The Rat

Novello as Pierre

Gainsborough 1925, black and white, with Intertitles.

Producer: Michael Balcon. Director: Graham Cutts. Written by Ivor Novello and Constance Collier, adapted from their own play. Cinematography: Hal Young. Art Direction: C. W. Arnold.

Cast: Ivor Novello – Pierre Boucheron/The Rat. Mae Marsh – Odille. Isabel Jeans – Zélie de Chaumet. Robert Scholtz as Herman Stetz.  James Lindsay as Detective Caillard. 

Marie Ault as Mère Colline. Julie Suedo as Mou Mou. Hugh Brook as Paul. Esme Fitzgibbons as Madeleine Sornay. Iris Grey as Rose  

The film is adapted from a successful play written by Novello and Collier. The original idea was Novello’s, who had thought of it in terms of a film. By the early 1920s Novello was a successful composer, film and stage actor and well on the way to becoming a ‘matinee idol’. The play and the film are both clearly written around Novello’s persona.

The drama is set in the Parisian underworld. Pierre is a thief, referred to as an ‘Apache’, a slang term of the period. It derived from a Parisian street gang noted for their violence and savagery, comparing them to the stereotypical image of the North American Indian tribe. Odille is his casual girlfriend and they live in the squalid and somewhat anarchic city quarter.

 Zélie de Chaumet is from the opposite end of the class divide. She goes ‘slumming’ in the quarters of the proletariat and lumpen-proletariat, a common activity among the bourgeoisie and one seen in both European and Hollywood films of the time. She visits the White Coffin Club, where we see the notorious Apache dance. This was another famed representation in which a man and woman, [often a pimp and a prostitute] have a flamboyant and violent dance. The dance turned up frequently in the Teens and 1920s films, including in the famed French series Les Vampires (1915). The meeting at the club set off a chain of events, involving passion, violence and the heavy hand of the law.

As with the play, the film was a popular success. There was quick sequel, also involving Novello and Jeans, The Triumph of the Rat (1926). And a third film followed in 1929, The Return of the Rat, released in both silent and sound versions in 1929. Ivor Novello is the star and prime focus of the film and seems to have been the major popular interest for audiences. This repeated the success of the stage version, both in the West End and in the provinces. One biographer recalls that: “At Leeds a fervent admirer got hold of his hair and pulled out quite a large lump, and with the very best of heart and affectionate feelings…’ (W. McQueen Pope, Ivor 1951).

Mae Marsh had starred with Novello in an earlier drama directed by the prestigious D. W. Griffith, The White Rose (1923). Marsh made several films in the UK, being an early member of the long line of Hollywood stars imported to improve British film’s box office. Marsh was an actress whose style was in the traditional melodramatic associated with early silent film. Isabel Jeans provided a clear contrast, nearly always playing upper class and sophisticated women. She was repeating the role that she had played in the successful West End production.

The two women, both enamoured with the Novello character, offer opposing stereotypes. Marsh as Odille, the innocent and simple slum child following Pierre almost like a lap dog: March as Zélie, is the sophisticated but kept woman of a bourgeois, her relative independence restrained by economic dependence.

The film was shot at the Islington Studio. Michael Balcon and Gainsborough had taken this over from the US Company Famous-Players Lasky. Balcon was possibly the most talented and successful producer in the history of the British Industry. He generally produced quality films with above average production values for British films: the scripts were usually economical with popular subjects: and he had a fine eye for talent. Among his alumni were Alfred Hitchcock, Alexander Mackendrick and Robert Hamer. However, the previous film directed by Cutts, Woman to Woman (1924, now lost) with another US star Betty Compson, had been a rushed production and failed at the box-office. So the fledgling company needed a success.

In the case of The Rat the director Graham Cutts was one of the most successful directors in the industry of the 1920s. Like other British filmmakers Cutts had experience of the technically advanced German film industry, and he was one of the first home filmmakers to introduce noticeable angles and tracking shots with the camera. He was ably assisted by the cameraman Hal Young, [who also filmed the fine rural drama Fox Farm, (1922)] and the art designer C. Wilfred Arnold (responsible for the design on The Lodger (1926). Cutts has since been overshadowed by the dominance of Alfred Hitchcock in Film Studies, but he and the larger British film scene offered frequent and higher quality than is often recognised.

Newspaper cartoon of Cutts

At recent screenings the general comment has been to place the second film in the series, The Triumph of the Rat, as superior to the first in the cycle. However, the surviving prints [certainly at the bfi] are about a 1,503 foot shorter than the original release [as listed by Rachel Low]. That is about 18 minutes of running time at the likely speed of 22 frames per second. A number of scenes appear to be truncated, notably the Apache dance that takes place at the The White Coffin Club: a sequence that would have been central in both the play and film versions. There are possibly one or more missing scenes: including one late in the film between Pierre and Zélie. The surviving prints are clearly compilations; the quality of the image varies, the best being the tinted exteriors. A couple of scenes appear to have the framing cropped: and one scene with Odille seems to have the same shot repeated twice.

Lacking a full-length print it is difficult to provide a fair comparisons between The Rat and his subsequent Triumph. What strikes one about the original is the inventiveness of the techniques on display: the economical development of the plot: and the strong visual quality of many scenes, especially in the mise en scène for the White Coffin Club. Rachel Low in her seminal The History of British Film 1918 – 1929 (1971) commented on The Triumph that it was ‘lacking the talent to create a credible situation for it, they [the scriptwriters] piled absurdity on absurdity, replacing plausibility with exaggeration.’ In the case of The Rat, the plot is not really realistic, but the melodrama is presented with great plausibility.

The surviving version of the film opens by introducing us to Zélie and her ‘patron’ Herman Stetz [Robert Scholtz]. Next we see the Rat, on the run from the police. The latter is a nicely inventive sequence, finely photographed and it quickly establishes the insouciant charm of Pierre. Returning to his flat we meet Odille, the virginal innocent. She is in many ways similar to the virginal heroines of D. W. Griffith melodramas: Novello may well have picked up on these stereotypes from his work with that director. Then we move to The White Coffin Club. This is both the dramatic and visual centre of the film. The bar and dance floor is surrounded by coffin-shaped alcoves, an impressive design feature. The scene also establishes the low-life quality, which is typical of these types of stories. The Rat is clearly a dominant and feared protagonist in this world. He is also the object of female desire on the part of a several women, liberated and aggressive in terms of the representations of the times.

Ivor Novello’s persona in silent film was intriguing. He is handsome, possesses some charisma, but is also often a passive object rather than an active male protagonist. This is certainly a sense of his character in Downhill (1927), and even more noticeably in an earlier film of the period appropriately titled The Man Without Desire (1923). As Pierre Novello is the object of a metaphorical struggle between Odille and Zélie.  The latter is clearly more sensual and sexual than Odille, and is somewhat typical of Novello that in the end he chooses the virginal and domesticated Odille.

This also provides a ‘moral’ ending to the tale. In fact, in the sequel of The Triumph Pierre is seen to leave the criminal underworld in an attempt to move up the social ladder.

Contemporary reviews commented favourably on Cutts’ inventive us of techniques. Apart from the compelling mise en scène of The White Coffin Club there are frequent and well executed tracks and dollies of the camera. The cinematographer, Hal Young, had moved to the UK from the USA in the days when Famous-Players Lasky ran the studio. The camerawork is not just inventive but contributes to the depth of character and story. In one sequence the returning Pierre first sees Odille as a reflection and the camera tracks in on this image before cutting to the actual couple. And there is a sense that parts of the narrative play out the repressed dreams of the characters. In another sequence Odille is menaced by Herman, preparing to embrace a new conquest. At the end of this sequence there is another reflection shot, and the character and his posture take on the look of an expressionist vampire as in Nosferatu (1921). Cutts had worked in the German film studios, and presumably he learnt the craft of chiaroscuro lighting and camera movements there.

The film also makes good use of décor and props. One recurring feature in framing of Pierre and Odille’s flat is a picture of the Virgin Mary and Child, with a prie-dieu bearing flowers placed beneath it. This is another touch reminiscent of D. W. Griffith, and Odille’s frequent prayers to the Virgin speak strongly of her innocence and naiveté. Crucially at a climatic point in the film Pierre himself collapses onto the prie-dieu as he forsakes his usual criminal responses for the religious acts associated with Odille.

Adapted from the notes to accompany a 35-mm screening of the film at the National Media Museum. Darius Battiwalla provided the accompaniment for the film at the piano, and emphasised not only the melodrama of the tale but the sleaziness associated with its underworld.

 

The 30th Giornate

This was an auspicious date in the history of the Pordenone Silent film Festival, held in this now famous Italian town in the first week of October 2011. We enjoyed an impressive selection of early films accompanied with the usual excellent live music. The signs that this is not the best decade for film or the arts were, though, apparent. It was a more European programme than usual, and there were a number of missing faces from the USA – transatlantic flight costs I assume.

Even so the new Verdi was packed for the most popular films with the townspeople crowding in too catch such rarities.

For me the highlights of the Festival were two programmes of Soviet films: one featuring the work of the Factory of the Eccentric Actor [FEKS] and scores provided for these films by Dmitri Shostakovich. The key filmmakers in FEKS were Grigori Kozintsev and Leonid Trauberg, whose Novyy Vavilon (New Babylon, 1929) was the opening gala event of the week. The print was from the Cineteca del Friuli and the Mitteleuropa Orchestra conducted by Mark Fitz-Gerald performed the score. [He has reconstructed Shostakovich’s score and it is available on the Naxos label]. The film runs for 92 minutes at 20 fps. It was shortened from a longer cut shortly before its premiere and there is a ‘longer version’. However, Trauberg argued that the additional 700 metres contained ‘scenes Kozintsev and I deliberately removed.’

New Babylon is a tour de force in style and content. It dramatises the events of the historic Paris Commune of 1870. The tile refers to a large department store where the frenzy of capitalist consumption and expropriation takes place. But the central focus of the drama is the heroic struggle by the Parisian proletariat against their bourgeois masters. The Commune failed in part because the German invaders laying siege to Paris were content to sit on their hands whilst their nationalist enemy but class allies suppressed the revolution. In fact the film is not especially analytical, an agitational film rather than propaganda. It makes impressive use of the familiar Soviet film techniques: it offers some of the finest montage in that cinema and displays the ‘eccentric acting’ in the grand Guignol style of the bourgeoisie and its allies. The music by Shostakovich is one of the finest scores for Silent film and the combination of film and music is inspiring.

There were several other fine features and some surviving fragments by this school. The other Soviet series was Georgian Cinema. This was an interesting programme but suffered from technical difficulties. The 35-mm prints only turned up halfway through the Festival and the early screenings relied on DVDs. Archives have started sending these to the Festival to allow the preparation of translations, projected using a digital format. In days gone by when prints were late the programme was re-arranged as far as possible. A response which I think it preferable to using the non-theatrical digital format. I only managed to sit through one of these screenings, Amerikana (The Jobbing Press, 1930). And this was because it was such a fascinating story, recreating the agitational and propaganda work of the Bolshevik’s under the Tsarist regime. A later film print was Khabarda (Out of the Way, 1931). This was a fairly avant-garde satire on the reactionary religious traditions and the petty bourgeoisie strata that defended such anachronisms. The film counterpoints a reactionary faction defending a supposedly traditional shrine that stands in the way of a new worker’s housing development. The film plays with the counterpoint between the grotesque reactionary characters and the more heroic proletarian ones. It also uses bizarre almost surrealist sequences, including one where a religious style funeral is whizzed up through the clouds towards ‘heaven’ and back again.

There was also a Soviet classic in The Canon Revisited programme of the Festival. This was Olomok Imperii (A Fragment of an Empire, 1919) directed by Fridrikh Ermler from a scenario by Katerina Vinogradskaia and himself. This was a film I first came across in Politics and Film (Furhammer and Isaksson, 1971) in the 1970s. Finally, in 2011, I was able to see it. The film justified the wait. It is a fascinating take on Soviet culture, with a fairly distinctive approach to plotting. A soldiers wounded in the civil war suffers from amnesia so that when he returns to Moscow and his old factory he is amazed by the new world of socialist society. The opening of the film makes terrific use of chiaroscuro and montage: whilst the resolution of the film offers a particularly sharp political comment.

"Fragment of an Empire"

The Canon Revisited also included a screening of Kenneth Macpherson’s Borderline, an experimental project that allowed Paul Robeson one of his few progressive and central film characters. The narrative is elliptical but the direction and characterisation are fascinating. Apart from Robeson’s role the film also projects a positive image of both gays and lesbians rare at this period.

Another canonical film was Hintertreppe (Backstairs, 1921). This was a Henny Porten project: she was a major diva of the German cinema. The film has the strong contrast between light and shadow of German film in this period: and it has very few Intertitles, [the original print had none]. This places great emphasis on the performances, of Portman as the housemaid and Fritz Kortner as the smitten postman. These, together with the emphatic direction, develop a powerful and melodramatic tale.

The event of the week was found in the Early Cinema programme with the screening of Lobster Film’s restoration of a colour version of Georges Méliès’ Le Voyage Dans Le Lune (A Trip to the Moon, 1902). This is a classic story of the care and devotion lavished on restoring lost masterworks. Méliès film was available originally in both black and white and hand-coloured versions. The later was thought not to survive in a complete 14-minute copy, until the Filmoteca de Catalunya received a donation in 1993. The film passed to the Serge Bromberg and Eric Lange of Lobster Films, who have discovered and restored a number of Méliès’ films over the years. The poor state of the print meant that it took years of patient work and the arrival of new technologies before the current restoration could be seen in 2011. The project has been supported by other institutions and this appears to be part of the reason why [at the moment] the film is only being distributed in a digital print with a soundtrack. This was commissioned from a French group AIR, who play ‘astro-pop’. In fact at the Festival there was both a screening with the new soundtrack and a more traditional performance with a piano accompaniment.

Serge Bromberg and Eric Lange delivered the annual Jonathan Dennis Memorial Lecture on the rediscovery and restoration of the Méliès film. In the course of this Bromberg argued that the film was a restoration rather than a reconstruction: an important distinction. I actually think it is more properly described as a reconstruction. A volume produced for the Cannes festival premiere details the techniques used, including digital copying frame by frame of the surviving film. These have enabled the production of the 35mm and digital versions. However, it appears that both versions are in sound formats: at 24 fps. I assume these have been produced by the computer version of step printing, adding additional frames or parts there-of to arrive at a synchronised version. The ratio used for this is not detailed: “The original material was captured at a much slower frame rate than today’s methods: 14 frames per second (fps) with a “hand-cranked” camera. It will now need to playback at the proper apparent speed while paying out at 24 frames per second.” In fact, it is quite straightforward to project a film at 14 fps on an appropriate 35mm machine, [though apparently not on digital]. To what extent the extra frames matter depends on the particular film, but this seems to me much more of a reconstruction than a restoration.

I was not impressed with the accompaniment by Air. It opens with a heavy bass line, which did not seem to fit the images. Overall I found it distracting rather than appropriate. The reasoning behind this choice of musical accompaniment is apparently the belief that a popular band will encourage younger people to view the film in its new format and this may spark an interest in early film. I find the reasoning suspect: I remember Giorgio Moroder’s Metropolis, [which at the time looked better than most of the available prints], but I cannot say it seemed to produce a new generation of early film fans. What concerns me most is that it appears that generally it will not be seen in a 35mm print that can be projected as originally produced by Méliès

There were a whole lot more early treasures, including several programmes of early Japanese animation: The Birth of Anime: Pioneers of Japanese Animation. This offered a varied range of films, beautifully drawn and with very distinctive tales. One favourite for me was Kanimanji Engi (The Tale of the Crab Temple, 1924), a fable where a young girl builds a temple in thanks for a rescue by a colony of crabs. There was a range of material to mark the centenary of the historic Antarctic explorations The Race to the Pole, including the expedition led by Captain Scott. We had The Great White Silence, Herbert Posting’s 1924 record of the earlier tragic events. It was shown in a 35mm print at 18 fps: in the UK I saw it in a digital format at 24 fps, the latter seemed to me at times slightly too fast. However, the jewel of this programme was Frank Hurley’s South (1919) – Sir Ernest Shackleton’s Glorious Epic of the Antarctic. As well as a musical accompaniment the film enjoyed readings from Shackleton’s diaries by Paul McGann, which set off the glorious images very effectively.

There was a programme of early films by the Hollywood director Michael Curtiz, Kertész before Curtis. His output was fairly variable, but my favourite was a short one-reel film, My Brother is Coming (Jön az Öcsém) made in Hungary during the short-lived Communist republic of 1919. Filmed mainly in tableaux it uses a contemporary poem to dramatise a brother’s return imbued with the new, vital Communist values. The film has great elan. Unfortunately the catalogue notes were by some bourgeois critic who lacked sympathy or empathy for such propaganda works. A later film was Moon of Israel / Die Sklavenkönigin (1924), a co-production of Hungarian and British companies. Adapted from the novel by H. Rider Haggard the story crosses over with other biblical epics like DeMille’s The Ten Commandments (1923). This film also features the crossing of the Red Sea by the Israelites, and is ingenious in its special effects as the more famous Hollywood version.

The closing event was MGM’s 1928 The Wind: very much a studio picture despite the involvement of silent luminaries Lilian Gish and Victor Seastrom. This is a beautiful and powerful film, though watching it again I realised that its gender politics follow the conventions of the period, with Gish’s Letty sacrificed to bourgeois marriage and domesticity.  She and Seastrom apparently planned a darker and more subversive ending. The film was accompanied by Mitteleuropa orchestra conducted by Carl Davis, performing his score written for the Thames Silents programme. It is very effective though occasionally going a little over the top.

There was also a lot of interest in the 43 minutes of an incomplete surviving film, The White Shadow (UK 1924).  This was partly due to the involvement of the young Alfred Hitchcock in the production as scriptwriter. In fact, there appeared to be two camps among the fans for the film: those who saw the surviving fragments as portents for a later, brilliant career; and those who thought interest lay in the film’s direction by Graham Cutts, another successful filmmaker of the 1920s. On the basis of the three surviving reels the jury was still out for me, though the restored print from the New Zealand Film Archive looked good. It is true though that Cutts is one of a number of British filmmakers whose reputations have suffered from the overarching shadow of Hitchcock and the academic industry he spawned.

Clive Brooks and Betty Compson in The White Shadow

There were all sorts of other early and rare treats, as you might expect in a weeklong all-day, very day programme. These included films by Charlie Chaplin and early examples of animation from the Walt Disney studio. And a programme, Treasures of the West, marked the fifth DVD box set of US film archives from the National Film Preservation Foundation. One of the great pleasures was the musical accompaniments. There were some particular fine performances, both among the solo piano accompaniments and the orchestrations. I especially enjoyed Gabriel Thibaudeau’s splaying for Asphalt (1929), the elate German/UFA silent. I was impressed when I saw Mie Yanashita stagger in for the Japanese animation with a capacious holdall, containing apparently some 14 different instruments: which she varied with great aplomb through the programme. And several of the regular musicians had composed scores for particular films: Günter Buchwald performed with a trio for the Georgian film Eliso (1928) and Maud Nelissen led a quartet for Shinel (The Overcoat, 1926) a Soviet adaptation of Gogol’s story. The UK’s own John Sweeney offered really good solo accompaniments both for the Antarctic films and some of the Soviets. So it was another rewarding week. And I wait for 2012 with anticipation.

Stills courtesy of Giornate del Cinema Muto.

The Treasures of Pordenone

Il Giornate del Cinema Muto 1995.

Lillian Gish and Ronald Coleman in The White Sister (US 1923)

Silent cinema conjures up images of an absorbed audience, fixed on an illuminated rectangle, in a dark and hushed auditorium. In fact, what we call silent cinema was a rather noisy affair, with the whirr of the projector, the strident voice of the barker or benshi (the narrator for Japanese films) and most typically the rhythms of either piano or orchestra. The patterns of light and dark that made up the dramas of early cinema were interwoven with music, which both heightened emotions and expanded on the characterisations of the filmmakers. Even so, it was the visual aspect that predominated and the great masterpieces of silent cinema tend to be more memorable for what is seen on screen – the towering expressionist sets of Metropolis, the inter-cutting of Soviet montage, the wide spaces of the western.

In the modern era it has been difficult, until quite recently, to see these images in a way that could be enjoyed. When it was seen, silent cinema was represented most typically by a comedy (e.g. Max Sennett or Hal Roach), shown at a sound speed of 24 frames per second instead of the original slower speeds of 18 to 20 frames per second.

This resulted in staccato movements for screen characters. Sound accompaniment was often a dreadful organ and a jolly commentary, which pre-empted the visual antics of the comedians. Prints were frequently scratched, poorly focused and unevenly printed.

Silent Cinema as it was meant to be seen 

It was only in the 1980s that this slap-dash presentation was challenged by new opportunities to see silent films as they might first have appeared, in decent prints, at the right speed and with appropriate music. The best example of this is Napoleon, the French epic painstakingly reconstructed in all its six-hour glory by Kevin Brownlow. When seen live with an orchestra this was indeed one of the great experiences of cinema.

Brownlow with his colleague, David Gill, is probably the most well known of a band of dedicated archivists and restorers. Spending hours poring over different prints and fragments; researching unlabelled film and stills; printing from old and fragile stock with great care – the archivists are constantly adding to the ‘recovered’ stock of silent films though only about a third of silent film is known to survive.

In 1996 – .The state of silent cinema appreciation has improved immeasurably. Thames Silents have been followed by Channel 4 Silents and even the BBC has screened the odd archive restoration: if you have TNT there are whole evenings devoted to silent films. Regional film theatres and festivals regularly screen the recovered masterpieces. An increasing number of films can be bought or rented on video, and a growing stack of books produces both praise for and analysis of the achievements of early cinema.’ By 2011 the situation has declined on in the Exhibition sector and on Television:  DVDs and Blu ray offer more.

Pordenone

One of the key events of this restoration is the annual Festival of Silent Cinema in Pordenone (II Giornate de Cinema Muto), Northern Italy. Since 1981 archivists, collectors, academics and film lovers have gathered for a week of serious film viewing – daily from 9.00 am to 1.00 am the following morning, all silent, though always accompanied by a pianist, or sometimes a full orchestra. It is the showcase for all the treasures newly restored by archives around the world. In 1995 the Festival opened with Man With A Movie Camera, accompanied by a musical interpretation of Vertov’s own original arrangements: it closed with a restoration of Chaplin’s The Gold Rush, accompanied by an orchestra conducted by Carl Davis.

The themes of any given festival reflect the achievements of the archives and collectors over the previous year. Appropriately, the 1995 Giornate featured pre-cinema, including an evening with the Magic Lantern, one of the most popular moving image entertainments before cinema. Films by both Edison and the Lumières were also screened and the actuality style of the latter was amplified through a series of screenings of early documentary and newsreel.

The centrepiece of these actualities was a block of films from the early Zionist movement, ‘Israel before Israel’. The Israeli archivists were enthusiastic and dedicated but given the current political contradictions in the Middle East, some Arabic counter-point would have been welcome. Egypt for instance had both pre-cinematic shadow plays and very early cinema (detailed in The Cinema in the Arab Countries, edited by George Sadoul, UNESCO). Actuality on display also included the 1896 English Derby, which has since been supplanted as the earliest such coverage by discovery of the 1895 Derby on film. Silent cinema is constantly on the move.

Hollywood, as the most successful purveyor of film entertainment, is always a key component, usually through the study of a particular filmmaker. Henry King was

featured in 1995. He began as an actor in 1913, directed his first film in 1916 and was still around in 1961 for Tender is the Night in CinemaScope and Technicolor. In between he directed a host of classic Hollywood movies. Pordenone screened all the surviving silents, the most memorable being Tol’able David (1921), a drama typifying King’s love of rural themes and his use of the classic Hollywood opposition, town (bad) and country (good).

We also saw one of the rare George Eliot adaptations, Romula (1925), and The White Sister (1923). Both were filmed in Italy with the great silent star Lillian Gish. The White Sister also had Ronald Coleman, an eruption of Vesuvius, and the classic dilemma of profane or divine love. Needles to say, divine love won – Hollywood moral codes were fairly conventional, even in the 1920s. 

Early Chinese Cinema

The other major strand in the festival was early Chinese Cinema. Like other cinema industries outside Western Europe and North America, that in China was denied the technology and opulent production resources of Hollywood features. As late as 1935 Chinese films were still made without optical sound at a time when Hollywood and Europe had completely changed over. However, the Chinese filmmakers compensated by their enthusiasm for drama and ingenuity in the use of the resources they actually had.

We saw an example of the traditional opera film, replete with Confucian values. However, most of these archive treasures were made at the left-wing studios in Shanghai in the 1920s and 1930s, when the great clash between the Kuomintang and the Communists was in full swing, complicated by the Japanese invasion in 1931. The Chinese melodramas were structured so that the film could constantly remind the audience of the national struggle. My favourite was Little Toys (1933). A group of rural toymakers are displaced to Shanghai and a mother loses her son. The mother perseveres against all obstacles and at the climax of the narrative she is approached by her son in the street but she does not know him. With proper nationalist, commitment he asks “Are these toys foreign?” The moment brings together the ‘personal’ emotional drama and the ‘political’ struggle and the film ends with a call to passers-by (i.e. the audience) to support China’s struggle – terrific stuff. Almost all these left-wing melodramas centred on contradictions around gender and women, a continuing theme in Chinese Cinema which can be related to more recent film dramas such as Two Stage Sisters and Raise the Red Lantern.

Little Toys (China 1933, Xiao wanyi)

There were lots of other treats including cinema advertisements, early sound and colour, an early porno film (‘poor production values’ is a consistent quality in thisgenre), the work of cartoonists Max and Dave Fleischer, and the newly discovered first film of Ernst Lubitsch – a rich if exhausting banquet. Hopefully many of these discoveries will percolate through to film audiences around the world. Some will feature in television programmes such as C4′s The Peacock Screen (showing Indian films screened at Pordenone in 1994), or more recently Cinema Europe, shown last winter on BBC2 and produced and directed by Kevin Brownlow and David Gill.  

Originally published in the picture, issue 28 Summer 1996.

Stills kindly provided by Il Giornate del Cinema Muto.

Anthony Asquith

A successful and long-time contributor to British cinema, it is surprising that there does not appear to be a full-length study of Anthony Asquith. There is a biography by Lesley Frewin, Puffin Asquith, [The title includes his nickname, published, London 1973], but not, it seems, a full-length study of his film output. Two of his later films, The Way to the Stars (1945), and The Importance of Being Ernest (1952) count among the classics of British cinema. And he was a fine director of actors, warmly admired by many who worked with him. Wendy Hiller in Pygmalion (1938) and Michael Redgrave in The Browning Version (1951) are among the outstanding performances elicited by him. It seems that Asquith was a supporter of what is now the auteur position: “I will only say that every work of art, even where more than one mind had gone to its shaping, ultimately bears the imprint of a single personality.” [Quoted by Brian McFarlane.] In fact, collaboration was an important component in his work: these include six films from the pen of Terence Rattigan. There are also at least four features where he is credited as co-director.  The latter include two of his early silent films.

Asquith was a young cinephile: he spent six months in Hollywood as a guest of Mary Pickford and Douglas Fairbanks, observing the film capital at close quarter, [presumably the trip was due in part to family connections, his father was an ex-Liberal Prime Minister]. Asquith was also a co-founder of the London Film Society. This early example of art cinema exhibition provided opportunities to see creative and influential European films like those of German Expressionism and Soviet Montage. His early films show the influence of the narrative economy of the best of 1920s Hollywood and follow, to a degree, the developing conventions of continuity. But they also use the techniques which graced European art films. What is noticeable is that Asquith tends to use them in a manner akin to that of the creators, unlike Hitchcock who revised them in line mainstream conventions.

Asquith’s first feature was made for British Instructional Films. He had started there in a junior role. The company, formed in 1919, initially developed features from actual war stories, sort of early docu-dramas. By the late 1920 they were involved in straightforward genre features. Asquith’s first feature was Shooting Stars (1928) on which he is credited with co-directing with A. V. Bramble. Bramble was an actor-producer with a theatrical background. He had entered film production with the British pioneer Cecil Hepworth. It seems likely that the young Asquith was mainly responsible for the direction on set: and the film bears the stylistic marks that are repeated in his other silents. He also wrote the scenario with J. O. C. Orton. The film is a tour-de-force, especially as it is a first time outing for a young filmmaker. The film centres on a romantic triangle. There is Mae Feather (Annette Benson) married to a fellow film star Julian Gordon (Brian Aherne) but involved with a film comedian Andy Willis (Donald Calthrop). The reflective angle on the film medium is emphasised by a number of sequences in the film, which play on the conventions of film and popular genres. The ending is a particular fine example as an ironic counterpoint is developed on the tragic ending within the setting of the film studio. The film also displays some impressive technical effects, one being a tracking shot across the various sets of the film studio, which also sets up the climax of the narrative. At a thematic level Mae’s stardom has aroused interest by a Hollywood studio. The playing out of the triangle not only subverts her ambitions; it sets up a contrast between British and Hollywood film in the person played by Julian Gordon. It is an unintended irony that Aherne subsequently became an actual Hollywood star.

On his second feature, Underground (1928), Asquith receives a solo credit both for direction and the scenario. This is another romantic drama, this time involving a quartet: Brian Aherne is once again the hero Bill, his rival is a philanderer Bert (Cyril McLaglen}: whilst the contrasting women are the beautiful Nell (Elissa Landi) and a young seamstress Kate (Norah Baring). The drama concludes with a dramatic rooftop chase and conflict. The film makes strong use of chiaroscuro techniques, as seen in the contemporary German films. Whilst the cinematographer was the British Stanley Rodwell, the lighting was by Karl Fischer, bought over from a German Studio. There are also some nice sequences filmed on the London Underground where the romance starts.

European co-operation, especially with the advanced German Studios like Ufa, was important for British cinema: and seemingly for the young Asquith. His next feature was a co-production between British Instructional Films and the German Laender Film. This was The Runaway Princess (Priscillas fahrt Glück, 1929: co-director Fritz Wendhausen). I haven’t seen the film, but the title of the novel by Elizabeth Russell on which it is based, Princess Priscilla’s Fortnight, gives an idea of the plot. Gifford in his Catalogue of British Films offers the following synopsis: “Prince in disguise saves runaway princess from a forger’s dupe.” The forger was played by Norah Baring, who is a regular lead actress across the later three 1920s features.

 Asquith’s final silent was originally a part-sound film Cottage on Dartmoor (1920: made in the same year as Hitchcock’s Blackmail. In fact, the sound version, which used the German Tobis-Klangfeld sound-on-film system, has been lost: so only a silent version survives. This was also scripted and directed by Asquith, developed from a story by Herbert C. Price. The film was a co-production with a Swedish studio, [presumably Svensk] with the Swedish version titled Fängen 53. This involved a British cinematographer, Stanley Rodwell, and a Swedish cinematographer, Axel Lindblom: presumably using two cameras. Norah Baring plays Sally, once again involved in a romantic triangle, with Jo (Uno Henning) and Harry (Hans von Schlettow – both actors from the German film industry).

Once again there is the expressionist style together with some superb editing, and particular scenes using montage. This style dramatises the conflicts in the film, set out in a superb opening and a following complex flashback. A particular delight is a visit to a cinema to watch a ‘talkie’. This was originally a sound sequence, but it works fine in the silent version. Asquith tackled this sequence by using non-synchronous sound, enabling him to maintain the dynamic camera work and editing that characterises much of the film.

Cottage on Dartmoor appears to be the type of feature that benefited from the increased investment in film that followed on the 1927 Film Act and the prospects that seemed to be promised by the new sound technology. The film was shot at the newly constructed Welwyn Studio and distributed by the fairly recently formed company of Pro Patria. Such expectations were not realised. In the 1930s British cinema suffered as Hollywood dominated the box office and set production standards that British film could rarely match. Not only Brian Aherne, but also Alfred Hitchcock [among others] crossed the Atlantic to the rival film city. Asquith stayed but only occasionally did his sound films match his early silents in technical prowess or dynamism. Around 1938 he commented: “ … the arrival of the talking film … not only killed the silent film but at first, at any rate, failed to substitute anything positive for it …” [McFarlane]. However, as I noted there are a number of real masterworks among his later output.

Quotes from An Autobiography of British Cinema by Brian McFarlane, Methuen 1997.

 Stills kindly provided by the bfi at Il Giornate del Cinema Muto.

Mikhail Kalatazov.

An important though not that well known Soviet director.  His two best-known works are The Letyat Zhuravii / The Cranes are Flying (1957), which shared the Best Picture Award at Cannes 1958: and Soy Cuba / I am Cuba (1963), which presents a triptych of stories of Cuba before and during the revolutionary civil war. There have been two opportunities in recent years to see more of his film work. In 2004 the Göteborg Film Festival presented a selection of his films. This welcome opportunity was slightly arduous for linguistically limited English fans, as the films were screened in Russian with Swedish subtitles.

Then in 2010 Il Giornate del Cinema Muto presented all the surviving silent film work of Kalatozov, including those on which he worked as cinematographer. He emerges from this fuller picture as an extremely gifted stylist, whose approach to film is rather poetic. In fact, it struck me that whilst there are major differences there is a similar quality to the films of Sergei Paradjanov. Both were Georgian artists: both had problems with the Soviet authorities: and in both sets of films emotional imagery takes precedence over narrative and commentary.

Kalatazov was born Mikhail Konstantinovich Kalatozishvili in Tiflis (Tibilisi) in 1903. He entered the Georgian sector of the young Soviet film industry in 1925 at the Goskinprom Studios. He worked as an actor, cutter and cameraman before graduating to direction. He was a member of the Georgian avant-garde of the period and worked at different times with innovators like Lev Kuleshov, Esther Shub and Sergei Tretyakov.

His command and manipulation of the film camera is what one first notices in his work, including on the films on which he worked as cinematographer. Two of these were screened at Pordenone: Giuli (1927, director Lev Push): and Boshuri Siskhli / Gypsy Blood, 1928, (director Lev Push).

In the films that he directed, especially during the silent period, the camera work is almost delirious and the images throb with emotion. His two major works from this early period are Jim Shuante / Salt for Svanetia (1930), formally a documentary about a remote area of the Caucasus. However, the film focuses on traditional rituals and mythic representations of customs that had probably already died out. Only in the final reel does it address the impact of Soviet socialist plans. And the other film is Lursmani Cheqmashi / Nail in the Boot (1931) which is an overt propaganda film. However, once again Kalatazov is really interested in the poetic image and tale. The first part of the film depicts a battle shot in noir style and the desperate and unsuccessful journey for help by a soldier. In the second part a military court martial provides the setting for overt political comment. In both cases Kalatazov expended more energy on the poetic qualities of the film than on the political aspects. This resulted in criticism by the cultural authorities, and also by the military authorities on the second film. This was the period when ‘socialist realism’ was the required form for films, and Kalatazov’s work was as far from such a style of filmmaking as one could possibly get.

Salt for Svanetia

Nail in the Boot was banned and Kalatazov was transferred to administrative duties. He did not direct films again until the 1939. I have not yet been able to see the nine films he directed up until 1956. The Cranes are Flying in that year shows has retained both his command of the medium and his poetic feelings. The film tells the story of two lovers separated by the great Nazi-Soviet conflict. The film’s cinematography is powerful and very unusual for the period in Soviet cinema. I rather felt that there is some influence here on Tarkovsky.

The Unmailed Letter (1960) is one of the films I tried to follow in Russian and Swedish. It follows an expedition to Siberia, which ends disastrously. The film has all the fevered camerawork that Kalatazov delivered in his silent films. I am Cuba has grown in reputation in recent years, and is an important record of a particular moment in the Cuban revolution. It still expended as much attention on the poetic aspects of the struggle and the Cubans were less impressed with the film. His final film, The Red Tent / La Tenda Rossa (1971) was a Soviet/Italian co-production about an ill-fated polar expedition. Unfortunately it is slow, wooden and not really a memorable last movie.

Stills courtesy of Gosfilmomond and Il Giornate del Cinema Muto.

The Cranes are Flying and Soy Cuba are both available on DVD.

 

 

The Battleship Potemkin / Bronenosets Potemkin

USSR 1925. Black and white, silent with musical accompaniment, 1337 metres / 70 minutes.

 

UK film fans have a fresh chance to enjoy one of the key films of cinema history. Moreover it comes in a new restoration which is the closest yet to that seen at the premiere in Moscow in December 1925. This may seem odd for a film that is widely screened, studied and debated. However, even in an industry that often shows a scant regard for the intentions of the filmmakers, Potemkin has had a very erratic history. Ennio Patalas of the Filmmuseum Berlin [Deutsche Kinemathek), the lead archivist in this restoration had detailed many of the cuts, changes and worse in his The Odyssey of the Battleship. (Journal of Film Preservation, 2005).

The Soviet Production Company Goskino sold the original negative to the German left-wing distributor Prometheus in 1926. The film was then censored by the German authorities, cuts included a justifiably famous shot, ‘Close-up of the child covered in blood and his feet, with people running over them and then his head, with a woman stepping on it …’. When the negative was returned to the Soviet Union, possibly before, possibly after the war, the cuts remained. Soviet censors did more damage in the 1930s, removing [amongst other frames] the opening quotation, originally from the now disgraced Leon Trotsky. Hollywood did worse in the 1940s producing a bowdlerised version, Seeds of Freedom (1943) in which the shortened original film was a flashback by an ex-sailor / partisan fighting the German invaders. Then demonstrating Godard’s apt comment about the ‘Hollywood – Mosfilm axis’, in 1949 the Soviet authorities produced a sound version, partly re-edited, including changing the order of the images in the famous Odessa Steps sequence. Other versions step-printed the original and altered the aspect ratio of the frames. Clearly it remained a powerful and political viewing. But Eisenstein’s very specific treatment of image and montage was frequently diluted.

Patalas and his colleagues have meticulously researched surviving prints, contemporary material on the film and records of the different versions in different archives. They have inserted accurate titles, replaced missing frames and sequences, and carefully combined the best prints to produce this version. It is though still slightly shorter than the original version.

A key element in this process is a copy of the version that was shown at the London Film Society in 1927. This print had come directly from Moscow. It had some cuts but was relatively complete: though the English title cards were not always accurate in their translation. Life was complicated for the restorers because another version arrived in the UK in 1927, but from Berlin thus having suffered the scissors of the German censors. Both have been used in the Restoration.

The restorer have also taken into account the famous score produced for the German release by Edmund Meisel.  Apparently the Moscow premiere was accompanied by a medley of music, and performed by an orchestra unfamiliar with the film. Meisel’s score was a serious engagement with the film and its political drama. In fact, the music was so successful that on one occasion the German authorities allowed the film to be screened but banned the music.

There have now been a number of performances with a live orchestra accompanying the film. I was fortunate to see and hear this at the Giornate del Cinema Muto, with the accompaniment by Günther Buchwald. Now the British Film Institute is distributing this version of the film in a High Definition digital print. This enables them to provide the Meisel score in a recorded accompaniment. I would expect that Eisenstein’s film would look good in this format, as there are few of the special effects that are over-emphasised by the sharper edges of digital. However, it does create a further problem, the film’s running speed.

The screening at the Giornate was 18 frames per second [fps] and ran for seventy minutes. The BFI release also runs for 70m minutes but will be on digital projectors running at 24 fps.  I assume that the version has been adapted on a computer, which is rather similar to the now disused step-printing. This can produce a slight ghosting effect on the image. I think this is quite likely for the Potemkin print given that there are a number of shots in the film that are only a few frames and run for only part of a second. I am inclined to think that Eisenstein would not be completely happy with this. Patalas records that in 1929 in London, Meisel had it [the film] projected at a slower speed [to fit his music] a reason for the cooling of relations between himself and Eisenstein.’ Given what an experience the film is, this is not a reason to miss seeing the film [or seeing it again].

Apart from any other reasons it has been my experience in teaching that more people have seen the famous Odessa Steps sequence than have seen the whole film. As impressive and powerful as this sequence is, it makes far sense dramatic and political sense as part of the whole film. And the Patalas restoration means that effectively we are seeing the film in a new form and possibly in a new way. I have actually seen quite few of the different versions – memorably one print where only two of the three lions at the end of the Odessa Steps were to be seen. Here we have the radical cinematic form, the emotional resonance of the revolution, and the complexities of the film’s propaganda.  

                                    *************************************

Watching the restoration in the digital release was a real pleasure. Eighty years on Eisenstein’s film stands the test of time, and of a radically changed social and political context. In this fuller version the film displays a dynamic drive coupled with a coherent but fairly complex narrative. Even after numerous previous viewing new aspects struck me. One particular sequence is near the start of Act V. There are shots of low rolling waves near a coastline. This appears to refer us back to the opening stormy sea, now presented in its original form. A new phase of the struggle is signalled.

The digital version looked very good, though the sharper edges of the format seemed to make the grain of the film more obvious. The visual aspect confirms how important was the contribution of Eduard Tissé to this [and other films by Eisenstein]. In particular, whilst one is struck by the editing and tempo of the Odessa Steps sequence, it is also full of stunning camera shots. There are several wide shots of the steps with the civilian crowd in full flight from the murderous soldiers. Even after eighty years I can think of few films with such dramatic images.

The accompanying score was excellent. It had to be rearranged as Meisel original score was to composed to accompany the censored and therefore somewhat shorter version. The rearrangement was extremely well done and the music makes a major contribution to the impact of the film.

There were slight weaknesses. The digital version runs at 24 fps, whereas the original probably ran at 18 fps. It appears that the method used to adjust the difference in speeds was a form of computerised ‘step-printing’, – inserting extra frames every so often. Step printing usually inserted an extra frame every three – this electronic system apparently inserts every seven or eight frames. The slight drawback is that the film has a number of camera shots that are less than this. I did think at one or two places that the image ran rather fast. There were several points where I felt this, in the Odessa Steps sequence, and also with the appearance of the three lions that follows that sequence.

But it was still a great film to see again – looking and sounding great. I did check David Thomson’s book shortly before the screening. He does not like it at all. Perversely, that is probably unintended praise.

Stills provided by Il Giornate del Cinema Muto, courtesy of the British Film Institute

Rotaie

Rotaie. (Wheels).

S. A. C. I. A. / Nero-film, Italy / Denmark, 1929. 

Director: Mario Camerini, also scenario.  Story, Corrado D’Erico.

35mm, Italian Intertitles with translation.

 

The girl, Käthe von Nagy – The Girl; Maurizio D’Ancora – The Boy [Giorgio]; Daniele Crespi – The Seducer, Jacques Mercier;  

The film was produced in both silent and sound versions, and there was also a titled version with a musical soundtrack. The Giornate del Cinema Muto screened the silent version with a live musical accompaniment.

 

The film has a splendid opening as a rear-view camera tracks behind a couple entering a hotel late at night. The camera [and audience] follows the couple as they almost wordlessly check in and go to a room. \We learn that family opposition blights their love and their actions imply death together. The chance passing of a train and its vibrations cause the glass with the fatal tablet to fall to the floor. The doomed spell is broken.

The couple now set off on an odyssey. Another chance event, a man dropping a wallet at the central railway station, provides the wherewithal for their train journey to the sea and the Riviera. Here is the film becomes fairly predictable as The Boy first wins and then loses at the Casino: he is then tempted to steal another’s winnings to settle his bills. Meanwhile a rich seducer targets The Girl. Chance, or more likely fate, once more intervenes, and the seducer refrains. Reconciled the couple spend the night on a park bench.

Once more penniless the young couple takes another train journey back to the city: this time among the workers and peasants rather than in a sleeping car. At the film’s end The Boy is working in a factory. The Girl meets him at the gate and her knitting suggests that a baby will turn them into a family. A montage of shots of trains, factory building, factory chimneys, turbines and workers accompany this ending.

After the film there a discussion about how far the film’s ending should be seen as an expression of the Fascist values dominant in 1920s Italy. The film’s ending does integrate the couple into the world of work: a central notion in Italian Fascism. It also sets up a nuclear family, another institution encouraged under fascism.

However, the notion of work as central to integration into society is a rather generalised idea. And the potential family appears a rather individualised one: there is no sign, for example, of the Fascist social institution, Dopolavoro. The central emphasis in Italian Fascism was on the role of conflict and importance of the dominance of the State. Two slogans of the Party were – “War is to Man as Motherhood is to Woman” and “Everything in the State, nothing outside the State, nothing against the State”. Neither of these aspects is overtly present in the film. [Marco Bellocchio’s portrait Vincere (2009) powerfully emphasises these aspects]. 

Rather I felt the film was an example of a melodrama which presents the integration of the main characters into the general value system. It is extremely well done and well worth seeing.

 

Metropolis



Germany, 1927 Director: Fritz Lang. Restored 2010. 

I saw this version at Il Cinema Ritrovato in Bologna, screened in the Piazza Maggiore with a live musical performance by the Orchestra del Teatro Comunale directed by Frank Strobel. Several thousand onlookers enjoyed this spectacle under a clear and dark Italian sky. A suitable occasion for this epic film.

 

The restored Metropolis is impressive, finally achieving an almost complete reconstruction of the version screened in Berlin in 1927. The newly found sequences, in an Archive in Buenos Aires, survived only on a 16mm copy. They are clearly visually inferior to the existing 35mm sequences. This does have the advantages that the additions are all clearly identifiable in the print: my friend counted 39. They fill out the narrative; thus the motivation of Rotwang [Rudolf Klein-Rogge] is now fully presented in the story. And the melodramatic aspects of the characters and their relationships developed. There is the conflict between Rotwang and the omnipotent capitalist Fredersen [Alfred Abel]. And the conflict between Freder [Gustav Fröhlich] and his father takes on a stronger Oedipal tone, especially when the cloned Maria makes her appearance. The two Maria’s [human and robot- both Brigitte Helm] suggest a further conflict between tradition and modernity: a conflict played out in many fashions in the capital city Berlin at that time.

What seems to me unchanged is the problematic values embedded in the film. The resolution has Maria engineering a solution to the film’s crisis as Freder acts as mediator [the heart] between Fredersen [the head] and the workers [the hand]. Siegfried Kracauer, in his classic work From Caligari to Hitler [Princeton University Press 1947] comments;

“On the surface its seems that Freder has converted his father; in reality, the industrialist has outwitted his son. The concession he makes amounts to a policy of appeasement that not only prevents the workers from winning their cause, but enables him to tighten his grip on them. … By yielding to Freder, the industrialist achieves intimate contact with the workers, and thus is in a position to influence their mentality.”

This is an accurate description of the conclusion with the exception of the final sentence. The final pact between capital and labour needs to be seen through the lens of Marx and his comments on ideology. In The German Ideology Marx and Engels wrote:            

“The ideas of the ruling class are in every epoch the ruling ideas, i.e. the class which is the ruling material force of society, is at the same time its ruling intellectual force.”

[English Translation in the Lawrence & Wishart edition, 1970].                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                              This comment is often misinterpreted as alluding to the notion of ‘false consciousness’. However, Marx’s use of ideology is both more complex and more accurate. He stresses two aspects of ideology: as representing the interests of a particular class: and of accepting the surface appearance of things rather than identifying the underlying social relations. The prime example of this is in the contract for ‘a fair days work for a fair days pay’. That contract is not a case of the capitalist merely outwitting the workers. The capitalist class’s social domination extends from the economic base into the superstructure. In the case of the labour contract the social institutions reinforce this surface appearance. The law enforces the contract in this sense and a social institution like Trade Unions normally operates in line with this contract. But as Marx points out the apparently fair contract is in reality exploitation. The underlying social relation is that labour contributes not only the value of their labour power but a surplus, which provides the profit of the capitalist class.

The workers in Metropolis seem bound in a condition nearer to slavery than ‘free labour’. In fact, the political economy of Metropolis is not fully explained. We appear to be in an economy based on wage labour and commodity exchange. However, the condition of the Metropolis proletariat seems to embody both exploitation and oppression.

Whatever the conditions the ideology of exchange and control is still potent in the city world. Kracauer in fact points out that the surface appearances are reinforced in the actual style of the film.

“If in this [final] scene the heart really triumphed over tyrannical power, its triumph would dispose of the all-devouring decorative scheme that in the rest of Metropolis marks the industrialist’s claim to omnipotence. Artist that he was, Lang could not possibly overlook the antagonisms between the breakthrough of intrinsic human emotions and his ornamental patterns. Nevertheless, he maintains these patterns up to the very end: the workers advance in the form of the wedge-shaped strictly symmetrical procession which points towards the industrialist standing on the portal steps of the cathedral. The whole composition denotes that the industrialist acknowledges the heart for the purpose of manipulating it:…”

Of course, Fredersen does not need to manipulate it. The design of the world of Metropolis is a visual sign of the social relations, within which [as with the labour contract] the workers are ideologically constrained. When the workers [‘the hand’] process to meet with the ‘heart’ and the ‘head’ they are led by Grot [Heinrich George], the foreman and overseer. Earlier in the film we have seen him reporting to Fredersen on signs of revolt amongst the workers. Clearly the first step a workers revolution would need to take is to toss Grot into the torrent of water that submerges their part of the city. The flood also appears to be the result of the workers’ actions, as they smash the ‘heart machine’. But this is only the occasion of the catastrophe. Its actual cause is the system that confines the workers underground, both at labour and at rest at home.

This is the part of the story where the lack of a clear economic discourse creates the greatest weakness. Fredersen orders the opening of the gates, which enables the enraged workers to smash the ‘heart machine’. Rotwang has suggested earlier in the film that Fredersen wishes to provoke force by the workers so that he can use force to suppress them. But at this point there is no sign of how he would do that. And the catastrophic destruction that entails would appear to go beyond anything of that order. The workers are whipped up by the cloned Maria to ‘smash the machines’. It would appear that we are in an early stage of industrial society where workers can perceive the surface problem as the machine itself. And Fredersen from this perspective is the ruthless early capitalist determined to drive forward his new productive relations.

It does seem that the existing relations of exploitation in Metropolis are fairly archaic. The ten-hour shifts leave the workers in a state of exhaustion with the consequent disasters as that witnessed by Freder when he first visits the underground machine room. One possible scenario then sees Freder as a more enlightened capitalist who can bring in a newer form of ‘free labour’: more efficient at creating value and surplus value. But the actual scenario fails to develop this aspect.

Kracauer also comments on the record that both Goebbels and Hitler were very taken with Lang’s film. He discusses at length the idea that this is an expression of psychological tendencies within German society. This probably overstates the matter. The film seems to give expression to social conflicts and fear in contemporary society. There were already members of the bourgeoisie consorting with and financing right-wing parties including the National Socialists.  The petit bourgeois were in panic over economic collapse and social breakdown. The working class was suffering economic privations whilst still in a state of ferment. Yoshiwara in the upper city seems to be a pastiche of a certain Berlin nightlife of the period. The contradictions of contemporary society were already signalling the social upheavals that were likely to resolve them.

So neither Fritz Lang, nor the scriptwriter Thea von Harbou were consciously predicting a little way in the future. So it would seem unfair to retrospectively attribute the film’s values to either one or the other. Thea von Harbou stayed in Germany and Fritz Lang left. But in 1926 the film’s vision was likely held by both of them. Both were fairly nationalistic. Both had a fondness for tradition Teutonic values. Moreover, Lang’s life and work styles did not leave much room for involvement in socially conscious activities.

 

One aspect of the plot, which might well flow from von Harbou’s pen, is the representation of women. The workers wives appear to be chained to the reproduction of the labour force. Women in the upper city of the elite appear to serve as sexual or romantic objects for the men. Maria alone, and her cloned opposite, show fire and understanding. Whilst Von Harbou had many conservative values she was a proponent of equal rights for women: something not strongly apparent in Lang’s own work of the period.

Whatever their individual contributions, the final  ‘moral’ of the film that they offer is one that falsely suggest that amelioration is possible within the system. And their use of traditional story motifs and a strong dose of religion reinforce this. Maria’s talks to the workers are laden with religious symbolism. And the City Cathedral looms large in the mise en scène. 

Production: Universum-Film-Aktiengesellschaft (Ufa) studios; black and white, 35mm, silent; length 4189 meters originally, the cut version was only 3170 meters. Released 10 January 1927, Berlin. Filmed 1925-26, in 310 days and 60 nights, in UFA Studios, Berlin. Cost: Approximately 5 million Deutschmarks.

Screenplay: Fritz Lang and Thea von Harbou, from the novel by von Harbou; photography: Karl Freund and Günther Rittau; art directors: Otto Hunte, Erich Kettelhut, and Karl Vollbrecht; original accompanying music: Gottfried Huppertz; special effects: Eugene Schüfftan; costume designer: Anne Willkomm; sculptures: Walter Schultze-Mittendorff.

Length of restored version 2010: 4070 meters. D.: 148′ a 24 fps.  German Intertitles.

Friedrich-Wilhelm-Murnau Stiftung (Wiesbaden), jointly with Deutsche Kinemathek – Museum für Film und Fernsehen (Berlin), in co-operation with the Museo del Cine Pablo C. Ducros Hicken (Buenos Aires).

Musical score by Gottfried Huppertz reconstructed and synchronised by Frank Strobel.

 

Dom Na Trubnoi / The House on Trubnaya Square

USSR 1928.

Directed by Boris Barnet. Produced at the Mezhrapom-Rus Studio, the most commercial of the Soviet production companies.

Running 66 minutes at 24 fps: unfortunately reel five is missing.

Screened as part of The Canon Revisited at Le Giornate del Cinema Muto 2009.

As the Festival catalogue points out the film does not have the status of a ‘classic’ as it is extremely difficult to see. Apparently it is only available on DVD in France. Hopefully the warm reception at the Giornate will motivate someone to remedy this sad state of affairs.

The House on Trubnaya Square is that rare feature, a montage comedy. It is marvellously funny and makes exemplary use of Soviet montage techniques. Barnet had worked, as an assistant director on Lev Kuleshov’s The Extraordinary Adventures of Mr West in the Land of the Bolsheviks (Neobychainiye priklucheniya Mistera Vesta v stranye bolshevikov, 1924), and was apparently also, for a time, a member of DzigaVertov’s ‘workshop’. His favoured genre appears to have been comedy.

“Speaking generally about my attitude towards cinema, I like comedy best of all. I like to insert amusing scenes into dramas and dramatic scenes into comedies, but of course it’s all a matter of proportion.

With a few obvious exceptions, all my films, for better or worse, deal with contemporary life and its problems. When I have an option, I have always chosen contemporary subjects, even though it is not always easy to tackle these.” [Interview in Eisenschitz, 1991].

The interweaving of the comic and dramatic can be seen in this feature film. Barnet continued working as a director, and sometime actor, in the Soviet industry into the 1960s. The House on Trubnaya Square also enjoyed the services of a team of four scriptwriters, an unusually large number for the period and suggestive of concerns over content. However, according to an article by Bernard Eisenschitz [Eisenschitz, 1991] there seems to have been little in common between a published script and the actual finished film.

Yuri Tsivian set the scene for this film in the Festival Catalogue:

“There exists a sad story used more than once in Russian silent films and in Russia’s soulful prose. A young peasant woman comes to the city carrying all she has – a goose or a duck in a basket. Overwhelmed by the crowd and frightened by the trams, she spends the night in a park only to be spotted by a brothel owner, or, if in luck, to find a low-wage job as a nurse or maid in a rich man’s house. In the next reel her employer or his son seduces the peasant girl, and, with a baby on her hands, she returns to her village, where no one is willing to take her back.”

As Tsivian points out this film apparently revisits the genre, but then offers an unexpected twist.

The opening introduces the House on Trubnaya: presented round a central staircase with various floors and flats. This set provides a site for comedy and satire, with some inventive tracks and tilts up and down its length. Two Intertitles inform us, ‘The City sleeps’. And ‘The City wakens’, accompanied by shots of urban activity. [This opening bears some resemblance to that of Vertov’s Man With a Movie Camera / Chelovek s kinoapparatom, 1929]. Then we meet the apparently stereotypical village heroine, Parasha (Vera Maretskaia), who has arrived in Moscow laden with all her belongings, including a duck. Bewildered and lost she wanders into the path of an oncoming tram. At this point Barnet introduces a freeze frame, and an Intertitle addresses the audience, ‘How Parasha came to be in Moscow?’

The film proceeds to fill out the story. Parasha has come to Moscow to seek her uncle but finds he has moved. Fortunately the driver of the tram, Semyon [Vladimir Batalov], is from her village. This is how Parasha comes to reside at Trubnaya Square. Here she works as a maid for the hairdresser Golikov [Vladimir Fogel]. Golikov is an example of an entrepreneur who exploits his servants: Parasha is the latest in a line of serving girls who endure service. Golikov is clearly a satire on the Nepmen, entrepreneurs who were able to trade and profit in the period of the New Economic Policy.

The films also satirises the less than utopian behaviour of the workers in the Trubnaya flats. The staircase provides the site for a continuing battle between Soviet order and individualist fecklessness. The feckless behaviour includes dumping rubbish and using the landings for wood chopping. The battle against this individualist disorder is led by Fenia (Ada Voitsik), also a union organiser. She is one of the alternative model proletarians, the citizens of the new Soviet world. The other lead model is the driver Semyon, a union member. Fenia befriends Parasha and encourages her to demand her entitlements.

Class contradictions come to a head at certain points in the narrative. First, there is a revolutionary dramatic performance at the workers’ club. [This is a rare example of such a club featuring in a Soviet film]. The topic is the Storming of the Bastille [during the French Revolution, a harbinger of that which had occurred in Russia in 1917]. Thanks to an excess of alcohol by one of the performers Golikov has to take the stage as a general leading the reaction. His violent stage actions are too much for Parasha who rushes from the audience to join in on stage and attack his reactionary character.

The later event is the elections to the Moscow Soviet. Parasha attends an election meeting with her friend Fenia. Part of these events occur in the missing reel. A resident at the Square, Marina, hears what she thinks is Parasha’s name read out in the election results. On hearing the news the other residents prepare to welcome Parasha, including finally cleaning up the staricase.  Golikov and his wife, now wishing to impress an elected representative, arrange a dinner party for Parasha, and invite their petit bourgeois friends. Then Golikov discovers the error. When the truth outs Parasha is sacked.

However Fenia encourages her to demand unpaid emollients, including untaken holidays and a discharge payment. The film ends with the suggestion of a romance with Semyon as Parasha takes up a proper proletarian job and Golikov receives punishment for the frequent beatings administered to the serving girls. And Fenia celebrates: at last, the Trubnaya House staircase is clean, tidy and in order.

The film makes use of a variety of techniques, not just editing [as is the case with Soviet montage films generally]. There is the integration of sets and locations; a range in camera use from long shot to close up; tracks, pans and tilts. The variety matches and dramatises the plot, which is an amalgam of speed, change and zany actions.

A number of other films by Barnet are viewed favourably by writers but all remain difficult to see at present. Bernard Eisenschiz article, A fickle man, or portrait of Boris Barnet as a Soviet Director discusses many of these. The article is included in Inside the Film Factory New approaches to Russian and Soviet Cinema, edited by Richard Taylor and Ian Christie, Published by Routledge in 1991.

Stills supplied by the Giornate del Cinema Muto, courtesy of Gosfilmofond, Moscow.

Les Nouveaux Messieurs

 

 This French silent was screened at the 2008 Il Giornate del Cinema Muto. It is both a romance and a political satire. I not only enjoyed the film but also started noticing interesting parallels with a later British sound film, Fame is the Spur. The discussion of the two films that follows does include plot spoilers.

LES NOUVEAUX MESSIEURS (Translated as The New Men) Films Albatros/Sequana Films, France 1928.

Director: Jacques Feyder; screenplay: Jacques Feyder, Charles Spaak, from the play by Robert de Flers & Francis de Croisset (1926); photography: Georges Périnal, Maurice Desfassiaux; design: Lazare Meerson; cast: Albert Préjean (Jacques Gaillac), Gaby Morlay (Suzanne Verrier), Henry Roussell (Comte de Montoire-Grandpré).

Filmed: 27.6­28.9.1928 (Brie-Comte-Robert; Créteil; Brunoy; Château de Bisy; Studios Billancourt).

35mm, 2805 m., 123′ (20 fps); print source: Cinémathèque Française, Paris.

French intertitles [with a translation].

Musical score composed and conducted by Antonio Coppola, performed by I’Octuor de France.

“Les Nouveaux Messieurs, by Francis de Croisset and Robe­rt de Flers, had been the hit of the 1925-26 Boulevard season, enjoying a run of 400 performances. It was a romantic and satiric comedy that described a tug-­of-war waged over a pretty young actress by two men: her ageing aristocratic protector and a young left-wing electrician union organiser. The aristocrat uses his wealth and connections to protect his ­protégéé, but the worker wins her over with his casual charm and ­dynamic self-confidence. The electrician is appointed labour minister in a new left-wing government, only to lose his position (and lover) when the government is toppled.”

Lenny Borger in the Catalogue 2009.

The play from which the film originated was first performed in 1926. It would seem likely that it was commenting on current political developments in France. There was a General Election in 1924. It was narrowly won by the Cartel des Gauches, which replaced a conservative government. The Cartel was an alliance of radicals and socialists, with a small group of communist. However, the new government was undermined by disagreements among its members. What finally bought it down were economic forces. There was a large deficit in the French budget, exacerbated when the reparations awarded to France from Germany at the Treaty of Versailles were postponed by the US sponsored Dawes Plan. Unable to resolve the crisis the Cartel lost the support of centrist groups, and was replaced by a government of National Unity. The Cartel leader Herriot joined in, but it was really a conservative administration.

[See A History of Modern France, Volume 3: 1871 – 1962, Alfred Cobban. Pelican].

This French silent provides an interesting contrast with the later sound film made in Britain, Fame is the Spur, UK Two Cities 1947, black and white, 116 minutes.

Produced by John Boulting. Directed by Roy Boulting. Script by Nigel Balchin from the novel by Howard Spring.

Cast: Hamer Radshaw – Michael Redgrave. Ann – Rosamund Johns. Tom Hannaway – Bernard Miles. Arnold Ryerson – Hugh Burden. Lady Lettice -

Howard Spring started out as a journalist in South Wales, and then moved on to the London Evening Standard. This, his most well known novel was published in 1940. It is a salutary tale [the leading character appears to be modelled on Ramsay MacDonald] of a working class lad who succeeds in becoming a Member of Parliament, a Government Minister and finally a Lord: but loses touch with his roots and his class politics. The novel begins with a quotation from John Milton’s Lycidas:

“Fame is the spur that the clear spirit doth raise

(That last infirmity of noble mind)

To scorn delights and live laborious days.”

The film broadly follows the book and opens with this quotation in a voice-over by the lead actor. It provides an apt comment both on this British political saga and the earlier French farce. The narrative is organised around episodes, usually introduced by a title showing the year, running from 1870 to 1937. The French and British films are in many ways very different, including one being silent and one sound. But there are also interesting parallels in the character situations and the development of the plot.

Like Nouveaux Messieurs, Fame is the Spur is loosely based on actual events and characters. And the latter film mirrors the earlier one in that a key moment in the narrative is an economic crisis that impacts on the governing class. In Fame is the Spur Hamer has become the Minister for Interior Affairs in a Labour Government. The Wall Street Crash and the beginning of the Great Depression lead to the formation of the National Government led by Ramsay MacDonald. Hamer joins this collaborationist government, which [among other measures] institutes a cut in unemployment benefit.

Hamer ‘sells out’, as indeed does Gaillac.

In fact this crossing over of the class divide had becomes increasingly clear as Hamer’s career progresses. Like Gaillac he acquires the external trapping of the bourgeois politician, the top hat and evening dress. He also acquires a large and expensive mansion. In Nouveaux Messieurs Gaillac visits a new housing estate dressed in his top hat and tails, demonstrating his alienation from the working class party supporters. In the British film at one point we see Hamer vainly attempting to persuade Welsh miners to support the Imperialist war effort. This contrasts with his early working class family and upbringing.

Hamer stirs the miners with his grandfather's sword

In Nouveaux Messieurs we see Gaillac at the C.I.T. offices with a copy of Karl Marx’s Capital on his desk. [C.I.T. is presumably meant to strand in for the actual C.G.T. Confédération Générale du Travail]. The equivalent scene in Fame is the Spur shows Hamer in an early job in a Manchester Bookshop. Among the photographs on the wall is a portrait of Karl Marx. Hammer’s young female admirer, Ann [whom he later marries] comes to be ‘instructed’ and he lends her An Introduction to Capital.

Some of the parallels are rather different in presentation. So in Nouveaux Messieurs we see a French deputy dreaming in the chamber: of nubile ballet dancers pirouetting in the aisles. In the Boulting film the ‘dream’ sequence refers to the tale told to the young Hamer by his granddad. This is a reminiscence of the Peterloo massacre in Manchester in 1819. This is not a realistic flashback, but an imagined event [presumably by Hamer] where the workers wear garlands of flowers and the attacking yeomanry are dressed as medieval knights. The grandfather has retained a souvenir from this infamous event, a yeoman’s sword, which becomes a symbol of Hamer’s youthful radicalism.

Fame is the Spur uses frequent montages: i.e. rapid sequence of shots highlighting events, as for example in the St Swithun Parliamentary election where Hamer cuts his political teeth, or when the Suffragette agitation is introduced. Nouveaux Messieurs uses a rather different technique, rapid accelerated motion, during the tour by Jacques of the new housing estate, as he desperately tries to rush back to the political crisis in Paris.

There are two important developments in the plot where the films differ considerably. In Nouveaux Messieurs Suzanne accompanies Jacques when he goes to address a transport workers strike. Jacques is successful in halting the march by the workers; and later, at a rally, suggests the speeches are ended and that there be dancing. The strikers win concessions, but Jacques is clearly restraining worker’s militancy in a reformist manner.

In the Boulting film Hamer’s equivalent scenes is when he goes to address striking Welsh miners at the request of his friend Arnold. Hamer stirs the miners up to a militant pitch, brandishing the sword from Peterloo as a symbol of class resistance. In the ensuing fracas a worker is killed and Hamer is seen as an agitator, though he vigorously disclaims responsibility.

Even more interesting is the comparison between the heroines of the two films. Suzanne is a fairly active heroine, but the plot contains her as an object of male interest. By the end of the film she has opted for the affluent life provided by the Comte and is still a ballet dancer at the prestigious Opéra; a position first obtained for her by the Comte and then reinstated by Gaillac as a Minister. Ann, in Fame is the Spur, is equally subservient to Hamer early in the film. But by 1912 she has become a militant supporter of the Suffragette movement. Hamer, now well down the path of reformism, opposes the movement and votes for women. In fairly harrowing scenes the audience see Ann in Holloway prison and enduring the violence of forcible feeding. This exacerbates her consumption and she soon dies: leaving Hamer to the admiration of his aristocratic admirer, Lady Lettice, [wife of the Earl whom Hamer opposed in the earlier St Swithun’s election].

Fame is the Spur received an A Certificate and did not suffer the fate of Nouveaux Messieurs, which was banned for a time and then suffered enforced cuts to the film. This was presumably down to the more radical climate in the 1940s Britain with the mood of ‘no return to the thirties’. And the French film  appeared after a further General Election in France in 1928. This was won by the conservatives, and presumably sharpened the satire of Nouveaux Messieurs for audiences.

With everything going for it, nobody was ready for the shock awaiting the finished film at a first trade screening in late November 1928: it was refused a distribution visa and subsequently banned! The parliamentary world was up in arms: the film was declared an act of lèse-government, and a number of MPs, among them the president of the Chamber of Deputies, claimed to recognise themselves in some of the more unflattering portraits. Both Left and Right felt they were on the receiving end of Feyder’s satiric darts.

The scandal swelled ludicrously, only to subside months later. The distribution visa was finally delivered – pending cuts (the unkindest being the now-lost ironic epilogue at the train station, where the aristocrat sees his ex-rival off to a safely distant post in Geneva: “Vive la Republique!” yells the worker; “Vive la France!” the anti-parliamentarian counters).

Lenny Borger

The farewell

Fame is the Spur has a very different sort of ending. The Boulting brothers came up with an inspired scene, which is not in the original novel. Now 75 and a Lord, Hamer returns to his mansion and overcome by memories takes down the sword from the mantelshelf and tries to draw it from the scabbard. He fails; it has rusted up from disuse. A powerful visual symbol for the situation of Hamer.

Nouveaux Messieurs is essentially a farce, whilst Fame is the Spur is a melodrama with tragic overtones This would seem to reverse Marx’s dictum, ‘that history repeats itself, first as tragedy, then as farce’. But the films also fit with stereotypical representations of the differences between French and British culture. The French film is a satirical farce, and at the centre is effectively a ménage à trois. The British film is clearly a melodrama, which opts for a serious moral stance rather than satire or even irony.

 The Director of Nouveaux Messieurs, Jacques Feyder, was an established filmmaker by 1929. In the 1920s he directed a number of fine features that are seen as early examples of French Poetic realism. [One example would be Crainquebille (1922) screened at an earlier Giornate]. But he had a chequered career. In 1929 he went to Hollywood for a period, but was not successful there. He had already demonstrated a clear touch for comedy and satire and his most famous film, La Kermesse heroique (Carnival in Flanders, 1935), is a satire on war set in a C17th village occupied by Spanish soldiers. Like Nouveaux Messieurs, the film mixes political and sexual conflicts in its plot.

The Boulting Brothers are now probably best remembered for their 1950s comedy. This included I’m Alright Jack, a satire on industrial relations that caricatured both bosses and workers. However, in the 1940s the Boulting were young and radical, part of that post-war left-leaning generation. Their earlier Pastor Hall (1940) was a savage indictment of the Nazi, and even ventured into the violent world of the concentration camp. And The Guinea Pig (1948) followed a working class lad [Richard Attenborough] trying to make a success of a scholarship to a Public School.

So the two films provide both parallels and contrasts. Given that the topic of parliamentary and class conflicts are not common in popular film, both their similarities and their differences provide an intriguing study.

 

Thanks to Il Giornate del Cinema Muto for stills from Nouveaux Messieurs.