Brides of Sulu

August 7, 2011

Adelina Moreno and Eduardo de Castro in Brides of Sulu, from www.gmanews.tv

A lot of us will know the commonly accepted figure of 80% of all films from the silent era as being considered lost. The figures varies for different territories, however (and whether you are counting fiction films only or all kinds of production). For America there is an estimated a survival rate of 7-12% for each year of the teens (feature films only), moving to 15-25% for the 1920s, but for China the figure is 95% loss, and for Japan the figure is between 95% and 99% loss. For the Philippines the figure is even worse – 100% loss of all native silent film production. Or at least that was what was thought. But silent films can lurk in some surprising places.

Brides of Sulu is an obscure American B-movie, made anywhere between 1933 and 1937 according to assorted sources. It’s included in the American Film Institute’s catalogue for the 1930s. The film tell of two lovers from the Philippine islands, one a Mohammedan princess (Venita), the other a pagan pearl diver (Assam). To escape her aranged marriage to a local chief, the couple flee to a remote island only to be pursued by her tribe, determined to kill Assam. It was filmed in the Philippines, though there is apparently no written account there of its production, and has an American narration (the country was still a colony of the USA at this time). The film was directed by one John Nelson, of whom nothing else (according to IMDb) is known, and stars two Phillipines film actors, Adelina Moreno and Eduardo de Castro, as well as local Moro tribesmen.

Now Brides of Sulu is to feature at Manila’s International Silent Film Festival, because recent scholarship indicates that the film was made out of one, if not two, Philippine silents. According to the Society of Filipino Archivists for Film:

There were two late silent-era Filipino films made in 1931 about the Moros of Sulu – Princess Tarhata (Araw Movies) and The Moro Pirate (Malayan Movies). The first was produced by the forgotten cinematographer Jose Domingo Badilla, while the latter was produced and directed by Jose Nepomuceno, acknowledged as the Father of the Philippine movie industry. Tarhata‘s lead actress is Adelina Moreno, while main actor of Moro Pirate is Eduardo de Castro …

… Coincidentally, both Moreno and De Castro, are the main starring actors in Brides of Sulu. The film also looks like it has two separate parts- the dramatically acted scenes and the documentary portions. Which raises the the intriguing possibility- is Brides the mutant offspring of the re-cutting and reconstitution of two earlier local films via the editing room? Then dubbed in English and re-editorialized for U.S. release with the intention of making it look like an American production so it would be easier to sell abroad? And who is director John Nelson? … Why are his initials the same as those of Jose Nepomuceno’s? So is the nationality of the film American or Filipino?

For the exciting conclusion, please attend the opening of the 5th International Silent Film Festival on Aug. 26 at the Shangri-la Mall Cinema …

Well, given that they promise an exciting conclusion, and given that the film is to screen at a silent film festival, I think we are safe in declaring that the Philippines has found one, or maybe two, films from its silent heritage, the first such films known to survive. Brides of Sulu has circulated on assorted obscure video labels for many years, and you can view the whole film on YouTube.

Extract from Brides of Sulu, in which Assam (Eduardo de Castro) faces up to Datu Tamboyan, father of Benita (Adelina Moreno)

Viewing the film undoubtedly suggests a silent film cannibalised by some opportunistic American producer with some actuality footage and narration to make an exotic B-movie release. Maybe Jose Nepomuceno, a revered figure in Philippine film history who directed their first fiction film, Dalagang Bukid, in 1919, is ‘John Nelson’, though there doesn’t seem much reason why this should be. No doubt all will be revealed at the International Silent Film Festival, which is now in its fifth year. The festival takes place 26-28 August at the Shang Cineplex (Cinema 2), Shangri-La Plaza, Mandaluyong Manila. Brides of Sulu will be screened with musical accoompaniment by Armor Rapista and the Panday Pandikal Cultural Troupe, which suggests that they will be dropping the American narration, which will be no bad thing. Other films screening at the festival are Nosferatu (Germany 1922), Akeyuku Sora (The Dawning Sky) (Japan 1929), L’Inferno (Dante’s Inferno) (Italy 1911), The Greek Miracle (Greece 1921) and Pilar Guerra (Spain 1926) – an impressive eclectic selection.

When certain information is reported on the provenance of Brides of Sulu, we will report it. Meanwhile, you can discover more about Jose Nepomuceno in a thesis by Nadi Tofighian of Stockholm University, The role of Jose Nepomuceno in the Philippine society: What language did his silent films speak? (2006), which shows what a rich history early Philippine filmmaking can boast, even without the films themselves to refer to.

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Bad influence

August 6, 2011

From time to time we have noted the various publications from the silent era or just after which looked at the social effects of the cinema, particularly on children. Like most sociological treatises they are predicated on the anxieties of their age, or at least of the enquirer, and most are concerned with why children were spending so much time in front of the screen, how what they were watching might influence them adversely, and why they might not rather do something far healthier, like sports or visting public parks. And if they had to watch films, then why couldn’t they be educational ones? And so on. A number of these are freely available online, with links and short descriptions in the Bioscope Library.

Now, and with acknowledgements to the Research into Film blog where I came across it, UNESCO has published a word-searchable PDF of its 1961 annotated international bibliography, The influence of cinema on children and adolescents. The 107 page document is an extraordinary monument to fifty years of angst, with 491 reports on cinema’s influence on the young from the 1920s to the 1950s from all around the world. There is plenty here for the student of silent cinema, not just from the publications from the 1920s, but in later reports which (especially in the 1930s) interview people about their past experiences of filmgoing which inevitably look back to the silent era.

There are too many to list in their entirety, but by searching under “192″ you can find everything with a 1920s publication date (there are none listed before that decade). Below are some choice examples, including the summaries provided by the UNESCO report which reveal that these documents often contains important primary evidence of filmgoing practice as well as evidence of contemporary attitudes.

Lscis, A. and Kejlina, I. Deti i kino.
[Children and the cinema]. Moscow,
General Directorate of Social Education,
Peoples I Commissariat of Instruction of the
RSFSR, Moscow, 1928, 85 p.
Chapter 1 presents information about collective infatuation or “cinematomania” of children collected by the Institute of Curricular Methods through an examination of 2,000 children in Moscow. Data are included on the dangerous influence on children of films which are not appropriate to their age. Chapter 2 describes the adaptation of film services for child audiences, the opening of a cinema for children, and the arrangements made for special children’s matinees. For the sake of comparison, information is also given about a children’s cinema in Germany during the same period.

Various practices adopted at the first children’s cinema (800 seats) in Moscow are outlined: in the foyer was a “cinema corner” with a mural newspaper and publicity material; a co-operative snack bar was opened and group games were organized; in the cinema hall proper, the services of an educational expert were made available.

Other subjects treated are the equipment needed for children’s cinemas and liaison between the children’s cinema and other children’s organizations. A report on the work of a children’s cinema and notes on several children’s films are included.

A diagram of educational work in connexion with the screening of three films before child audiences is given in the annex. Illustrated with six scenes from Soviet children’s films.

Japan, Ministry of Education.
Seishonen no Eiga-kogyo Kanran-jokyo Chosa Gaiyo, jo. / Summary of surveys on film-viewing by Children and adolescents, vol.I, Tokyo, Ministry of Education, Social Education Burecu, 1929, 79 p. (Kyoiku Eiga Kenkyu Shiryo / Data
for Research on Educational Films series, 3).

This volume is a summary of data collected on the cinema attendance of boys and girls of primary and secondary schools in Tokyo and Osaka. The surveys which produced the data were made in October 1927 in Tokyo, and in December 1921, in Osaka.

Part 1. Survey on primary schoolchildren
(1) Film-viewing by primary schoolchildren, accoring to sex.
(2) Film-viewing by primary schoolchildren, according to zones of industry.
Part 2. Survey on middle school pupils.
Part 3. Survey on pupils of girls in high schools.
Part 4. Comparison of Parts 1, 2 and 3, and conclusions.
Supplement. Observations of school authorities on the films shown and on the influence of film-viewing.

Dale, Edgar. The Content of Motion Pictures,
New York, MacMillan, 1935, 234 p.

A content analysis of 1,500 feature films (500 from each of the years 1920, 1925 and 1930). Ten categories were made: crime, sex, love, the comic element, mystery, war, children, history, travel and social propaganda. In 1930, love (29.6 per cent), crime (27.2 per cent) and sex (15 per cent) were the most important subjects, i.e. a total of 72 per cent of all subjects. 16 per cent were taken up by comedy, and 8.6 per cent jointly by mystery and war. Only one out of 500 films was a children’s film; in 1930 there were 7 historical and 9 travel films, but not one social propaganda film. An average of one crime film was seen each month by those who visited the cinema once a week. In nearly two-thirds of all cases, adolescents find crime films unattractive. Of 115 crime films shown in Columbus (Ohio) cinemas, murder techniques are shown in nearly every film, actual murder in 45, attempted murder in 21, and revolvers were used in 22 films. Sex films show: extra-marital relations, seduction, adultery, procuring, illegitimacy, prostitution and bedroom jokes. Romantic love films have for subject: melodrama, courtship, love, flirting, difficulties in marriage, historical romances.

Jimenez de Asua. L. Cinematagrafo y delincuencia.
[The cinema and delinquency] / In:
Revista de Criminalogia, Psiquiatria y Medicina
Legal, Buenos Aires, May-June 1929, p. 377-384.

Earlier studies of the influence of literature and art upon delinquency, especially of the young, began to be extended to the field of the movies soon after 1910. Such studies were undertaken in the United States of America and later in most leading countries of the world. The general conclusion is that the cinema is widely effective in suggesting crime. Various prophylactics have been attempted, of which public censorship has been most commonly and widely applied.

Pedro Casablanca has agitated for the international censorship and control of films, but the plan is scarcely practicable. The Brussels Congress for the Protection of Childhood (1921) sought to stimulate the production of a more educational type of picture. The only legitimate control over films must be in the interests of children and
here considerations of health are more important than morals.

Shuttleworth, F.K. and May, Mark A. The Social Conduct and Attitudes of Movie Fans. New York, MacMillan, 1933, 142 p. (Payne Fund Studies).

The first part concerns the relationship between cinema attendance and the character and social behaviour of young people. The test groups were composed of an equal number of “movie” and “non-movie” children, i.e. children who attended the cinema 4 or 5 times a week and children who went only twice a month. The results were based on
information obtained from the children and their teachers. It was found that “movie” children behaved less satisfactorily in general – were less co-operative, had less self-control and emotional stability, poorer judgement, poorer school performance – than the “non-movie” children. They were, however, more often cited by their class-mates as “best friends” and were more apt to admire others. No differences in honesty, perseverance, obedience and moral consciousness were observed between the two groups.

In the second part of the investigation the opinion of 416 “movie” and 443 “non-movie” children on a variety of matters were compared. Movie children were found to have more admiration for cowboys, popular actors, ballet girls, than “non-movie” children; they believe more readily that alcoholism exists, attach more importance to clothes, object more to parental control, go more often to dance parties, and read more, but what they read is not of good quality. The “non-movie” children showed a greater interest in students and teachers as film characters than did the “movie” children. However, these differences cannot be attributed solely to the cinema.

Such reports often reveal prejudice and partiality, but they also show the seriousness with which sociologists began to treat cinema in the 1920s. They placed emphasis upon empirical study, using such primary evidence as questionnaires, interviews, on-site observations and such like to reach their conclusions, rather than unsubstantiated opinion. They were as an important part of taking films seriously as were the film first theorists, film societies and film archives which likewise recognised the fundamental importance of the medium – a radical step in each case from what had gone before. In treating cinema seriously, however, they had a tendency to view their young subjects as laboratory animals. There is something rather unsettling about reading about children as objects to be controlled better if only they could be better understood. It is salutory to read audiences memoirs of the period, or indeed to think back to one’s own memories of cinema-going when young to and realise that cinema was, as it has always has been, about escape. And that includes escape from adult control or adult assumption of understanding. Worthy and impeccably empirical as such studies were, fundamentally they coiuld only ever uncover so much. The real cinema remains in our heads.

The examples above by Shuttleworth, May and Dale from the famous series of Payne Fund studies which in the 1930s investigated how the movies were influencing America’s youth. A thorough history, with much unpublished material included, is Garth S. Jowett, Ian C. Jarvie and Kathryn H. Fuller’s Children and the Movies: Media Influence and the Payne Fund Controversy.

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Lost Graham Cutts film discovered!

August 3, 2011

Betty Compson as the good and evil twins in The White Shadow (1923), from the National Film Preservation Foundation

Terrific news has spread all across the wires today. A lost film by one of the leading British directors of the silent era, Graham Cutts, has been discovered in New Zealand. The film is The White Shadow, made in 1923. It starred the American actress Betty Compson, who had been brought over to star in three British films at the exalted sum of £1,000 a week, and Clive Brook, British-born but on his way to success in Hollywood riding on the back of the trio of films he made with Compson. Sadly, the film does not survive in a complete state. Around 30 minutes has been found. But it’s an important discovery for all that – as a product of a the work of a talented production team, as a notable starring vehicle, and as an example of the directorial work of Graham Cutts.

Graham Cutts (1885-1958) was arguably the leading British film director of the 1920s. Working with Herbert Wilcox and then Michael Balcon, two of Britain’s top producers of the period, Cutts made stylish romantic dramas characterised by fluid narrative, sumptuous production (on slim budgets) and subtly emotional performances. It could be argued that he was the first British film director to think cinematically. In particular he proved his worth by bringing out the best in some of the many American stars who were brought over to appear in British films at this time, such as Mae Marsh in Paddy-the-Next-Best-Thing (1923), Alice Joyce in The Passionate Adventure (1924), Jane Novak in The Prude’s Fall (1925) and Betty Compson in Woman to Woman (1923). This was a huge hit at the time, and is arguably the most sought-after lost British silent film – at least on artistic grounds or importance to film history.

The White Shadow, from the National Film Preservation Foundation

Woman to Woman starred Compson and Brook, and was hit with both audiences and critics, who admired its maturity of style and theme. Produced for Balcon-Saville-Freedman (Michael Balcon, Victor Saville and John Freedman), the film was directed by Cutts and produced by Michael Balcon, the first film to be made by one of British cinema’s most notable production talents. The success of the film led to a second made by the much the same production team. This was The White Shadow (1923), a tale of twins, one good, one bad, each played by Betty Compson. The verdict at the time was that the film was not as successful, commercially or artistically, as Woman to Woman, but we will have to wait until what survives of the film is made generally available to judge what we think of the latter.

Graham Cutts would go on to make a number of notable films for Balcon’s Gainsborough Studios, this time showing how to bring the best out of British stars. The Rat (1925), starring Ivor Novello as a Parisian apache, was very popular and is one of those British silents that still works well with general audiences today. It inspired two sequels. Cutts also made the accomplished The Sea Urchin (1926) with Betty Balfour and The Rolling Road with Flora Le Breton (1928). His star waned in the latter half of the decade, probably exacerbated by an awkward personality (he was obsessively jealous of his fellow filmmakers), but he continued to do some professional, if low-key work in the 1930s (the boisterous Just William, made in 1939, is a Bioscope favourite).

And yes, of course, there is some extra interest in The White Shadow because of its assistant director, art director, dialogue writer and editor. The same man undertook all four functions, and he was Alfred Hitchcock. The news has gone round the world that this is a rediscovered Alfred Hitchcock film, which is a little misleading. It is something that will have undoubtedly had Cutts whirling in his grave, because he was particularly resentful of how the young man’s talent came to eclipse his own, so that by the end of the decade the pre-eminent talent in British film was not Graham Cutts but his presumptuous protégé. Hitchcock had entered film production in 1920 as a title writer, and had directed two short films (the unfinished and lost Number Thirteen and Always Tell Your Wife, of which half survives), before joining Balcon’s team as an all-purpose talent. He was assistant director, art director and co-scriptwriter on Woman to Woman, and told Truffaut the following about working with Cutts:

FT: Graham Cutts directed that Picture [Woman to Woman]. You did the adaptation and dialogue, and were assistant director as well?

AH: More than that! My friend, the art director, was unable to work on the picture. I volunteered to serve as art director. So I did all of this and also helped on the production. My future wife, Alma Reville, was the editor of the picture as well as the script girl. In those days the script girl and the editor were the same person … It was while working on that picture that I first met my wife.

Then I performed these various functions for several other films. The second was The White Shadow …

The White Shadow – three reels of it – was discovered in the New Zealand Film Archive by archivist Leslie Lewis, having originally been in the collection of New Zealander projectionist and collector Jack Murtagh. It is to recieve its “re-premiere” on 22 September 2011 at the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences’ Samuel Goldwyn Theater. There are reports on the National Film Preservation Foundation and in the LA Times, neither unfortunately doing Cutts’ reputation many favours. Let’s turn such shallow historio-filmography around. Alfred Hitchcock’s doesn’t need any new find to bolster up his reputation; Graham Cutts is the one in need of rediscovery. His was a real and important talent. Now we have a little more in the way surviving archive by which to celebrate it.

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Summer silents

August 2, 2011

Emile Cohl’s Rien n’est impossible à l’homme (1910), showing at Italy’s Strade del Cinema

Time has been creeping on, as time will, and a number of silent film festivals are imminent without much time to deal with them one by one. Some have also left it terribly late before revealing any information on what they are showing. So here’s a quick round-up on what’s happening silent-wise around the world over the next couple of months:

August

Strade del Cinema
A festival of silent film and music held at Aosta, Italy. This year’s festival is taking place on 5-12 August 2011 and includes Gli ultimi giorni di Pompei (1913), a retrospective of Keystone Chaplins, I Fauno ((1917), and solid Bioscope favourite jazz trumpeter Dave Douglas and ensemble playing to the animation films of Emile Cohl.

Jornada Brasileira de Cinema Silencioso
The silent film festival held in São Paulo, Brazil starts on 5 August and runs to the 14th, but they still haven’t published any programme information on their website …

Capitolfest
Central New York’s annual summer classic and silent movie festival is taking place 12-14 August 2011. There’s a special focus on Janet Gaynor, and among the silent features on offer there’s A Ship Comes In (1928), Geared to Go (1924), North of 36 (1924) and Harold Teen (1928).

Bonner Sommerkino
Germany’s premiere silent film festival is held in Bonn, this year 11-21 August 2011. We mentioned it in our previous post, but just a reminder that it includes The Circle (1924), Les ombres qui passent (1924), Von Morgens bis Mitternachts (1920) and Bolivia’s Wara Wara (1930).

September

Cinecon
The annual classic film festival held in Hollywood takes place 1-5 September 2011. Among the titles announced so far are East Side, West Side (1927), Raymond Griffith in Hands Up! (1926), Nazimova in the newly-restored Stronger than Death (1920) and Marion Davies in Beauty’s Worth (1922).

Mykkäelokuvafestivaalit (Forssa Silent Film Festival)
Globe-trotting summer silent film followers may prefer cooler climes, in which case there’s the annual silent film festival in Forssa, Finland, held 2-3 September 2011. Highlights include Victor Sjöström’s Ingeborg Holm (1913), Mauritz Stiller’s Herr Arnes pengar (1920), Carl Th. Dreyer’s Prästankan (1920) and Benjamin Christensen’s Häxan (1922).

Australia's Silent Film Festival
This year’s festival will be held in Sydney as a series of events across September-November 2011. Films include The Lodger (1927), Bed and Sofa (1927) and Lucky Star (1929).

Cinesation
Silent and early sound film festival held in Massillon, Ohio, USA. Dates for the next festival are 22-25 September 2011. Promised titles include newly-restored 1920 serial The Phantom Foe, Bebe Daniels in Feel My Pulse (1928), William S. Hart in The White Oak (1921), Lord Jim (1925) and Oliver Thomas in Betty Takes a Hand (1918).

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Bioscope Newsreel no. 28

July 29, 2011

Bébé victime d’une erreur? The supposed Gaumont film filmed outside the Pathé studios at 30 rue Louis Besquel, Vincennes, Paris (location today inset)

Just time to rush out a hastily-cobbled together edition of the Bioscope Newsreel for you, picking up on a few of the things happening in the silent world that have caught our eye over the past couple of weeks.

A life in the movies
The Guardian has published a profile of Kevin Brownlow, asking why a man who has won an Oscar for a lifetime dedicated to preserving the art of silent film isn’t better known in his own country. Read more.

Locating the General
On July 20 John Bengston, author of Silent Echoes and other books on the locations behind classic silent comedies, gave a presentation before the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts & Sciences on the locations used by Buster Keaton for The General. The Academy has published his compelling and superbly researched PowerPoint slides, with Bengston’s commentary, on its site. Read more.

Gaumont mystery
On that truly engrossing and mysterious site The Cine-Tourist, Roland-François Lack has posed an intriguing question. He has examined closely the film credited as Bébé victime d’une erreur judiciaire, an extract from which appears on the recent Gaumont boxed DVD set Le Cinéma premier, 1897-1913. But this supposed Gaumont film was sot outside the Pathé studios, as his meticulous visual evidence makes clear. What is going on? Can you solve the mystery? You may certainly enjoy the detective work. Read more.

Bonner Sommerkino
Germany’s silent film festival takes place 11-21 August and the programme has been published (in German). Among the highlights are Frank Borzage’s The Circle (US 1924), Mosjoukine in Les ombres qui passent (France 1924), the astonishing unreleased (except in Japan) experimental German film Von Morgens bis Mitternachts (Germany 1920), Shingun (1930) – Japan’s answer to Wings, and Bolivia’s sole surviving silent feature film Wara Wara (1930). Read more.

One in the eye for Murdoch
Yes, we can bring in the News International scandal which has so engrossed the British media, because there is a tangential silent film angle. When someone rejoicing in the name of Johnnie Marbles interrupted the Culture Media ans Sport select committee’s investigation into the phone hacking scandal by placing a foam pie in Rupert Murdoch’s face, he was acting in a tradition that goes back to the custard pies beloved of silent cinema and beyond. The BBC News site investigates the history. Read more.

‘Til next time!

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Triangle Film Corporation

July 28, 2011

The House Built upon Sand (1916), with Lillian Gish and Roy Stewart, from La Triangle (1915-1919): Archives, recherche et histoire du cinéma

Here’s a couple of websites to bring to your attention, each dedicated in one way or another to the Triangle Film Corporation. Triangle was formed in 1915 following a parting of the ways between the brothers Harry and Roy Aitken and other board members at the Mutual Film Corporation. Harry Aitken formed the Triangle Film Corporation in July 1915 with the plan of releasing the films of three prominent producers: D.W. Griffith, Thomas Ince and Mack Sennett. For three years it was a considerable force in American film production before it was dissolved, brought down in part by the huge costs of Intolerance – ironically enough, given that it was formed on a tide of optimism and finance that followed the great success of The Birth of a Nation.

The first site is The Harry & Roy Aitken Collection, created by the Wisconsin Center for Film & Theater Research, Madison. The WCFTR holds the papers of the Aitken brothers, comprising scripts, photos, promotional materials, company ledgers, legal records, and both personal and business correspondence. The site exhibits documents from one part of the collection, the Scripts and Scenarios series, using selected digitised documents to illustrate the great changes that took place in American film practice in the 1910s.

From the continuity script for Love of Justice? (working title The Woman of It) (1917)

The site comprises a timeline of developments in cinema in the 1910s; and a summary history of such developments, focussing on such key aspects as the arrival of feature films, the formation of exchanges, the distribution of features, and their exhibition. The central section is Continuity Script and the Rationalization of Film Production, which illustrates its historical thesis with digitised documents showing examples of Proof of Copyright, Detailed Scenario, Credits and Condensed Story, Locations, List of titles, Continuity Script Excerpt, Complete Picture Report and Budget Summary, all of them for Triangle releases. Another section, Changes in Film Style in the 1910s, demonstrates changes in lighting, staging, performance, editing and cinematography films at the start and end of the decade, with clips and stills as illustration. Finally there’s a case study based on The Clodhopper (1917), directed by Victor Scherzinger for Kay-Bee and released by Triangle, with a clip from the film and its matching continuity script.

From the gallery of photographs of Triangle productions on the Cinémathèque française site

Secondly, there’s the recently-launched La Triangle (1915-1919): Archives, recherche et histoire du cinéma, created by the Cinémathèque française. This brings together film clips (William S. Hart in The Desert Man, 1916 and Thomas Ince’s The Despoiler, 1915) with analyses of their restoration, photographs, digitised archival documents (including another contintuity script, for Lieutenant Danny, 1916, essays, catalogue records for relevant papers in Paris, Madison and Chicago, filmography, bibliography and weblinks.

Even if you don’t read French, the gallery of photographs alone is gorgeous to look at, and both sites are properly scholarly and just a little bit enthusiastic about their their subject, which is not just Triangle but the extraordinary way in which American film production stylistically and structurally evolved, matured and conquered the world over the period of the 1910s.

My thanks to Andrew Comiskey for alerting me to both sites.

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The Soldier’s Courtship

July 25, 2011

Fred Storey and Julie Seale in The Soldier’s Courtship (1896), one of a few frames held by the National Media Museum

As we reported yesterday, a copy of Robert Paul’s The Soldier’s Courtship (1896) has been discovered at the Centro Sperimentale di Cinematografia in Rome and will be premiered at the Pordenone silent film fesival in October. This is a discovery of major importance, since the film is generally recognised as the first British fiction, or narrative film. However, the film has never been entirely lost, nor is it (arguably) the first British fiction film. Let us examine the history.

In 1936 Robert W. Paul, the British film pioneer, reminisced about the residency his Animatograph projector enjoyed at the Alhambra music hall in London’s Leicester Square in 1896, a little over a month after projected films were first shown to an audience in Britain:

The first public exhibition of the Lumière cinematograph in England took place … on February 20th, at the Polytechnic in Regent Street, and the results were then superior in steadiness and clearness to my own. To compete with that machine, as shown at the Empire Theatre in Leciester Square, the Manager of the Alhambra asked me to give a show, as a ten-minute item in the programme, with my Theatrograph, which he renamed the Animatographe. This engagement was for two weeks, beginning March 25th, but actually continued for about two years. The salary, or fee, was at the rate of eleven pounds for each performance, far more than I has expected. In April, the Alhambra manager, Mr. Moul, who wisely foresaw the need for adding interest to wonder, staged upon the roof a comic scene called The Soldier’s Courtship, the 80-foot film of which caused great merriment.

Paul’s account suggests that both the idea and the setting up of the film were the idea of the Alhambra’s manager, Alfred Moul, and the leading performers in the mini-drama were two Alhambra regulars, dancer and comedian Fred Storey and and dancer Julie Seale. Paul was chiefly there to turn the handle of the camera, though his wife Ellen did play the role of the interloper in the simple comic scene, described in the theatre journal The Era (16 May 1896):

Mr R.W. Paul has much improved the animated pictures presented by means of his clever invention … The element of humour is introduced by a picture of a soldier’s courtship. Mars and Venus (a befeathered Harriet) are interrupted in their ‘billing and cooing’ by a lady of maturer years, who insists on making a third on the seat occupied by the lovers. Protestations are in vain. Finally, the linesman, taking the law into his own hands, tips up the seat violently and throws the uninvited one to the ground. The courtship then continues.

The film appears to have been a great hit, so much so that Paul produced a remake two years later, entitled Tommy Atkins in the Park. The Soldier’s Courtship has since gone down in British film mythology as the first British fiction film.

But what is a fiction film, and what is a first? Anyone familiar with early film history will recognise the perils – nay, the folly – of describing any film as being the ‘first’ of something. Apart from anything else, such labels are meaningless when it comes to describing films produced at a time before such labels existed.

Arrest of a Pickpocket, made by Birt Acres and Robert Paul in April 1895, and a stronger candidate for the first British fiction film

If we want to dip into such controveries and argue that a fiction film is one that contains dramatic elements, then The Soldier’s Courtship had its predecessors. Robert Paul had begun film production in February or March of 1895, when he and the photographer Birt Acres collaborated on producing films for the Edison peepshow Kinetoscope, which Edison had notoriously neglected to patent in Europe, presenting a money-making opportunity to the two quick-minded London men. They produced a number of films between March and May 1895, before they fell out and went their separate ways, each finding his way towards a projected film system by early 1896. But among the films they made in 1895 (the full extent of which remains unknown) were:

  • An untitled ‘comedy’ filmed outside Acres’ Barnet home, ‘starring’ Henry Short (an acquaintance of both Acres and Paul), a few frames of which survive and which is various known as Incident at Clovelly Cottage or Cricketer Jumping Over Garden Gate. Whether it contained any genuine dramatic content is unclear – it seems chiefly to have been a test to demonstrate movement and image contrast (Short dressed in cricket whites).
  • Arrest of a Pickpocket – made in April 1895, this is the strongest candidate for the first British fiction film. It shows in single shot a pickpocket pursued by a policeman; he escapes the policeman’s clutches only to be captured by a passing sailor. The present tense is apposite, because the film survives, at the National Fairground Archive, and can be seen online at the Europa Film Treasures site.
  • Comic Shoeblack – made around May 1895. No description survives (and no film), but the title indicates an element of dramatisation, even if it is only to add spice to an actuality.
  • Carpenter’s Shop – made around May 1895, in emulation of Edison films showing scenes in a barroom and a blacksmith’s, this was ostensibly a scene from actuality, but had small dramatic points designed to capture the interest of the peepshow viewer, and could therefore be argued as being fictionalised. It is a lost film.
  • Arrest of a Bookmaker – John Barnes dates this Paul production to August 1896, but Denis Gifford in the British Film Catalogue puts it as May 1896, possibly even before The Soldier’s Courtship. A film which may be this is held by the BFI National Archive [The BFI has the film under the supplied title of Footpads - see comments]. Gifford also places Acres’ Golfing Extraordinary (a comic scene with golfers) as May 1896 and considers Acres’ Boxing Match to be a January 1896 production and to have dramatic elements (i.e. a staged match).

So, The Soldier’s Courtship is not the first British fiction film, if we can talk of fictional or narrative films in their later sense. Nor is it entirely a lost film. Firstly, a few frames from the film survived in the Kodak collection for many years and are now preserved by the National Media Museum in Bradford – one of the frames is used as the illustration at the top of this post. Secondly, as John Barnes points out – and illustrates – in The Beginnings of the Cinema in England, vol. 1 – 1894-1896, a Filoscope exists of the film. The Filoscope was a hand-held flickbook with sequential images taken from cinefilms (a demonstration video is here). It was the invention of Henry Short, the same man who appeared in the ‘Clovelly Cottage’ film made by Acres and Paul in February or March of 1895. John Barnes had a copy of the Filoscope himself (his collection is now held by Hove Museum and Art Gallery) and reported that there were 176 leaves, or images. Hardly a complete film, but enough to show the central action. It was marketed as The Soldier’s Embrace, and at least one other copy has come up for auction before now.

Well, this leaves us with The Soldier’s Courtship being neither the ‘first’ British fiction film, nor a ‘lost’ film. But it is a landmark film for all that, and we have a complete 35mm copy in good condition, and that is a marvel all by itself, given that it is 115 years old. Moreover it’s a film with an identified cast, among whom Fred Storey in particular was a musical comedian of some fame. It is the first British film where we can set out a full set of credits (because we do not know the cast members of Arrest of a Pickpocket):

    The Soldier’s Courtship (UK 1896)
    director: Robert Paul
    production company: Paul’s Animatograph Works
    supervised by: Alfred Moul
    length: 80 feet
    location: Alhambra Theatre, Leicester Square, London
    cast: Fred Storey (soldier), Julie Seale (his sweetheart), Ellen Paul (woman)

And that’s a movie.

I hope that there will be chances for everyone to see it following its Pordenone premiere in October. It certainly is an exciting and important discovery.

13 Comments | Lost films, Production | Tagged: | Permalink
Posted by urbanora

Pordenone 2011

July 24, 2011

The Wind

The Giornate del Cinema Muto, or Pordenone Silent Film Festival, has announced details of its programme for 1-8 October 2011. It has the look of another classic year, with some eye-catching special presentations and discoveries to tempt us acros to Italy once more. Here are details from the publicity materials available so far:

People of Italy’s Golden Age
To celebrate three decades of rediscovery and restorations of the national cinema, and Italy’s 150th unification anniversary, we present “People of Italy’s Golden Age”, with programmes devoted both to superstars and to less-known personalities, including Francesca Bertini, Pina Menichelli, Nino Oxilia, Febo Mari and the galaxy of clowns of the first decade – Cretinetti, Polidor, Kri-Kri, Robinet and friends.

It’s good to see Italian silent cinema celebrated at an Italian silent film festival – you can sometimes forget when in front of the screen at Pordenone that you are in Italy, though the festival has a tradition of celebrating Italian comedians of the era (a great favourite of festival director David Robinson).

Shostakovich and the Factory of the Eccentric Actor
Focuses on the association of the composer and the film-makers Grigori Kozintsev and Leonid Trauberg, which began with the unparalleled marriage of music and image in New Babylon and Odna. This is a rare opportunity to see all the surviving work of the Factory of the Eccentric Actor (FEKS), unique in Soviet cinema for its vitality, originality and audacity. The Giornate will also show Shostakovich’s two “cartoon operas”, the banned and never-completed Story of the Priest and his Servant Balda and The Story of the Silly Little Mouse.

New Babylon will provide the festival’s gala opening show. Although New Babylon has often been performed before, this performance can be claimed as definitive. After the debacles of the first performances, Shostakovich’s score was lost for
45 years, until 1975, when Gennadi Rozhdestvensky found a set of orchestral parts in the Lenin Library, Moscow, and adapted a suite from the score. Subsequently other, fuller copies of the original orchestral parts became available; but it was not until this century, thanks to the work of the Paris-based Shostakovich Centre, that the most complete versions of the score, as well as Shostakovich’s own much-corrected manuscript (the original of which is in the Glinka Museum, Moscow) became freely available. Mark Fitz-Gerald, who began his studies of the score twenty years ago, has been able to extensively revise his work in preparing the new Naxos recording, and with assistance from another fine Shostakovich scholar, Pierre-Alain Biget, has brought the score and its synchronisation to a new level, at which Shostakovich’s genius can finally be fully appreciated. A second film in the FEKS programme, The Overcoat, after Gogol, will be accompanied by a new score for quartet by Maud Nelissen.

More films from the vast and largely unexplored treasury of Soviet silent films can be seen in a presentation of Georgian cinema, including the remaining two films from the oeuvre of Lev Push – a gifted director, prevented from direction after 1930, whose name was virtually unknown until last year’s Giornate.

Last year at the Giornate we were treated to Lev Push’s visually vivid Giuli (1927) and Gypsy Blood (1928). The music for New Babylon will be performed by FVG Mitteleuropa Orchestra, conducted by Mark Fitz-Gerald.

Kertész before Curtiz
Remembered as one of the great names of classic Hollywood (his films included Casablanca, The Adventures of Robin Hood, Mildred Pierce) it is often forgotten that Michael Curtiz enjoyed a prolific 14-year career in Europe before arriving in America. Few of the 48 films he made in his native Hungary, as Mihály Kertész, survive; the Giornate will show the newly rediscovered A Tolonc (The Expulsion, 1914), which already exemplifies his exceptional gift for narrative, pace and character. In Austria, now Michael Kertesz, he made 17 films, which have been generally overlooked by film historians, perhaps because Kertesz’ intention was primarily commercial entertainment – art was an incidental asset. The Giornate’s selection from the Austrian era will include Der Junge Medardus, from the novel by Artur Schnitzler, who collaborated on the script, and Das Spielzeug von Paris, Einspänner nr 13 and Der Goldene Schmetterling – all starring the gifted Lili Damita (who was briefly married to Kertesz) and exemplifying Kertesz’ special qualities of eroticism and sharp social satire.

Definitely one for the cineaste completists, particularly for the rediscovery of A Tolonc, not least because pitifully few Hungarian silents have survived overall.

The Canon Revisited
The popular “Canon Revisted” series this year includes an orchestral show, with Günter Buchwald conducting Chaplin’s own accompaniment to The Circus. Other “Canon” titles include Marcel l’Herbier’s Eldorado, Joe May’s Asphalt and Friedrich Ermler’s Fragment of an Empire.

On the Giornate site they add Merry-Go-Round (1923), the film from which Erich von Stroheim was fired and replaced by Rupert Julian, and Kenneth Macpherson’s experimental work Borderline (1930), starring Paul Robeson.

Early and Transitional Cinema
A dramatic rediscovery featured in the Early and Transitional Cinema series is Robert William Paul’s 1896 The Soldier’s Courtship, which has been regarded as a key work in film history, as the first British fiction film – and indeed one of the world’s first fiction films. Believed lost for almost all its 115 years, a fine print recently surfaced in the Roman archive of Centro Sperimentale di Cinematografia and will be premiered at the 2011 Giornate. Also in this series are two more programmes from the Corrick Collection, and a centenary programme which explores the exceptional narrative qualities of the films of the American Thanhouser Company.

The rediscovery of The Soldier’s Courtship is stunning news. It is a title that has been referred to as important more or less for as long as there have been histories of British film, but all we have ever had to refer to were a catalogue description and a single still. The film was made in April 1896 on the roof of the Alhambra Theatre, Leicester Square in London, where Robert Paul‘s Animatograph projector was a featured attraction. The film featured music hall star Fred Storey, Julie Seale and Paul’s wife Ellen, and is generally considered to be the first British film fiction film. Such as its popularity that Paul re-shot the film in 1897, but it appears that the Rome discovery is the 1896 original. Well, well.

Early Westerns
A small but selective programme to celebrate the American National Film Preservation Foundation’s DVD issues of early Westerns will include screenings of W.S. Van Dyke’s Lady of the Dugout (1918), Victor Fleming’s Mantrap (1926) and the little-known Salomy Jane (1914), directed by Lucius Henderson and William Nigh.

Other highlights of this year’s Giornate: a special series to commemorate the centenary of the great polar expeditions of 1911-12; Japanese silent animation film; the recently re-assembled full series of Walt Disney’s 1922 Laugh-o-Grams; and a special selection of early films depicting the experience of going to the cinema drawn from the collections of EYE, Amsterdam.

The closing show will be a full orchestral performance of Victor Sjostrom’s The Wind (1928), with Carl Davis conducting his own score.

As with New Babylon, the orchestra for The Wind will be the FVG Mitteleuropa Orchestra.

Information on registration, accommodation and travel is here. Those who have not attended before need to fill out a registration request form. Old hands should now be receiving registration details by email – let the festival know if you haven’t head from them by the end of this month.

This all has the look of a classic Pordenone, and there’s more to be announced in due course. Will you want to be anywhere else the first week in October?

5 Comments | Festivals | Tagged: | Permalink
Posted by urbanora

Film industry year books

July 21, 2011

MGM advertisement from the Motion Picture News Booking Guide 1929

We have previously reported enthusiastically and in detail on the digitisation of American film journals such as Photoplay and Film Daily undertaken by David Pierce for the Media History Digital Library, all of which can be located on the Internet Archive at www.archive.org/details/mediahistory.

And now there’s more, because Pierce is branching out into books. He has digitised a number of essential American and British studio directories and trade annuals from the 1920s to the 1950s. They are as follows (in chronological order):

I can’t begin to tell you what a fabulous collection these represent (you can find them all through the one link here). The film trade almanacs and annuals are among the best guides we have to the workings of the motion picture industry, because they were produced for the industry and with huge contributions from that industry, as performers, filmmakers, studios, technicians and services supplied vital information to these reference sources that everyone else in the industry would then consult. If you weren’t in Quigley’s Motion Picture Almanac, Wid’s Film Daily Yearbook or the Kine Year Book in Britain, then you were invisible. So everyone had to be listed (though competing yearbooks meant that some submitted details to one reference source and not another – so always double-check if you can). Such reference books have been the bread and butter of film history research for decades. They include lists of films produced over the previous year, studio details, biographies of actors, filmmakers and technicians, statistics, background information, gossip and anecdote, information on legal cases, and copious advertisements. Above all they are full of names, and in the word-searchable form in which they are given on the Internet Archive, they are even more useful to the researcher than arguably the printed volume would be (though it’s handiest to have both).

Quigley’s Motion Picture Almanac for 1929

There isn’t space to go through each of the volumes, though I heartily recommend the immensely informative Motion Picture Almanac for 1929, the Kine Year Books for their invaluable primary information on British film, and the fascinating overview of the American film industry in 1926 that is The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science: The Motion Picture in Its Economic and Social Aspects (not strictly speaking a film year book). I also have great fondness for Clarence Winchester’s The World Film Encyclopedia, not because it is especially useful as a reference source (“close to useless”, says Mr Pierce), but because it was one of the first film books I ever bought and I found it so full of apparent riches. It’s also of value for being the sort of reference guide that a fan would have bought rather than a film industry type.

I may write posts on individual volumes in due course, but what I have done is create yet another section of the Bioscope Library, this time devoted to directories, to go alongside those for books, journals, and catalogues and databases. All of the directories above are listed (including those for the post-silent era, because they generally have information going back to the silent period), plus those directories previously reported on by the Bioscope.

Thank you once again to David Pierce for his digitisation efforts. He continues to add film trade journals to the Internet Archive, and we will continue to try and keep up somehow by listing them all.

Leave a Comment » | Digitised journals, Publications | Tagged: | Permalink
Posted by urbanora

The death of celluloid

July 19, 2011

Five seconds on the death of cinema as we have known it. As the filmmakers say (in a statement which takes longer to read than the film takes to view):

In this terrible job market with bleak prospects, in a world where film projection is getting replaced by slick machine-operated digital projection, in a culture where black-and-white silent film is all but lost to the winds of time … one doofus with a tie and a poignancy-starved cineaste found magic together. But then everything caught on fire.

One of a long series of 5-second films made by 5secondfilms.com.

2 Comments | Projection, Technology | Tagged: | Permalink
Posted by urbanora

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