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.
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