for this week’s TRIBUNE : report from the 13th British Silent Film Festival, Leicester

Published on: May 7th, 2010

Amid the cavalcade of hype that surrounds films such as Avatar and stars like the Twilight saga’s Robert Pattinson, it’s salutary to ponder how future audiences will come to regard such noisy contemporary phenomena. Clues can be provided by looking back through cinema history – the medium is, after all, well into its second century – via events such as the British Silent Film Festival (BSFF), whose 13th renewal was held from 15th-18th April at Leicester’s new Phoenix Square arts-complex. For Avatar, read Harry O Hoyt’s dinosaur saga The Lost World (1925). For a precursor of the Pattinson-hysteria, look no further than Rudoph Valentino, who cemented his status as the planet’s pre-eminent smouldering heart-throb in George Melford’s The Sheik (1921).
   Having built up a considerable reputation in its former home at Nottingham’s Broadway cinema up until 2006 (including a continued association with several of the world’s most respected “accompanists” including Neil Brand and Gunther Buchwald) the BSFF – presented in collaboration with the British Film Institute – moved to London’s Barbican for the somewhat lower-key renewals from 2008-9. But now it’s back on “home” turf in the East Midlands, in a slightly run-down corner of Leicester’s city centre that is being regenerated as a performing-arts quarter.
   This was my first visit to BSFF since Nottingham in 2006, and the clientele was again a combination of academics, technical aficionados and curious members of the general public, with an average age some way older than one usually finds at film-festivals these days. Indeed, one or two of the older denizens looked as though they might even recall enjoying the offerings “first time around.”
   This year’s BSFF was officially entitled “The World Before You : Exploration, Science and Nature in British Silent Film” – a somewhat loosely-applied definition, as it transpired. Several of the features were Hollywood productions, including both The Lost World and The Sheik (Paramount). 
   Of that pair, it was perhaps surprising that the former – reliant for its impact upon dinosaurs jerkily ”animated” by Willis O´Brien´s stop-motion techniques (later refined for the 1933 King Kong, and predating Ray Harryhausen by a couple of decades) should have aged rather better than the latter, featuring flesh-and-blood sensations including the legendary Valentino.
   Such enduring fame is hard to credit based purely on The Sheik, in which Valentino over the course of 80-odd minutes displays less charisma than his 1920s box office rival Douglas Fairbanks (Sr) could pack into a single scene of daredevil derring-do. As showcased in the likes of The Mark of Zorro (1920), Robin Hood (1922) and The Thief of Baghdad (1924) – which, despite their venerable age, can still be appreciated and enjoyed by 21st century audiences – Fairbanks’ appeal has scarcely dimmed over the decades.
   The Sheik, however, is essentially now mainly of sociological and historical interest – a corny fantasy of sexual escapism in which a free-thinking heiress, hungry for adventure in north Africa, becomes the unwilling concubine of a virile young desert potentate. But she soon experiences a romantic equivalent of what we’d now call the Stockholm Syndrome, whereby her feelings for her captor evolve from outraged contempt into something rather more tender.
   Valentino is a surprisingly nervy screen presence, his default expression a somewhat goofy, boyish grin – and whereas his hands are so dark they appear to have been dipped in iodine (to make a greater contrast with his co-star Agnes Ayres´ porcelain fingers), his features veer distractingly towards the paler end of the Italian spectrum.
   A rather more arresting and ebullient version of silent-cinema masculinity was provided by Wallace Beery, whose blustering Professor Challenger – a bearded, wild-haired Brian Blessed type – dominates the screen during The Lost World whenever Mr O´Brien´s tyrannosaurs and pterodactyls are absent. Based on Conan Doyle´s 1912 novel, the picture sees an intrepid band of explorers venture into a remote corner of the Amazon in search of supposedly long-extinct megafauna. The results engagingly combine spectacle and humour, setting the template for countless similar fantasies over the subsequent decades – right down to the climactic rampage of an escaped dinosaur through modern city streets.
   Combining aspects of The Sheik (exotic romance) and The Lost World (fantastic goings-on beyond the ken of western civilisation) was another literary adaptation in the BSFF line-up, Leander de Cordova’s She (1925), based on H Rider Haggard´s stupendously successful 1887 novel – according to some sources, it´s the fifth best-selling English-language novel of all time. The far-fetched tale of an immortal princess (who just so happens to be white) ruling a lost, inaccessible African kingdom – the ´She´of the title being of course the original She ‘’who must be obeyed’’ – the picture only really takes off in the closing stages, when the characters embark on a somewhat Tolkien-ish quest for a fabled source of eternal life (through eerily luminescent mountainous zones that look like the inside of Turkish Delight) that has an unexpected and somewhat abrupt conclusion.
   Amid such berserk exotica, two more down-to-earth British productions stood out. Directed by Manning Haynes, Sam’s Boy (1922) is a droll little comedy about an East End urchin (Bobbie Rudd, turning in a surprisingly unsentimentalised performance) who inveigles his way onto a coastal boat and causes various problems for the crew. Running barely an hour, this brisk tale of veteran sea-dogs has dated rather better than the more ballyhooed entries in the BSFF lineup such as She, The Sheik or The Lost World – then again, perhaps the fact that it was presented on proper film (rather than DVD) helped boost its appeal.
   In the ‘’old days’’, the festival showed pretty much everything from celluloid – and it is to be firmly hoped that the organisers come to acknowledge that the older the movie, the ropier it looks if projected digitally. Live accompaniment is always a plus, but these days if we want to watch DVDs, we have ample opportunity to do so at home.
   Also shown on film was the 13th BSFF´s true highlight, the desert/adventure spoof Crossing the Great Sagrada from 1924, ruthlessly parodying countless conventions of silent cinema within a brisk eight-minute running-time. Always amusing and at times genuinely hilarious, Crossing the Great Sagrada was directed by Britain´s unsung hero of early cinema Adrian Brunel, later responsible for the stand-out of the 2006 BSFF, The Constant Nymph (1928). It´s available to view in full on YouTube – not the ideal technological format, of course, but preservation of any kind is perhaps preferable to extinction and oblivion.
   
Neil Young
30th April, 2010
(written for the 6th May edition of Tribune magazine)

Crossing the Great Sagrada : [****/5] : Adrian BRUNEL : UK 1924 : 8m {11/13}
THE LOST WORLD : [6+/10] : Harry O. HOYT : US 1925 : 100m {15+/28} : DVD projection
SAM’S BOY : [6/10] : Manning HAYNES : UK 1922 : 63m {16/28}
SHE : [5+/10] : Leander DE CORDOVA : UK 1925 : 120m {14+/28} : DVD projection
THE SHEIK : [4+/10] : George MELFORD : US 1921 : 80m {9+/28} : DVD projection

all seen at Phoenix Square, at the British Silent Film Festival, Leicester, 15th/16th April 2010 (complimentary tickets.)

also seen :
THE BRIDAL PARTY IN HARDANGER :  [5/10] : Rasmus BREINSTEIN : Norway 1926 : 74m : {14/18} : digital projection
‘In the calm waters of the Yare‘ (fragment) : [****/5] : director not known : UK 1910? : 6m : {9/13}
Q SHIPS : [5/10] : Geoffrey BARKAS & Michael BARRINGER : UK 1928 : 78m : {14/28}
To Rona on a Whaler : [****/5] : aka Trip to Rona on a Whaler : director not known : UK 1914? : 12m : {9/13}

all running-times are approximate and taken from the BSFF website, where given.