2 March

Douglas Fairbanks Night.  Returning after a two year covid absence, SWS Club Screenings return to present an evening with everyone’s favourite swashbuckling hero, Douglas Fairbanks.  As well as looking at the life of the great man they will be screening his last great swashbuckler; coincidentally the last great silent drama from Hollywood and his own emotional farewell to the silent film era that he helped make great.  Presented by South West Silents.  With recorded score.  Lansdown Pub, Clifton, Bristol Link

 

Hamlet (Dir. Svend Gade/Heinz Schall, Ger, 1921) (Screening format – digital, 116mins) A unique vision of the cursed Dane, this silent take on Shakespeare’s drama stands the test of time thanks to a unique and brilliant twist.  Starring the gorgeous Danish siren Asta Nielsen, ‘the first diva of European silent film’,  this adaption supposes that Hamlet’s inner turmoil centred on having been born a girl but having to pass incognito as the male heir to the throne.  Asta Nielsen founded her own production company to realise her artistic vision for this ambitious project, with herself in the leading role. Her memorable performance stands out for its relatively uninhibited style, whilst the Expressionist-era, shadowy staging is the ideal backdrop for the film’s fascinating premise.   Find out more at silentsplease.wordpress.com With live musical accompaniment.  BFI Southbank, London  Link

 

4 March

Our Hospitality (Dir. Buster Keaton/John G Blystone, US, 1923) (Screening format – not known, 73mins)  Our Hospitality is a riotous satire of family feuds and Southern codes of honor. In 1831, Keaton leaves his home in New York to take charge of his family mansion down South. En route, Keaton befriends pretty Natalie Talmadge (Keaton’s real-life wife at the time), who invites him to dine at her family home. Upon meeting Talmadge’s father and brothers, Keaton learns that he is the last surviving member of a family with whom Talmadge’s kin have been feuding for over 20 years. The brothers are all for killing Keaton on the spot, but Talmadge’s father insists that the rules of hospitality be observed: so long as Keaton is a guest in the house, he will not be harmed. Thus, Keaton spends the next few reels alternately planning to sneak out of the mansion without being noticed or contriving to remain within its walls as long as possible. But once he is out of the house the chase is on, with the father and brothers in hot pursuit.  In the climactic waterfall stunt a dummy stood in for Talmadge but Keaton used no doubles, and nearly lost his life as a result.  This 7-reel silent film represents the only joint appearance of Buster Keaton and Natalie Talmadge; Keaton hoped that by spending several weeks on location with his wife, he could patch up their shaky marriage (it didn’t work). Also appearing are two other members of the Keaton family: Keaton’s ex-vaudevillian father Joe (who performs an eye-popping “high kick”) and his son Joseph Keaton IV, playing Buster as a baby. Find out more at wikipedia.org  Presented by the Fleapit Cinema Club.  With live musical accompaniment by Stephen Horne.  Westerham Hall, Kent.   Link

 

5 March

The Real Charlie Chaplin (Dir. Peter Middleton & James Spinney, US, 2021) (104mins) This brand new documentary takes a look at the life and work of the one and only Charlie Chaplin in his own words. With unprecedented access to archive footage, as well as talking heads from surviving family members, this documentary reveals never-before-seen insights into the Hollywood star.  The Real Charlie Chaplin traces Chaplin’s meteoric rise from the slums of Victorian London to the heights of Hollywood superstardom – and fall from grace following The Great Dictator.   Co-directors Peter Middleton and James Spinney have created an innovative and compelling account based on revelatory, newly-unearthed audio recordings, dramatic reconstructions and a wealth of archive material, bringing us close enough to uncover the real Charles Chaplin.  Presented as part of the Borderlines Film Festival.  Courtyard, Hereford and Malvern Theatres, Malvern   Link

 

The Decline (aka Downfall, aka Der Absturz) (Dir. Ludwig Wolff, Ger, 1923) (Screening format – digital, 84mins) The diva faces her own mortality in this poignant melodrama.  Fortysomething Nielsen confronts the ageing process in this drama with a devastating climax. She plays a musical star waiting faithfully for her lover to be released from a jail sentence so they can be reunited. In this film’s haunting final scene, wrote the theorist and filmmaker Belá Belázs, ‘we witness the death of a soul – in the foreground, in Asta Nielsen’s face’.  Find out more at wikipedia.org.  With live musical accompaniment.  Introduced by renowned film writer Pamela Hutchinson.  BFI Southbank, London Link

 

Hamlet (Dir. Svend Gade/Heinz Schall, Ger, 1921) (Screening format – digital, 116mins) A unique vision of the cursed Dane, this silent take on Shakespeare’s drama stands the test of time thanks to a unique and brilliant twist.  Starring the gorgeous Danish siren Asta Nielsen, ‘the first diva of European silent film’,  this adaption supposes that Hamlet’s inner turmoil centred on having been born a girl but having to pass incognito as the male heir to the throne.  Asta Nielsen founded her own production company to realise her artistic vision for this ambitious project, with herself in the leading role. Her memorable performance stands out for its relatively uninhibited style, whilst the Expressionist-era, shadowy staging is the ideal backdrop for the film’s fascinating premise.   Find out more at silentsplease.wordpress.com With live musical accompaniment. Introduced by Prof Judith Buchanan.   BFI Southbank, London  Link

 

Earth Spirit (aka Erdgeist) (Dir. Leopold Jessner, Ger, 1923) (Screening format –  digital, 68mins) Louise Brooks was not the only actress to play Frank Wedekind’s antihero in the 1920s. Nielsen was Weimar cinema’s first Lulu in this Expressionist-style film directed by Leopold Jessner. Nimble in her early forties and sporting a very modern bob, Nielsen projects her famous ‘demonically dangerous’ sensuality as the siren who lures the people who love her to their inevitable destruction.  Find out more at imdb.com  With live musical accompaniment.  Introduced by renowned film writer Pamela Hutchinson.  BFI Southbank, London Link

 

Passion of Joan of Arc (Dir. Carl Theodore Dreyer, 1928) (Screening format – not known, 82 mins) In 1926 Danish film director Dreyer was invited to make a film in France by the Societe Generale des Films and chose to direct a film about Joan of Arc, due to her renewed popularity in France (having been canonised as a saint of the Roman Catholic Church in 1920 and subsequently adopted as one of the patron saints of France).  Apparently discarding a script provided by the Societe, Dreyer spent over a year researching Joan of Arc including study of the actual transcripts of her trial before producing a script of his own.  In the title role Dreyer cast the little-known stage actress Renee Jeanne Falconnetti who had previously acted in just two previous, inconsequential films, both back in 1917.  The film focuses upon the trial and eventual execution of Joan of Arc after she is captured by the English.  Although not a popular success at the time, the film attracted immediate critical praise.  The New York Times critic wrote “…as a film work of art, this takes precedence over anything so far produced.  It makes worthy pictures of the past look like tinsel shams.  It fills one with such intense admiration that other pictures appear but trivial in comparison.” Falconnetti’s performance has been widely lauded with critic Pauline Kael writing in 1982 that her portrayal “…may be the finest performance ever recorded on film.”  The film was subsequently re-edited against Dreyer’s wishes and his original version was long thought lost.  But in 1981 a near perfect copy was found in the attic of a psychiatric hospital in Oslo.  The Passion of Joan of Arc now regularly appears in ‘Top Ten’ lists not just of silent films but best films of all time.  Find out more at rogerebert.com . Presented by the Yorkshire Silent Film Festival.  With live musical accompaniment by the acclaimed improvising quartet Frame Ensemble. Harrogate Theatre, Harrogate Link

 

6 March

The Real Charlie Chaplin (Dir. Peter Middleton & James Spinney, US, 2021) (104mins) This brand new documentary takes a look at the life and work of the one and only Charlie Chaplin in his own words. With unprecedented access to archive footage, as well as talking heads from surviving family members, this documentary reveals never-before-seen insights into the Hollywood star.  The Real Charlie Chaplin traces Chaplin’s meteoric rise from the slums of Victorian London to the heights of Hollywood superstardom – and fall from grace following The Great Dictator.   Co-directors Peter Middleton and James Spinney have created an innovative and compelling account based on revelatory, newly-unearthed audio recordings, dramatic reconstructions and a wealth of archive material, bringing us close enough to uncover the real Charles Chaplin.  Presented as part of the Borderlines Film Festival.  Courtyard, Hereford and Malvern Theatres, Malvern   Link

 

The Joker (aka Jokeren, aka Der Faschingskönig) (Dir. Georg Jacoby, Dk/De, 1928)  Its carnival week in Nice but amongst the jollity a fatal car accident leads to a blackmail plot.  Can  Lady Cecilie Powder‘s headstrong younger sister Gill (Elga Brink) prevent the unscrupulous lawyer Borwick (Miles Mander) from profiting from his ill-gotten knowledge.  And who is the young Englishman Mr Carstairs (Henry Edwards), known to his friends as ‘The Joker’, with a passion for gambling.  Is he acting in cahoots with Borwick or against him?  This Danish/German co-production, made by Denmark’s Nordisk Company but intended to appeal to the British market (hence with some big British names in the cast), is based on the novel “The Joker” by Noel Scott. . Unseen for 90 years, the film has recently been restored by the Danish Film Institute.  Find out more at de-m-wikipedia-org.  With live musical accompaniment.  Introduced by BFI Silent Film Curator Bryony Dixon.  BFI Southbank, London Link

 

The Joyless Street ( aka Die Freudlose Gasse) (Dir. G W Pabst, Ger, 1925) (Screening format – digital, 151mins) Based on a novel by Hugo Bettauer  and directed by Georg Wilhelm Pabst  this  is one of the most important films of Germany’s Weimar Era.  Set in the inflationary period in Vienna in the years immediately after World War I the film caused outrage with its provocative story-line of the  nouveau riche financial speculators wallowing in luxury, while the poor, the homeless and the unemployed  sell their souls for a bit of fresh meat at the butchers.  A story of sexual orgies, bordellos and murders it created many a problem for censors worldwide.  Starring Greta Garbo in her second major role,  the film was then ruthlessly re-cut for the US market to cash in on her subsequent fame and for many years a full version of the film was almost impossible to see.  But following reconstruction and restoration we can now see the film in all its glory and rediscover that, although Garbo looks wonderful,  the real acting star is the incredible Asta Nielsen, ably supported by  Valeska Gert and Hertha von Walther.  Find out more at silentfilm.org.  With live musical accompaniment.  Introduced by BFI Inclusion Team Coordinator, Miranda Gower-Qian.  BFI Southbank, London  Link

 

Nanook of the North (Dir. Robert J Flaherty, US, 1922) (Screening format – not known, 79 mins) Robert Flaherty’s classic film tells the story of Inuit hunter Nanook and his family as they struggle to survive in the harsh conditions of Canada’s Hudson Bay region. Enormously popular when released in 1922, Nanook of the North is a cinematic milestone that continues to enchant audiences.  Filmed from 1920-1921 in Port Harrison, Northern Quebec, Flaherty brought an entirely unknown culture to the western world. It describes the trading, hunting, fishing and migrations of a group barely touched by industrial technology.  Nanook of the North was widely shown and praised as the first full-length, anthropological documentary in cinematographic history, but it is a film around which controversy still rages, particularly over Flaherty’s inclusion of staged sequences. In a sad footnote, the hunter at the centre of the film Allakariallak (dubbed Nanook by Flaherty) died of starvation not long after the film’s release. Find out more at www.rogerebert.com. Presented by South West Silents and Borderlines Film Festival.  With live piano accompaniment by Meg Morley.  Malvern Theatres, Malvern Link

 

Earth Spirit (aka Erdgeist) (Dir. Leopold Jessner, Ger, 1923) (Screening format –  digital, 68mins) Louise Brooks was not the only actress to play Frank Wedekind’s antihero in the 1920s. Nielsen was Weimar cinema’s first Lulu in this Expressionist-style film directed by Leopold Jessner. Nimble in her early forties and sporting a very modern bob, Nielsen projects her famous ‘demonically dangerous’ sensuality as the siren who lures the people who love her to their inevitable destruction.  Find out more at imdb.com  With live musical accompaniment.   BFI Southbank, London Link

 

Airship Norge’s Flight Across The Arctic Ocean  (Dir. Paul Berge, Nor, 1926) (Screening format – digital, 87mins) This visually stunning film has hardly been seen on the big screen since it first thrilled adventure-loving audiences over 90 years ago. In 1926, explorers Roald Amundsen, Lincoln Ellsworth and Italian airship constructor Umberto Nobile flew with 13 others in the airship Norge from Svalbard over the North Pole to Teller in Alaska. Theirs was the first undisputed crossing of the North Pole by air. It was also the most intensely photographed of polar expeditions, with movie cameras taking in the views from the ground as well as on board the Norge. It is a production with awe-inspiring images of technological triumph and some spectacular vistas of the frozen North.  Find out more at frammuseum.no.  Presented by the Borderlines Film Festival and South West Silents.  With live musical accompaniment by Stephen Horne.  Courtyard Theatre, Hereford.  Link

 

Rowdy Ann (Dir. Al Christie, US, 1919) + The Boatswain’s Mate (Dir. H. Manning Haynes,  UK, 1924) (Screening format – not known,  21/24mins)  In Rowdy Ann, Cow-girl Ann (Fay Tincher) is Rowdy by name and rowdy by nature, so her father packs her off to college hoping she will ‘larn to be a lady’. The tutors try to smooth Ann’s ‘rough corners’ but you can’t keep a good woman down and it’s not long before she is putting the men in their place. Find out more at imdb.com  Written by Lydia Hayward from the humorous story by the now largely forgotten W.W. Jacobs, The Boatswain’s Mate sees Florence Turner (famed as the ‘Vitagraph Girl’ and one of the film industry’s first stars) plays savvy pub landlady Mrs Waters.  According to lazy ex-boatswain George Benn, who fancies himself as a publican by proxy, she is the ideal woman. Benn enlists a ‘mate’, a burly out-of-work seaman, in an over-complicated plan to appear heroic in Mrs Waters’ eyes. This doesn’t quite go to plan. This adaptation was accorded a rapturous reception by the press; Motion Picture Studio pointed out that Artistic Pictures – the company owned by H. Manning Haynes, and through which he released all of his W. W. Jacobs adaptations – had developed such an excellent reputation for their  cinematic adaptations that even the most hardened admirer of Jacobs’ writing would find little fault in the film.   Presented as part of the Hippodrome Silent Film Festival.  With live piano accompaniment by Jane Gardner.  Barony Theatre, Bo’Ness.  Link

 

 

The Loves Of Mary Queen Of Scots (Dir. Denison Clift, UK, 1923) (Screening format – not known, 120mins)  The world premiere of a new restoration of this extremely rare British feature film, chronicling the Scottish Queen’s life. Full of intrigue, betrayal and scandal: her bitter enmity with John Knox, wars with the unruly Scottish nobility, her fatal marriages to Darnley and Bothwell, her captivity, imprisonment and execution at the hands of Queen Elizabeth… all are played out in this ambitious historical costume drama.   A review in the Bioscope of 15th Nov 1923 noted “Ideal’s scholarly production, “The Loves of Mary, Queen of Scots,” is undoubtedly one of the most conscientious historical pictures ever made. Never has Britain’s treasury of historical relics been so freely drawn upon as in this superbly mounted picture, which might almost be described as a screen museum of the period. Human interest is by no means lacking, moreover, and in her characterization of the ill-fated Queen, Fay Compton achieves what is undoubtedly one of the best performances her film career”.  Find out more at wikipedia.org  Presented as part of the Hippodrome Silent Film Festival.  With live narration and musical accompaniment by Andy Cannon (narrator/explainer), Wendy Weatherby (cello, voice), Frank McLaughlin (guitar, pipes), David Trouton (piano).  Hippodrome Cinema, Bo’ness Link

 

 

17 March

A Movie World:  How 1930s Amateur Film Making Conquered The World. In the 1920s, interest in amateur filmmaking expanded rapidly across the globe thanks to affordable and widely available filmmaking equipment and materials. Although often dismissed, these DIY makers of “home movies” offered exciting alternatives to the predominant mainstream movie industry.  Paul Frith, Keith Johnston and Melanie Selfe  will offer an insightful illustrated discussion of amateur filmmaking during the inter-war period.   This will consider how the work of the ‘serious’ amateur filmmaker pioneers blossomed during this lively period, producing unorthodox and ground-breaking films to rival the mainstream with their imagination and creativity.  Presented as part of the Hippodrome Silent Film Festival.  Presented by Paul Frith and Keith Johnston (University of East Anglia), and Melanie Selfe (University of Glasgow).  Hippodrome Cinema, Bo’ness  Link

 

Institute Of Amateur Cinematographers Award-Winners Film Programme  (1935-1939) In 1935, during the formative years of amateur filmmaking in Britain, the Institute of Amateur Cinematographers (IAC) sent out a package of seven award-winning films on a ‘World Tour’. Arranged in conjunction with cine clubs across the globe (including Australia, India, and Japan), this tour represented the breadth of filmmaking styles and genres open to the amateur filmmaker.  To mark the 90th anniversary of the IAC, this specially curated programme features new 2k scans of the tour films, recently digitised at the East Anglian Film Archive and Filmoteca de Catalunya as part of the research project ‘International Amateur Cinema Between the Wars, 1918-39’.   Presented as part of the Hippodrome Silent Film Festival.  With live musical accompaniment by John Sweeney and students of the Reid School of Music Hippodrome Cinema, Bo’ness  Link

 

Journey To The Isles;  Marjory Kennedy-Fraser.   A mesmerising glimpse into the landscapes, folktales and songs that inspired one of Scotland’s great early collectors of Traditional Arts.  Kennedy-Fraser began collecting Hebridean songs in 1905, fired by a desire to preserve and celebrate the musical riches of the islands’ people. These disarming films, made by Kennedy-Fraser herself – provide a snapshot of her work and the culture of the people she devoted her life to studying. All the while revealing the warmth of her personality and the profundity of her passion for the rugged beauty of the Hebrides.   Presented as part of the Hippodrome Silent Film Festival.  With live spoken commentary and musical accompaniment by Marion Kenny (storytelling, piano, flute, gu-xheng) and Mairi Campbell (voice, viola).  Hippodrome Cinema, Bo’ness  Link

 

18 March

The Night Rider  (Dir. Jay Hunt, US, 1920) + Rowdy Ann (Dir. Al Christie, US, 1919) (Screening format – not known,  25/21mins)  In The Night Rider,  actor-Producer Texas Guinan – a successful Broadway star – who played heroic cowgirls in films throughout the 1910s, here plays a self-sufficient ranch owner who reluctantly decides to enlist the help of a husband. Find out more at wikipedia.org In Rowdy Ann, cow-girl Ann (Fay Tincher) is Rowdy by name and rowdy by nature, so her father packs her off to college hoping she will ‘larn to be a lady’. The tutors try to smooth Ann’s ‘rough corners’ but you can’t keep a good woman down and it’s not long before she is putting the men in their place. Find out more at imdb.com  Presented as part of the Hippodrome Silent Film Festival.  With live musical accompaniment by Meg Morley (piano).  Hippodrome Cinema, Bo’ness Link

 

Wartime Propaganda And Peacetime Diplomacy: Edith Cacell On Film 1915-1928  When the German occupiers in Belgium shot Edith Cavell for treason in 1915 they handed the British and their allies a perfect propaganda opportunity to portray the enemy as brutal and uncivilized. After the war international relations shifted significantly, and cinema took a key role in cementing more friendly relations within Europe and in remembrance activities through battle reconstructions and war stories. Lawrence Napper’s accessible, illustrated talk will consider Herbert Wilcox’s extraordinary retelling of Cavell’s story in the film Dawn (1928) and discuss representations of the Cavell case on film as part of allied propaganda, shining a light on the diplomatic controversy sparked by continuing interest in the case.  Presented as part of the Hippodrome Silent Film Festival.  Dr Lawrence Napper is a senior lecturer at King’s College London.  With live musical accompaniment by Mike Nolan (piano).  Hippodrome Cinema, Bo’ness   Link

 

Dawn (Dir. Herbert Wilcox, GB, 1928) (Screening format – not known, 91 mins) One of the greatest British martyrs of World War I, Edith Cavell (1865-1915) was a distinguished nurse who moved to Brussels in 1907 to help establish an independent medical institution outside the control of the established churches. After war was declared in 1914 she became actively involved in helping to smuggle British fugitives out of Belgium, for which she was eventually caught, tried and sentenced to death. In the first of two adaptations of the Cavell story director Herbert Wilcox opted to stage the events primarily in the form of an atmospherically-shot suspense thriller, with Sybil Thorndike in the title role, one of her most memorable film appearances.  Wilcox was keen to ensure realism and historical accuracy in his film, using original location footage, scrupulously researched set designs and one of Cavell’s collaborators -Ada Bodart – playing herself, but the film nevertheless attracted considerable controversy. . Diplomatic efforts to minimise the film’s perceived potential for inflaming anti-German sentiment and disrupting international relations led to censor cuts for British audiences but in Belgium the film was released intact. It is this uncensored version that we present for our stirring Festival screening. Find out more at wikipedia.org   Presented as part of the Hippodrome Silent Film Festival.  Introduced by Dr Lawrence Napper, senior lecturer at King’s College London.  With live musical accompaniment by  Forrester Pyke (piano).  Hippodrome Cinema, Bo’ness   Link

 

The Mark Of Zorro (Dir. Fred Niblo, US, 1920) (Screening format – not known, 85mins)  Don Diego Vega (Douglas Fairbanks) masquerades as an ineffectual fop to bamboozle his enemies and conceal his secret persona: ‘Zorro’: avenger of the oppressed. The first King of Hollywood – dashing, athletic Fairbanks, pretty much defined the swashbuckling genre with this rip-roaring adventure flick. Featuring horseback stunts, witty chase sequences and sword fighting, this entertaining romp achieves a satisfying blend of humour and heroics that remains the benchmark for action films today.  Find out more at  silentfilm.org   Presented as part of the Hippodrome Silent Film Festival.    With live musical accompaniment by Neil Brand (piano) and Frank Bockius (percussion) Hippodrome Cinema, Bo’ness  Link

 

19 March

Diary Of A Lost Girl (Dir. G W Pabst, Ger, 1929) (Screening format – not known, 106mins) A masterpiece of the German silent era, Diary of a Lost Girl was the second and final collaboration of actress Louise Brooks and director G.W. Pabst, just months after their first collaboration in the now-egendary Pandora’s Box (1929). Brooks plays Thymian Henning, a beautiful young woman raped by an unscrupulous character employed at her father’s pharmacy (played with gusto by Fritz Rasp, the villain of such Fritz Lang classics as Metropolis, Spione, and Frau im Mond). After Thymian gives birth to his child and rejects her family’s expectations of marriage, the baby is torn from her care, and Thymian enters a purgatorial reform school that seems less an institute of learning than a conduit for fulfilling the headmistress’s sadistic sexual fantasies. Find out more at rogerebert.com   With live musical accompaniment by Wurlitza.  Dartington Great Hall, Totness     Link

 

Behind The Screen (Dir Charles Chaplin, US, 1919)  +  Sherlock Jr (Dir. Buster Keaton, 1924) (Screening format – not known, 23/45 mins) In Behind The Screen, Chaplin plays a stagehand on a movie set. He is overworked and under-appreciated while his boss Goliath (Eric Campbell) spends most of the time asleep.   Meanwhile a young woman (Edna Purviance) is trying to get her big break as an actress but is turned down so dresses up as a male stagehand in order to get a job.  The film is noted for having one of Hollywood’s first gay jokes in it. After Chaplin learns that Purviance is really a woman, he kisses her while on the set. Goliath dances about in an exaggerated feminine style, an obvious gay stereotype meant to be amusing, setting off the climatic pie fight.  Find out more at wikipedia.org  In Sherlock Jr, a kindly movie projectionist (Buster Keaton) longs to be a detective. When his fiancée (Kathryn McGuire) is robbed by a local thief (Ward Crane), the poor projectionist is framed for the crime. Using his amateur detective skills, the projectionist follows the thief to the train station – only to find himself locked in a train car.  Disheartened, he returns to his movie theatre, where he falls asleep and dreams that he is the great Sherlock Holmes.   Although not a popular success on its initial release, the film has come to be recognised as a Keaton classic with its special effects and elaborate stunts making it a landmark in motion picture history.  Find out more at silentfilm.org.   Presented as part of the Hippodrome Silent Film Festival.    With live musical accompaniment by Neil Brand (piano)  Hippodrome Cinema, Bo’ness  Link

 

Lydia Hayward and The Boatswain’s Mate (Dir. H. Manning Haynes,  UK, 1924) (Screening format – not known, 24mins)   British screenwriter Lydia Hayward could spin comedy gold out of any story and wrote dozens of screenplays in the 1920s. She was hailed in the film trade press as ‘the finest scenario writer we have’, but her fine reputation languishes forgotten with the films she worked on.  Bryony Dixon  provides an introduction to the screenwriter’s creative career and outstanding contribution to some of the era’s most widely enjoyed films.  This is followed by a screening of one of her films, based on the humorous story by the now largely forgotten W.W. Jacobs, The Boatswain’s Mate.  The film sees Florence Turner (famed as the ‘Vitagraph Girl’ and one of the film industry’s first stars) plays savvy pub landlady Mrs Waters.  According to lazy ex-boatswain George Benn, who fancies himself as a publican by proxy, she is the ideal woman. Benn enlists a ‘mate’, a burly out-of-work seaman, in an over-complicated plan to appear heroic in Mrs Waters’ eyes. This doesn’t quite go to plan. This adaptation was accorded a rapturous reception by the press; Motion Picture Studio pointed out that Artistic Pictures – the company owned by H. Manning Haynes, and through which he released all of his W. W. Jacobs adaptations – had ‘developed such an excellent reputation for their  cinematic adaptations that even the most hardened admirer of Jacobs’ writing would find little fault in the film’.  Presented as part of the Hippodrome Silent Film Festival.    Introduced by Bryony Dixon, curator of silent film at the BFI National Archive.  With live musical accompaniment by John Sweeney (piano)  Hippodrome Cinema, Bo’ness   Link

 

Not For Sale (Dir. W P Kellino, UK, 1924) (Screening format – not known, 86mins) Ace screenwriter Lydia Hayward’s adorable romcom concerns a spoiled young aristocrat cut off by his exasperated father and reduced to living in a Bloomsbury boarding house. Handsome Hollywood leading-man Ian Hunter made his film debut here as Martin Bering – the feckless, disinherited toff.  French born Mary Odette plays the impoverished boarding house proprietor Annie, who’s hindered by her dysfunctional house full of tenants, with their gossiping and finicky ways who constantly try her patience. She also has her brother Mickey Brantford to deal with, a sprightly 12-year-old, whose take on Lon Chaney’s Hunchback of Notre Dame has to be seen to be believed and who enlists Bering in his ‘Anti-Boarders League’. This well-plotted and entertaining film features a splendid cast of ensemble characters – not least the dubious Sunny Jim (W G Saunders) who is taken on as a rather unpolished butler, as well as film and theatrical stalwart Mary Brough who plays the easily offended Mrs Keane.  There’s even a small early role for long-term Will Hay collaborator Moore Marriot, he of ‘Old Harbottle’ fame. .  Find out more at wikipedia.org  Presented as part of the Hippodrome Silent Film Festival.    Introduced by Bryony Dixon, curator of silent film at the BFI National Archive.  With live musical accompaniment by Stephen Horne (piano, flute, percussion).  Hippodrome Cinema, Bo’ness  Link

 

City Girl (Dir. F W Murnau, US, 1930) (Screening format – not known, 89mins).  Murnau made three silent movies for Fox in Hollywood. The first, Sunrise, is universally acclaimed; the second one, Four Devils, no longer exists; and the third, City Girl, was for years known only through a re-edited, semi-sound version which Murnau himself disowned. But the restored, fully silent version of  City Girl is a lyrical master–work of pastoral realism, in which Lem, a simple farm boy from Minnesota (Charles Farrell), in Chicago to sell the family’s wheat crop, meets and marries Kate (Mary Duncan), a waitress yearning for an idyllic life in the countryside. When they return to Minnesota, however, they’re met with hostility from both the coarse, lascivious harvesters and from Lem’s overbearing father. It is a rural melodrama of great beauty and honesty, and was surely in part an inspiration for Terrence Malick’s Days of Heaven (1978).  Find out more at sensesofcinema.com. Presented as part of the Hippodrome Silent Film Festival.     With live musical accompaniment by The Dodge Brothers (featuring Mike Hammond (lead guitar, banjo), broadcaster and film critic Mark Kermode (bass, harmonica), Aly Hirji (rhythm guitar, mandolin), Alex Hammond (percussion) )and Neil Brand.  Hippodrome Cinema, Bo’ness   Link

 

Train Triple Bill – Station Content (Dir. Arthur Hoyt, US, 1918)  +   The Timber Queen (Dir. Fred Jackman, US, 1922) + The Lonedale Operator (Dir. D.W. Griffith, US, 1911) (Screening format – digital, 12/10/15 mins)  In Station Content, Kitty (Gloria Swanson) is the lonely wife of a rural station master.  Bemoaning her husband’s lack of promotion she runs away with a group of musical travelling players.  A meeting with the railroad president offers the prospect of romance but a chance layover at another rural station brings recollections of her earlier life and she has second thoughts, redeeming herself and her marriage by averting a train wreck.  Station Content is a one reel abridgement of a now lost 5 reel feature.  Find out more at wikipedia.org.  The Timber Queen is a 1922 American action film serial directed by Fred Jackman, and starring actress and stunt woman Ruth Roland . She stars as  Ruth Reading, the inheritor of a wealthy timber business who tries to stay independent of a cruel man who wants to marry her and steal her wealth.  Made in 15 episodes, only five are believed to have survived.  This screening is of Episode 12: The Abyss in which Ruth Reading finds herself stranded atop a runaway box car.  Find out more at wikipedia.org  When her father,  The Lonedale Operator, becomes ill, a young woman takes over the telegraph at a lonely western railroad station. She soon gets word that the next train will deliver the payroll for a mining company. The train brings not only the money, but a pair of ruffians bent on stealing it. All alone, she wires for help, and then holds off the bad guys until it arrives.  The Lonedale Operator has long been celebrated for its flamboyant and advanced editing. It intercuts three primary spaces—the telegraph office interior, the criminals outside, and the rescue train—with an escalating rhythm. Within this frantic adventure, it also manages a subtle character study of a self-willed, quick-witted girl, who bluffs her way out of the threatening situation without having the gun offered by her father.  Find out more at wikipedia.org  Presented as part of the Hippodrome Silent Film Festival.    With live musical accompaniment by Mike Nolan.  Bo’ness Station, Bo’ness and Kinneil Railway, Bo’ness Link

 

The Fall of The House of Usher (Dir. Jean Epstein, Fr, 1928) (Screening format – not known, 63 mins) An unnamed man pays a visit to the decaying, aristocratic mansion of his childhood friend, Roderick Usher. He finds Usher to be demented… obsessed by death, consumed with fear that his beloved wife Madeline will die, and no less fearful that she will be buried alive. He spends his days painting an eerily lifelike portrait of Madeline, but with each brushstroke the life seems to drain from her. Director Jean Epstein and screenwriter Luis Buñuel studiously avoided cheap shocks and opted for a controlled, spookily subtle technique, in this tale of hereditary madness.   Epstein’s version changes the relationship of Madeline and Roderick from brother and sister to husband and wife but matches the horror and menace of Poe’s story, with weird, surreal images and an insidious atmosphere conveyed by the glowering halls, fluttering curtains, and nightmarish suggestiveness of the veil and coffin. Look out for French director Abel Gance, fresh from directing Napoleon (1927) in a minor role while his then wife, Marguerite, stars as Madeline. Find out more at rogerebert.com.  Presented as part of the Hippodrome Silent Film Festival.    With live musical accompaniment by Stephen Horne (piano, flute, accordion) and Elizabeth-Jane Baldry (harp), premiering their new musical collaboration for this film.  Hippodrome Cinema, Bo’ness  Link

 

 

A String of Pearls (aka Yichuan Zhenzhu)  (Dir. Li Zeyauan, China, 1926) (Screening format -not known, 106mins) One of the earliest surviving Chinese features, and based on Guy de Maupassant’s short story The Necklace. A social climbing, middle-class housewife cajoles her husband into borrowing an expensive necklace to wear at a party. Her ostentatious display succeeds in making a big impression but, on the night of the party, the necklace is stolen and her husband ends up embezzling funds to pay for the loss, triggering a downward spiral in their fortunes. Boasting some surprisingly lovely cinematic touches, and moody lighting, the film also offers a fascinating look at rich, Westernized life in 1920s Shanghai.  Find out more at  imdb.com   Presented as part of the Hippodrome Silent Film Festival.    With live musical accompaniment by John Sweeney (piano) .   Hippodrome Cinema, Bo’ness    Link

 

The Unknown (Dir. Tod Browning, US, 1927) (Screening format – not known, 63 mins)  To escape the police, Alonzo, who has two thumbs on one hand, poses in a sideshow as an armless wonder. He falls in love with Estrellita, and when detected by her father, he kills him. Then, discovering that the girl abhors the touch of a man’s hand, he has both his arms amputated. Returning, he finds to his dismay that she has fallen in love with Malabar, the strong-man.  Is all lost for Alonzo….The Unknown was the sixth of ten collaborations between Chaney and director Tod Browning. Its circus theme was a favorite of Browning’s, both on and off screen.  Chaney was already “The Man of a Thousand Faces” when he appeared in The Unknown but in this film he didn’t need to rely on heavy make-up to transform himself for a role. For The Unknown, Chaney reported, “I contrived to make myself look like an armless man, not simply to shock and horrify you but merely to bring to the screen a dramatic story of an armless man.”  Find out more at moviessilently.com .  Presented as part of the Hippodrome Silent Film Festival.    With live musical accompaniment by Jonny Best (piano) .   Hippodrome Cinema, Bo’ness Link

 

L’Homme du Large (aka Man of the Sea) (Dir. Marcel L’Herbier, France, 1920) (Screening format – not known, 84mins)  Severe and deeply religious, Nolff is a fisherman who lives with his wife, daughter and son on the Breton coast, far from the temptations of the city. From his remote cliff-top home, Nolff dedicates himself to his fishing and to raising his son Marcel, as “a free man, a sailor”. But Marcel is idle and selfish, exploiting his father’s blind affection, and rejecting the old man’s passionate devotion to the sea and all it represents. With beautifully stylised, poetic inter-titles, haunting symbolic imagery and striking use of natural settings this is a memorable fable of the opposing elements of earth and water, of the corrupt modern world and the timeless purity of the ocean. Find out more at silentfilm.org   Presented as part of the Hippodrome Silent Film Festival.    With live narration by acclaimed actor Paul McGann and  live musical accompaniment by John Sweeney (piano) and Frank Bockius (percussion). Hippodrome Cinema, Bo’ness  Link

 

 

25 March

Nosferatu (Dir. F W Murnau, 1922) (Screening format – digital , 96mins) To celebrate the hundredth anniversary of its original release, Nosferatu gets a nationwide re-release.  A German Expressionist horror masterpiece starring Max Shreck as the vampire Count Orlok, the film was an unauthorised adaption of Bram Stoker’s ‘Dracula’ with names and other details changed because the studio could not obtain the rights to the novel.  Stoker’s heirs sued over the adaption and a court ruling ordered that all copies of the film be destroyed.  However, a few prints survived and the film came to be regarded as an inspirational master work of the cinema. In the film, Count Orlok travels across Europe leaving a trail of death in his wake.  Brilliantly eerie, with imaginative touches which later adaptions never achieved.  Find out more at wikipedia.org.  With recorded soundtrack.   Curzon Bloomsbury  Link

 

29 March

Early Days of Anime: Shorts Programme.  As an introduction to its Anime film season, the BFI is screening a compilation of early precursors to the anime genre, featuring several short films from the silent era including; The Dull Sword (Dir. Junichi Kouchi, Jap, 1917) about a samurai who looses every fight due to his worn out sword.  Find out more at animation.filmarchives.jp;   The Story of Tobacco (Dir. Noburo Ofuji, Jap, 1926) a live action/animation combination about a fight over a cigarette.  Find out more at animation.filmarchives.jp;  and The Lump (Dir. Yasuji Murata, Jap, 1929) about two men who each have a lump growing on their faces.  Find out more at animation.filmarchives.jp.  With live piano accompaniment.  BFI Southbank, London  No link yet