The Beloved Rogue

Ilveilijäin kuningas / THE BELOVED ROGUE (Il poeta vagabondo) (Feature Productions, dist: United Artists, US 1927) D: Alan Crosland; P: Joseph M. Schenck; story, SC: Paul Bern, Michael Strange [Blanche Oelrichs; uncredited]; titles: Walter Anthony; DP: Joseph H. August; AD: William Cameron Menzies; C: John Barrymore (François Villon), Conrad Veidt (Louis XI), Marceline Day (Charlotte de Vauxcelles), Lawson Butt (John, Duke of Burgundy), Henry Victor (Thibault d’Aussigny), Slim Summerville (Jehan), Mack Swain (Nicholas), Angelo Rossitto (Beppo, a dwarf), Nigel de Brulier (astrologer), Lucy Beaumont (Villon’s mother), Otto Matiesen (Olivier, the king’s barber), Jane Winton (the Abbess), Rose Dione (Margot), Bertram Grassby (Duke of Orléans), Martha Franklin (maid), Dick Sutherland (Tristan L’Hermite, the king’s executioner); filmed: 1926-27 (Hollywood); première: 12.3.1927 (Mark Strand Theatre, New York); orig. l: 9264 ft (10 rl.); 35 mm, 8853 ft, 105' (22 fps); titles: ENG; print source: George Eastman House, Rochester, NY. Preserved and printed 1967.
    With e-subtitles in Italian, live music by Donald Sosin (piano) and his quartet with a harp, bass, and drums - and a computer, at Teatro Verdi (Le Giornate del Cinema Muto), Pordenone, 10 Oct 2014

Philip C. Carli (GCM Catalogue and website): "Warner Bros. had earned considerable prestige and (on the whole) substantial profits from John Barrymore’s association with them when in late 1926 Joseph Schenck offered John $352,000 plus a share in the profits for a three-picture contract with his Feature Productions organization, the films to be released through United Artists. John went straight to Schenck in a move that angered Jack Warner and would color John’s later dealings with WB when he returned to the studio in 1929. Although John was apparently an artistically appropriate and valuable acquisition for United Artists, the truth was that Schenck was always trying to fill UA’s release schedule; it was a distributor and not a production company, and he never had enough product to fill exhibitors’ needs. The prestige productions of Fairbanks, Pickford, and Chaplin were sporadic, and in order to offset their high expenses, the films Schenck provided in the UA lineup had unusually high rental fees. Schenck also spent far less on overall promotion than did M-G-M, Paramount, and Fox; thus any UA films other than those made by its founders were at best irregularly profitable, and often just lost money, sometimes disastrously (as in the case of Buster Keaton’s three UA features). In an effort to guarantee that John’s first UA production was a hit, Schenck imported the Don Juan/When a Man Loves crew from Warners, with some tweaking of personnel and cast."

"The Beloved Rogue is certainly no more historically “accurate” than Beau Brummel or Don Juan in its tale concerning medieval French poet-qua-criminal François Villon (1431-post 1462), and it is as lavish as any of John’s Warner Bros. costume films, but it takes a radically different tack: through John’s direct influence on its conception and execution, it deliberately contradicts its contemporary theatrical and cultural connections. The source that Beloved Rogue spurns was very familiar to contemporary audiences, Irish nationalist politician Justin Huntly McCarthy’s 1901 novel and play If I Were King, the stage version of which originally starred E. H. Sothern as Villon in New York and George Alexander in London. J. Gordon Edwards directed the first film version for Fox in 1920, starring William Farnum (this is now one of Edwards’ few extant films, and quite stodgy if enjoyable), and Frank Lloyd directed Ronald Colman in Paramount’s romantic 1938 sound remake. Poet Brian Hooker, who in 1923 had elegantly translated Edmond Rostand’s play Cyrano de Bergerac into what became the standard English version, in 1925 also co-adapted If I Were King into the operetta libretto for The Vagabond King, which with a score by Rudolf Friml was one of the greatest stage successes of the 1920s. It ran 511 performances in New York and went on to London for 480 more, before being filmed in 2-color Technicolor by Ludwig Berger for Paramount in 1930, featuring Dennis King in his original stage role as Villon; Paramount released a second musical version in 1956, directed by Michael Curtiz, with the Maltese tenor Oreste Kirkop. (The operetta’s rousing “Song of the Vagabonds” remains a football fight song for the United States Military Academy at West Point, under the title “Slum and Gravy,” with new lyrics.)"

"While John was at Warners, his second wife, poet and playwright Blanche Oelrichs, had already written a more traditional Villon scenario under her pen name of “Michael Strange”, which already
deliberately avoided (most likely for copyright reasons) many of the well-known situations of If I Were King, but would fit in with John’s “Great Lover” film persona as it was then established. However, John looked at his signing with Schenck as an opportunity to broaden his potential beyond being merely a dashing romantic lead, so he wrote to Oelrichs (from whom he was then amicably separated but not yet divorced) setting out the reasons why he intended to change his approach and not use her plot. The letter is quoted in John Kobler’s 1977 biography of John, Damned in Paradise: “When this scenario was first devised … it was before I had perpetrated such arrantly ‘romantic’ movies as Don Juan and Manon Lescaut … I now wish, for this new firm I am with, to do something totally different, that I have greater sympathy with, and can get much more fun out of, and I believe achieve a more significant result, and that is with the extraordinary figure of Villon as a vehicle to rather burlesque the whole idea of romance. He was a creative artist, a poet, and everything happened in his head. When he is caught by life in these movie situations, which always demand a rather asinine, heroic activity, he is frightfully up against it, and only by his amazing dexterity and imagination can he elude them, maintain a certain whimsical integrity, and prevent himself from looking like an ass, the audience being the only person he takes into his confidence. I think the picture of Villon skipping, bounding, and crawling on his stomach through a Gothic dimension of a dying chivalry and a brutal and slightly sacerdotal materialism till almost the very end of the movie, when he is forced, through the reality of suffering, his mother’s death, etc., to a different attitude, always, however, flecked by a sort of pinched gaiety, is something that I can have genuine fun with and accomplish something real in the movies whose possibilities interest me exceedingly … I am writing to you right off the bat, just as I feel, for as you have expended a certain amount of time and energy on the formulation of a scenario, you must certainly deserve to have it explained to you clearly why the general scheme of it is not in line with the thing I have the urge to do at present.” John managed to get Schenck to pay Oelrichs $1,250 for her treatment, but Paul Bern used very little of it in his screenplay and ultimately received sole screen credit."

"The Beloved Rogue is John’s most deliberately athletic film, and his broad humor and gestures are very Fairbanksian while still being characteristic of John’s innate cynical sense of humor. However,
elements of John’s earlier costume films persist, some of them a little perverse and perhaps as in-jokes within the larger joke of the film: for instance, Crosland (possibly with John’s connivance) did seem to like to strip, oil, and flog John fairly frequently – it happens again this film, just as it did in Don Juan and When a Man Loves, except here John’s slicked-up appearance in the skimpiest of loincloths (little is left to the imagination!) is almost sneering at the censors in its excess and audacity. On the more intellectual side, and as a mark of John’s intense dedication to his art, John’s makeup as the King of Fools early in the film renders him totally unrecognizable, but it also provides him with one of the greatest pieces of film acting of his career, in his reaction to being banished from Paris – there is tremendous power and humanity that emerges through all the layers of greasepaint."

"Marceline Day, though pleasant enough, does not provide the kind of incandescent female lead evident in Mary Astor’s and Dolores Costello’s pairings with John (which were, after all, incandescent in different ways off the set as well), but the unlikely camaraderie between John and Mack Swain and Slim Summerville really works, and is tremendous fun. Rogue was also Conrad Veidt’s first film made outside Germany; Veidt was so honored to be working with John that supposedly on their first meeting he knelt and kissed John’s hands. Having Veidt’s acting style to compare with John’s certainly provides a fascinating contrast, although it could be argued that Veidt is trying to be as repulsive as John is kinetic, each having a grand old time. The film’s splendid visuals can only be properly appreciated in a good print such as we have here – Joe August’s camerawork constantly provides memorable imagery (look out for the flying food hurled by catapults!), and William Cameron Menzies’ sets are almost worth the price of admission alone in their brilliant Gothic eccentricity and atmosphere. August and Menzies also work together in how their depiction of the snow-covered streets and rooftops of medieval Paris convey both fantasy and solidity for dramatic effect (which is especially exploited by John and his two cohorts), giving a specific sense of place and space that belongs entirely to this one film, akin to the results of Menzies’ association with cinematographer Arthur Edeson on Fairbanks’ The Thief of Bagdad three years earlier."

"All this effort and all the quality didn’t work, though – John’s idea of semi-burlesque was too sophisticated for his public, and perhaps the film’s grand scale worked against the idea being clear to 1920s audiences. The Beloved Rogue was an expensive flop on first release."

"The film’s acrobatic humor and grotesquerie overshadowed its romantic elements, confusing cinemagoers. And since audiences didn’t get the joke, it was perceived by many as a stale formulaic gambit; to them it was just another great big John Barrymore film-in-tights. Contemporary reviews were uneven and strange. Mordaunt Hall’s review in the New York Times (14 March 1927) shows how much he missed the point: “There are moments when Mr. Barrymore appears to be the real conception of Villon, and then there are times when he is just a handsome adventurer. Alan Crosland, producer of this film, delights in extravagancies, exaggerations that are presumed to have a popular appeal. This new François Villon ducks the darts from the King’s henchmen and then picks up a snowball and proves that his aim is truer than that of any archer.” Hall also preferred Fritz
Leiber’s Louis XI in the very straight 1920 Fox If I Were King to Veidt’s, describing Veidt as “that competent German character actor” whose portrayal is “perhaps a little too healthy and well-nourished in appearance.” (Hall must be the only critic in history to apply that description to Conrad Veidt.) “Rush,” reviewing the film in Variety (16 March 1927), accidentally grasped some of the concepts John had privately explained to Blanche Oelrichs in his letter, but sniffily dismissed John’s characterization by stereotyping the picture from the start, adroitly adding unintentional insult and injury along the way:"

"“Besides, as a purely romantic offering it has its defects. Much of the glamor is missing in the hero, who is for most of the time rather a disheveled sort of person – a picturesque enough rogue at all times, but not always the height of splendid romance. Briefly, this Don Juan doesn’t always glow in triumph, but often plays the underdog.”"

"The mixed responses dispirited John to the point where he publicly disavowed his own original intent; midway through a screening during its first run at the Strand Theatre in New York, where the audience sat in stolid silence, he called out from the back of a balcony, “Call yourself an actor? My God, what a ham!” Certainly John’s next film, Tempest, a Russian Revolution story, was a very different matter in every respect." – Philip C. Carli

AA: Another of John Barrymore's illustrated classics, another romp in French history metamorphosed beyond recognition into a cavalier, alternative fairy-tale version.

There are many biopics of writers in the cinema. Usually the screenwriters are in trouble because everything that is interesting in a writer's life is in the interior. François Villon's wild life is certainly an exception, and although the account of The Beloved Rogue is highly sanitized, it still conveys a sense of the poet's life in the medieval Paris underworld and his experience of utter poverty.

The Beloved Rogue is an action film which fails to convey the flavour of Villon's poetry. (His French is too difficult for me, but in Finnish there are translations by Aale Tynni, Yrjö Jylhä, and Veijo Meri.) Poetry is missing. Remains an entertaining swashbuckler.

Yesterday in Pordenone we saw Georges Méliès's film epic about Jeanne d'Arc, who was burned at the stake in 1431. The Beloved Rogue starts in the same year, 1431, when the father of François Villon, a French patriot, is also burned at the stake. His widow collects the ashes in her heart casket which becomes a key symbol for François.

As Philip C. Carli states above, the basic concept of The Beloved Rogue derives, without credit, from Justin Huntly McCarthy's well-known novel (1901) and play If I Were a King, also turned into the operetta The Vagabond King; both the play and the operetta have been filmed twice. The common concept to all, deriving from McCarthy, is that of "the two kings" Louis XI and Villon (there is no evidence they ever met). The basis is in the medieval idea of the "day of the revels". Villon, "the king of fools" may rule Paris for one night. ("Elsewhere fools reign all the time".)

Philip C. Carli also states that The Beloved Rogue is John Barrymore's most deliberately athletic film, and his swashbuckling bravado is worthy of comparison with Douglas Fairbanks and Errol Flynn. The element of sadism and masochism is striking in the torture sequence. Villon is stripped, and his oiled, well-built torso, clad only in a skimpy loincloth in Tarzan style, is flogged and burned, and he is locked in a tiny cage which is towed high up to the tower where he can only almost touch Charlotte. As Villon John Barrymore is a ham actor who often overacts.

It is interesting to compare his performance with Conrad Veidt as "the other king", Louis XI. Veidt was capable of subtle and refined performances, but this is one of his most macabre interpretations. Veidt overacts much more than Barrymore, he goes over the top. There is in Veidt's Louis XI a direct affinity with "the procession of monsters and tyrants" analyzed by Siegfried Kracauer in the German post-WWI cinema. Veidt creates a terrifying, deranged portrait of the decadent king.

Donald Sosin's quartet provided us a fine musical experience to the film.

Reportedly there is a tinted and toned print in the Mary Pickford collection. This print was ok, but I would look forward to seeing a colour print one day.

Photos: George Eastman House. Click to enlarge.

Chiny i lyudi (Chekhovski almanakh) / Ranks and People / A Chekhov Almanac

Чины и люди («Чеховский альманах») / [the film was not released in Finland] / CHINY I LIUDI (Chekhovskii Almanakh) (US: An Hour with Tchekhof) [Cariche e uomini / Ranks and People; Almanacco di Cechov / A Chekhov Almanac] (Mezhrabpomfilm – SU 1929). D: Yakov Protazanov, Mikhail Doller (при участии М. Доллера); SC: Oleg Leonidov, Yakov Protazanov, from three stories by Anton Chekhov; DP: Konstantin Kuznetsov; AD: Vladimir Yegorov; ass D: Aleksandr Popov, Leonid Khmara; cost: Nikolai Kilburg; make-up: Sergei Guskov; literary consultant: Yuri Sobolev; stills ph: Mark Magidson; C:
    Анна на шее / Anna kaulassa (short story: 1895) / [Anna on the Neck] / Anna na shee [Anna al collo/Anna Around His Neck]: Mikhail Tarkhanov (Modest Alekseyevitch), Maria Strelkova (Anna Petrovna), Andrei Petrovskii (Governor), Nikolai Sherbakov (Anna’s father), Viktor Stanitsyn (Artinov), Elena Maksimova (servant of Modest Alekseyevitch), Daniil Vvedenskii (carriage superintendent), Varvara Rizenko (neighbour [in scene cut from final montage]), Sergei Sideliov (student), Sofia Levitina (gossip);
    Смерть чиновника / Virkamiehen kuolema (short story: 1883) / [The Death of a Civil Servant] Smert Chinovnika [Death of a Bureaucrat]: Ivan Moskvin (Cherviakov), Vladimir Yershov (General Bryzzhalov);
    Хамелеон / Kameleontti (short story: 1884) / Khameleon [The Chameleon]: Ivan Moskvin (Ochumelov), Daniil Vvedenskii (Yeldyrin, police commissioner), Vladimir Popov (Khriukin); 35 mm, 1855 m., 73' (22 fps); titles, dial: RUS; print source: Gosfilmofond of Russia.
    With e-subtitles in English and Italian, grand piano: Antonio Coppola, at Teatro Verdi (Le Giornate del Cinema Muto), Pordenone, 10 Oct 2014

Natalia Noussinova (GCM Catalogue and website): "The adaptation of Chekhov’s well-known stories, acted by members of the Moscow Art Theatre, was a very natural choice for Mezhrabpomfilm, given that the studio had always had close links with the theatre of Stanislavsky and Nemirovitch-Dantchenko both in terms of aesthetic and also at the level of the team which worked in both places (Nikolai Efros, critic and literary adviser; Vladimir Simov, designer; Aleksandr Sanin, director; and Leonid Leonidov, actor and director; etc.). However, towards the end of 1929 this traditional arrangement suddenly acquired a political aspect, since Moisei Aleinikov, director of Mezhrabpom (the only private studio that had succeeded in surviving within the USSR) was arrested as a “capitalist” and deprived of his voting rights. A group of intellectuals began a campaign in support of him and his studio, and on 9 February 1930 Lunacharsky, Meyerhold, Kachalov, Moskvin, Barnet, Pudovkin, Protazanov, and others signed a letter to the heads of state, in which they said that the Rus and later the Mezhrabpom studios under the leadership of Aleinikov had played a role in the history of the Soviet cinema comparable to that of the Moscow Art Theatre in the history of Russian theatre. In this context, Protazanov’s recently released film was to be the incontestable proof of the affiliation and the closeness of the two cultural phenomena. Happily and by chance this defence was successful, and Aleinikov was freed."

"Protazanov’s film is interesting above all for the participation of two great actors of the Moscow Art Theatre, Mikhail Tarkhanov and Ivan Moskvin. Protazanov had a reputation as a good director for actors, and thus it was that stage actors – among them Kachalov, Bliumental-Tamarina, Varvara Ryzhova, Klimov, Iliinsky, et al. – very much enjoyed working with him, but the idea of working with Moskvin became a positive obsession for the film-maker. According to the memoirs of the writer Oleg Leonidov, Protazanov was constantly nagging the staff of Mezhrabpom, begging them, “Give me a subject for Moskvin”. Finally, in 1927, Leonidov proposed adapting for this purpose Ivan Shmelyov’s novel The Man from the Restaurant (Chelovek iz restorana), reckoning that the role of the waiter would fit Moskvin like a glove. After some hesitation Protazanov accepted the idea, as did Moskvin, though the actor’s unexpected illness resulted in the part being passed to Mikhail Chekhov. Two years later however Moskvin was directed by Protazanov, in this adaptation of stories by Anton Chekhov – the uncle of Mikhail."

"According to Aleinikov cinema critics were initially very sceptical about the project, since the three stories chosen by Protazanov, particularly “Death of a Bureaucrat” and “The Chameleon” – in both of which Moskvin appeared – are above all dependent on very brilliant and witty dialogue. How would it be possible to find an equivalent in silent film? Astonshingly this equivalent was found through theatrical means. The critic of the newspaper Krasnaya gazeta marvelled how successfully the players’ expressive and “theatrical” acting corresponded to the words of Chekhov. Moskvin’s make-up for “The Chameleon” was very pronounced, very strong. Such a make-up would never have been possible in the theatre because, according to Moskvin, he would be incapable of tolerating it for 20 minutes, which would be the minimum time in the theatre; but an actor could bear a make-up like this for the 20 seconds necessary to shoot a film close-up. Protazanov uses many close-ups in this film, providing the possibility to see the facial expression of the actors of the psychological school of the Moscow Art Theatre."

"Stanislavsky’s “expressive detail” is also very important for this film. An enormous samovar in the ballroom scene of “Anna Around His Neck”, symbol of the vulgarity of the bureaucrats and the hypocrisy of a “charity” auction which is nothing but a show of riches, is followed by a little samovar, auctioned to pay the debts of Anna’s father’s miserable family.

It is notable that the usual style of Protazanov’s décors, with vignettes, portraits, shadows on the wall (there are echoes of Hermann / Mozhukhin losing his mind in The Queen of Spades and the shadows of Anna’s drunken father and his two distraught sons). All this is close to the conception of inhabited space created by the founders of the Moscow Art Theatre. This closeness is not by chance: the artists who succeeded in freeing the producer Aleinikov from prison in fact hardly exaggerated in saying that Mezhrabpom was the Moscow Art Theatre of the cinema. But then, Protazanov is a rare director, who succeeded in making a bridge between great theatre, great literature, and cinema, to arrive at comedy." – Natalia Noussinova

AA: Last year I gave a lecture on "The Short Story and the Cinema" with a special focus on the mystery of Anton Chekhov. Ingmar Bergman thought that the stories of Anton Chekhov are particularly fruitful for film adaptation. Indeed there are so many film adaptations, including Chekhov portmanteau films such as Chiny i lyudi / Ranks and People, that they are a remarkable sub-genre. The mystery is that they never reach the subtlety of Chekhov with the single exception of Lady with the Dog by Iosif Kheifits, and that a true Chekhov affinity may rather be found in certain films by masters such as Ozu, Satyajit Ray, and Kiarostami. (Ok, there are some other exceptions, such as the Romance with the Double Bass, the Jiri Trnka animation).

I am always eager to be disproved, but Chiny i lyudi - a quality production, as Chekhov film adaptations always are - is no exception. It is based on three of Anton Chekhov's beloved stories; none of them, however, belonging to his great tales. They are all satires of bureaucracy, they all share qualities of the caricature. The caricature has been exaggerated, and the satire has been rendered more obvious. The trivial, always essential in Chekhov, has been emphasized, but the more profound dimension, even more essential, but rendered via indirection, is missing. The story, always a mere anecdote in Chekhov, remains, but the theme has been simplified. The general feeling of this film for me was un-Chekhovian.

The best episode in my opinion is the last one, The Chameleon. It is a little anecdote full of juicy vignettes. "Dog bites man" is the definition in the schools of journalism of "there is no story" (and the definition of a story is "man bites dog"). When the police decides to intervene, after all, it turns out that the dog's owner is the general. Thus the final verdict is: "there is no case".

What is precious in this movie is the record of the actors of the Moscow Art Theatre. They are not at their best here as Protazanov directs them to over-act. But Ivan Moskvin, the great theatre director and actor, is memorable.

A beautiful print.

The Death of a Civil Servant: Ivan Moskvin (Cherviakov) and Vladimir Yershov (General Bryzzhalov). Photo: Gosfilmofond of Russia. Click to enlarge.

Anna Around the Neck: Maria Strelkova (Anna Petrovna) and Mikhail Tarkhanov (Modest Alekseyevitch). Photo: Gosfilmofond of Russia. Click to enlarge.

Honouring Peter von Bagh in Pordenone: Muisteja / Remembrance

David Robinson arranged a closed dvd screening at a conference room at the fourth floor of Hotel Moderno honouring Peter von Bagh. Of Muisteja / Remembrance (2013) I blogged last year in its first preview screening in Oulu.

When a person dies, photographs of him change. They look different. You notice a hidden sadness you had never paid attention to before.

Muisteja did look and sound so different that I had the feeling that I might have seen last April a pre-release cut that had since been changed. The producer Jouko Aaltonen assured me that there has only been this single version.

I did not now notice a new sadness in Muisteja, though. It was elegic for me in the first place, but now I rather sensed Peter's sense of humour more profoundly. His view of life in his films was evolving into something more gentle while he never lost the bite of his wit.

Potomok Chingis-khana / Storm Over Asia

Ö s t e r r e i c h i s c h e s   F i l m m u s e u m   5 0

Потомок Чингис-хана / Myrsky yli Aasian / POTOMOK CHINGIS-KHANA (Tempeste sull’Asia / Storm over Asia) [Il discendente di Gengis Khan / The Heir to Genghis Khan] (Mezhrabpomfilm – USSR 1928) D: Vsevolod Pudovkin; SC: Osip Brik, based on a novel by Ivan Novokshonov; DP: Anatoli Golovnya, Konstantin Vents; AD: Sergei Kozlovsky, Moisei Aronson; ass D: Aleksandr Ledashchev, L. Bronstein; C: Valery Inkizhinov (Bair), Ivan Inkizhinov (father of Bair), Aleksandr Chistyakov (Russian guerrilla commander), Lev Dedintsev (British Colonel), L. Belinskaia (the Colonel’s wife), Anel Sudakevich (the Colonel’s daughter), Vladimir Tsoppi (fur trader), Boris Barnet (British soldier); 35 mm, 2593 m, 125' (18 fps), titles: RUS; print source: Österreichisches Filmmuseum, Wien.
    With e-subtitles in English and Italian, grand piano: Eunice Martins, percussions: Frank Bockius, at Teatro Verdi (Le Giornate del Cinema Muto) (Canon Revisited) (Österreichisches Filmmuseum 50), Pordenone, 9 Oct 2014

Sergei Kapterev (GCM Catalogue and website): "The film which premiered in the Soviet Union on 10 November 1928, under the title The Heir to Genghis Khan, and was later released in other countries as Storm over Asia – possibly in reference to the German explorer Wilhelm Filchner’s 1924 book Sturm über Asien – became the final installment in Vsevolod Pudovkin’s trilogy about the social revolution’s influence on the growth of individual conscience."

"The first two parts of the trilogy, Mother (1926) and The End of St. Petersburg (1927), dealt with Russian topics; Storm over Asia embraced a more exotic setting, placing the problems of radical revolutionary change into the feudal context of early-1920s Mongolia. This unusual, mysterious environment helped Pudovkin convey even more expressively than before what Gilles Deleuze defined as the filmmaker’s profound ability to disclose “the set of a situation through the consciousness which a character gains of it” and to prolong it “to the point where consciousness can expand and act”."

"The screenplay for Storm over Asia was written by Osip Brik, a prominent figure in early Soviet literary and cinematic circles and the head of the screenplay department at Mezhrabpomfilm, a studio which, among other things, specialized in films about international solidarity – a notion which became one of Storm’s key political motifs. It was inspired by a novel penned by the Siberian writer and former guerrilla commander Ivan Novokshonov, whose death in Stalinist purges postponed its publication until the 1960s (as The Heir to Genghis Khan). Brik pared down Novokshonov’s work, eliminating the love story and several other plot-lines and enhancing the metaphorical charge."

"The narrative of Storm over Asia unfolds in a Mongolia occupied by British troops. Ignoring historical facts – the British never entered the Mongolian steppes – the story of the occupiers’ ploy to consolidate control over the Mongolian people embodied a political fantasy inspired by the Western powers’ colonialist activities in neighboring China, as well as the 1927 severance of Soviet-British diplomatic relations, which temporarily turned Britain into the primary outside enemy of the Soviet state."

"Besides being the conclusion to an ambitious cinematic project showcasing the triumph of Communist ideology, Storm over Asia became the peak of Pudovkin’s search for a synthesis of diverse cinematic means. Eclectically but convincingly, the film combined topical political themes, fascinating ethnographic studies (conducted in an expedition to the USSR’s Buryat-Mongolian autonomous republic, which bordered on Mongolia and shared many of its cultural traits), conventions of genre cinema (primarily, those of the adventure film and the melodrama), romantic tonality, pamphlet-like rhetoric, montage experiments, intellectual metaphors, and allegories."

"Eventually, all elements in the eclectic directorial style of Storm over Asia were subordinated to the construction of a streamlined narrative comparable to the story-oriented style of American cinema; quite pertinently, Brik’s colleague Sergei Yermolinskii noted in 1928 that the film’s main protagonist Bair “crushed the enemies and their lair with the ease of a Russian heroic poem or … the hero of an American detective film”."

"One of Storm’s most remarkable features was the cinematography by Anatoly Golovnya, a major contributor to the evolvement of Pudovkin’s directorial style. In Golovnya’s words, his goal was “to render the spirit of Mongolia through its landscapes; and the character of its people, through the close-ups of their faces”. The film’s textured Mongol faces – most prominently the face of Bair, played by Valery Inkizhinov, a Buryat (northern Mongol) disciple of Vsevolod Meyerhold and Lev Kuleshov and a sophisticated proponent of the theory of “biomechanics”; and the face of Bair’s father, played by the actor’s real-life father Ivan – are as striking as Mongolia’s primordial scenery and ancient religious rituals."

"In his blending of an ethnographic documentary style and visual metaphors, Golovnya demonstrated a pictorial gamut which went beyond the images of Mongolia or the Revolution: the shot of the silver fox fur might allude to 17th-century Dutch still lifes; and the shot of a bandaged Bair, to the foreshortened composition of Andrea Mantegna’s Dead Christ. In both cases, Golovnya was evidently assisted by the expertise of Sergei Kozlovsky, the art director of all three films in Pudovkin’s trilogy."

"A classic Mezhrabpom mix of politics and entertainment, and a pinnacle of the “heroic” stage in the development of Soviet cinema, Storm over Asia presents powerful images of revolutionary transformation, as well as a compelling condensation of unfamiliar and challenging material into a multifaceted picture of a little-known society at the juncture of dramatically different historical periods. The film is also a virtuoso narrative and stylistic piece, executed by Pudovkin and his colleagues with gusto and the full command of their own and other filmmakers’ achievements. As such, it remains one of the most enduring contributions to the concluding stage of cinema’s silent era." Sergei Kapterev

AA: The version of Storm Over Asia I'm familiar with is the 1949 sonorized re-release version with a score by Nikolai Kryukov. That version is the only one we have in Helsinki. I have nothing against the music of the talented Kryukov but otherwise that version is a crude Stalin-era job.

Thus it is a beautiful revelation for me to see the original silent version of Storm Over Asia, a masterpiece from the heroic age of Soviet cinema. Memorable images include: - the fur bazaar - the sacred amulet - the chase in the snow - the ultra long shots of the taiga and the mountains - the war of the partisans in the mountains - the breastfeeding partisan woman - the majestic rivers - the Buddhist monastery - the giant horns - the rapturous sacred dances - the slow parallel montage of Bair taken to be executed in the mountains / and the ancient text being deciphered, "revealing" Bair to be the heir to Chingiz Khan - the surgical emergency procedure to revive Bair - the mighty ceremony to crown Bair as the puppet ruler of the country - Bait taking to the sword - the climactic epic montage of the storm over Asia, the rebel cavalry charging like an irresistible wind, blowing down the old world of imperialism.

We know the irony of history. The socialist liberation led to another form of imperialism. The satire is at times heavy, the caricature obvious in a tired way. Yet this is a grand poetic vision of a hope for the future, the people of Mongolia breaking their chains, no longer being fooled and exploited.

The visual quality is often brilliant, but at times not perfect, for instance in the beginning. But it is easy to deduce how great the entire film must have looked.

Collection Austrian Film Museum

L. Belinskaya (the Commandant's wife) and Valeri Inkizhinov (Bair). Collection Austrian Film Museum

Films in Colour by Georges Méliès (2013 La Cinémathèque française restorations in 4K)

Le merveilleux éventail vivant (1904). Photo: La Cinémathèque française. Click to enlarge.

Film a colori di Georges Méliès
Films in Colour by Georges Méliès
A programme of rare hand-painted films digitally restored in 4K from original hand-painted prints by the Cinémathèque française in 2013.
    Bonimenteur: David Robinson (reading the original boniments for Rip Van Winkle and Jeanne d'Arc), e-subtitles in Italian, grand piano: John Sweeney at Teatro Verdi (Le Giornate del Cinema Muto), Pordenone, 9 Oct 2014
    The total duration of the 4 Georges Méliès films was 43 min
    The order of the show was changed from the printed programme 1-4-3-2. Below the films are in the screening order.

Laurent Mannoni (GCM Catalogue and website): "Why does the marvellous, strange universe created by Méliès still deserve to be visited and revisited? Why does Méliès still fascinate us as much as ever, in this era of digital special effects, CGI monsters and robots, and other creatures in performance capture?"

"Méliès discovered the cinematograph in 1895-96, just like the intrepid adventurers of A Trip to the Moon, who did not hesitate to brave the army of Selenites to invade a highly agitated terra incognita. Almost immediately he used the camera of Marey and Lumière as a machine for phantoms, an animist fantascope from which, for several years, burst an unceasing ballet of burlesques and diabolical visions worthy of Bosch, the magic lantern, and féerie stage extravaganzas."

"What makes Méliès so fascinating, in the eyes of today’s spectator as well as the historian, is that he is, in himself, a veritable encyclopaedia of the archaeology of cinema and the performing arts. Tracing Méliès’ iconography back to its origins, we quickly understand that this brilliant artist, the most inventive director and illusionist working at the dawn of cinema, was the heir to several centuries of magic traditions, phantasmagorical practices, and technical, optical, theatrical, and féerie extravaganza secrets, handed down from miracle workers to necromancers, from set designers to magic lantern operators, from technicians to conjurors."

"So it is that, when you see a Georges Méliès film projected on a screen today, you have the good fortune of making a fantastic, unique journey back to the France of Napoleon III and the end of the 19th century. Méliès was decidedly not a man of this so-called “modern” 20th century. He was the heir to Robert-Houdin, the greatest magician of the Second Empire; he was the living reflection of the extraordinary féerie extravaganzas at the Théâtre du Châtelet; he was the disciple of Robertson’s phantasmagoria; and finally, he was the one who would best manage to use the illusionistic possibilities of the chronophotographic camera, to the great displeasure of the rigorist Marey."

"Nothing remains of the incredible féerie extravaganzas staged throughout the era of the Second Empire, apart from a few rare photographs and booklets, which cannot hope to restore to us the beauty of this type of spectacle, and the virtuosity of the directors, set designers, and special effects men who helped to create them. With its pyrotechnics, optical illusions, light projections, monumental sets, colourful costumes, songs and dances, the féerie enchanted and captivated its audiences."

"Nothing remains of the phantasmagoria shows of Robertson, Philipsthal, or Comte, except for a few fragile glass plates. Nor does anything remain, aside from a few photos and precious trick objects, of the astounding quality and intelligence of Robert-Houdin’s magic shows, which deceived his public with elegance and refinement."

"And yet… If one wants to relive a féerie stage extravaganza, a phantasmagoria, white and black magic, illusionism; if one wants to go back to Hell, cross the Milky Way on horseback, explore the North or South Pole in a balloon, or chase Selenites – all one needs to do is to watch a Méliès film."

"It is important to stress Méliès’ cultural roots, because today’s spectator, if not familiar with this past, quite simply risks not understanding the richness and interest of this universe, which is absolutely unique in the history of the art of cinema."

"It is also essential to see the films of Méliès over and over again, and under the best conditions. Forget your DVDs – even if they are quite useful and often well thought-out – and relive art trompeur on the big screen, with the original music and patter, when they exist. For, indeed, we must repeat: the cinema of the years 1890-1900 was a “living spectacle”, with barkers at the entrance, and a pianist or orchestra, sound-effects men, and bonimenteurs or “lecturers” inside the auditorium. “Noise machines” were even built to accompany these films, producing thunderclaps, wind, lightning, rain, gunshots, etc."

"Almost all of Méliès’ films contained sound effects, which are rarely resuscitated today. When, in  1905, Méliès triumphantly projected two films on the stage of the Châtelet, during the féerie extravaganza Les Quat’ Cents Coups du diable, it is obvious that the show took on a completely different scope from today, since a full orchestra and sound-effects men were in the orchestra pit, while actors were performing on stage. On several occasions, and always felicitously, Méliès would revive this mixed-media experiment, half-cinematograph, half-theatre: Le Raid Paris–Monte-Carlo en automobile, the “great fantastic race funambulesque” that made fun of the automobile adventures of the King of the Belgians, Leopold II, was shown more than 300 times in 1905 at the Folies-Bergère."

"For want of reproducing Méliès’ stage féeries, magic, and cinematograph shows at the Châtelet – which should be done someday, just as one should also try to restore to life the cinematographic cadavre exquis that Henri Langlois and Georges Franju conceived in 1937 for  the “Gala des Fantômes” – the Cinémathèque française, which has always endeavoured to collect and protect the work of the “Magician of Montreuil”, has restored “in digital” (as we say nowadays) several rare films, entirely hand-painted."

"These aniline dyes, applied delicately on to the film – a painstaking task, frame by frame, on a minuscule surface, with sometimes astonishing precision – also constitute one of the major characteristics of a Méliès show. By adopting the bright colours of magic lantern plates, Méliès first gave additional life to the grey images of the cinematograph that had so dispirited Maxim Gorky in 1896. But he went even further, by literally creating a cinematographic language of colour: some of his special effects were not truly effective unless the film was painted with a brush. Obviously, his pyrotechnical tricks, gushes of smoke, lightning bolts, and starry-night effects on moving panoramic backcloths take on a completely different dimension in colour."

"For a long time, film archives were completely unequipped to save these fragile hand-painted incunabula. To preserve them from destruction, they were recopied in black & white, with disastrous results. The spread of colour cinema finally allowed for duplication, with techniques increasingly improved over time, up to today’s digital technology, which permits miracles (as well as regrettable aberrations). The four films presented here come from the collections of Madeleine Malthête-Méliès and Marie-Hélène Léhéressey-Méliès (who provided the original print of Rip Van Winkle), who have been extremely generous in depositing their nitrate films at the Cinémathèque française. They are all hand-painted. Savour these fireworks from a bygone, but ever so captivating, era!" – Laurent Mannoni

The restoration of these films has been made possible thanks to a CNC grant for the digitization of cultural heritage.

La Légende de Rip Van Winkle and Jeanne d’Arc were accompanied by the original live commentary (boniment) as performed at their earliest public screenings. The texts are preserved in the Méliès Archives, now in the collections of the Cinémathèque française. For the Giornate performances the original texts were translated into English (with Italian subtitles).

LE MERVEILLEUX ÉVENTAIL VIVANT (The Wonderful Living Fan) (Georges Méliès, Star Film - FR 1904) D: Georges Méliès; orig. l: 90 m.; 35 mm, 87 m, 5' (16 fps); no titles; print source: La Cinémathèque française, Paris.
    AA: Féerie. The giant magic fan of whose sections ten beautiful women come alive, their costumes metamorphosing. Slightly low contrast but bright. Digital look, but gratifying.

Jeanne d'Arc (1900). Photo: La Cinémathèque française. Click to enlarge.

JEANNE D’ARC (Joan of Arc) (Georges Méliès, Star Film - FR 1900) D: Georges Méliès; orig. l: 250 m; 35 mm, 210 m, 11' (16 fps); print source: La Cinémathèque française, Paris.
    AA: A historical epic in tableaux. Méliès is at the beginning of the lavish tradition of Jeanne d'Arc films, in contrast to the Dreyer-Bresson approach. Domrémy, the vision, denouncing the captain, the court of the King, Renault de Chartres, the coronation at Reims, the battle at Compègne, the siege of the fortress, Jeanne captured, the vision of the village, the interrogation, the burning at the stake. The signature bright red highlight of the hand-coloured films of Georges Méliès appears at the burning. The apotheosis: the ascent into heaven. - David Robinson was inspired as the bonimenteur in English. - The hand-colouring of the source material had been charmingly rendered in the restoration.

La Légende de Rip Van Winkle (1905). Photo: La Cinémathèque française. Click to enlarge.

LA LÉGENDE DE RIP VAN WINKLE (Rip’s Dream) (Georges Méliès, Star Film - FR 1905) D: Georges Méliès; orig. l: 405 m; 35 mm, 278 m, 15' (16 fps); print source: La Cinémathèque française, Paris.
    Based on the short story by Washington Irving (1819).

    AA: Fiction, féerie. Another early, founding film adaptation of a beloved tale. Rip the village fool with a funny walks finds a hollow in the mountain in search of Captain Hudson's treasure. "Le rêve de Rip". In the fairy-tale grotto Rip meets the ghosts of Captain Hudson's crew and hacks up a snake which metamorphoses into gnomes. [My notes are confused and incomplete about this title.]. The colour is beautiful, but there is a slightly airless digital touch.

Le Raid Paris - Monte-Carlo en automobile (1905). Photo: La Cinémathèque française. Click to enlarge.

LE RAID PARIS – MONTE-CARLO EN AUTOMOBILE (An Adventurous Automobile Trip) (Georges Méliès, Star Film - FR 1905) D: Georges Méliès; SC: Victor de Cottens; C: Harry Fragson, Victor Maurel (rival motorists), Félix Galipaud, Séverin [Caffera], Jane Yvon (well-wishers at the Opéra), Antonich (giant), Little Pich (dwarf); orig. l: 200 m; 35 mm, 172 m, 9' (16 fps); no titles; print source: La Cinémathèque française, Paris. Reconstructed from two hand-painted prints.
    The film was commissioned by the brothers Isola and the writer Victor de Cottens for the Folies-Bergère revue. It appears to have been a great success, and was exclusive to the theatre until the end of the run of the revue, after which it was made available to film exhibitors. It was evidently through the connection with de Cottens and the Folies that major stars of the stage agreed to take part, even if only for walk-ons, and presumably the surprise of recognizing current favourites was one of the attractions of the theatre presentation.
    AA: Fiction, comedy. Another first maybe? The first auto demolition movie? At least in Driven! The Desmet Automobile Show, curated by Elif Rongen-Kaynakçi, screened in Pordenone a few days ago, the earliest film was from the next year, from 1906. The chauffeur is clad in furs, and Little Tich (or an imitator) with his ultra long shoes appears in the beginning. The victims of the catastrophic journey involve policemen, pumps, mailmen, The Alps, Dijon, the customs officer with a pot belly, and vegetable stands. The magic car belongs to the gravity-defying vehicles of Méliès. The colour red appears in explosions, but also the car itself is bright red.

Paul Nadar films from 1896-1898 (from la Cinémathèque française, including five films deposited in 2011, restored in 4K in 2013)

[Mademoiselle Zambelli de l'Opéra] (1898). Photo: La Cinémathèque française. Click to enlarge.

Cinema delle origini / Early Cinema
P a u l  N a d a r
Grand piano: John Sweeney at Teatro Verdi (Le Giornate del Cinema Muto), Pordenone, 9 Oct 2014
    The total duration of the 11 Paul Nadar films was 18 min.

Céline Ruivo, Laurent Mannoni (GCM Catalogue and website): "The reputation of Paul Nadar (1856-1939), as photographer and film-maker, is inevitably overshadowed by that of his legendary father, Félix Nadar (1820-1910). Born Gaspard Félix Tournachon, the elder Nadar evolved his pseudonym through the tortuous wordplay of “collegian gothic” student slang, and had already adopted it when he began his career as writer and caricaturist for freethinking journals. In 1853, faced with the repressive censorship of the Second Empire of Napoleon III, he abandoned journalism to join his brother Adrien in a photographic studio, where they used the revolutionary new collodion glass negative process. At the same time he allied himself to the “Bohemian” counter-culture, defined by Henri Murger’s Scènes de la vie de Bohème, much later the source of Puccini’s opera. Nadar’s portraits were innovative in expressing, in his own word, the “psychology” of his subjects, who included his Bohemian friends and many of the great French celebrities of the era, among them Baudelaire, Delacroix, Verne, Courbet, and Georges Sand. He also established the concept of the artist photographer, able to charge fees of 30 francs, when the price for a conventional studio sitting ranged from two to five francs. Having split with his brother in 1860, however, Nadar was bankrupted by the Franco-Prussian War and the Commune, but in 1873 set up a new studio in Rue d’Anjou."

"Here, in 1884, he was joined by his 28-year-old son Paul-Armand Tournachon, who now himself adopted the name Nadar. In 1886-87 Paul was appointed artistic director and manager, and began to experiment with new approaches to the styles and topics of the studio’s work. The work of the elder Nadar was marked by its rigueur inspirée, achieving intimacy with the subjects by using solid backgrounds and dramatic chiaroscuro lighting on the faces of the sitters, who wore their everyday clothes, even heavy coats draped over their bodies and masses of fabric falling over their hands. Though the elder Nadar had often adopted more conventional “commercial” styles to pay the rent, the young Paul now converted the studio’s style to a fantaisie démocratique (in the phrase of Michel Poivert), through the development of more theatrical mise-en-scène and settings. Celebrities of the Belle Époque, like Cléo de Mérode and Sarah Bernhardt, were photographed by Paul Nadar in their stage costumes. Portraits of opera stars also represented a very good source of income, and were published in Paul’s magazine Paris-Photographe. The pictures also focused on the ornamental costumes and the painted backgrounds which Paul used, along with a refined sense of how to use lighting and screens. He favoured three types of portrait shot: bust, mid-thigh, and full-length. He also adopted the techniques of “retouching” demonstrated by the German photographer Franz Hampfstängl at the Paris Exposition Universelle of 1855, involving the application of varnish to the glass plate in order to erase the imperfections, stains, and wrinkles, and to soften the skin tones."

"Paul Nadar was much more than an innovative commercial photographer, however. His career demonstrates his strong interest in the history and new technologies of photography and science. In 1886 the Nadars, father and son, set up the first photographic interview with the scientist Michel-Eugène Chevreul, for the Journal Illustré, attempting to synchronize photographs with a sound recording made with an Ader phonograph. Though the sound equipment did not work, Paul Nadar devised a special camera for the occasion, with a very fast Thury & Amey shutter set at 1/133 seconds, to capture instantaneous photographs."

"Paul Nadar’s growing interest in moving images was evident from his publication in Paris-Photographe, in 1891, of articles by Georges Demenÿ (“La Photographie de la parole”) and Étienne-Jules Marey (“L’Analyse des mouvements par la photographie”, which described the technique of chronophotography). As the Eastman representative in France and the French colonies, Nadar was evidently in close contact with these and the other pioneers of motion pictures. On 24 June 1896, together with the photographic chemist Eugène Defez, he registered an optimistic patent for a motion picture camera/projector that would use unperforated 35 mm film. The specifications suggest that maximum ingenuity was employed to avoid duplicating features of existing patents. The film movement was effected by small rollers around the edges of a large drum, while the shutter took the form of a ribbon revolving between two rollers, and pierced with two equidistant windows which admitted the projection beam when they coincided, twice in every complete revolution. Small teeth left indentations on the edge of the film after the photography or projection of the images. The apparatus was demonstrated to the management of the Musée Grévin on 12 May 1897, with the prospect that Nadar might succeed Émile Reynaud and his Théâtre Optique. The committee were unimpressed, however: “the noise of the mechanism makes the machine absolutely impracticable,” they reported."

"Even so, Nadar made a few films with this first camera: several unperforated 35 mm negatives with traces of points on the edge are preserved in the Cinémathèque française. The camera was evidently
dogged by instability and unreliable focus, while the images were of a different aspect ratio from those of Lumière or Edison. Nadar next built a camera/projector using 58mm film. No films made with this have survived, though the camera itself is again preserved by the Cinémathèque française (both cameras were purchased from Nadar’s widow in 1950). Finally, however, Nadar settled for a commercial apparatus using standard Edison-format 35 mm film, and it was with this that most of the surviving films included in this programme were shot."

"The Cinémathèque française recently discovered several hitherto unknown and unique films by Paul Nadar, among the deposit of numerous early films by the collector Olivier Auboin-Vermorel. Two
of them are dedicated to dances with Les Soeurs Rappo, while another shows the actresses Mellot and Reyé in a scene from the play Les Deux Gosses, filmed in Paul Nadar’s studio, using a painted background probably inspired by the set of the original stage production at the Théâtre de l’Ambigu-Comique. Paul Nadar also made his own study of movement, using himself as the subject, practicing fencing. Finally, this montage of Nadar contains a sort of fictional film, where Paul pretends to be sitting on the terrace of a café reading a newspaper, though again the scene is shot entirely in his studio. A few other films, edited together by Henri Langlois, show different Parisian scenes, demonstrating that Paul Nadar could also be an outdoor film-maker. Another shows the great prima ballerina of the Opéra de Paris, Carlotta Zambelli." – Céline Ruivo, Laurent Mannoni

Sources: Anne Alligoridès, “Photographies d’artistes lyriques”, in Nadar l’oeil lyrique, exhibition catalogue, Paris, 1992; Michèle Auer, Paul Nadar: Le premier interview photographique: Chevreul – Félix Nadar – Paul Nadar, 1999; Anne-Marie Bernard, Le monde de Proust vu par Paul Nadar, 1999; Michel Poivert, Nadar, la norme et le caprice, exhibition organized by Le Jeu de Paume in Château de Tours, 2010; Elizabeth Anne McCauley, “Nadar and the Selling of Bohemia”, in Industrial Madness, Commercial Photography in Paris, 1848-1871, Yale University Press, 1994.

The films are in long shot, long take, and single shot - except where otherwise noted.

[DANSES SLAVES] (Nadar - FR, ca 1896) D, DP: Paul Nadar; C: Les Soeurs Rappo; 35 mm (Edison perforations), 25 m, 2' (14 fps); print source: La Cinémathèque française, Collection Auboin-Vermorel.
    AA: Non-fiction, a recorded performance. An ultra rapid dance scene photographed against a black background. Focus not perfect, visual quality fair.

[DANSES RUSSES] (Nadar - FR, ca 1896) D, DP: Paul Nadar; C: Les Soeurs Rappo; 35 mm (unperforated), 25 m, 2' (14 fps); print source: La Cinémathèque française, Collection Auboin-Vermorel. “Les Incomparable Soeurs Rappo”, as they proudly announce themselves with a banner, have left little traceable mark in the history of dance or music hall, though at the time the sisters were filmed by Nadar in his studio they were appearing at the Alhambra music hall in Paris.
    AA: Non-fiction, a recorded performance. Like the previous one, a dance scene against a black background. A Cossack dance with knives, simulating a fight. Visual quality fair.

LES DEUX GOSSES (Nadar - FR 1896) D, DP: Paul Nadar; 35 mm (unperforated), 25 m, 2' (14 fps); C: Marthe Mellot, Hélène Reyé; print source: La Cinémathèque française, Collection Auboin-Vermorel. Pierre de Courcelle’s adaptation of his own 1880 novel Les Deux Gosses, produced at the Ambigu-Comique, was a major theatrical success of 1896. In later years it was to become one of the most filmed of all French literary works, with screen adaptations in 1912, 1914 (Capellani), 1923 (Maurice Tourneur), 1924 (Louis Mercanton), 1936, and 1950.
    AA: A recorded performance. A glimpse of a theatre scene with Marthe Mellot and Hélène Reyé against a painted backdrop. Visual quality fair.

[PAUL NADAR PRATIQUANT L’ESCRIME] (Nadar - FR, ca 1896) D: Paul Nadar; DP: ?; 35 mm (Edison perforations), 8 m, 30'' (14 fps); print source: La Cinémathèque française, Collection
Auboin-Vermorel.
    AA: Self-portrait at the studio. Paul Nadar fencing against a black background. Visual quality fair.

[PAUL NADAR LISANT L’ÉCHO DE PARIS À LA TERRASSE D’UN CAFÉ] (Nadar - FR, 1896) D: Paul Nadar; DP: ?; 35 mm (Edison perforations), 8 m, 30'' (14 fps); print source: Cinémathèque française, Collection Auboin-Vermorel.
     AA: Self-portrait at the studio. Paul Nadar smokes, reads the newspaper and folds it into his pocket at the café set at his studio. Medium shot. Visual quality ok.

[MADEMOISELLE ZAMBELLI DE L’OPÉRA] (Nadar - FR ca 1898) D, DP: Paul Nadar; 35 mm (Edison perforations), 19 m, 1' (16 fps), col. (tinted orange); print source: La Cinémathèque française. The great prima ballerina of the Opéra de Paris, Carlotta Zambelli.
    AA: A recorded performance. A dance number by the prima ballerina Carlotta Zambelli. Against a black background, tinted orange. Visual quality fair.

[DANSE DU PAPILLON] (Nadar - FR ca 1896) D, DP: Paul Nadar; 35 mm (from safety dupe negative), 20 m., 1' (16 fps); print source: La Cinémathèque française. Henri Langlois labelled this film as “Bob Walter playing Loïe Fuller”.
    AA: A recorded performance. Another sample of the popular serpentine dance subgenre. This one is wonderful, truly great. In black and white, but the visual quality is ok.

[SCÈNE DE RÊVE] (Nadar - FR ca 1896) D, DP: Paul Nadar; 35 mm (from safety dupe negative), 20 m., 1' (16 fps); print source: La Cinémathèque française. Two unidentified actresses on stage; one of them plays a male character dressed in a 16th-century costume, who is delighted by the dance of a ballerina. This title was originally attributed to the film by Henri Langlois.
    AA: A recorded performance. A ballet for two women. Charming. Visual quality fair.

[Rue Royale] (1896). Photo: La Cinémathèque française. Click to enlarge.

[RUE ROYALE] (Nadar - FR, ca 1896) D, DP: Paul Nadar; 35 mm (Edison perforations), 18 m, 1' (16 fps); print source: Cinémathèque française, Collection Auboin-Vermorel. View of the Rue Royale.
    AA: Non-fiction, city view. Heavy traffic, screened too fast. Visual quality mediocre.

[Place de la Concorde] (1896). Photo: La Cinémathèque française. Click to enlarge.

[PLACE DE LA CONCORDE] (Nadar - FR, ca 1896) D, DP: Paul Nadar; 35 mm (Edison perforations), 17 m, 1' (16 fps); print source: La Cinémathèque française. View of the Place de la Concorde.
    AA: Non-fiction, city view. From a source quite worn with marks of imminent decay. Screened quite fast.

[FRAGMENTS DE FILMS SUR PAPIER] (Nadar - FR, ca 1896-1898) D, DP: Paul Nadar; DCP (from paper prints), ca 1' (transferred at 16 fps); print source: La Cinémathèque française.
    AA: Glimpses from paper prints of Paul Nadar films fascinating to compare with the ones we had just seen. Some are the same, some quite different versions of the same subjects.

AA: An invaluable treasure of early cinema. The more I see of these precious very first films, the more profound and fundamental they all seem. Like the Lumière brothers, Paul Nadar came from a family of the highest distinction and culture in the art of photography. He had an innate sense of composition but also of the value and the dignity of his subjects. He projects his kind of a joy of life via these semi-experimental films. The city views are vivid. He is confident in photographing stars of the performing arts.

The live pianist John Sweeney played really well, finding an individual approach for each film.

There were three units in this programme: 1) The five films newly restored on 4K, printed on 35 mm 2) The five films compiled by Henri Langlois on 35 mm, and 3) The DCP with fragments of paper prints.

Restored beautifully by La Cinémathèque française from very difficult sources - from non-standard aspect ratios, from sources without perforations, and from sources with Edison perforations.

Edwardian Entertainment (compilation programme curated by Vanessa Toulmin and Bryony Dixon)

Little Tich

Intrattenimento edoardiano / Edwardian Entertainment
    Grand piano: Stephen Horne, [with Frank Bockius at percussions?], at Teatro Verdi (Le Giornate del Cinema Muto), Pordenone, 9 Oct 2014

Vanessa Toulmin, Bryony Dixon (GCM catalog and website): "100 years ago, more or less, the film business became the cinema industry and the dominant form of mass entertainment before the arrival of television. Yet in the preceding two decades film had a more symbiotic relationship with other entertainment forms, and was in a unique position to record them."

"In Britain during these years film was itself a music hall act, on the bill of variety programmes of theatres as well as being a major attraction at fairgrounds up and down the land. With the propensity of early film-makers to film spectacle and celebrity one might expect considerable evidence of the myriad of Edwardian entertainments to have survived on film. This selection from the BFI National Archive shows traces of some of them. What doesn’t survive (with one small exception) are films of live performances inside music hall theatres – so there is no record of Marie Lloyd singing one of her suggestive songs, or of Dan Leno’s pantomime patter. What we do have however are the extraordinary films of Mitchell & Kenyon, capturing all aspects of street life in the first decade of the 1900s, overshadowing the handful of odd, fragmentary survivors from other pioneers and producing companies that also record, deliberately or incidentally, this vibrant entertainment scene."

"The range of entertainments on offer was a cornucopia of delights, including music hall and variety performers, fairs and circus shows, fairground rides, and seaside entertainment, pleasure gardens and hippodromes, pyrotechnic shows and fireworks, pageants, minstrels, pierrots and harlequinades; beach photographers, barrel jumpers, and comic sketches based on strip cartoons… All of these are captured in the films in this programme. Edwardian Britons also spent much of their leisure time in the streets, with outdoor shows, carnivals, and pageants a regular occurrence. Parades and processions offered a different type of leisure activity, a mixture of a local carnival parade with appearances by specialty and musical hall acts, interspersed with elaborate trade floats and community activities."

"The early 1900s saw the rise of leisure time, resulting in a greater diversity of places and venues solely concerned with purveying entertainment for the masses. Increased recreation time through reduced working hours and the extension of consecutive holidays stimulated an organized leisure industry aimed at the exploitation of this new mass market. A variety of entertainment industries competed for the working-class market, with local “wakes” fairs and agricultural shows, which in mid-Victorian times had primarily centred on trading and economic activities, but in the early 20th century were transformed into high-tech carnivals of fun with the latest modern attractions."

"The music hall and variety theatre, although originally embracing the cinematograph, became increasingly threatened by the growing popularity of the cinema as the first decade of the century progressed. By the start of the First World War, cinema had overtaken the music hall as the most popular mass-entertainment medium; Manchester alone had 78 cinemas. But in that first period of film’s history, cinema existed as part of an astonishing range of amusements, which demonstrates that cultural bricolage is not a solely modern phenomenon. The Edwardian era was a golden age for the development of popular entertainments such as fairgrounds, circuses, and theatres, all of which adapted and incorporated the latest novelties and attractions to capture the attention of an ever-receptive audience. G.J. Goodrick, writing in his book Tableaux Vivants and Living Waxworks (1895), stated: “There always are, always have been, always will be, people who are willing to be ‘entertained’, i.e., amused, by a ‘show’ of some kind. Not only willing are they, but eager for such amusement. And they will travel miles and part from their money with no other object than to view.”"

"The wonder of this film material is that perhaps for the first time it allows us to see both the spectators and the entertainments that they were relishing."

"This programme commemorates the 20th anniversary of the University of Sheffield’s National Fairground Archive along with the 10th anniversary of the release to the general public of the Mitchell & Kenyon Collection, thanks to a three-year partnership (2001-2004) between the NFA and the BFI. The greater part of the collection had its international premiere in a series of four programmes at the Giornate del Cinema Muto between 2001 and 2004. Since then the collection has had wide exposure, and is now available online on the BFI Player. The Mitchell & Kenyon Collection has been described as filmic time travel to a lost world – the world before the shadow of
the First World War fell across British society along with the rest of Europe." – Vanessa Toulmin, Bryony Dixon

All films except the very first one in the programme are from the BFI National Archive, London. None of the prints have intertitles.

The order was changed in the screening from the printed programme to the following. Little Tich was screened last.

GRAND DISPLAY OF BROCK’S FIREWORKS AT THE CRYSTAL PALACE (Festa pirotecnica nel cielo di Londra) (Charles Urban Trading Company – GB 1904) D: ?; 35 mm, 269 ft, 4'29" (16 fps), col. (tinting & hand-colouring); main title: ITA; print source: Museo Nazionale del Cinema, Torino. Brock’s, the fireworks manufacturers, celebrated their 40th anniversary with this grand display at London’s Crystal Palace. The pyrotechnic display ends with a portrait in fire of King Edward VII and Queen Alexandra that Brock’s had developed for the Coronation of 1902, which inaugurated the Edwardian era. – Bryony Dixon
    AA: Splendid hand-colouring in the Edwardian fireworks.

Famous music halls

ENTRÉE DU CINÉMATOGRAPHE (Lumière – FR 1896) D: ?; DP: Charles Moisson; 35 mm, 40 ft, 40" (16 fps). Exterior of the Empire Leicester Square, London’s most famous music hall, showing the poster for the Lumière cinématographe show. – Bryony Dixon
    AA: A beautiful view of life, the urban bustle at Leicester Square. Fine visual quality.

THE CROWD ENTERING ST. GEORGE’S HALL, BRADFORD (Mitchell & Kenyon – GB 1901) D: ?; 35 mm, 35 ft, 35" (16 fps); Mitchell & Kenyon n. 637. Scenes shot outside the theatre on 23 February 1901 by A.D. Thomas as the crowd waits for the afternoon show of local views and Boer War subjects. This film was screened that evening, four hours later. Vanessa Toulmin
    AA: Lively faces in the crowd - Mitchell & Kenyon caught the individuals, including children. They caught the life of the crowd. It is not a mass, not even "a lonely crowd". Fine visual quality.

THE COLLAPSING BRIDGE (Gibbons Bio-tableaux? – GB 1902) D: ?; 35 mm, 87 ft, 1'27" (16 fps). The only example of a theatrical show taken inside a theatre building, this records a water spectacular at a Hippodrome theatre, featuring Hengler’s diving horses. The show is “The Bandits”, which we know was performed at the London Hippodrome, but Walter Gibbons’ press story about filming at the theatre concerns another production. Of all the films here, this gives us the closest sense of being in the presence of Edwardian theatre at its most extravagant. – Bryony Dixon
    AA: A straight record of the performance, priceless. The scene of horses at waterfalls is astounding. Visual quality: low definition, could this be from a paper print?

Numeri comici / Acts

COMIC COSTUME RACE (Paul’s Animatograph Works – GB 1896) D: ?; 35 mm, 43 ft, 43" (16 fps). This sports day took place every year at Herne Hill, in south London, to raise money for musical hall charities. All the celebrities attended, including the famous comedian Dan Leno, who was later filmed at the event by A.D. Thomas of Mitchell & Kenyon fame, but that film unfortunately doesn’t survive. R.W. Paul’s film shows a race in fancy dress. This film was included in a programme that Paul showed to Queen Victoria at Windsor Castle on 23 November 1896. Bryony Dixon
    AA: Fun record of the race in fancy dress. Shot in exteriors. A duped visual quality.

HERBERT CAMPBELL AS LITTLE BOBBY. (British Mutoscope & Biograph Company – GB 1899) D: ?; 35 mm, 48 ft, 48" (16 fps). Herbert Campbell was the professional partner of Dan Leno, and performed with him in a series of Drury Lane pantomimes from 1888 until Leno’s death in 1904. Here he plays the character of “Little Bobby” in Cinderella. The film is operating on several levels: as a news item, as an advertisement for the pantomime, and as a “facial” comedy. – Bryony Dixon
    AA: A comic scene: Little Bobby is a big gourmand who devours food and downs a huge mug of beer in one gulp. In medium shot.

WILL EVANS THE MUSICAL ECCENTRIC (Warwick Trading Company – GB 1899) D: ?; 35 mm, 67 ft, 1'07" (16 fps). The famous music hall performer, on an open-air stage, does his act, involving tumbling while singing and playing a mandolin. – Bryony Dixon
    AA: A record of an acrobatic performance. Visual quality: duped from a challenging source.

// here the order of the films was changed, and I had difficulty with my notes //

KITTY MAHONE (British Mutoscope & Biograph Company – GB 1900) D: ?; 35 mm, 118 ft, 1'57" (16 fps). Lil Hawthorne, the popular comedienne and singer, performs her signature song “Kitty Mahone”. Lil was American, but spent most of her professional life on the music hall stage in Britain, and is most famous now as the woman who reported the notorious murderer Dr. Crippen to the police. – Bryony Dixon
    AA: If my notes are correct, this was a sonorized version of a straight stage performance record. The song is barely audible. 

ALGIE’S CIRCUS IN CARLISLE (Mitchell & Kenyon – GB 1901) D: ?; 35 mm, 31 ft + 32 ft [63 ft], 1'03" (16 fps); Mitchell & Kenyon n. 675, 677. Algie’s Circus parade, captured in December 1901 in Carlisle, where it was appearing with a mixed bill of horse acts, a dog and monkey circus, sleight-of-hand “manipulation”, and a cinematograph in a semi-permanent corrugated-iron building owned by Albert Comley, the proprietor of the show. Vanessa Toulmin
    AA: A delightful record of the circus coming to town.

DEONZO BROTHERS (Paul’s Animatograph Works – GB 1901) D: ?; 35 mm, 84 ft, 1'24" (16 fps). The Deonzo Brothers were famous barrel jumpers from Hamilton, Ohio. They performed their novelty act in all the great music halls of the era. The triumphant climax of the act is unfortunately cut short. – Bryony Dixon
    AA: A record of incredible barrel jumping feats, also with eyes tied. Ok visual quality.

LEEDS ATHLETIC AND CYCLING CLUB CARNIVAL AT HEADINGLEY (Mitchell & Kenyon – GB 1902) D: ?; 35 mm, 90 ft + 42 ft [132 ft], 2'11" (16 fps); Mitchell & Kenyon n. 552, 553. Rare footage of an amazing novelty act, the Mazondas – barrel-jumping champions of the world – who were appearing at the Tivoli Theatre on 12 July 1902. This was filmed earlier in the day as part of the Leeds Athletic Club’s annual carnival held at the local cricket ground. Vanessa Toulmin
    AA: More incredible barrel jumping achievements, now in exteriors. In long shot with a clumsy pan. Visual quality mediocre.

LIZARS EDINBURGH (Mitchell & Kenyon – GB 1904) D: ?; 35 mm, 91 ft , 1'31" (16 fps); Mitchell & Kenyon n. 692. The identity of this seasoned performer, filmed at Lizars Theatre in Edinburgh on 12 December 1904, is still a mystery. Here he is performing a comedy sketch involving a dispute or miscommunication on the telephone, then still a novel form of communication. – Vanessa Toulmin
    AA: A farcical scene of a guy sporting a turban, frustrated over the call, smashing the telephone on the floor. In medium shot.

Fiere, parchi dei divertimenti, mostre, parate
Fairgrounds, Pleasure Gardens, Exhibitions, Street Parades

MANCHESTER AND SALFORD HARRIERS’ CYCLISTS PROCESSION (Mitchell & Kenyon – GB 1901) D: ?; 35 mm, 22 ft + 91 ft [113 ft], 1'53" (16 fps); Mitchell & Kenyon n. 428, 429. Part of the Fancy Dress Cyclist procession filmed on 22 June 1901 for A.D. Thomas at the Broughton Rangers football ground. The parade features costumes ranging from cavaliers, American cowboys, and tramps, to ladies in waiting, and scenes from the American prairie. – Vanessa Toulmin
    AA: Exciting dresses. A straight record of the parade, lively faces. Good visual quality. *

BAILEY’S ROYAL BUXTON PUNCH AND JUDY SHOW IN HALIFAX (Mitchell & Kenyon – GB 1901) D: ?; 35 mm, 120 ft, 2' (16 fps); Mitchell & Kenyon n. 608. Professor Bailey’s Punch and Judy show filmed in October 1901 is one of the most interesting films in the collection, showing as it does no spectators but purely a rare glimpse of the performance, with the town of Halifax in the vale below. Vanessa Toulmin
    AA: Fascinating to see the epic industrial vista as the background to the Punch and Judy show outdoors. Ok visual quality.

THE BARBER SAW THE JOKE (British Mutoscope & Biograph Company – GB, c.1901) D: ?; 35 mm, 50 ft, 50" (16 fps). A barber cutting a man’s hair reads an Ally Sloper comic over his client’s shoulder. He is laughing so hard he cuts the customer’s ear with his razor. Barbershops were a stock location or “situation” for comic sketches in pantomime and the music hall. – Bryony Dixon
    AA: A comedy with a dark Van Gogh twist. Laughter can be infectuous. Medium shot. Ok visual quality.

SEDGWICK’S BIOSCOPE SHOWFRONT AT PENDLEBURY WAKES (Mitchell & Kenyon – GB 1901) D: ?; 35 mm, 108 ft, 1'48" (16 fps); Mitchell & Kenyon n. 772. A beautiful film of the front of a fairground cinematograph show, shot on 18 August 1901, with showmen enacting a comic sketch of a visit to a barbershop, perhaps hinting at the film show inside. We also catch James Kenyon making a rare appearance on the showfront, next to the showman Albert Sedgwick. Vanessa Toulmin
    AA:  The barber connection in the programming. A boisterous view by Mitchell & Kenyon. Good visual quality.

TRIP TO SUNNY VALE GARDENS AT HIPPERHOLME (Mitchell & Kenyon – GB 1901) D: ?; 35 mm, 118 ft + 119 ft + 93 ft [330 ft], 5'30" (16 fps); Mitchell & Kenyon n. 588, 589, 590. Sunny Vale Gardens was one of many burgeoning pleasure gardens that flourished in the North of England at this time. The threepart sequence starts with the showman proprietor Mr. Joseph Bunce opening the gates for the spectators, to be filmed in the manner of a factory-gate film. Made in July 1901, it includes actuality shots, staged incidents for the camera, a wonderful ride on the scenic railway, and footage of the two boating lakes, tea rooms, swing boats, and vistas of the gardens. – Vanessa Toulmin
    AA: A record of the many merry entertainments at Sunny Vale Gardens. Multi-shot. Ok visual quality.

PANORAMA OF CORK EXHIBITION GROUNDS (Mitchell & Kenyon – GB 1902) D: ?; 35 mm, 84 ft, 1'24" (16 fps); Mitchell & Kenyon n. 703. The opening of the Cork International Exhibition on 20 April 1902 attracted the cream of Anglo-Irish society, with this film part of a larger group consisting of the civic opening. The whole span of the grounds is included in this panoramic shot, which also shows the range of temporary venues built for this international exposition. – Vanessa Toulmin
    AA: A holiday by the lake - with swings, pleasure rails, horses, and donkeys. A lady falls from a donkey. Ok visual quality. // I may have caught the wrong film here //

HULL FAIR (Mitchell & Kenyon – GB 1902) D: ?; 35 mm, 123 ft + 77 ft [200 ft], 3'20" (16 fps); Mitchell & Kenyon n. 651, 652. Continuous shots of the show row at Hull Fair, one of the largest and oldest travelling fairgrounds in the United Kingdom, still held every October. The shows in view include William’s Cinematograph, Bailey’s Circus, complete with acrobats, Wombwell’s travelling menagerie, and close-ups of Hughes’ boxing academy. Vanessa Toulmin
    AA: Pleasure vessels at sea. Camera looks. Dances. Ok visual quality. // I may have caught the wrong film here //

// the order of the screening was changed, and there were no title cards --- here was a long pan from right to left, covering also rooftops. Ok visual quality. --- Panorama of Cork Exhibition Grounds? //

ARMLEY & WORTLEY CARNIVAL (Mitchell & Kenyon – GB 1904) D: ?; 35 mm, 119 ft, 1'59" (16 fps); Mitchell & Kenyon n. 577. Shot on 4 June 1904, the delights of the local carnival are filmed, including scenes of the procession, children in fancy dress, and the crowning of the local Carnival Queen on a slightly precarious platform especially erected for the occasion. – Vanessa Toulmin
    AA: Another long pan full of life. Ok visual quality. // I may have caught the wrong film here //

BUXTON WELL DRESSING (Mitchell & Kenyon – GB 1904) D: ?; 35 mm, 84 ft, 1'24" (16 fps); Mitchell & Kenyon n. 540. Beautiful shots of the front of President Kemp’s cinematograph show, appearing at the local well dressing as part of the fairground attractions, on 30 June 1904. President Kemp can be seen in the large white hat, with a beautiful shot of maypole dancers performing on the front of the show. – Vanessa Toulmin
    AA: A lively parade, a merry celebration. Ok visual quality.

LEYLAND MAY FESTIVAL (Mitchell & Kenyon – GB 1905) D: ?; 35 mm, 58 ft, 58" (16 fps); Mitchell & Kenyon n. 293. Filmed on 25 May 1905, for fairground showman George Green to show in his cinematograph booth, the recently-formed carnival Morris team can be seen performing their new dances as part of the procession to mark the crowning of the May Queen. – Vanessa Toulmin
    AA: Not this film? A children's ring dance, a band, in long shot. Good visual quality.

GREEN’S RACING BANTAMS AT PRESTON WHIT FAIR (Mitchell & Kenyon – GB 1906)
D: ?; 35 mm, 54 ft, 54" (16 fps); Mitchell & Kenyon n. 771. Filmed in early June 1906, this shows the thrills of a white-knuckle fairground ride, part of the annual Preston Whit Fair held in the market-place. – Vanessa Toulmin
    AA: The fairground, the carousel, in long shot, in ok visual quality.

CREWE HOSPITAL PROCESSION AND PAGEANT (Mitchell & Kenyon – GB 1907)
D: ?; 35 mm, 485 ft, 8'04" (16 fps); Mitchell & Kenyon n. 484. This heavily-edited 8-minute sequence presents the highlights of the annual carnival procession held in Crewe on 10 August 1907. All the participants, including the different “minstrel” troupes, were workers at the local London North Western Railway Company, who were raising money for their local hospital. Featuring minstrel troupes, “customs of the world”, and other exotic themes. – Vanessa Toulmin
    AA: A parade in long shot with swordsmen, acrobats on giant walking sticks, minstrels, historical characters, indians, a brass band, incredible dancers, suffragettes. Ok visual quality.

WHITE CITY FRANCO-BRITISH EXHIBITION (British Alpha Films – GB 1908) D: ?; 35 mm, 119 ft, 1'59" (16 fps). This international exposition to celebrate the Entente Cordiale between Britain and France featured many cutting-edge entertainments, such as the legendary Flip-Flap (unfortunately not seen), dodgems, and a scenic railway. There is also a brief shot of a cinematograph show. Bryony Dixon
    AA: People emerging from a train, enjoying the performances at the show and the scenic railway. Ok visual quality.

Al mare / Seaside

E. WILLIAMS AND HIS MERRY MEN (Arthur Cheetham – GB 1899) D: ?; 35 mm, 140 ft, 2'20" (16 fps). The minstrel show was immensely popular in Britain from the mid-19th century. White men in black face perform the traditional three-act show, a combination of music, dance, and comic skits, with the “endmen” keeping up a flow of comic patter. E. H. Williams’ Merrie Men were a fixture on the beach at Rhyl in Wales in the holiday season. – Bryony Dixon
    AA: Slapstick at full blast, eight performers, literally wielding slapsticks, a chase farce with dancing elements. In exteriors. A duped quality from partly visually bad sources.

COMICAL CHRIS (William Henry Youdale – GB 1900) D: ?; 35 mm, 63 ft, 1'03" (16 fps).
A small troupe entertains holiday-makers at Morecambe in Lancashire, with a ventriloquist and a comedian dressed as a jockey on a hobby-horse. – Bryony Dixon
    AA: Thrilling clownery involving horses. Wild and breezy. Bad visual quality, low contrast.

TYNEMOUTH SWIMMING GALA IN THE HAVEN, NORTH SHIELDS (Mitchell & Kenyon – GB 1901) D: ?; 35 mm, 110 ft, 1'50" (16 fps); Mitchell & Kenyon n. 685. This event demonstrates the crossover that existed between sport and entertainment culture at the time. The competitors swam the first 30 yards in “ordinary costume, tall hat and gloves”, and completed the final 30 yards wearing a coat, vest, and trousers, and carrying an umbrella! Filmed on 31 August 1901, in anticipation of the Coronation celebrations of Edward VII. – Vanessa Toulmin
    AA: A goofy swimming contest in full costume. Mediocre visual quality.

PANORAMIC VIEW OF THE MORECAMBE SEA FRONT (Mitchell & Kenyon – GB 1901)
D: ?; 35 mm, 116 ft + 74 ft [190 ft], 3'09" (16 fps); Mitchell & Kenyon n. 251, 254.
Shot in early June 1901, as part of the film shows at the Winter Gardens Theatre in Morecambe, Lancashire. Taken from a horse-drawn tram as it traversed the promenade, the film includes shots of the holiday-makers, and is a beautiful snapshot of the seaside as a place of leisure and recreation. – Vanessa Toulmin
    AA: A beautiful, very steady tracking shot from the horse-drawn tram. One of the best films of the show. Ok visual quality. *

PARADE ON WEST END PIER, MORECAMBE (Mitchell & Kenyon – GB 1901) D: ?; 35 mm, 104 ft + 77 ft [181 ft], 3' (16 fps); Mitchell & Kenyon n. 247, 253. This film showing people promenading on the now-lost West End pier, for a two-hour film show at the Winter Gardens Theatre presented by A.D.Thomas. Thomas had a prolific season in Morecambe; this was shown alongside the previous film (Panoramic View of the Morecambe Sea Front) in his main touring programme. Vanessa Toulmin
    AA: A charming full shot of the crowd, with a ring dance. Visual quality ok to good.

SCENES BY THE STONE JETTY, MORECAMBE (Mitchell & Kenyon – GB 1902) D: ?; 35 mm, 124 ft, 2'04" (16 fps); Mitchell & Kenyon n. 754. The varied range of amusements on show in this film include a phrenologist, a wonderful group of mutoscopes, and a strange character selling animal skins. It is one of the most beautifully shot films in the collection. – Vanessa Toulmin
    AA: A multi-event view from the Stone Jetty. The people are aware of the camera and look at it. Full shot. Good visual quality. *

PARADE ON MORECAMBE CENTRAL PIER (Mitchell & Kenyon – GB 1902) D: ?; 35 mm, 123 ft, 2'03" (16 fps); Mitchell & Kenyon n. 250. Shot in the Summer of 1902, this film shows a more respectable group of holiday-makers on Morecambe’s second and more elite pier. A more regimented approach to filming than the previous year, it includes a scene of the showman holding up a copy for the camera of The Era, the principal trade paper for the theatre and music hall. – Vanessa Toulmin
    AA: A straight record of a parade. The passers-by greet the camera. Visual quality: low contrast, a duped look. // I wonder if these notes belong to this title. //

PANORAMIC VIEW OF SOUTHPORT PROMENADE (Mitchell & Kenyon – GB 1902) D: ?; 35 mm, 109 ft, 1'49" (16 fps); Mitchell & Kenyon n. 384. Southport, the second of the North West seaside resorts, is captured here with footage of the local variety company’s day out on South Drive and the promenade taken in May that year from the front of a horse-drawn tram. – Vanessssa Toulmin
    AA: A phantom ride from the driver's seat at the horse-drawn tram. Visual quality: a bit stuffy.

BLACKPOOL NORTH PIER (Mitchell & Kenyon – GB 1903) D: ?; 35 mm, 125 ft, 2'05" (16 fps); Mitchell & Kenyon n. 205. The earliest and most beautiful of all the piers in the North of England was filmed as part of the Easter Sunday parade on the promenade. The North Pier was an exclusive venue, as reflected in the top hats and dress coats on display. The panoramic shot which finishes the sequence includes the skyline of Blackpool at that time, including the Alhambra music hall and the Big Wheel. – Vanessa Toulmin
    AA: A big crowd, well-dressed people, an impressive pan to the coast. Good visual quality.

Pantomime e intemezzi
Pantomime and Entr’acte Films

// changed order: Mr. Moon was the last in the printed programme, moved here: //
MR. MOON (Mitchell & Kenyon – GB 1900) D: ?; 35 mm, 106 ft, 1'46" (16 fps). This film was commissioned for Honri’s musical show, which consisted of a series of acts interspersed with quick changes covered by film. Mr. Moon is described in the show synopsis in The Era as “Quick Change to ‘The Newest Dandy’, introducing the Great Cinematograph Novelty of the Age, Oh Mister Moon”. The trick film shows Percy Honri’s disembodied head as the man in the moon, with a tiny body which attaches itself to the head as the hands play a banjo. Vanessa Toulmin
    AA: Against a black background, the huge face appears, mugging and grinning.

LETTY LIMELIGHT IN HER LAIR (Miss Bayley) (G.A. Smith – GB 1903) D: G.A. Smith; cast: Laura Bayley; 35 mm, 43 ft, 43" (16 fps). An entr’acte film, in which Smith’s wife, actress Laura Bayley, is making up in a mirror as if between acts in a show. – Bryony Dixon
    AA: A nice quick record. Visual quality: bad, duped, perforation visible.

QUICK CHANGE ACT (Charles Urban Trading Company – GB 1906) D: ?; 35 mm, 117 ft, 1'56" (16 fps). An entr’acte film starring Percy Honri, a virtuoso concertina and musical theatre performer who had a show called Concordia. The film shows him doing a rapid costume change. Sometimes these entr’acte films were shown on a pull-down screen during the show to cover the costume change. – Bryony Dixon
    AA: A goofy little number. Ok visual quality.

// the order was changed and this film, second to last in the printed programme, was screened here //
ROBINSON CRUSOE (G. A. Smith – GB 1902) D: G. A. Smith; cast: Laura Bayley; 35 mm, 225 ft, 3'45" (16 fps). Fragment of a film based on a pantomime with Laura Bayley in the principal role. – Bryony Dixon
    AA: This number has nothing to do with the title. First four maidens, then many more are dancing. Turns into a farce. Visual quality: duped, bad.

MUSIC HALL ACT (? – GB, c.1910) D: ?; 35 mm, 90 ft, 1'30" (16 fps). An unidentified Harlequinade scene with its stock characters: Harlequin and Columbine, Pantaloon, Clown, and Policeman. They enact a scene involving a sausage-making machine, a favourite comic device of the pantomime, and finish with a classic tableau shot. Bryony Dixon
    AA: Slapstick in the literal sense: the origin of slapstick in commedia dell'arte. Even splatter comedy as they turn adversaries into sausage. Ok visual quality.

MOTHER GOOSE NURSERY RHYMES (G.A. Smith – GB 1902) D: G. A. Smith; cast: Tom Green; 35 mm, 38 ft, 38" (16 fps). Fragment of a series of films based on the pantomime of the 1901/02 holiday season at the Eden Theatre in Brighton, Mother Goose and the Golden Eggs. – Bryony Dixon
    AA: Visual quality: bad, duped, at times barely visible, partly in high contrast. // I may mix films here, as the order was changed. //

LITTLE TICH ET SES BIG BOOTS (Paul Decauville, S.A. du Phono-Cinéma-Théâtre – FR 1900)Prod: Paul Decauville; DP: Clément Maurice Gratioulet; artistic dir: Marguerite Vrignault; 35 mm, 173 ft, 1'55" (24 fps), sd. Harry Relph performs his most famous routine, the big boots dance. As Little Tich, he was one of the most famous British music hall artistes of all time, and an international celebrity. The source of the footage being shown is the French compilation film Cinéma Parlant 1900 (1952, Jacques de Casembroot). – Bryony Dixon
    AA: Film number eight in the printed programme, Little Tich, the best film of the show, was understandably switched to the end. It is a delightful record of the routine of the legendary performer. Visual quality: duped, yet conveying the rich quality of the record.

The live musical accompaniment of Stephen Horne was rich and varied, reacting to the changing modes of the 41 films and conveying an impressive period feeling.

A splendid work of curatorship, Edwardian Entertainment should be edited onto a compilation DCP, complete with a Stephen Horne score.

The programme is of high value for studies of performing arts.

I have seen several shows of Mitchell & Kenyon films before, but this kind of intelligent programming elevates the fascinating views to something more, a bigger and more general view of life before the First World War. We can feel a connection with these people who lived over a century ago. We feel a connection with their joy of life.

Edwardian Entertainment belongs to a remarkable continuum in Le Giornate del Cinema Muto together with the unforgettable Phono-Cinéma-Théâtre reconstruction a couple of years ago, and with the Tonbilder compilation seen here this year.