A Bullet from Mary Pickford

Illusion may travel by streetcar but where the tramlines don’t go the autobus will fill in the mirages. I took the train to Linlithgow and then waited… and waited… as three buses listed as coming failed to materialise. I downloaded the bus company app which helpfully suggested I take a bicycle. I phoned the bus company, and a nice man told me about the other phantasmal transports listed on the fictional timetables. Then I called a cab. By then three other travelers had appeared and they paid for it.

So that’s the only bad thing about Bo’ness — getting there. Once there, I saw STELLA MARIS which was ace and ADVENTURES OF HALF A RUBLE which was even acer.

SM stars Mary Pickford in a dual role and Teddy the Keystone dog in a single role. Also Herbert Standing of the Standing acting dynasty, and Conway Tearle, who’s rather sweet. Since one Pickford incarnation here is the usual golden ringlet person, she’s freed up to transform herself in her other role as a cockney orphan, which apparently caused some anxiety to Adolph Zukor in the front office. But this gives the film it’s best non-Teddy moment, as a backlit Pickford, bent on homicide, walks slowly from a wide medium shot into a tight closeup, a slash of light falling across her eyes. Electric stuff, and Meg Morley on piano did well by it. Programme notes by Pamela Hutchinson are here.

(Pickford’s prospective victim was one Marcia Manon who delivers a stupendous performance of one-not malignity. Proving you can do a great deal with one note. Manon was in fact several years younger than her onscreen adoptive daughter, but you’d never know it.)

The director responsible was Marshall Neilan, whose efforts I’ve always enjoyed, but this was one of his rare showy moments, which I enjoyed even more than all the classy invisible stuff.

I think the overall message was “It’s better being rich than being poor.” But then the Soviets attempted to persuade us of the opposite argument.

John Sweeney played along to ADVENTURES OF HALF A RUBLE, disappearing into the film with his usual elegant discretion. It’s a yarn about working-class boys in Tsarist Kyiv (though filmed later, in Soviet-era 1929). The titular coin moves about the story world, from hand to hand, as if rehearsing for a bigger role in Bresson’s L’ARGENT. Very good programme notes here with fascinating context. We get some not-very subtle class war stuff, but also lovely naturalistic performances from the kids and a full-on Russian montage delirium as the young hero suffers a fever. I never pranced across an ice floe as a kid but I did slide down hills and chase rainwater down the gutters on hillsides, which we seen enacted in Swedish-born Aksel Lundin’s film. I don’t know if I felt nostalgia, exactly, but I did sympathise with these kids, sometimes at the expense of their director, who seemed to be pretty tough on them.

Two more movies Friday, five on Saturday, three or four on Sunday (depending on whether I decide to take a chance on QUEEN OF SPORTS — I haven’t always enjoyed the Chinese silents I’ve seen and I hate sport). Keaton, Sjostom, Laurel & Hardy, Milestone, and things which are new to me… Good times.

Day One/Two

I missed Wednesday’s screenings at the Hipodrome Silent Film Festival (hereafter Hippfest) due to teaching engagements I could perhaps have wriggled free from had I been more organized. But I’m about to head off to see Mary Pickford in STELLA MARIS and who exactly? I guess some Russians in ADVENTURES OF HALF A RUBLE. I have seen neither film so this is an adventure for me too.

I will report back.

Tomorrow is JUST AROUND THE CORNER directed by Frances Marion, the newly-newsworthy Clara Bow in MANTRAP — I’ve seen the latter but remember very little so I guess I’m going. Should be a blast — maybe I’ll see you or vice versa? Anyhow I’m sure to see SOMETHING.

End

No doubt it’s the dread of having to look at A COUNTESS FROM HONG KONG again that’s making me drag my feet about finishing A KING IN A NEW YORK. And yet, it’s not as if anybody’s forcing me to do either.

There are two bits that seem worth talking about. First, on his way to testify before a redbaiting congressional committee, Chaplin’s King Shadhov gets his finger stuck in a fire hose. This is silly but potentially quite promising. As often with Chaplin, he’s wrestling with something stupid while something serious hangs over him as a threat — farce is the true medium of terror, after all.

The sequence doesn’t develop as wonderfully as prime Chaplin routines do, and while I hate to blame Bob Arden, and ultimately you can’t blame anyone but Chaplin, I’m going to slightly blame Bob Arden. Yes, that guy — leading man in Welles’ MR ARKADIN/CONFIDENTIAL REPORT, that one ambulance guy who stinks up a scene in A MATTER OF LIFE AND DEATH. That guy.

(A friend offered a convincing argument that Welles INTENDED Arden to be a loathsome lunk in ARKADIN, and it sort of convinced me but I still can’t feel it. I feel more like he was meant to be a slightly loveable rogue and missed by a mile. If he’s not meant to be even remotely appealing it’d be a good example of Wellesian perversity, though.)

The thing is, if KING were being shot in America, we can be sure Chaplin would have selected someone like Chester Conklin as co-clown for this key bit. Instead we have Arden, whose main selling point was always that he was a Yank in the UK. But a convincing accent is the least important attribute this bit needs. Chaplin could surely have engaged a physical comedian like Mr. Pastry (Buster’s “pet” comic) who was great at physical entanglement business.

Two slapstick specialists who are in sync with a bit of business will give you so much value in terms of little interactions. Even with Chaplin presumably telling Arden exactly what to do and when, that is missing.

The slightly contrived logic which causes the fire hose to eventually get plugged in and spray the committee is acceptable. A bit more excess would be good — skilled stuntmen falling over, individual gags about toupees coming off or whatever, furniture collapsing. We get none of that, just splash and a fadeout.

Of course it’s absurd that an actual monarch should be accused of being a commie, so the whole thing fizzles out. But young Michael Chaplin isn’t so lucky — in a genuinely heartrending and deeply depressing outcome, he’s gotten his parents out of prison by naming names himself.

Shadhov tries to comfort him and it is outstandingly ineffectual.

He says he’s going to pay him a visit sometime and we do not believe it.

He says that this will all pass one day and he’s right but it’s not a very comforting thing to tell a child, for whom the future is always far off and the present always interminable.

Strangely grandiose music plays as Shadhov and his secretary fly off in a jet, reading the papers. Chaplin has a great gift for musical counterpoint, but what exactly is this music doing here? Brainwashing the viewer into thinking this isn’t an incredibly bleak ending? Or just celebrating the miracle of flight and skyscrapers and so on?

Chaplin now being a European filmmaker ends with FINIS, which seems a bit much.

OK, that’s over. Very glad I saw it, of course.