Alice, Cleo, Dorothy, Lois and Ruth

www.kino.com

More DVD releases, though in this case it is the DVD release (22 April) of titles previously only available on videotape. Kino is issuing three DVDs of silent films made by American women directors, available singly or bundled as ‘First Ladies‘. Kino claims that “the mid-1910s was a virtual golden age for women directors, with over a dozen women working behind the camera.” ‘Golden Age’ might seem to suggest an era of unfettered opportunity and creative expression, which was hardly the case. No woman was able to get behind the camera without a tough struggle, but nevertheless there were proportionately more women directors at this period than for many decades thereafter, and enough survives for us to value a distinctive and often clearly feminist body or work.

First up is the double-feature The Ocean Waif (1916), directed by Alice Guy-Blaché and 49-17 (1917), written and directed by Ruth Ann Baldwin. Alice Guy (right) or Alice Guy-Blaché (she married cameraman/ producer Herbert Blaché) is arguably the most notable of early women filmmakers; certainly one whose career has been championed in some quarters to the point of myth. She was taken on as Léon Gaumont’s secretary in 1897, and swiftly became head of film production at Gaumont, producing hundreds of short films (including proto-sound films). She moved to America in 1907 when her husband was made head of Gaumont’s office in New York. She returned to filmmaking in 1910 for her own company, Solax, before becoming an independent filmmaker, and it was during this period that she made The Ocean Waif for William Randolph Hearst’s International Film Service. Kino describes it as “a romantic story, plenty of pathos but no brutality, a likeable hero and an innocent young woman, and a suspenseful plot with a dramatic and happy ending”. It is one of the few films of hers from this period that survives. She carried on directing with moderate success throughout the teens, but her career petered out after her divorce in 1922, after which she returned to obscurity, only to be rediscovered in old age and awarded the Legion d’Honneur by a grateful French government.

The American Ruth Ann Baldwin was a journalist turned screenwriter, film editor and director. 49-17 is a parody Western, starring Jean Hersholt. It was her only feature (she directed several two-reelers), though apparently it was a hit, and the remainder of her film credits are for scriptwriting.

Baldwin worked for Universal studios, which seems to have been more encouraging of women directors than its rivals. It was home to Cleo Madison, actress turned director of the short film Eleanor’s Catch (1916), which is paired on the second DVD with Lois Weber’s feature The Hypocrites (1915). Weber (left) is the most notable of American women director of the silent era, a filmmaker as bold in technique as she was in ideas. She too started with the Gaumont company, as an actress, where for a time she worked alongside Alice Guy, and married a Gaumont manager Phillips Smalley. She turned to directing films in 1911, directing many shorts, including (with Smalley) the classic stylistic thriller Suspense (1913), before making her name with a succession of controversial and issue-led films, such as Where Are My Children? (1916) on abortion, The People vs John Doe (1916) on capital punishment as The Hand that Rocks the Cradle (1917) on birth control. The Hypocrites (1915), on religion and hypocrisy, itself caused contoversy for its use of nude woman (representing naked truth). She too worked for a time at Universal, enjoyed further success as a director into the early 1920, only to see her career crumble following the break-up of her marriage and a nervous breakdown.

The third DVD, The Red Kimona (1925) was directed by Dorothy Davenport Reid, better known as Mrs Wallace Reid (right), the wife of the wretched Wallace Reid. He was the actor whose death through drug addiction so shocked Hollywood and the nation, leading his wife to appear in the impassioned anti-drug film Human Wreckage (1923), which featured in the Bioscope Festival of Lost Films. After the success of that film she formed her own production company, and made this concerned drama (based on a true story) of a young woman lured into a life of prostitution, starring Priscilla Bonner. Its notable female credits continue, with a story by future director Dorothy Arzner and screenplay by Adela Rogers St. John. She continued to have some success as a director into the 1930s and thereafter as a screenwriter.

As said, it would be misleading to look upon 1910s America as some sort of golden period for women filmmakers, except by the modest proportion of women able to make films compared to later decades. It was still a cinema dominated by men in every field of production, and probably only Lois Weber rose to real prominence and power. Alice Guy worked regularly as a director in America throughout the 1910s, but generally for minor film companies set up by her husband. Her public profile was nothing like Webers. Dorothy Davenport made some courageous films, but she was never a leading figure, and by the mid-1920s women filmmakers were virtually unknown in America. The others were actresses or scenarists who were allowed a brief turn behind the camera.

However, if it was not Utopia, it nevertheless was a time of opportunities to be taken to create films from the woman’s point of view, and this Guy, Weber and Davenport undoubtedly did. They did not simply ape common themes and styles but purposefully chose subjects of particular interest to them as women, or simply revealed a different eye in how they placed and treate female protagonists within the narratives that they told. These films are no mere curiosities, but evidence of a different way of making films and seeing films. It’s good to see them made available again in this way.

And now La Roue

www.flickeralley.com

Having already pronounced Georges Méliès: First Wizard of Cinema (1896-1913) to be the finest silent DVD release of the year, it looks the upcoming new release from the same company, Flicker Alley, may occupy a close second place. In May they are releasing a 2-DVD set of Abel Gance’s bravura La Roue (1923). Here’s the blurb to explain the film’s importance to the history of cinematic expression:

Never before released in the United States, this monumental French film is one of the most extraordinary achievements in the whole history of cinema. Written and directed by Abel Gance (Napoleon, J’Accuse), three years in production, and for its time unprecedented in length and complexity of emotion, La Roue pushed the frontiers of film art beyond all previous efforts. Said Gance, “Cinema endows man with a new sense. It is the music of light. He listens with his eyes.”

Taken to its bare bones, the story deals with Sisif, a locomotive engineer who saves Norma, an infant girl, from a train wreck and raises her as his adopted daughter. Norma thinks Sisif’s son Elie is her brother, and when the two fall in love, she leaves to marry a virtual stranger. Sisif is also obsessed with her and the plot elaborates this triangular relationship. German director G.W. Pabst, an ardent admirer of La Roue, was encouraged by Gance’s example to undertake his own remarkable explorations of human psychology in such silent films as Secrets of a Soul, Pandora’s Box and Diary of a Lost Girl.

Yet La Roue is even more remarkable for its cinematic accomplishment than for its story. The film was taken almost entirely on location. Sets were built along the railroad tracks in the yard at St. Roch, near Nice, and at an elevation of 13,000 feet on Mount Blanc. Gance pioneered a dazzlingly innovative style of rapid montage that revolutionized filmmaking around the world, especially in the works of Eisenstein and his contemporaries in the Soviet Union. Almost every sequence was experimental; as his cinematographer, L-H Burel recalled, “I’d never come to the end of it if I were to list all the tests we did, all the special effects I invented, and all the innovations we launched.” Like Intolerance and Citizen Kane, La Roue became a source book of cinematic invention that reverberated in countless other classic films over the decades. It was hailed by artists and intellectuals, who recognized it as a stunning advance in modern art. Said Akira Kurosawa, “The first film that really impressed me was La Roue.”

This new restoration with a running time of nearly four and a half hours, accompanied by Robert Israel’s symphonic score, is the fullest presentation of La Roue to reach the public since 1923. It at last allows audiences today to experience the amazing, poetic vision that Abel Gance brought to the world. The DVD also includes a short film that provides a vivid documentary record of the great work in production, along with a booklet containing an outstanding essay by William M. Drew on the history and impact of La Roue, and comments by Robert Israel on the score.

Though not on sale yet, there’s a pre-release offer of $31.95 (normal price $39.95), with orders shipped on or just before 6 May.

There will be silents

The Story of Petroleum, from www.dvdtalk.com

An intriguing small news piece for you. The forthcoming DVD release (Collector’s Edition) of the Paul Thomas Anderson film There Will Be Blood, on the birth of the American oil industry, will include The Story of Petroleum among its extras.

This 25mins documentary dates from c.1923 and was produced at the behest of the US Bureau of Mines and the Sinclair Oil Company (nothing to do with Upton Sinclair, whose novel Oil! forms the basis on Anderson’s film). It shows operations of the American oil industry at the time (There Will Be Blood is set in the 1890s), and comes with a score from Radiohead’s Jonny Greenwood, who also scored the main feature film. The film was presumably remade or updated from time to time, as the BFI National Archive has copies dating from 1920 and 1928. It is a typical example of the semi-instructional semi-propagandist films produced by industrial concerns for the burgeoning non-theatrical market from the 1920s onwards.

The DVD (Collector’s Edition) of There Will Be Blood is released in the UK on 8 April.

Georges Méliès: First Wizard of Cinema (1896-1913)

The outstanding Flicker Alley 5-disc set Georges Méliès: First Wizard of Cinema (1896-1913) is now published, and I have my copy. Naturally, it’s a sensational package. Put together by Eric Lange (Lobster Films) and David Shepard (Blackhawk Films) from the archival holdings from seventeen collections across eight countries, the elegantly-presented DVDs comprises 173 titles (including one unidentified fragment) - almost (though not quite) every extant Georges Méliès film, plus the Georges Franju 1953 film, Le Grand Méliès. The DVDs are region 0, NTSC format.

The set comes with a well-illustrated booklet, which has essays by Norman McLaren (something of a surprise - it’s a transcript of an audio recording he made for a conference he couldn’t attend) and a long piece by John Frazer on Méliès’ life and work, adapted by Shepard from a text first written by Frazer in 1979. The full list of titles is now available on the Flicker Alley site, but here’s The Bioscope’s version, with the titles in the chronological order in which they appear on the DVDs, with Star-Film catalogue number, original French title and English title.

1896
1 - Partie de cartes, une/Playing Cards
26 - Nuit terrible, une/Terrible Night, a
70 - Escamotage d’une dame chez Robert-Houdin/Vanishing Lady, the
82 - Cauchemar, le/Nightmare, A

1897
96 - Château hanté, le/Haunted Castle, The
106 - Prise de Tournavos, la/Surrender of Tournavos, The
112 - Entre Calais et Douvres/Between Calais and Dover
122-123 - Auberge ensorcelée, l’/Bewitched Inn, the
128 - Après le bal (le tub)/After the Ball

1898
147 - Visite sous-marine du Maine/Divers at Work on the Wreck of the “Maine”
151 - Panorama pris d’un train en marche/Panorama from Top of a Moving Train
153 - Magicien, le/Magician, The
155 - Illusions fantasmagoriques/Famous Box Trick, The
159 - Guillaume Tell et le clown/Adventures of William Tell, The
160-162 - Lune à un mètre, la/Astronomer’s Dream, The
167 - Homme de têtes, un/Four Troublesome Heads, The
169 - Tentation de Saint Antoine/Temptation of St Anthony, the

Entrevue de Dreyfus et de sa femme à Rennes

1899
183 - Impressionniste fin de siècle, l’/Conjurer, The
185-187 - Diable au couvent, le/Devil in a Convent, The
188 - Danse du feu/Pillar of Fire, The
196 - Portrait mystérieux, le/Mysterious Portrait, The
206 - Affaire Dreyfus, la dictée du bordereau/Dreyfus Court Martial - Arrest of Dreyfus
207 - Ile du diable, l’/Dreyfus: Devil’s Island - Within the Palisade
208 - Mise aux fers de Dreyfus/Dreyfus Put in Irons
209 - Suicide du Colonel Henry/Dreyfus: Suicide of Colonel Henry
210 - Débarquement à Quiberon/Landing of Dreyfus at Quiberon
211 - Entrevue de Dreyfus et de sa femme à Rennes/Dreyfus Meets His Wife at Rennes
212 - Attentat contre Me Labori/Dreyfus: The Attempt Against the Life of Maître Labori
213 - Bagarre entre journalistes/Dreyfus: The Fight of Reporters
214-215 - Conseil de guerre en séance à Rennes, le/Dreyfus: The Court Martial at Rennes
219-224 - Cendrillon/Cinderella
226-227 - Chevalier mystère, le/Mysterious Knight, The
234 - Tom Whisky ou l’illusionniste truqué/Addition and Subtraction

L’Homme-orchestre

1900
243 - Vengeance du gâte-sauce, la/Cook’s Revenge, The
244 - Infortunes d’un explorateur, les/Misfortunes of an Explorer, The
262-263 - Homme-orchestre, l’/One-Man Band, The
264-275 - Jeanne d’Arc/Joan of Arc
281-282 - Rêve du Radjah ou la forêt enchantée, le/Rajah’s Dream, The
285-286 - Sorcier, le prince et le bon génie, le/Wizard, the Prince and the Good Fairy, The 289-291 - Livre magique/Magic Book, The
293 - Spiristisme abracadabrant/Up-to-date Spiritualism
294 - Illusioniste double et la tête vivante, l’/Triple Conjurer and the Living Head, The
298-305 - Rêve de Noël/Christmas Dream, The
309-310 - Nouvelles luttes extravagantes/Fat and Lean Wrestling Match
311 - Repas fantastique, le/Fantastical Meal, A
312-313 - Déshabillage impossible, le/Going to Bed under Difficulties
314 - Tonneau des Danaïdes, le/Eight Girls in a Barrel
317 - Savant et le chimpanzé, le/Doctor and the Monkey, The
322 - Réveil d’un homme pressé, le/How He Missed His Train

L’Homme à la tête en caoutchouc

1901
325-326 - Maison tranquille, la/What is Home Without the Boarder?
332-333 - Chrysalide et le papillon, la/Brahmin and the Butterfly, The
335-336 - Dislocation mystérieuse/Extraordinary Illusions
345-347 - Antre des esprits, le/Magician’s Cavern, The
350-351 - Chez la sorcière/Bachelor’s Paradise, The
357-358 - Excelsior!/Excelsior! - Prince of Magicians
361-370 - Barbe-Bleue/Blue Beard
371-372 - Chapeau à surprises, le/Hat With Many Surprises, The
382-383 - Homme à la tête en caoutchouc, l’/Man With the Rubber Head, The
384-385 - Diable géant ou le miracle de la madone, le/Devil and the Statue, The
386 - Nain et géant/Dwarf and the Giant, The

Voyage dans la lune

1902
391 - Douche du colonel/Colonel’s Shower Bath, The
394-396 - La danseuse microscopique, la/Dancing Midget, The
399-411 - Voyage dans la lune/Trip to the Moon, A
412 - Clownesse fantôme, la/Shadow-Girl, The
413-414 - Trésors de Satan, les/Treasures of Satan, The
415-416 - Homme-mouche, l’/Human Fly, The
419 - Équilibre impossible, l’/Impossible Balancing Feat, An
426-429 - Voyage de Gulliver à Lilliput et chez les géants, le/Gulliver’s Travels Among the Lilliputians and the Giants
No number - Sacre d’Edouard VII, le/Coronation of Edward VII, The
445-448 - Guirlande merveilleuse, la/Marvellous Wreath, The

1903
451-452 - Malheur n’arrive jamais seul, un/Misfortune Never Comes Alone
453-457 - Cake-walk infernal, le/Infernal Cake-Walk, The
458-459 - Boîte à malice, la/Mysterious Box, The
462-464 - Puits fantastique, le/Enchanted Well, The
465-469 - Auberge du bon repos, l’/Inn Where No Man Rests, The
470-471 - Statue animée, la/Drawing Lesson, The
473-475 - Sorcier, le/Witch’s Revenge, The
476 - Oracle de Delphes, l’/Oracle of Delphi, The
447-478 - Portrait spirite, le/Spiritualistic Photographer
479-480 - Mélomane, le/Melomaniac, The
481-482 - Monstre, le/Monster, The
483-498 - Royaume des fées, le/Kingdom of the Fairies, The
499-500 - Chaudron infernal, le/Infernal Cauldron, The
501-502 - Revenant, le/Apparitions
503-505 - Tonnerre de Jupiter, le/Jupiter’s Thunderbolts
506-507 - Parapluie fantastique, le/Ten Ladies in an Umbrella
508-509 - Tom Tight et Dum Dum/Jack Jaggs and Dum Dum
510-511 - Bob Kick, l’enfant terrible/Bob Kick the Mischievous Kid
512-513 - Illusions funambulesques/Extraordinary Illusions
514-516 - Enchanteur Alcofribas, l’/Alcofribas, the Master Magician
517-519 - Jack et Jim/Comical Conjuring
520-524 - Lanterne magique, la/Magic Lantern, The
525-526 - Rêve du maître de ballet, le/Ballet Master’s Dream, The
527-533 - Faust aux enfers/Damnation of Faust, The
534-535 - Bourreau turc, le/Terrible Turkish Executioner, The
538-539 - Au clair de la lune ou Pierrot malheureux/Moonlight Serenade, A
540-541 - Prêté pour un rendu, un/Tit for Tat

Voyage à travers l’impossible

1904
547-549 - Coffre enchanté, le/Bewitched Trunk, The
552-553 - Roi du maquillage, le/Untamable Whiskers
554-555 - Rêve de l’horloger, le/Clockmaker’s Revenge, The
556-557 - Transmutations imperceptibles, les/Imperceptible Transmutations, The
558-559 - Miracle sous l’Inquisition, un/Miracle Under the Inquisition, A
562-574 - Damnation du Docteur Faust/Faust and Marguerite
578-580 - Thaumaturge chinois, le/Tchin-Chao, the Chinese Conjurer
581-584 - Merveilleux éventail vivant, le/Wonderful Living Fan, The
585-588 - Sorcellerie culinaire/Cook in Trouble, The
589-590 - Planche du diable, la/Devilish Prank, The
593-595 - Sirène, la/Mermaid, The
641-659 - Voyage à travers l’impossible/Impossible Voyage, The
665-667 - Cascade de feu, la/Firefall, The
678-679 - Cartes vivantes, les/Living Playing Cards, The

1905
683-685 - Diable noir, le/Black Imp, The
686-689 - Phénix ou le coffret de cristal, le/Magic Dice, The
690-692 - Menuet lilliputien, le/Lilliputian Minuet, The
705-726 - Palais des mille et une nuits, le/Palace of the Arabian Nights, The
727-731 - Compositeur toqué, le/Crazy Composer, A
738-739 - Chaise à porteurs enchantée, la/Enchanted Sedan Chair, The
740-749 - Raid Paris - Monte-Carlo en deux heures, le/Adventurous Automobile Trip, An
756-775 - Légende de Rip Van Vinckle, la/Rip’s Dream
784-785 - Tripot clandestin, le/Scheming Gamblers’ Paradise, The
789-790 - Chute de cinq étages, une/Mix-up in the Gallery, A
791-806 - Jack le ramoneur/Chimney Sweep, The
807-809 - Maestro Do-Mi-Sol-Do, le/Luny Musician, The

1906
818-820 - Cardeuse de matelas, la/Tramp and the Mattress Makers, The
821-823 - Affiches en goguette, les/Hilarious Posters, The
824-837 - Incendiaires, les/Desperate Crime, A
838-839 - “Anarchie chez Guignol, l’”/Punch and Judy
843-845 - Hôtel des voyageurs de commerce ou les suites d’une bonne cuite, l’/Roadside Inn, A
846-848 - Bulles de savon animées, les/Soap Bubbles
849-870 - Quatre cents farces du diable, les/Merry Frolics of Satan, The
874-876 - Alchimiste Parafaragaramus ou la cornue infernale, l’/Mysterious Retort, The
877-887 - Fée Carabosse ou le poignard fatal, la/Witch, The

L’Tunnel sous la Manche ou le cauchemar anglo-français

1907
909-911 - Douche d’eau bouillante, la/Rogues’ Tricks
925-928 - Fromages automobiles, les/Skipping Cheeses, The
936-950 - Tunnel sous la Manche ou le cauchemar anglo-français, le/Tunnelling the English Channel
961-968 - Eclipse de soleil en pleine lune/Eclipse, or the Courtship of the Sun and Moon, The
1000-1004 - Pauvre John ou les aventures d’un buveur de whisky/Sightseeing through Whisky
1005-1009 - Colle universelle, la/Good Glue Sticks
1014-1017 - Ali Barbouyou et Ali Bouf à l’huile/Delirium in a Studio
1030-1034 - Tambourin fantastique, le/Knight of Black Art, The
1035-1039 - Cuisine de l’ogre, la/In the Bogie Man’s Cave
1044-1049 - Il y a un dieu pour les ivrognes/Good Luck of a Souse, The
1066-1068 - Torches humaines/Justinian’s Human Toches 548 A.D.

1908
1069-1072 - Génie du feu, le/Genii of the Fire, The
1073-1080 - Why that actor was late
1081-1085 - Rêve d’un fumeur d’opium, le/Dream of an Opium Fiend, The
1091-1095 - Photographie électrique à distance, la/Long Distance Wireless Photography
1096-1101 - Prophétesse de Thèbes, la/Prophetess of Thebes, The
1102-1103 - Salon de coiffure/In the Barber Shop
1132-1145 - Nouveau seigneur du village, le/New Lord of the Village, The
1146-1158 - Avare, l’/Miser, The
1159-1165 - Conseil du Pipelet ou un tour à la foire, le/Side Show Wrestlers
1176-1185 - Lully ou le violon brisé/Broken Violin, The
1227-1232 - The Woes of Roller Skates
1246-1249 - Amour et mélasse/His First Job
1250-1252 - Mésaventures d’un photographe, les/The Mischances of a Photographer
1253-1257 - Fakir de Singapour, le/Indian Sorcerer, An
1266-1268 - Tricky painter’s fate, a
1288-1293 - French interpreter policeman/French Cops Learning English
1301-1309 - Anaïc ou le balafré/Not Guilty
1310-1313 - Pour l’étoile S.V.P./Buncoed Stage Johnnie
1314-1325 - Conte de la grand-mère et rêve de l’enfant/Grandmother’s Story, A
1416-1428 - Hallucinations pharmaceutiques ou le truc du potard/Pharmaceutical Hallucinations
1429-1441 - Bonne bergère et la mauvaise princesse, la/Good Shepherdess and the Evil Princess
No number - unidentified film

1909
1495-1501 - Locataire diabolique, le/Diabolic Tenant, The
1508-1512 - Illusions fantaisistes, les/Whimsical Illusions

1911
1536-1547 - Hallucinations du Baron de Münchausen, les /Baron Munchausen’s Dream

1912
Pathé - A la conquète du pôle/Conquest of the Pole, The
Pathé - Cendrillon ou la pantoufle merveilleuse/Cinderella
Pathé - Chevalier des neiges, le/Knight of the Snow, The

1913
Pathé - Voyage de la famille Bourrichon, le/Voyage of the Bourichon Family, The

Almost needless to say, the quality of the digital transfers is excellent, sometimes startlingly so. There are fifteen examples of beautiful hand-colouring. Many musicians have provided scores, making the DVD a fascinating demonstration in itself of different approaches to the task of accompanying Georges Méliès (even if, for myself I find the American taste for organ accompaniment baffling). They are Eric Beheim, Brian Benison, Frederick Hodges, Robert Israel, Neal Kurz, the Mont Alto Motion Picture Orchestra, Alexander Rannie, Joseph Rinaudo, Rodney Sauer and Donald Sosin. Some of the films come with Georges Méliès’ original English narrations, designed to be spoken alongside the films, and here are spoken by Serge Bromberg and Fabrice Zagury (with some rather quaint mangling of the English language in places).

Georges Méliès is confirmed here as among the pre-eminent artists of the cinema, perhaps the most exuberant of all filmmakers. The films display imagination, wit, ingenuity, grace, style, fun, invention, mischief, intelligence, anarchy, innocence, vision, satire, panache, beauty and longing, the poetry of the absurd. Starting out as extensions of the tricks that made up Méliès’ magic shows, to view them in chronological order as they are here is to see the cinema itself bursting out of its stage origins into a theatre of the mind, where anything becomes possible - a true voyage à travers l’impossible, to take the title of one of his best-known films. The best of them have not really dated at all, in that they have become timeless, and presumably (hopefully) always will be so. Méliès in his lifetime suffered the agony of seeing his style of filmming turn archaic as narrative style in the Griffith manner became dominant, but we can see now that is his work that has truly lasted. The films will always stand out as showing how motion pictures, when they first did appeared, in a profound sense captured the imagination. And there is that consistency of vision that confirms Méliès as a true artist with a body of work that belongs in a gallery - or in this case a boxed set of DVDs - for everyone to appreciate.

What a great publication this is. Every good home should have one.

Les Vampires

Poster for Les Vampires

Well, first of all the imminent release by Artifical Eye of a three-disc DVD edition of Louis Feuillade’s classic serial Les Vampires gives me the opportunity to reproduce one of the great posters of the silent era. Has a touch of Twin Peaks about it, I’ve always thought, even if the curtains are the wrong colour.

Anyway, Les Vampires (1915/16) is, of course, one of the great crime serials (or series) made by Feuillade for Gaumont, after he had thrilled audiences and revitalised the crime genre with Fantômas (1913). The five Fantômas films, based the popular crime novels of Marcel Allain and Pierre Souvestre, were particularly thrilling for being shown from the perspective not of the detective but of the master criminal, with his genius for disguise and eluding the police. Les Vampires, a little more conventionally, is shown from the perspective of the pursuing journalist Philippe Guérande, but it does have the huge plus of arch villainess Irma Vep, played in true iconic fashion by Musidora. Irma Vep, as an intertitle sequence that always raises a cheer, is of course an anagram of vampire.

Intertitle sequence from Les Vampires giving the game away

The Vampires are a criminal gang, supposedly inspired by the real-life Bonnot gang whose exploits chilled and thrilled the French just before the First World War. Irma Vep does not lead the group, though she does assassinate the Grand Vampire, a scene Feuillade apparently concocted after the actor playing the Grand Vampire neglected to turn up on set on time. The Vampires dress head to toe in black and general steal, kidnap and assassinate, before making daring escapes across picturesque Parisian rooftops. Guérande doggedly pursues them, aided by reformed Vampire Mazamette, but each time some new nefarious figure rises to prominence within the ranks of the Vampires.

Les Vampires is, strictly speaking, halfway between a series and a serial. It is divided into ten episodes, but these were released irregularly, and it was until Judex (1917, also starring Musidora) and Feuillade truly adopted the serial form. Stylish, transgressive and wildly imaginative, Les Vampires gains a particular power from combining the surreal world of the Vampires with the ordinary streets and buildings of Paris, doubtless making it all the more imaginatively plausible to contemporary audiences.

www.amazon.co.uk

Over three discs you get the ten episodes (between 40 and 70 minutes each), plus a selection of Feuillade’s short films: La Bous-Bous-Mie (1907), Une Dame Vraiment Bien (1908), La Legende de la Fileuse (1908), C’est pour les Orphelines (1916) and L’Orgie Romaine (1911). Music is scored by Éric le Guen. The release derives from the same Gaumont restoration which has been released on DVD in France by Gaumont themselves, though ranging over four discs, albeit with some extras not available on the Artificial Eye release.

Les Vampires is released on 24 March.

Everybody loves Sessue

Sessue Hayakawa, from The Evening Class

The silent star of the moment is Sessue Hayakawa. The Japanese-born star of American silents has been the subject of a critical study, film season and DVD releases, while an archive has announced that it has recently preserved a number of his films. This is a round-up of Hayakawamania.

The critical study is Daisuke Miyao’s Sessue Hayakawa: Silent Cinema and Transnational Stardom (Duke University Press), which has already been the subject of a post on the Bioscope. There’s an online interview with Miyao on The Evening Class blog. Miyao’s work inspired a Museum of Modern Art exhibition, Sessue Hayakawa: East and West, When the Twain Met, which ran September 5–16, 2007 - details of the films shown are on the web page.

The Dragon Painter, from www.milestonefilms.com

The new DVD release is The Dragon Painter (1919), issued by Milestone. This is the blurb from their site:

Remembered mostly for his magnificent performance as the Japanese officer in The Bridge over the River Kwai, few filmgoers realize that Sessue Hayakawa was one of the great stars of the silent cinema. In many films he played a dashing, romantic lead — a rarity for Asian actors in Hollywood, even today. Hayakawa became so popular and powerful that he was able to start Haworth Pictures to control his own destiny. The Dragon Painter was the finest of the Haworth productions. Beautifully acted, gorgeously shot (with Yosemite Valley filling in for the Japanese landscape), and lovingly directed, the film is an absolute marvel.

Hayakawa plays Tatsu, an artist living as a hermit in the wilds of Japan. Thought mad by the local villagers, he believes that his princess fiancée has been captured by a dragon. His obsession leads to artistic inspiration. It isn’t until a surveyor comes across Tatsu in the mountains that his genius is discovered. The surveyor informs the famed artist Kano Indara about his discovery. Kano is desperate to find a male heir to teach his art, but when Tatsu meets Kano’s daughter (played by Hayakawa’s wife, Tsuru Aoki) and sees only his lost princess, a clash of wills brings the household to the brink of disaster.

Long considered lost, The Dragon Painter was rediscovered in a French distribution print and brought to the George Eastman House for restoration with the original tints. The film survives today as a tribute to Hayakawa’s great artistry and a shining example of Asian-American cinema.

The DVD comes with a remarkable set of extras, including the full-length feature, Thomas Ince’s The Wrath of the Gods (1914), starring Hayakawa, Tsuru Aoki and Frank Borzage; a copy of the script for The Wrath of the Gods; a 1921 short subject, Screen Snapshots (1921) with Hayakawa, Roscoe “Fatty” Arbuckle and Charles Murray; the original novel by Mary McNeil Fenollosa in PDF format; and the stills gallery includes Herbert Ponting’s exquisite images for his 1910 book In Lotus-Land Japan: Japan at the Turn of the Century (Ponting went on to be cinematopgrapher to the Scott Antarctic expedition).

You can download a presskit for the DVD from www.milestonefilms.com/presskits.php.

Other Sessue Hayakawa films available on DVD are The Cheat (1915) (from Kino in American and Bach Films in France) and The Secret Game (1917) (from Image Entertainment).

His Birthright, from www.filmmuseum.nl

Three Hayakawa films, or what remains of them, have recently been restored by the Nederlands Filmmuseum: The Man Beneath (1919), His Birthright (1918) and The Courageous Coward (1919): only The Man Beneath survives as a complete film. There is background information on the films, their restoration and Hayakawa’s career on the Filmmuseum site.

Finally, there’s information on The Cheat and Forbidden Paths (1917), shown recently at the Pacific Film Archive.

Music for experimental film

I missed this excellent-looking DVD release from Kino when it appeared late last year, but no harm in drawing attention to it now.

Music for Experimental Film is a collection of avant garde film classics from the 1920s, with music from former Television guitarist and front man Tom Verlaine plus producer/guitarist Johnny Rip. Originally a live show, the DVD features the original films with the music accompaniment for the most played live from a selection of the concerts.

The films featured are:

L’Étoile de Mer (France 1928 12 mins Man Ray)

The Fall of the House of Usher (USA 1928 13 mins James S. Watson & Melville Webber)

The Life and Death of 9413 A Hollywood Extra (USA 928 11 mins Slavko Vorkapich and Robert Florey)

Emak-Bakia (France 1926 13 mins Man Ray)

Rhythmus 21 (Germany 1921 3 mins Hans Richter)

Brumes d’Automne (France 1929 12 mins Dimitri Kirsanoff)

Ballet Mécanique (France 1924 10 mins Fernand Léger)

To judge from the extracts Kino have provided on the YouTube promo (Emak-Bakia, Rhythmus 21 and Ballet Mécanique) the marriage of delicate post-punk guitar and the visual purity of the films (all the better for the occasional scratches and blemishes earned through age) works particularly well. An apposite and haunting combination.

The first wizard of cinema

Georges Méliès: The First Wizard of Cinema, from www.flickeralley.com

2008 is not four weeks old, and yet what will have to be the silent DVD release of the year has already been announced. It won’t become available before 3 March 2008, but that just gives you a month’s worth of delicious anticipation, awaiting Flicker Alley’s thirteen-hour, five-disc DVD release, Georges Méliès: The First Wizard of Cinema (1896-1913).

The collection brings together over 170 films, comprising nearly all the surviving films of Georges Méliès (he made just over 500), from his first 1896 production Une partie de cartes (discovered by yours truly some twelve years ago - my very modest claim to early cinema fame), to his uproarious final film, Le voyage de la famille Bourrichon (1913). It includes such classics as Voyage dans la lune (A Trip to the Moon), Les quatres cent farces du diable (Satan’s Merry Frolics) and A la conquète du pôle (The Conquest of the Pole). Fifteen of the films are reproduced from partial or complete hand-colored original prints, while thirteen are accompanied by the original English narrations meant to accompany the films, written by Méliès.

The collection has been put together by the pre-eminent preservationist-producers Eric Lange (of Lobster Films) and David Shepard, from archival and private holdings in eight countries. A major extra is the half-hour documentary, Le Grand Méliès (1953), made by Georges Franju, which features Georges Méliès’ widow and star of many of his films, Jehanne d’Alcy and André Méliès portraying his father.

Le voyage dans la lune

Georges Méliès (1861-1938), the pre-eminent artist of early cinema, a creator of ingenious fantasies coming out of his magicianship background, but which employ the cinema’s own entrancing trickery to the full. The sheer joy of filmmaking that his films express means that his best work does not date and continues to delight each generation that comes across him (just take a look at some of the admiring comments made of the many films of his to be found on YouTube). He is particularly deserving of the complete box set treatment, even if the majority of the films that he made are now lost (though more titles keep turning up). It is seventy years since his death, and presumably it is no accident that the DVDs are appearing this year, since under European law his films should be coming out of copyright in 2008 i.e. the rule that says copyright remains in a film production until seventy years after the death of the author. What the position is of the Méliès family, who have been so protective of his heritage up until now, I don’t know. Perhaps one of our knowledgeable readers might be able to say.

At any rate, warmest congratulations to Messrs. Lange and Shepard for a herculean piece of work, and to Flicker Alley for issuing such an ambitious release. It’s available at special pre-order price of $71.96 (do note that it will be Region 1 DVD). I’m off to pre-order mine.

(There will be more on Méliès on the Bioscope in a couple of months or so’s time, if I ever finish a small project I’m working on)

Blackpool and the North West on film

Notice of a couple of shows of rare actuality film of Blackpool and the North West of England taking place this weekend in Blackpool. Organised by the British Film Institute, the North West Film Archive and the National Fairground Archive as part of the latter’s ‘Admission all Classes’ project, the programme is as follows:

Saturday 12th January

Pavilion Theatre, Winter Gardens, Blackpool

11.30am - BFI presentation of historic Blackpool

Blackpool High Tide (1913)
The Open Road (c.1925) Blackpool extract
Blackpool: A Nation’s Playground (c.1935)
Mining Review 2nd Year No 12 (1949)
Holiday (1957)

Grand Edwardian Magic Lantern Show

Professor Heard and company take us on a musical, magical excursion from the age of Victorian magic lantern show to the birth of the cinema picture palace.

2.30pm - North West Film Archive presentation of historic Blackpool

Blackpool Seafront (1899)
Royal visit to Lancashire (1913)
Prince of Wales visit to Blackpool (1927)
Blackpool Kaleidoscope (1963)

Grand Edwardian Magic Lantern Show

7.00pm - Electric Edwardians: the Films of Mitchell & Kenyon
With piano accompaniment
commentary by Professor Vanessa Toulmin

Sunday 13th January

The Grand Theatre, Blackpool

1.30pm - Mitchell & Kenyon: North Lancashire and Cumbria
Including:
Employees Leaving Williamson’s Factory, Lancaster (1901)
The Return of the Lancaster Volunteers (1901)
His Worship the Mayor Leaving Lancaster Town Hall (1902)
Opening of the Blea Tarn Reservoir (1902)
Panoramic View of the Morecambe Sea Front (1901)
Parade on West End Pier Morecambe (1901)
Parade on Morecambe Central Pier (1902)
Douglas Harbour Paddle Steamer (1902)
The King’s Ride in the Isle of Man (1902)
Employees Leaving Furness Railway Works, Barrow (1901)
Employees Leaving Messrs Vickers and Maxim’s in Barrow (1901)
Royal Visit to Barrow & Launch of H.M.S. Dominion (1903)
Workers at Carr’s Biscuit Works, Carlisle (1901)
Scenes of Carlisle (1901)

7.30pm - Mitchell & Kenyon: Central Lancashire
including:
Workforce at Horrocks Miller & Co, Preston (c. 1901)
Preston North End v Wolverhampton Wanderers (1904)
Preston North End v Aston Villa (1905)
Turn out of the Preston Fire Brigade (c. 1901)
Return of the East Lancashire Regiment (1902)
Preston Street Scenes (1904)
Whitsuntide Fair at Preston (1906)
Leyland May Festival (1905)
Les Montagnes Russes, Blackpool’s Latest Attraction (1902)
Blackpool North Pier (1903)
Steamboats at Blackpool North Pier (1903)
Blackpool Victoria Pier (1904)
Blackpool Promenade Extension (1905)
Lytham Club Day Carnival (1902)
Lytham Trams and Views along the Route (1903)
Panaromic view of Southport Promenade (c. 1902)
Southport Carnival and Trades Procession (1902)
The ‘hands’ leaving work at North-street Mills, Chorley (1900)
Chorley Coronation Processions (1911)

For booking on Saturday, visit the Blackpool Live site. For booking on Sunday, visit the Blackpool Grand site.

And while we’re considering things Lancastrian, do take note of the North West Film Archive’s excellent new DVD release, Liverpool on Film 1897-1967, which includes Lumière films of Liverpool taken in 1897, as well as other silent actuality material, handsomely presented. What better way to celebrate Liverpool as the 2008 City of Culture?

Bach releases DeMille

Cecil B. DeMille DVDs, from www.bachfilms.com

My thanks to Herr Graf Ferdinand Von Galitzien for the information that the French company Bach Films have released ten Cecil B. DeMille silents on DVD. The titles are:

The Cheat (1915) - with Sessue Hayakawa, Fannie Ward
Carmen (1915) - with Geraldine Farrar, Wallace Reid
Joan the Woman (1917) - Geraldine Farrar and Raymond Hatton
The Whispering Chorus (1918) - with Raymond Hatton and Kathlyn Williams
Old Wives for New (1918) - with Elliott Dexter and Florence Vidor
Don’t Change Your Husband (1919) - with Elliott Dexter and Gloria Swanson
Male and Female (1919) - with Thomas Meighan and Gloria Swanson
Why Change Your Wife (1920) - with Thomas Meighan and Gloria Swanson
The Affairs of Anatol (1921) - Gloria Swanson and Wallace Reid
Manslaughter (1922) - with Leatrice Joy and Thomas Meighan

All are retailing at 7.00€. All are Region 2, and appear to have French titles only. I can’t find any information about the music. At any rate, it’s a remarkable selection, with perhaps Joan the Woman, starring the opera singer Geraldine Farrar (who enjoyed a surprisingly successful career in silent films, given that her chief asset - her voice - was absent), the outstanding classic if you had to go for just one.

I’d not heard of Bach Films before now. Other silent DVDs on their list are D.W. Griffith’s Way Down East (1920), Orphans of the Storm (1922), Broken Blossoms (1919), Intolerance (1916) and Sally of the Sawdust (1925), all of them accompanied by assorted Griffith Biograph shorts; Douglas Fairbanks in The Three Musketeers (1921), Robin Hood (1922), Don Q, Son of Zorro (1925), The Black Pirate (1926) and The Iron Mask (1929); and Tod Browning’s Shadows (1922).

I don’t attempt to keep up with all silent film DVD releases here on The Bioscope, because there are other well-established sources that provide such a service very well. Check out the Silent Films on DVD section on Silent Era, or the impressively-extensive Silent Films on DVD site.