sinister Chinese, Li…
Things may have been different in the countryside of her youth, but in this Parisian society depicted by Tourjansky, there is no decent or sympathetic character, with the single exception of the browbeaten Uncle Michel (Nicolas Koline) who endeavours to offer some kindness and practical help in Helène’s tormented life.
The structure is eccentric, yet coherent. The "première époque" ends with Helène’s marriage and the discovery that Jean has married her for her fortune. The "seconde époque" takes up the story a year later, when she is already seeking escape from her unhappiness in a flirtation with Girard. The centre-piece is the 15-minute sequence of the masked ball, in the course of which the dramatic situation reaches its peak. The action then moves into a murder mystery, plotted with great complexity of flashbacks and anticipations (the viewer should notice and try to account for Hélène’s acute anxiety on thinking she sees Girard in his masquerade disguise towards the end of the party). Finally a violent climax and shoot-out à l’américain is followed by a quiet and genuinely touching coda.
Above all, however, La Dame masquée is a triumph for the designers Alexandre Lochakoff and Édouard Gosch. The film was made a year ahead of the official explosion of Art Deco, but the settings and costumes brilliantly anticipate and capture the style of the moment. Kovanko’s dress (decorated with the initials KN) complements the idiosyncratic interpretation of Chinese decoration in the final scene. A contemporary critic wrote perceptively: "If one day we have a cinémathèque, this Albatros film will deserve its place in it. Every film which comes from that astonishing phalanstery which is the Montreuil studio carries an individual stamp in terms of decoration. La Dame masquée, which we have just seen, is marked by profound art done with apparent ease. With what sure talent M. Lochakoff has built and brushed décors of a perfect stylization! There could not be a richer evocation of the action and the characters … The immense salons of linear design in which the whites and the blacks collide without half-tones, the chilly residence of Madame Doss, the arid house of Hélène the unhappy wife, the low, banal bachelor flat of the seducer, the rotunda of the proprietor Li, are equally attractions for the eye. … The scenario, which makes great concessions to the public cannot fail to please it, because it addes original detail to an ordinary dramatic story. Moreover Tourjansky’s direction has striven to develop within these décors, in a very plastic way, a pleiad of fine actors…"
This is certainly one of the best performances of Tourjansky’s wife Natalia Kovanko (1899-1967), as she progresses convincingly from ebullient country girl, to abused orphan, to unhappy and then unfaithful wife, and finally to full-blown tragic heroine. Rimsky, in between his newly discovered comic excursions, has a field day with Li, the sinister Chinese, while Koline finds one of his most sympathetic and human roles. The wretched Robin was the first acting role of Kovanko’s brother, Boris de Fast (born Boris Fastovich), who would shortly appear in Tourjansky’s Michel Strogoff and Gance’s Napoléon. The French actors also are skilfully cast. Jeanne Brindeau, a stage veteran with a long career in films, is a grand monster, and Sylvio de Pedrelli a convincingly charming seducer. René Maupré’s gross Jean contrasts with his suave operator in L’Heureuse mort, made in the same year.
The film was restored by Françoise London in 1986 in black-and-white, from an original nitrate negative acquired by the Cinémathèque française in 1958. This is one of the few Albatros prints still retaining its original credit titles. – David Robinson". - The nitrate negative was acquired by la Cinémathèque française in 1958, restored in 1987, and a new print was made in 2009. In this print I felt a duped look, like it would be a generation too far from a fully satisfactory experience, and I felt that the heavy tints obscured the quality of the cinematography. - I watched but the beginning of the film: the happy country girl Hélène performing outdoors, the fatal fire, the orphan Hélène's arrival in Paris, the oppressive circumstances at her aunt's home, the young men's nightly visitations at the Chinese gambling hall, and Hélène's humiliations as the cleaning help at her aunt's house.
Things may have been different in the countryside of her youth, but in this Parisian society depicted by Tourjansky, there is no decent or sympathetic character, with the single exception of the browbeaten Uncle Michel (Nicolas Koline) who endeavours to offer some kindness and practical help in Helène’s tormented life.
The structure is eccentric, yet coherent. The "première époque" ends with Helène’s marriage and the discovery that Jean has married her for her fortune. The "seconde époque" takes up the story a year later, when she is already seeking escape from her unhappiness in a flirtation with Girard. The centre-piece is the 15-minute sequence of the masked ball, in the course of which the dramatic situation reaches its peak. The action then moves into a murder mystery, plotted with great complexity of flashbacks and anticipations (the viewer should notice and try to account for Hélène’s acute anxiety on thinking she sees Girard in his masquerade disguise towards the end of the party). Finally a violent climax and shoot-out à l’américain is followed by a quiet and genuinely touching coda.
Above all, however, La Dame masquée is a triumph for the designers Alexandre Lochakoff and Édouard Gosch. The film was made a year ahead of the official explosion of Art Deco, but the settings and costumes brilliantly anticipate and capture the style of the moment. Kovanko’s dress (decorated with the initials KN) complements the idiosyncratic interpretation of Chinese decoration in the final scene. A contemporary critic wrote perceptively: "If one day we have a cinémathèque, this Albatros film will deserve its place in it. Every film which comes from that astonishing phalanstery which is the Montreuil studio carries an individual stamp in terms of decoration. La Dame masquée, which we have just seen, is marked by profound art done with apparent ease. With what sure talent M. Lochakoff has built and brushed décors of a perfect stylization! There could not be a richer evocation of the action and the characters … The immense salons of linear design in which the whites and the blacks collide without half-tones, the chilly residence of Madame Doss, the arid house of Hélène the unhappy wife, the low, banal bachelor flat of the seducer, the rotunda of the proprietor Li, are equally attractions for the eye. … The scenario, which makes great concessions to the public cannot fail to please it, because it addes original detail to an ordinary dramatic story. Moreover Tourjansky’s direction has striven to develop within these décors, in a very plastic way, a pleiad of fine actors…"
This is certainly one of the best performances of Tourjansky’s wife Natalia Kovanko (1899-1967), as she progresses convincingly from ebullient country girl, to abused orphan, to unhappy and then unfaithful wife, and finally to full-blown tragic heroine. Rimsky, in between his newly discovered comic excursions, has a field day with Li, the sinister Chinese, while Koline finds one of his most sympathetic and human roles. The wretched Robin was the first acting role of Kovanko’s brother, Boris de Fast (born Boris Fastovich), who would shortly appear in Tourjansky’s Michel Strogoff and Gance’s Napoléon. The French actors also are skilfully cast. Jeanne Brindeau, a stage veteran with a long career in films, is a grand monster, and Sylvio de Pedrelli a convincingly charming seducer. René Maupré’s gross Jean contrasts with his suave operator in L’Heureuse mort, made in the same year.
The film was restored by Françoise London in 1986 in black-and-white, from an original nitrate negative acquired by the Cinémathèque française in 1958. This is one of the few Albatros prints still retaining its original credit titles. – David Robinson". - The nitrate negative was acquired by la Cinémathèque française in 1958, restored in 1987, and a new print was made in 2009. In this print I felt a duped look, like it would be a generation too far from a fully satisfactory experience, and I felt that the heavy tints obscured the quality of the cinematography. - I watched but the beginning of the film: the happy country girl Hélène performing outdoors, the fatal fire, the orphan Hélène's arrival in Paris, the oppressive circumstances at her aunt's home, the young men's nightly visitations at the Chinese gambling hall, and Hélène's humiliations as the cleaning help at her aunt's house.
Rotaie
[The film was not released in Finland] [Rails] IT/DE 1929. PC: S.A.C.I.A. / Nero-Film. D: Mario Camerini; story: Corrado D’Errico; SC: Mario Camerini, Corrado D’Errico; DP: Ubaldo Arata; AD: Umberto Torri, based on designs by Daniele Crespi; CAST: Käthe von Nagy (The Girl), Maurizio D’Ancora [Gucci] (The Boy), Daniele Crespi (the seducer Jacques Mercier), Aldo Moschino [later Giacomo Moschini] (a Casino regular), Mario Camerini (a gambler at the Casino); 1868 m /22 fps/ 74 min
From: La Cineteca Italiana, Milano.* E-subtitles in English, grand piano: Antonio Coppola. Viewed at Teatro Verdi, Pordenone, 7 Oct 2009.
From the GCM Catalogue: "The silent films of Mario Camerini have only recently been rediscovered, thanks to some felicitous finds (his debut screenplay, Le mani ignote, and his earliest film as director available today, Voglio tradire mio marito, by the Cineteca del Friuli, and his later Maciste contro lo sceicco [US title: Maciste in Africa], and Kif tebbi, found by the Cineteca di Bologna). Other works remain lost, including Jolly, La casa dei pulcini, and Saetta principe per un giorno). However, Rotaie [Rails], which marks his transition from silent to sound film (although the 1931 sonorized version was not edited by him), has for some time been regarded as a classic, at least in the history of Italian cinema. With the as-yet fragmentary Sole by Blasetti, it composes the diptych of the so-called renaissance of Italian cinema following the production crisis of the late 1920s. For those not given to accepting values passed down passively, this status as a national classic – still little-recognized in a broader European context, despite its being a German co-production and the presence of Käthe von Nagy as star – seems to bear with it the risk of a contemporary over-valuation, resulting from its status as a “film of the rebirth of Italian cinema”. If it is true that Camerini started his career as a great filmmaker from the very beginning (even more so than his cousin Augusto Genina, whose greatness as a director steadily grew over his entire career), this might be revealed by his earlier silent films, if they existed. However, since we no longer have the purported masterpieces Jolly and La casa dei pulcini, today we must rely on Kif tebbi as the sign that his early talent might perhaps have been even greater than the long-known classic sound phase of his career.
Fortunately, this suspicion is unfounded. Although little-known internationally, Rotaie has all the marks of being a meeting-point between the European avant-garde movements, the Expressionistic mainstream, and that realist irresolution that has rendered the best Italian cinema so great. Like its contemporary, Genina’s Prix de beauté, it features a splendid travel sequence inside the compartments of a train, but with a more social variant, and we may hypothesize that the equally splendid sequence of the woman walking through the compartments of a train in Traviata 53 by Vittorio Cottafavi – a director whose début film, I nostri sogni, brilliantly refreshed the centrality of Camerini in Italian cinema – is the arrival point of a cinema, at once both Italian and European, which has been most astute in examining the defeat of passions within society. The happy ending of Rotaie, the inclusion of the protagonists in the world of work, is less social-fascistically inclined than one might imagine.
The casino sequences are the true hub of the film, and it is no coincidence that it is here that Camerini brings himself into play with the largest close-up of that sequence (his sole appearance in any of his films, apart from that almost “snatched” snapshot in his later Delitto quasi perfetto [Imperfect murder]): it is in these sequences, which are almost as obsessive as Jacques Demy’s, that Camerini arrived at the Lang-like result (and it would be he who subsequently produced a rather weak “sequel”, alas, to Lang’s Indian diptych) of making the strength of love win, causing the loser to renounce his desire for revenge. That loser, the film’s villain, was played by Daniele Crespi, also the film’s production designer. Crespi (1893-1954) was a key figure in the transition from silent to sound films in Italy, a champion of Futurist and avant-garde dreams who also appeared in Blasetti’s Resurrectio (and worked on Steinhoff’s Die Pranke). Bearing the same name as a 17th-century Lombard artist, Crespi is the forgotten emblem of the lost “rebirth” of Italian cinema. – Sergio Grmek Germani. * A version of the film also survives with synchronised music by Marcel Lattes, which was distributed by Cines without the approval of the director. This version was passed by the censorship on 30 June 1930 and was released in Rome in March 1931. There is no record of a public screening of the silent version and Camerini himself could not recall if it was ever released.".
I saw this impressive film for the first time. The cinematic expression (cinematography: Ubeldo Arata) is an example of the prime of the silent cinema in the late 1920s: a full command of eyeline matches, montage, shot sizes, camera movement. The film is constantly exciting to watch. - This is a film about the illusion of modernity. The two young people are dazzled by urbanity, by the promise of the gambling hall, of la dolce vita. - There is an alternation of realism and glamour in the visual world of the film. - There is a fascination with the machines: the trains, the roulette, the factory. - The narrative is conservative: it is about reconciliation with and resignation to the facts of life. The finale is a celebration of work and industry, maybe showing a Futuristic connection between the ideals of Soviet Russia and Fascist Italy. - I would guess this film has never belonged to the internationally recognized classics of cinema history, but it deserves to be ranked together with the contemporary visions of Ruttmann, Vertov, Murnau (Sunrise) and Hitchcock (Blackmail). - The visual quality of the print is often very beautiful, and sometimes (e.g. in the beginning) it betrays defects in the source from which it has been made.
From: La Cineteca Italiana, Milano.* E-subtitles in English, grand piano: Antonio Coppola. Viewed at Teatro Verdi, Pordenone, 7 Oct 2009.
From the GCM Catalogue: "The silent films of Mario Camerini have only recently been rediscovered, thanks to some felicitous finds (his debut screenplay, Le mani ignote, and his earliest film as director available today, Voglio tradire mio marito, by the Cineteca del Friuli, and his later Maciste contro lo sceicco [US title: Maciste in Africa], and Kif tebbi, found by the Cineteca di Bologna). Other works remain lost, including Jolly, La casa dei pulcini, and Saetta principe per un giorno). However, Rotaie [Rails], which marks his transition from silent to sound film (although the 1931 sonorized version was not edited by him), has for some time been regarded as a classic, at least in the history of Italian cinema. With the as-yet fragmentary Sole by Blasetti, it composes the diptych of the so-called renaissance of Italian cinema following the production crisis of the late 1920s. For those not given to accepting values passed down passively, this status as a national classic – still little-recognized in a broader European context, despite its being a German co-production and the presence of Käthe von Nagy as star – seems to bear with it the risk of a contemporary over-valuation, resulting from its status as a “film of the rebirth of Italian cinema”. If it is true that Camerini started his career as a great filmmaker from the very beginning (even more so than his cousin Augusto Genina, whose greatness as a director steadily grew over his entire career), this might be revealed by his earlier silent films, if they existed. However, since we no longer have the purported masterpieces Jolly and La casa dei pulcini, today we must rely on Kif tebbi as the sign that his early talent might perhaps have been even greater than the long-known classic sound phase of his career.
Fortunately, this suspicion is unfounded. Although little-known internationally, Rotaie has all the marks of being a meeting-point between the European avant-garde movements, the Expressionistic mainstream, and that realist irresolution that has rendered the best Italian cinema so great. Like its contemporary, Genina’s Prix de beauté, it features a splendid travel sequence inside the compartments of a train, but with a more social variant, and we may hypothesize that the equally splendid sequence of the woman walking through the compartments of a train in Traviata 53 by Vittorio Cottafavi – a director whose début film, I nostri sogni, brilliantly refreshed the centrality of Camerini in Italian cinema – is the arrival point of a cinema, at once both Italian and European, which has been most astute in examining the defeat of passions within society. The happy ending of Rotaie, the inclusion of the protagonists in the world of work, is less social-fascistically inclined than one might imagine.
The casino sequences are the true hub of the film, and it is no coincidence that it is here that Camerini brings himself into play with the largest close-up of that sequence (his sole appearance in any of his films, apart from that almost “snatched” snapshot in his later Delitto quasi perfetto [Imperfect murder]): it is in these sequences, which are almost as obsessive as Jacques Demy’s, that Camerini arrived at the Lang-like result (and it would be he who subsequently produced a rather weak “sequel”, alas, to Lang’s Indian diptych) of making the strength of love win, causing the loser to renounce his desire for revenge. That loser, the film’s villain, was played by Daniele Crespi, also the film’s production designer. Crespi (1893-1954) was a key figure in the transition from silent to sound films in Italy, a champion of Futurist and avant-garde dreams who also appeared in Blasetti’s Resurrectio (and worked on Steinhoff’s Die Pranke). Bearing the same name as a 17th-century Lombard artist, Crespi is the forgotten emblem of the lost “rebirth” of Italian cinema. – Sergio Grmek Germani. * A version of the film also survives with synchronised music by Marcel Lattes, which was distributed by Cines without the approval of the director. This version was passed by the censorship on 30 June 1930 and was released in Rome in March 1931. There is no record of a public screening of the silent version and Camerini himself could not recall if it was ever released.".
I saw this impressive film for the first time. The cinematic expression (cinematography: Ubeldo Arata) is an example of the prime of the silent cinema in the late 1920s: a full command of eyeline matches, montage, shot sizes, camera movement. The film is constantly exciting to watch. - This is a film about the illusion of modernity. The two young people are dazzled by urbanity, by the promise of the gambling hall, of la dolce vita. - There is an alternation of realism and glamour in the visual world of the film. - There is a fascination with the machines: the trains, the roulette, the factory. - The narrative is conservative: it is about reconciliation with and resignation to the facts of life. The finale is a celebration of work and industry, maybe showing a Futuristic connection between the ideals of Soviet Russia and Fascist Italy. - I would guess this film has never belonged to the internationally recognized classics of cinema history, but it deserves to be ranked together with the contemporary visions of Ruttmann, Vertov, Murnau (Sunrise) and Hitchcock (Blackmail). - The visual quality of the print is often very beautiful, and sometimes (e.g. in the beginning) it betrays defects in the source from which it has been made.
The Sounds of British Silents
From: BFINA. E-subtitles in Italian, grand piano: John Sweeney. Viewed at Teatro Verdi, Pordenone, 7 Oct 2009. Total running time: ca 90 min.
From the GCM Catalogue: "This programme, devised and presented by Tony Fletcher and John Sweeney, traces the efforts of early British film-makers to marry image to sound. As early as A.C. Haddon’s Torres Straits (1898) we find efforts to link mechanical sound recording to the image: from a later period we have examples from the extensive series of British Phonofilms. Other early producers gave exhibitors precise indications of the live music to accompany films (The Old Chorister; Sweet Genevieve), while the films of the musical team of Ellaline Terriss and Seymour Hicks would be meaningless without the accompaniment appropriate to their dance routines. The audience itself is invited to produce the vocal musical accompaniment for the ingenious H.B. Parkinson’s early variants on the “bouncing ball” films, The Tin-Can Fusiliers and Barcelona. Finally, Heroes of the Sea, Joe Grossman’s assembly of material from varied sources, is dramatically complemented by the synchronized score created by a prominent silent film composer, John Reynders. Notes by: Tony Fletcher, Alex Gleason, John Sweeney; with additions by: Michael Eaton, David Robinson, Geoff Brown, Catherine Surowiec."
[CHILDREN DANCING WITH BARREL ORGAN] (?, GB 1898). D: Charles Goodwin Norton; 69 ft, 1'09" (16 fps), sound. Charles Goodwin Norton (1856-1940) was a lanternist/lecturer who interspersed his programme of lantern slides with short films which he often took himself. This may be one of them. He exhibited for the royal family, the National Sunday League, and Harrods department store, among many others. - A funny scene full of life.
TORRES STRAITS (?, GB 1898). D: Alfred Haddon; DigiBeta [35mm orig. length: 235 ft], [6'] 4 min (transferred at 16 fps), sound. *No 35mm print of this film is currently available for screening.
Alfred Haddon visited Torres Strait, off the coast of northern Queensland, in 1888 as a marine zoologist. The people were already missionized, and he became convinced that old customs must be recorded before they disappeared completely. Ten years later he returned as leader of the Cambridge Anthroplogical Expedition. Though they took many photographs and made about a hundred phonograph recordings, the cinematograph which the team had ordered only arrived on the island of Mer a couple of days before they were due to leave. When he tested it Haddon was further disappointed, believing it had jammed. However, on his return to London he was informed by the makers, Newman and Guardia, that the four short films exposed had come out perfectly. On the first day he filmed fire-making and secular dances; on the second day a bêche-de-mer boat happened to arrive, and a dance by some of its crew is, therefore, the earliest film of Aboriginal Australians. But the final film is the most important: a magnificent documentation of one of the dances performed at a reconstruction of the now-defunct Malu-Bomai initiation ceremony, with masks specially recreated from cardboard. The earliest ethnographic film is already a performance for the camera. - The sound recordings used to accompany the Torres Strait film come from original wax cylinder recordings made on the same expedition as the films. While they were not recorded specifically as sound to accompany the films, they were used as such when Haddon showed the films in 1906. The recordings are used with the kind permission of the British Library Sound Archive. - A fascinating dance number with the original music mixed on the digital tape.
THE OLD CHORISTER (Williamson Kinematograph Company, GB 1904). D: James Williamson; 230 ft, 6' (16 fps). No intertitles. The film’s 4 scenes correspond to a set of 4 life-model slides for C.H. Roberts’ song “The Aged Chorister” (1901) issued by the Bamforth Company; Bamforth also produced a set of postcards illustrating the song. An entry in the Williamson catalogue specified the musical accompaniment: “At the point where the Old Chorister is remembering his younger days, an on-site boy soprano is to sing the opening measures of Handel’s ‘I know that my Redeemer liveth’ and again during the scene where the choir is singing in the church, an on-site chorus sings a verse of Sir Arthur Sullivan’s ‘Onward Christian Soldiers’, breaking off at the point where the old man is stricken.” - The religious film was screened with piano music. A duped look in the print.
THE WORLD FAMOUS MUSICAL COMEDY ARTISTS SEYMOUR HICKS AND ELLALINE TERRISS IN A SELECTION OF THEIR DANCES (Topical Film Company, GB, ca 1913). D: ?; CAST: Ellaline Terriss, Seymour Hicks; 629 ft, 10'29" (16 fps). Seymour Hicks (1871-1949) and Ellaline Terriss (1872-1971) were the English theatre’s ideal couple, both on and off stage. Hicks was actor-manager and author of 64 plays, who appeared in films from 1913 until his death. Terriss frequently partnered him on stage, film, and in music hall. This film gives a vivid impression of the British musical stage before the First World War. The items presented are:
“The latest American dance sensation THE BUMBLE BEE STING as being danced with enormous success nightly by SEYMOUR HICKS”
“FACIAL EXPRESSIONS BY SEYMOUR HICKS – ‘some do it this way’ (the various ways of kissing)”; followed by “The various ways of taking medicine”
“MISS ELLALINE TERRISS and original company in her well known dance from the Musical play THE MODEL AND THE MAID (‘If I were a boy’)”.
“The ever popular ragtime ALEXANDER’S RAG TIME BAND by Seymour Hicks and Ellaline Terriss”.
The penultimate item is puzzling: no production of this title can be traced. A short-lived musical The Medal and the Maid, with music by Sidney Jones and Paul Rubens, was produced in London in 1903, but Ellaline Terriss was not in the cast, though her brother Tom was. It was not revived. - A funny record of the two musical comedy artists.
ARE WE DOWN-HEARTED? (Hepwix Vivaphone, GB, c.1911). D: Frank Wilson?; CAST: Hay Plumb; DigiBeta [35mm orig. l: 176 ft], 3' (transferred at 16 fps?), sound. *No 35mm print of this film is currently available for screening. Cecil Hepworth originally devised his Vivaphone synchronized sound system to record prominent politicians from the Conservative and Unionist Party on the subject of tariff reform in 1908-09. Soon he was filming actors miming to popular records of the day, turning out approximately two each week, many directed by Frank Wilson.
The disc of Charles Bignell singing “Are We Downhearted – No!” (music and lyrics: Worton David and Lawrence Wright) was issued in December 1910. In Hepworth’s synchronized visual version, the main performer is a well-known actor, director and writer, Hay Plumb (1882-1960). He is assisted by Madge Campbell, Jack Hulcup, Chrissie White, Alma Taylor, Jamie Darling (“whimsical walker”), and Frank Wilson as the bailiff. - A funny "all singing" film. A slightly high contrast print.
SWEET GENEVIEVE (H.B. Parkinson, for Master Films, GB 1921) D: ?; P: H.B. Parkinson; CAST: Evelyn Hope; 600 ft, 8' (20 fps). Henry Tucker’s music was written in 1869 to accompany George Cooper’s poem, written on the death of his beloved young wife some 15 years earlier. It remained popular for many years, and featured in the 1953 comedy film Genevieve, with Kay Kendall miming to the trumpet of Kenny Baker. This 1921 interpretation was advertised in the series “Famous Songs of Long Ago”, reissued by the Standard Film Agency in October 1925. Complete band scores of the accompaniment were provided for exhibitors. -
RADIO AND RADIANCE (H.B. Parkinson, GB, 1925-26). D: ?; P: H.B. Parkinson; 189 ft, 3’ (20 fps). Released in January 1926, this was the seventh of eight in the series “Across the Footlights”, distributed by Graham-Wilcox Productions. It features a test broadcast from the BBC 2.L.O. studios, Savoy Hill, London. Artistes appearing include Iris White, Eddie Morris, The Dancing Radios, and, uncredited, the comedian Tommy Handley. - A fascinating radio document.
SYNCOPATED MELODIES: THE TIN-CAN FUSILIERS (H.B. Parkinson, GB 1927). D: J. Stevens-Edwards; P: H.B. Parkinson; 243 ft, 3'24" (20 fps). Harry B. Parkinson (1884-1970) was a prolific producer and director of “interest films”, mostly remembered for his suppressed The Life Story of Charlie Chaplin (1926) and for his films of London life. In addition he made some imaginative sing-along films, with variations of the bouncing-ball technique. This example, from the “Syncopated Melodies” series, illustrates a popular song of 1926, one of approximately 600 written by the sheet music publisher Lawrence Wright (1888-1964) under the nom-de-plume of Horatio Nicholls. - A sing-along film, and the Verdi audience did sing.
SYNCOPATED MELODIES: BARCELONA (H.B. Parkinson, for Fred White, GB 1927). D: J. Stevens-Edwards; P: H.B. Parkinson; DP: Jack Miller, William Harcourt; CAST: Jack Hylton and His Famous Band, Sidney Firman and The London Radio Orchestra; 825 ft, 11' (20 fps). The song “Barcelona” was written in 1925 by Tolchard Evans (music) and Gus Kahn (lyrics). This was the first in H.B. Parkinson’s series of 12 “Syncopated Melodies”. At the end of the film the audience is requested to join in. -This belongs to the predecessors of the music video. A revolving turntable transforms into a revolving dance platform. The infectuous power of music.
GWEN FARRAR AND BILLY MAYERL IN “I’VE GOT A SWEETIE ON THE RADIO” (De Forest Phonofilms, GB 1926). D: ?; CAST: Gwen Farrar, Billy Mayerl; 352 ft, 4'27” (22 fps), sound. The deep-voiced, cello-playing comedienne Gwen Farrar (1899-1944) was best known as the on- and off-stage partner of the more lady-like Norah Blaney (1894-1984) throughout most of the 1920s and 30s. However, between 1926 and 1931 they seem to have separated, with Farrar forming a double act with the pianist and prolific composer Billy Mayerl (1902-1959), who at 23 had been soloist for the British premiere of Gershwin’s “Rhapsody in Blue”. Farrar and Mayerl stirred early attention with their renderings of James V. Monaco’s “Masculine Women! Feminine Men!” (performed by them in a 1929 B.I.P. short). The present song was composed by Mayerl and Kenneth Western, half of another music hall act, the Western Brothers. - A funny comedy scene with highly original comedians.
BILLY MERSON SINGING “DESDEMONIA” (De Forest Phonofilms, GB 1926). D: ?; CAST: Billy Merson; 357 ft, 4'30" (22 fps), sound. Song: “Desdemonia” (music and lyrics: Billy Merson). Billy Merson (born William Henry Thompson, 1881-1947) was a versatile comedian who had worked in circus, music hall, revue, pantomime, and musical comedy. Maurice Chevalier, who appeared with him in Hullo, America (Palace Theatre, London, 1918), later wrote, “this man had everything”. Along with “The Spaniard that Blighted My Life” and “On the Good Ship Yacki Hicki Doola”, “Desdemonia”, performed wearing the draughty, abbreviated chiton of ancient Greece, was one of his best-loved numbers. The present main title – apparently added in recent years – incorrectly calls the song “Desdemona”. The film was one of a series of 5 De Forest Phonofilms produced under the supervision of Vivian Van Damm, who managed the Clapham Studios in south London. - A comedy song routine.
J.H. SQUIRE AND HIS CELEBRATED CELESTE OCTET (British Sound Film Productions, GB 1928). D: ?; 407 ft, 5' (22 fps), sound. De Forest Phonofilm was renamed British Sound Film Productions (BSFP) in 1928, after Isidore Schlesinger took over the business. - J.H. Squire (1880-1956) formed the Celeste Octet in 1913; between 1923 and 1955 he gave over 500 radio broadcasts, as well as recording discs for Columbia. The Octet consisted of celeste, piano, cello, viola, and 4 violins. - In this incomplete print, Squire promises a “Cook’s Tour” of Russia, India, Italy, Finland, and Ireland. Russia is represented by Rimsky-Korsakov’s Scheherazade, India by Amy Woodford-Finden’s ballad “Pale Hands I Loved Beside the Shalimar”. Bizarrely, a snatch of Mozart’s overture to Le nozze di Figaro, set in Seville, appears to represent Italy. Lost footage robs us of Finland, and most of Ireland too. - Contrary to the programme note, the film seems complete: Finlandia (Jean Sibelius) is heard as the second-to-last entry, and The Minstrel Boy is the final one.
THE VICTORIA GIRLS IN THEIR FAMOUS DANCING MEDLEY (BSFP [Phonofilm], GB 1928). D: Hugh Croise?; mus. dir: Jack Weaver with The Victoria Palace Orchestra; 699 ft, 9' (22 fps), sound. The Victoria Girls – a fixture in the bills of the Victoria Palace music hall – were formed in 1923 under the name “The Moss Girls” (the theatre was part of the Moss variety circuit), and were trained by Mr. and Mrs. Rodney Hudson. They appeared in the Royal Variety Shows in 1927 and 1928.Here the 8 Victoria Girls dance, together and separately, to numbers that include “Diane” (music: Erno Rapee), “Rain” (music: Eugene Ford), and “Let a Smile Be Your Umbrella” (music: Sammy Fain). - A funny phonofilm. The Victoria Girls have shapely legs.
GORNO’S ITALIAN MARIONETTES (BSFP [Phonofilm], GB 1929). D: Jack Harrison; supv. dir: Henrik Galeen; DP: Arpad Viragh; mus. dir: Philip Braham; sd. rec: F.K. Crowther; 543 ft, 7' (22 fps), sound. The Gorno Marionettes were an old-established Italian family company. Their association with Phonofilm was not fortunate: the marionettes were destroyed in a fire at Wembley Studios in October 1929, a month after Phonofilm opened there. - The puppets present three items: (1) “Hello, Sunshine, Hello” (music: Harry Tobias; lyrics: Charles Tobias and Jack Murray) is performed by “Miss Drage assisted by Three Plain Vans”. (2) “Jan Olson in Dimples and Tears” parodies Al Jolson in “Sonny Boy” (“you were sent from Hades, to me right here on earth!”). (3) “I’m Crazy Over You” (music and lyrics: Al Sherman and Sam Lewis) is performed by the black singers, “The 3 Duns. Done, Underdone and Overdone”. - A puppet film with blackface aspects.
TEDDY BROWN AND HIS XYLOPHONE (British Phototone Co., GB 1928). D: J.B. Sloane; P: Ludwig (Louis) Blattner; DP: Karl Freund; CAST: Teddy Brown; 179 ft, 2' (24 fps), sound. Song: “I Want to Be Alone with Mary Brown” (music and lyrics: Edgar Leslie and Joe Gilbert). British Phototone was linked with Lignose-Horfilm GmbH in Berlin, which employed a film-disc synchronized device. In August 1928, 16 artists (including Teddy Brown) went from Britain to Germany to produce 50 shorts. Karl Freund served as chief cameraman. - An American of generous girth, Teddy Brown (born Abraham Himmelbrand, 1900-1946) also played saxophone and drums, and worked with the New York Philharmonic Symphony Orchestra for 4 years before turning to dance-band work. He finally achieved popularity in cabaret and variety with his xylophone act. -Teddy Brown is a very big musician, dexterous with the xylophone.
HEROES OF THE SEA (British International Pictures, GB 1928-30). Compiler: Joseph Grossman; mus. dir: John Reynders; 520 ft, 6' (24 fps), sound. This promotional film for the Royal National Lifeboat Association was assembled by B.I.P. studio manager Joe Grossman from silent footage taken from several of the company’s features, including Castleton Knight’s Goodwin Sands and its sound version The Lady from the Sea, The Manxman (dir. Alfred Hitchcock), and the pioneering multi-lingual talkie Atlantic (dir. E.A. Dupont). - John Reynders (1888-1953) was the director of music at the Tivoli cinema in the Strand, London, in the 1920s. As music director at British International Pictures, 1928-1932, he conducted over 70 recorded film scores, including Blackmail, Atlantic, Under the Greenwood Tree, Elstree Calling, Murder!, Rich and Strange, The Informer, Piccadilly, A Romance of Seville, High Seas, The Vagabond Queen, The Flying Scotsman, and The Woman He Scorned. From 1935 he conducted light music concerts and musical productions with the BBC. - A dramatic seafaring montage with music.
From the GCM Catalogue: "This programme, devised and presented by Tony Fletcher and John Sweeney, traces the efforts of early British film-makers to marry image to sound. As early as A.C. Haddon’s Torres Straits (1898) we find efforts to link mechanical sound recording to the image: from a later period we have examples from the extensive series of British Phonofilms. Other early producers gave exhibitors precise indications of the live music to accompany films (The Old Chorister; Sweet Genevieve), while the films of the musical team of Ellaline Terriss and Seymour Hicks would be meaningless without the accompaniment appropriate to their dance routines. The audience itself is invited to produce the vocal musical accompaniment for the ingenious H.B. Parkinson’s early variants on the “bouncing ball” films, The Tin-Can Fusiliers and Barcelona. Finally, Heroes of the Sea, Joe Grossman’s assembly of material from varied sources, is dramatically complemented by the synchronized score created by a prominent silent film composer, John Reynders. Notes by: Tony Fletcher, Alex Gleason, John Sweeney; with additions by: Michael Eaton, David Robinson, Geoff Brown, Catherine Surowiec."
[CHILDREN DANCING WITH BARREL ORGAN] (?, GB 1898). D: Charles Goodwin Norton; 69 ft, 1'09" (16 fps), sound. Charles Goodwin Norton (1856-1940) was a lanternist/lecturer who interspersed his programme of lantern slides with short films which he often took himself. This may be one of them. He exhibited for the royal family, the National Sunday League, and Harrods department store, among many others. - A funny scene full of life.
TORRES STRAITS (?, GB 1898). D: Alfred Haddon; DigiBeta [35mm orig. length: 235 ft], [6'] 4 min (transferred at 16 fps), sound. *No 35mm print of this film is currently available for screening.
Alfred Haddon visited Torres Strait, off the coast of northern Queensland, in 1888 as a marine zoologist. The people were already missionized, and he became convinced that old customs must be recorded before they disappeared completely. Ten years later he returned as leader of the Cambridge Anthroplogical Expedition. Though they took many photographs and made about a hundred phonograph recordings, the cinematograph which the team had ordered only arrived on the island of Mer a couple of days before they were due to leave. When he tested it Haddon was further disappointed, believing it had jammed. However, on his return to London he was informed by the makers, Newman and Guardia, that the four short films exposed had come out perfectly. On the first day he filmed fire-making and secular dances; on the second day a bêche-de-mer boat happened to arrive, and a dance by some of its crew is, therefore, the earliest film of Aboriginal Australians. But the final film is the most important: a magnificent documentation of one of the dances performed at a reconstruction of the now-defunct Malu-Bomai initiation ceremony, with masks specially recreated from cardboard. The earliest ethnographic film is already a performance for the camera. - The sound recordings used to accompany the Torres Strait film come from original wax cylinder recordings made on the same expedition as the films. While they were not recorded specifically as sound to accompany the films, they were used as such when Haddon showed the films in 1906. The recordings are used with the kind permission of the British Library Sound Archive. - A fascinating dance number with the original music mixed on the digital tape.
THE OLD CHORISTER (Williamson Kinematograph Company, GB 1904). D: James Williamson; 230 ft, 6' (16 fps). No intertitles. The film’s 4 scenes correspond to a set of 4 life-model slides for C.H. Roberts’ song “The Aged Chorister” (1901) issued by the Bamforth Company; Bamforth also produced a set of postcards illustrating the song. An entry in the Williamson catalogue specified the musical accompaniment: “At the point where the Old Chorister is remembering his younger days, an on-site boy soprano is to sing the opening measures of Handel’s ‘I know that my Redeemer liveth’ and again during the scene where the choir is singing in the church, an on-site chorus sings a verse of Sir Arthur Sullivan’s ‘Onward Christian Soldiers’, breaking off at the point where the old man is stricken.” - The religious film was screened with piano music. A duped look in the print.
THE WORLD FAMOUS MUSICAL COMEDY ARTISTS SEYMOUR HICKS AND ELLALINE TERRISS IN A SELECTION OF THEIR DANCES (Topical Film Company, GB, ca 1913). D: ?; CAST: Ellaline Terriss, Seymour Hicks; 629 ft, 10'29" (16 fps). Seymour Hicks (1871-1949) and Ellaline Terriss (1872-1971) were the English theatre’s ideal couple, both on and off stage. Hicks was actor-manager and author of 64 plays, who appeared in films from 1913 until his death. Terriss frequently partnered him on stage, film, and in music hall. This film gives a vivid impression of the British musical stage before the First World War. The items presented are:
“The latest American dance sensation THE BUMBLE BEE STING as being danced with enormous success nightly by SEYMOUR HICKS”
“FACIAL EXPRESSIONS BY SEYMOUR HICKS – ‘some do it this way’ (the various ways of kissing)”; followed by “The various ways of taking medicine”
“MISS ELLALINE TERRISS and original company in her well known dance from the Musical play THE MODEL AND THE MAID (‘If I were a boy’)”.
“The ever popular ragtime ALEXANDER’S RAG TIME BAND by Seymour Hicks and Ellaline Terriss”.
The penultimate item is puzzling: no production of this title can be traced. A short-lived musical The Medal and the Maid, with music by Sidney Jones and Paul Rubens, was produced in London in 1903, but Ellaline Terriss was not in the cast, though her brother Tom was. It was not revived. - A funny record of the two musical comedy artists.
ARE WE DOWN-HEARTED? (Hepwix Vivaphone, GB, c.1911). D: Frank Wilson?; CAST: Hay Plumb; DigiBeta [35mm orig. l: 176 ft], 3' (transferred at 16 fps?), sound. *No 35mm print of this film is currently available for screening. Cecil Hepworth originally devised his Vivaphone synchronized sound system to record prominent politicians from the Conservative and Unionist Party on the subject of tariff reform in 1908-09. Soon he was filming actors miming to popular records of the day, turning out approximately two each week, many directed by Frank Wilson.
The disc of Charles Bignell singing “Are We Downhearted – No!” (music and lyrics: Worton David and Lawrence Wright) was issued in December 1910. In Hepworth’s synchronized visual version, the main performer is a well-known actor, director and writer, Hay Plumb (1882-1960). He is assisted by Madge Campbell, Jack Hulcup, Chrissie White, Alma Taylor, Jamie Darling (“whimsical walker”), and Frank Wilson as the bailiff. - A funny "all singing" film. A slightly high contrast print.
SWEET GENEVIEVE (H.B. Parkinson, for Master Films, GB 1921) D: ?; P: H.B. Parkinson; CAST: Evelyn Hope; 600 ft, 8' (20 fps). Henry Tucker’s music was written in 1869 to accompany George Cooper’s poem, written on the death of his beloved young wife some 15 years earlier. It remained popular for many years, and featured in the 1953 comedy film Genevieve, with Kay Kendall miming to the trumpet of Kenny Baker. This 1921 interpretation was advertised in the series “Famous Songs of Long Ago”, reissued by the Standard Film Agency in October 1925. Complete band scores of the accompaniment were provided for exhibitors. -
RADIO AND RADIANCE (H.B. Parkinson, GB, 1925-26). D: ?; P: H.B. Parkinson; 189 ft, 3’ (20 fps). Released in January 1926, this was the seventh of eight in the series “Across the Footlights”, distributed by Graham-Wilcox Productions. It features a test broadcast from the BBC 2.L.O. studios, Savoy Hill, London. Artistes appearing include Iris White, Eddie Morris, The Dancing Radios, and, uncredited, the comedian Tommy Handley. - A fascinating radio document.
SYNCOPATED MELODIES: THE TIN-CAN FUSILIERS (H.B. Parkinson, GB 1927). D: J. Stevens-Edwards; P: H.B. Parkinson; 243 ft, 3'24" (20 fps). Harry B. Parkinson (1884-1970) was a prolific producer and director of “interest films”, mostly remembered for his suppressed The Life Story of Charlie Chaplin (1926) and for his films of London life. In addition he made some imaginative sing-along films, with variations of the bouncing-ball technique. This example, from the “Syncopated Melodies” series, illustrates a popular song of 1926, one of approximately 600 written by the sheet music publisher Lawrence Wright (1888-1964) under the nom-de-plume of Horatio Nicholls. - A sing-along film, and the Verdi audience did sing.
SYNCOPATED MELODIES: BARCELONA (H.B. Parkinson, for Fred White, GB 1927). D: J. Stevens-Edwards; P: H.B. Parkinson; DP: Jack Miller, William Harcourt; CAST: Jack Hylton and His Famous Band, Sidney Firman and The London Radio Orchestra; 825 ft, 11' (20 fps). The song “Barcelona” was written in 1925 by Tolchard Evans (music) and Gus Kahn (lyrics). This was the first in H.B. Parkinson’s series of 12 “Syncopated Melodies”. At the end of the film the audience is requested to join in. -This belongs to the predecessors of the music video. A revolving turntable transforms into a revolving dance platform. The infectuous power of music.
GWEN FARRAR AND BILLY MAYERL IN “I’VE GOT A SWEETIE ON THE RADIO” (De Forest Phonofilms, GB 1926). D: ?; CAST: Gwen Farrar, Billy Mayerl; 352 ft, 4'27” (22 fps), sound. The deep-voiced, cello-playing comedienne Gwen Farrar (1899-1944) was best known as the on- and off-stage partner of the more lady-like Norah Blaney (1894-1984) throughout most of the 1920s and 30s. However, between 1926 and 1931 they seem to have separated, with Farrar forming a double act with the pianist and prolific composer Billy Mayerl (1902-1959), who at 23 had been soloist for the British premiere of Gershwin’s “Rhapsody in Blue”. Farrar and Mayerl stirred early attention with their renderings of James V. Monaco’s “Masculine Women! Feminine Men!” (performed by them in a 1929 B.I.P. short). The present song was composed by Mayerl and Kenneth Western, half of another music hall act, the Western Brothers. - A funny comedy scene with highly original comedians.
BILLY MERSON SINGING “DESDEMONIA” (De Forest Phonofilms, GB 1926). D: ?; CAST: Billy Merson; 357 ft, 4'30" (22 fps), sound. Song: “Desdemonia” (music and lyrics: Billy Merson). Billy Merson (born William Henry Thompson, 1881-1947) was a versatile comedian who had worked in circus, music hall, revue, pantomime, and musical comedy. Maurice Chevalier, who appeared with him in Hullo, America (Palace Theatre, London, 1918), later wrote, “this man had everything”. Along with “The Spaniard that Blighted My Life” and “On the Good Ship Yacki Hicki Doola”, “Desdemonia”, performed wearing the draughty, abbreviated chiton of ancient Greece, was one of his best-loved numbers. The present main title – apparently added in recent years – incorrectly calls the song “Desdemona”. The film was one of a series of 5 De Forest Phonofilms produced under the supervision of Vivian Van Damm, who managed the Clapham Studios in south London. - A comedy song routine.
J.H. SQUIRE AND HIS CELEBRATED CELESTE OCTET (British Sound Film Productions, GB 1928). D: ?; 407 ft, 5' (22 fps), sound. De Forest Phonofilm was renamed British Sound Film Productions (BSFP) in 1928, after Isidore Schlesinger took over the business. - J.H. Squire (1880-1956) formed the Celeste Octet in 1913; between 1923 and 1955 he gave over 500 radio broadcasts, as well as recording discs for Columbia. The Octet consisted of celeste, piano, cello, viola, and 4 violins. - In this incomplete print, Squire promises a “Cook’s Tour” of Russia, India, Italy, Finland, and Ireland. Russia is represented by Rimsky-Korsakov’s Scheherazade, India by Amy Woodford-Finden’s ballad “Pale Hands I Loved Beside the Shalimar”. Bizarrely, a snatch of Mozart’s overture to Le nozze di Figaro, set in Seville, appears to represent Italy. Lost footage robs us of Finland, and most of Ireland too. - Contrary to the programme note, the film seems complete: Finlandia (Jean Sibelius) is heard as the second-to-last entry, and The Minstrel Boy is the final one.
THE VICTORIA GIRLS IN THEIR FAMOUS DANCING MEDLEY (BSFP [Phonofilm], GB 1928). D: Hugh Croise?; mus. dir: Jack Weaver with The Victoria Palace Orchestra; 699 ft, 9' (22 fps), sound. The Victoria Girls – a fixture in the bills of the Victoria Palace music hall – were formed in 1923 under the name “The Moss Girls” (the theatre was part of the Moss variety circuit), and were trained by Mr. and Mrs. Rodney Hudson. They appeared in the Royal Variety Shows in 1927 and 1928.Here the 8 Victoria Girls dance, together and separately, to numbers that include “Diane” (music: Erno Rapee), “Rain” (music: Eugene Ford), and “Let a Smile Be Your Umbrella” (music: Sammy Fain). - A funny phonofilm. The Victoria Girls have shapely legs.
GORNO’S ITALIAN MARIONETTES (BSFP [Phonofilm], GB 1929). D: Jack Harrison; supv. dir: Henrik Galeen; DP: Arpad Viragh; mus. dir: Philip Braham; sd. rec: F.K. Crowther; 543 ft, 7' (22 fps), sound. The Gorno Marionettes were an old-established Italian family company. Their association with Phonofilm was not fortunate: the marionettes were destroyed in a fire at Wembley Studios in October 1929, a month after Phonofilm opened there. - The puppets present three items: (1) “Hello, Sunshine, Hello” (music: Harry Tobias; lyrics: Charles Tobias and Jack Murray) is performed by “Miss Drage assisted by Three Plain Vans”. (2) “Jan Olson in Dimples and Tears” parodies Al Jolson in “Sonny Boy” (“you were sent from Hades, to me right here on earth!”). (3) “I’m Crazy Over You” (music and lyrics: Al Sherman and Sam Lewis) is performed by the black singers, “The 3 Duns. Done, Underdone and Overdone”. - A puppet film with blackface aspects.
TEDDY BROWN AND HIS XYLOPHONE (British Phototone Co., GB 1928). D: J.B. Sloane; P: Ludwig (Louis) Blattner; DP: Karl Freund; CAST: Teddy Brown; 179 ft, 2' (24 fps), sound. Song: “I Want to Be Alone with Mary Brown” (music and lyrics: Edgar Leslie and Joe Gilbert). British Phototone was linked with Lignose-Horfilm GmbH in Berlin, which employed a film-disc synchronized device. In August 1928, 16 artists (including Teddy Brown) went from Britain to Germany to produce 50 shorts. Karl Freund served as chief cameraman. - An American of generous girth, Teddy Brown (born Abraham Himmelbrand, 1900-1946) also played saxophone and drums, and worked with the New York Philharmonic Symphony Orchestra for 4 years before turning to dance-band work. He finally achieved popularity in cabaret and variety with his xylophone act. -Teddy Brown is a very big musician, dexterous with the xylophone.
HEROES OF THE SEA (British International Pictures, GB 1928-30). Compiler: Joseph Grossman; mus. dir: John Reynders; 520 ft, 6' (24 fps), sound. This promotional film for the Royal National Lifeboat Association was assembled by B.I.P. studio manager Joe Grossman from silent footage taken from several of the company’s features, including Castleton Knight’s Goodwin Sands and its sound version The Lady from the Sea, The Manxman (dir. Alfred Hitchcock), and the pioneering multi-lingual talkie Atlantic (dir. E.A. Dupont). - John Reynders (1888-1953) was the director of music at the Tivoli cinema in the Strand, London, in the 1920s. As music director at British International Pictures, 1928-1932, he conducted over 70 recorded film scores, including Blackmail, Atlantic, Under the Greenwood Tree, Elstree Calling, Murder!, Rich and Strange, The Informer, Piccadilly, A Romance of Seville, High Seas, The Vagabond Queen, The Flying Scotsman, and The Woman He Scorned. From 1935 he conducted light music concerts and musical productions with the BBC. - A dramatic seafaring montage with music.
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