Monthly Archives: February 2010

Silent film journals online

February 28, 2010 By in Digitised journals Tags: 12 Comments

Pictures and the Picturegoer (1915), Photoplay (1921) and A Scena Muda (1921)

That post on the appearance online of the George Eastman House journal Image made me think that it would be useful to have a round-up of those silent film journals that are available on the Web. Though few of the leading journals of the period have digitised, given the specialised nature of the subject we’re not doing too badly. Note that the range of years and the number of issues refers to what is available online, not necessarily what was originally published.

  • Bollettino di informazioni cinematografiche
    Country: Italy
    Years: 1924-25
    Number: 8 issues
    Description: Pittaluga film company journal with information on films available for showing (no illustrations)
    Available from: Teca Digitale piemontese
    Format: Java-based viewer
    More information: Bioscope guide
  • Bollettino edizioni Pittaluga
    Country: Italy
    Years: 1928-29
    Number: 6 issues
    Description: Pittaluga film company journal, with full page illustrations
    Available from: Teca Digitale piemontese
    Format: Java-based viewer
    More information: Bioscope guide
  • Bollettino staffetta dell’ufficio stampa della anonima pittaluga
    Country: Italy
    Years: 1929-31
    Description: Bulletin for the Pittaluga film company
    Number: 23 issues
    Available from: Teca Digitale piemontese
    Format: Java-based viewer
    More information: Bioscope guide
  • Cinéa
    Country: France
    Years: 1926
    Number: 81 issues
    Description: Intellectual magazine discussing film art and culture
    Available from: Gallica
    Format: PDF
    More information: Bioscope guide
  • Cinearte
    Country: Brazil
    Years: 1926-1942
    Number: 561
    Description: Film fan magazine, with news, reviews, photographs, gossip, advertisements etc.
    Available from Biblioteca Digital das Artes do Espetaculo
    Format: PDF
    More information: Bioscope guide
  • Cinéma: annuaire de la projection fixe et animée
    Country: France
    Years: 1911-1914
    Description: Photography and film journal
    Number: annual volumes for what was originally a photography journal
    Available from: Gallica
    Format: PDF
    More information: Bioscope guide
  • Al cinema: settimanale di cinematografia e varietà
    Country: Italy
    Years: 1922-30
    Number: 439 issues
    Description: Weekly film magazine with stories, features, illustrations
    Available from: Teca Digitale piemontese
    Format: Java-based viewer
    More information: Bioscope guide
  • Cine Mondo: rivista quindicinale illustrata de cinema
    Country: Italy
    Years: 1927-31
    Number: 102 issues
    Description: Film trade journal
    Available from: Teca Digitale piemontese
    Format: Java-based viewer
    More information: Bioscope guide
  • Ciné-schola. Bulletin de la Ligue pour l’enseignement par la cinématographie
    Country: France
    Years: 1922
    Number: 2 issues
    Description: Bulletin covering the use of film in education
    Available from: Gallica
    Format: PDF
    More information: Bioscope guide
  • Eco film: periodico quindicinale cinematografico
    Country: Italy
    Years: 1913
    Number: 4 issues
    Description: Film trade journal
    Available from: Teca Digitale piemontese
    Format: Java-based viewer
    More information: Bioscope guide
  • The Era
    Country: UK
    Years: 1838-1900
    Number: Weekly issues to the end of 1900
    Description: Theatre trade journal which reported regularly on film exhibition from 1896 onwards
    Available from: British Newspapers (subscription service only)
    Format: JPEG
    More information: Bioscope guide
  • Figure mute: rivista cinematografica
    Country: Italy
    Years: 1919
    Number: 1 issue
    Description: Film trade journal with characteristic advertisements
    Available from: Teca Digitale piemontese
    Format: Java-based viewer
    More information: Bioscope guide
  • Filmnyheter
    Country: Sweden
    Years: 1923
    Number: 8 issues
    Description: A.V Svensk Filmindustri film company journal
    Available from: Virtual History Film
    Format: JPEG
    More information:
  • Films Pittaluga: rivista di notizie cinematografiche: pubblicazione quindicinale
    Country: Italy
    Years: 1923-25
    Number: 20 issues
    Description: Pittaluga film company journal
    Available from: Teca Digitale piemontese
    Format: Java-based viewer
    More information: Bioscope guide
  • Hebdo-film. Revue indépendante et impartiale de la production cinématographique
    Country: France
    Years: 1916, 1917, 1930, 1933, 1934
    Number: 149 issues
    Description: Film trade journal
    Available from: Gallica
    Format: PDF
    More information: Bioscope guide
  • Journal of the Society of Motion Picture Engineers
    Country: USA
    Years: 1930-62
    Number: 32 annual volumes (plus synopses of papers 1916-1930)
    Available from: Internet Archive
    Description: Film technicians’ journal with many key papers on motion picture technology
    Format: PDF, DjVU and TXT
    More information: Bioscope guide
  • Kinematograph and Lantern Weekly
    Country: UK
    Years: 1890s (when journal was Optical Magic Lantern Journal), early 1915, 1943-mid-1954, 1955-1971
    Number: This is an index to the journal only, and does not include the text of articles
    Description: One of the two leading British film trade journals of the silent era
    Available from: The British Cinema History Research Project
    Format: Filemaker database
    More information: BCHRP website
  • Il Maggese cinematografico: periodico quindicinale
    Country: Italy
    Years: 1913-15
    Number: 46 issues
    Description: Film journal with information on new releases
    Available from: Teca Digitale piemontese
    Format: Java-based viewer
    More information: Bioscope guide
  • Mon Ciné
    Country: France
    Years: 1922-25
    Number: 43 issues
    Description: French film fan magazine
    Available from: Virtual History Film
    Format: JPEG
    More information: Movingmags.com
  • Motion Picture Classic
    Country: USA
    Years: 1920
    Number: 1 volume covering monthly editions
    Description: Film fan magazine
    Available from: Internet Archive. See also the note at the end of this post
    Format: PDF, DjVU, TXT
    More information: Bioscope report
  • Moving Picture World
    Country: USA
    Years: 1913
    Number: Volume covering weekly editions April-June 1913
    Description: The leading American film trade journal of the early cinema period
    Available from: Internet Archive. See also the note at the end of this post
    Format: PDF, DjVU, TXT
    More information: Bioscope report
  • Photoplay
    Country: USA
    Years: 1925-30
    Number: 8 volumes, each covering six months of the weekly journal
    Description: The great American film fan magazine of the silent era
    Available from: Internet Archive. See also the note at the end of this post
    Format: PDF, DjVU, TXT
    More information: Wikipedia, Bioscope report
  • Picturegoer
    Country: UK
    Years: 1910s-1960s
    Number: Front cover images only
    Description: British film fan magazine
    Available from: Picturegoer Online which links to sales of original copies. Searchable only by name of actor
    Format: PDF, DjVU, TXT
    More information: Wikipedia
  • Popular Film
    Country: Spain
    Years: 1926-1934
    Number: 137
    Description: Spanish film fan magazine
    Available from: Biblioteca Nacional de España
    Format: PDF
    More information: San Francisco Silent Film Festival blog
  • Rassegna delle programmazioni
    Country: Italy
    Years: 1925-26
    Number: 4 issues
    Description: Pittaluga film company bulletin
    Available from: Teca Digitale piemontese
    Format: Java-based viewer
    More information: Bioscope guide
  • The Reel Journal
    Country: USA
    Years: 1924-26
    Number: 3 annual volumes of weekly journal
    Description: American film exhibitors’ journal, precursor of Boxoffice
    Available from: Internet Archive
    Format: PDF, DjVU, TXT
    More information: Boxoffice
  • Revue scientifique et technique de l’industrie cinématographique et des industries qui s’y rattachent
    Country: France
    Years: 1913-1914
    Number: 1 issue
    Description: Journal for the use of film in science and industry
    Available from: Gallica
    Format: PDF
    More information: Bioscope guide
  • A Scena Muda
    Country: Brazil
    Years: 1921-1955
    Number: 1136
    Description: Film fan magazine, with news, reviews, photographs, gossip, advertisements, including striking coloured cover photos
    Available from: Biblioteca Digital das Artes do Espetaculo
    Format: PDF
    More information: Bioscope guide
  • La Scène
    Country: France
    Years: 1921
    Number: 7 issues
    Description: Magazine covering the social scene, including theatre, film, music, the Arts and sport
    Available from: Gallica
    Format: PDF
    More information: Bioscope guide
  • Les Spectacles: Paraît tous les vendredis
    Country: France
    Years: 1921-1933
    Number: 366 issues
    Description: Entertainments journal
    Available from: Gallica
    Format: PDF
    More information: Bioscope guide
  • The Stage
    Country: UK
    Years: 1880-2007
    Number: over 6,500 issues
    Description: Theatre trade journal with substantial film coverage, particularly for the silent era
    Available from: The Stage (subscription service only, but note that annual volumes are available for free for 1908-1919 from the Internet Archive)
    Format: ActivePaper
    More information: Bioscope guide
  • Theater und Film Kino
    Country: Austria
    Years: 1919
    Number: 3 issues
    Description: Austrian theatre and film magazine
    Available from: Virtual History Film
    Format: JPEG
    More information:
  • Le Travail manuel, les sciences expérimentales et le cinéma à l’école
    Country: France
    Years: 1922
    Number: 3 issues
    Description: Film in science and education
    Available from: Gallica
    Format: PDF
    More information: Bioscope guide
  • Variety
    Country: USA
    Years: 1914-present day
    Number: Reviews only, selection from each year
    Description: Venerable American entertainment trade magazine
    Available from: Variety
    Format: PDF
    More information: Bioscope guide

This list only covers those journals which were active during the silent era, so it leaves out journals from later eras such as Image or Film Studies which are now available online, purely online journals like Bright Lights Film Journal or Screening the Past, and modern journals available from academic subscription sites such as Project Muse or JSTOR. It also leaves out digitised newspapers, an updated round-up of which will be the subject of another post.

If anyone knows of a silent era journal available on the Web (free or subscription) that isn’t listed above, please let me know so I can make the guide comprehensive.

Update 1: This post has been revised to incorporate some corrections and additions, and to add short descriptions (please will readers of French, Italian and Portuguese correct me for any errors of interpretation). Additionally, I have been informed about those silent film journals which are available through Google Book Search in the USA only: there are five volumes of Photoplay (1915, 1916, 1917 (1), 1917 (2), 1920), plus Motion Picture News (Vols. 20-24, 1919) and Moving Picture World (Vol. 3, 1908; Vol 4, 1909; Vol. 17, issues 1-6, 1913; Vol. 18, issues 1-7; Vol. 18, issues 8-13, 1913; Vol. 19, issues 1-7, 1914; Vol. 20, issues 4-6, 1915; Vol. 25, issues 4-6, 1915; Vol. 25, issues 7-9, 1915).

Update 2 (18 March 2010): It can now be reported that the issues of Motion Picture Classic, The Moving Picture World and Photoplay on the Internet Archive are part of the Media History Digital Library project, organised by David Pierce. Read more about this major media journal digitisation project on the Bioscope, here.

Update 3 (25 March 2010): Acknowledgments to the San Francisco Silent Film Festival blog, which is doing its own survey of digitised silent film journals, for the discovery of Popular Film available among the extensive range of digitised Spanish and Spanish-language digitised journals on the Biblioteca Nacional de España site.

Update 4 (5 April 2010): And the numbers just keep on growing – a further eighty-three (!) silent film journals from the Museo Nazionale del Cinema in Italy have been made available online. See this Bioscope post for details, and visit the new Journals section of the Bioscope Library for the complete list of all journals.

Image

February 26, 2010 By in Digitised journals, Publications, Resources Tags: 4 Comments

Production still from Georges Méliès’ Eclipse de soleil en pleine lune (1907), from Image vol. 34 (1991)

The number of digitised film journals on the Web remains very few, the number dedicated to silent film miniscule, and the number of those in English nanoscopically small. So it is terrific to be able to report that George Eastman House has published online most of Image, 1952-1997.

Image was the journal of George Eastman House, International Museum of Photography and Film, for forty-seven years. It reported on and documented scholarship in photography and motion pictures, with particular reference to its own collections. Its distinguished contributors included photography historian and GEH’s first curator Beaumont Newhall, GEH’s first motion picture curator, James Card, George Pratt, author of one of the essential silent film books, Spellbound in Darkness, and more recently GEH curators Jan-Christopher Horak and Paolo Cherchi Usai. Today the name of Image lives on in part through Marshall Deutelbaum’s fine collection ‘Image’ on the Art and Evolution of the Film (1979).

Image covered photographic and motion picture history, so only a part of the journal run relates to silent film, but what is there is excellent, often with key historical or filmographic data published for the first time, and gorgeously illustrated. Below is a selection of some of the articles with links to web page for the individual issues (many of which are also reproduced in Deutelbaum’s book). Please note that the journal has been digitised volume-by-volume and each PDF file is 30MB or more in size. Be aware also that the journals are not arranged in complete chronological order, so one can find oneself jumping from the 1950s to the 1970s then back to the 50s in places. There do not seem to be many issues for the 1960s, for reasons that are not explained (it appears it just wasn;t published too often that decade).

  • Collecting Old Films: Article stressing the importance of motion picture archives and the need for a collective effort to preserve film history. IMAGE (1952. vol 1. issue 7.)
  • The Kammatograph: Description of the apparatus developed and patented by Leo Kramm in England, 1897. The Kammatograph, a camera and projector in one unit, recorded up to 550 images in a spiral pattern on a circular glass plate that could then be projected. IMAGE (1952. vol 1. issue 8.)
  • Silent Film Speed, by James Card. Discusses the factors in trying to determine correct projection speeds for silent films, as the speeds vary, sometimes even from scene to scene within a single film. The end of the article provides a list of 29 silent films and their correct projection speeds. IMAGE (1955. vol 4. issue 7.)
  • Eadweard Muybridge and the Motion Picture, by Beaumont Newhall. IMAGE (1956. vol 5. issue 1.)
  • Out of Pandora’s Box: New light on G. W. Pabst from his lost star, Louise Brooks, by James Card, and Mr. Pabst, by Louise Brooks. IMAGE (1956. vol 5. issue 7.)
  • The George K. Spoor Collection. Equipment and film recently given to the museum, by James Card. IMAGE (1956. vol 5. issue 8.)
  • Early Days of Movie Comedies: Reminiscences by a director in the early silent comedy days, by Clarence G. Badger. IMAGE (1957. vol 6. issue 5.)
  • Film Archives: Historians of the future might have had the rare privilege of consulting filmed documents of all the world events from the year 1898, by James Card. IMAGE (1958. vol 7. issue 6.)
  • The Posse is Ridin’ Like Mad: An account of Westerns and Western stars from 1907 through 1914, by George Pratt. IMAGE (1958. vol 7. issue 4.). Part II IMAGE (1958. vol 7. issue 7.)
  • The Films of Mary Pickford: On early screen legend Mary Pickford and her enduring appeal. With An Index to the Films of Mary Pickford. IMAGE (1959. vol 8. issue 4.)
  • The Jack-Rabbits of the Movie Business: On the prolific and profitable nickelodeon theatres of the early 1900s. IMAGE (1961. vol 10. issue 3.)
  • Firsting the Firsts. George Pratt posits that film projection on the Eidoloscope in America pre-dated the first public screenings by Lumière in France and Skladanowsky in Germany. IMAGE (1971. vol 14. issue 5–6.)
  • “”If You Beat Me, I Wept””: Alice Terry Reminisces About Silent Films. Excerpts from a taped interview with actress Alice Terry and veteran cameraman John Seitz conducted by George Pratt in 1958. IMAGE (1973. vol 16. issue 1.)
  • “”It’s Just Wonderful How Fate Works””: Ramon Novarro on his Film Career. Ramon Novarro, who played the title role in Ben Hur (1925), reminisces about his film career in this taped interview conducted by George Pratt. IMAGE (1973. vol 16. issue 4.)
  • The Most Important Factor was the ‘Spirit’: Leni Riefenstahl During the Filming of The Blue Light. IMAGE (1974. vol 17. issue 1.)
  • “Anything Can Happen—and Generally Did”. Buster Keaton gives a detailed account of his silent film career during a talk with an unnamed interviewer in Los Angeles in 1958. IMAGE (1974. vol 17. issue 4.)
  • “She Banked in her Stocking; or, Robbed of her All”: Mutoscopes Old and New. IMAGE (1976. vol 19. issue 1.)
  • Early Film Activities of William Fox. Excerpt from Paul C. Spehr’s book The Movies Begin: Making Movies in New Jersey. IMAGE (1977. vol 20. issue 3–4.)
  • Cue Sheets for Silent Films: On Theodore Huff’s collection of thematic cue sheets for silent films presented to George Eastman House in 1953. IMAGE (1982. vol 25. issue 1.)
  • The Color of Nitrate: Some Factual Observations on Tinting and Toning Manuals for Silent Films, by Paolo Cherchi Usai. IMAGE (1991. vol 34. issue 1–2.)
  • A Trip to the Movies: Georges Méliès, Filmmaker and Magician (1861-1938) by Paolo Cherchi Usai. IMAGE (1991. vol 34. issue 3–4.)

And that’s just a selection on what’s available on silent film. It’s such a treasure trove, and all word-searchable – do note, by the way, that once you have searched for a keyword, you must uncheck the box on the left which says ‘Search within results’, or else further keyword searches will only be within the results of the previous search. Also, search under More Options for browing by author, keyword, volume number and year.

Warm praise is due to George Eastman House for making the journal available in this way. Go explore.

The beskop in Tibet

February 24, 2010 By in Amateur, Bioscope, Travel and exploration Tags:

Jigme Taring

Bioscope is a word with many meanings (which is why it was chosen for the title of this blog). Bioscope can mean a view of life (its original dictionary definition), a cinematograph camera, a projector, a fairground film show, a cinema, a make of microscope, a film trade journal, and a science-based visitor attraction in France. The term was commonly used for a place to see films in the early years of the twentieth-century, and that term persisted in some countries, notably India and South Africa. What I hadn’t know before now is that it also also adopted in Tibet – albeit in the local pronunciation, beskop. I have just come across two detailed and fascinating articles on the history of film in Tibet, ‘The Happy Light Bioscope Theatre & Other Stories’, written by Jamyang Norbu for the Tibetan news website Pahyul.com. Part one is here, and part two is here. It can also be read on Jamyang’s Shadow Tibet blog. He has quite a story to tell.

Film had come to Tibet by 1920. Jamyang tells us that when the “first (invited) British mission reached Lhasa” the head of the mission, Charles Bell, was entertained by Tsarong Dasang Dadul, commander-in-chief of the Tibetan army, with some film shows held in his private screening room. Tsarong operated the projector himself. Jamyang doesn’t say what the films were, but reasons that it was probably one of only two projectors in Tibet. The Dalai Lama is likely to have had the other one.

Tibetans however were not unaccustomed to screen entertainments. Jamyang traces the history of puppet shows with special visual effects and the magic lantern shows exhibited by British visitors at the turn of the centiury. But after 1920 subsequent British political missions brought film projectors with them. Jamyang says that Frederick Bailey (political agent and spy) showed newsreels in Lhasa in 1924, including King George V opening parliament, while in 1933 Derek Williamson showed Charlie Chaplin and Felix the Cat films to the 13th Dalai Lama. His wife Peggy, in her memoirs recalled:

In Lhasa, Charlie Chaplin was the great favourite; we had one of his films called The Adventurer, in which he played an escaped convict. The Tibetans renamed this film ‘Kuma’ (The Thief) and everyone wanted to see, including His Holiness, who laughed heartily throughout the performance.

Tibetans called Chaplin ‘Chumping’, from Charlie the Champion, the word entering the language. Rin Tin Tin was another great favourite. The cinema came to be known as beskop, adapted from bioscope, though now Tibetans use the term ‘lok-nyen’, a translation of the Chinese ‘dian-ying’ (electric shadows). Jamyang stresses that there is little evidence of Tibetans having viewed the cinema superstitously. The first cinema in Lhasa may have opened before 1934, managed by two Muslim brothers named Radhu, Muhammad Ashgar and Sirajuddin, though the details are uncertain. It seated around a hundred, with a balcony for twenty or thirty paying higher prices, from which a Muslim translator would narrate the story to the Tibetan audience.

Much of the evidence for all this comes from accounts written by British political mission members and explorers. The Austrian adventurer Heinrich Harrer, author of the celebrated Seven Years in Tibet, wrote that talkies were being shown in Lhasa by the mid-1930s. Sir Basil Gould, who headed the British mission of 1936, reported that:

Monks were amongst the most ardent of our cinema clientele. There is nothing which Tibetans like better than to see themselves and their acquaintances in a frame or on the screen.

Gould was among those who supplied that need, because as well as bringing projectors with them the British brought cine cameras.

Extract from Sir Basil Gould’s films of Tibet (1940), from the BFI’s YouTube channel

The first film shot in Tibet was probably film taken by J.B.N. Noel, cinematographer with the 1922 British Everest exhibition, whose footage is included in the documentary feature Climbing Mt Everest (1922). It is included in a new BFI National Archive touring programme, The Search for Shangri-La: Tibet on Film 1922-1950. The bulk of the programme is (silent) home movie footage shot by British missions and explorers iin the 1920s, ’30s and ’40s. They include the botanist George Sherriff, the aforementioned Frederick Bailey and the Williamsons, Charls Bell (on his return to Tibet in 1934) and Sir Basil Gould, who brought a cameraman with him to Lhasa, Frederick Spencer Chapman. These films feature ceremonies, landscapes and Tibetan flora and fauna. Shot for the most part in colour they form an extraordinary archive of Tibetan life before the Chinese takeover, and were used in the 2008 BBC television series The Lost World of Tibet (now available on DVD).

The first Tibetan filmmaker may have been Tsarong Dasang Dadul, who acquired a camera at some time after the projector with which he entertained Charles Bell in 1920. Actuality films were made by Tsarong’s son Dundul Namgyal, while Tsarong himself filmed Anglo-Tibetan football matches outside Lhasa in 1936. Heinrich Harrer reports that the young 14th Dalai Lama was a keen filmmaker and knew how to dismantle a projector and put it back together again. Jamyang Norbu writes that another filmmaker in the 1940s was Tibetan official Jigme Taring (shown at the top of this post) who filmed festivals and street life in Lhasa, and the 14th Dalai Lama’s official tour of Sera, Drepung and Ganden.

Jamyang goes to to write about films and cinema exhibition following the Chinese occupation, including Tibetan fiction films (the first is believed to have been made in the mid-1970s). He also writes about his personal experience of exhibiting world cinema classics to Tibetan students in the 1980s, including Nosferatu (1922). It’s a fascinating history, showing how film was not just the harbinger of modernity for Tibet but how it fitted into (and documented) established traditions. Film was never simply about the shock of the new; it complemented the old as well, and was shaped by every society that encountered it.

The Search for Shangri-La tours Britain until May 2010 – details of screenings are here; while the Everest films of J.B.L. Noel will feature at this year’s British Silent Film Festival in April.

A war film

February 24, 2010 By in Poetry, War Tags: 4 Comments

From time to time the Bioscope lifts its eyes from the screen, looks wistfully out of the window, and turns its mind to poetry. And when it does so it adds another poem to the select list of those works which touch upon the subject of silent film.

I’m ashamed to say that ‘A War Film’ is a poem that is new to me, though I now discover that it is a much-anthologised and popular work. It was written by Teresa Hooley (1888-1973), a British poet from Derbyshire who in private life went under the name of Mrs Frank Butler. The fascination behind ‘A War Film’ is her reaction to seeing a film of the First World War, and then trying to determine which film it was:

I saw,
With a catch of the breath and the heart’s uplifting,
Sorrow and pride, the “week’s great draw” –
The Mons Retreat;
The “Old Contemptibles” who fought, and died,
The horror and the anguish and the glory.
As in a dream,
Still hearing machine-guns rattle and shells scream,
I came out into the street.

When the day was done,
My little son
Wondered at bath-time why I kissed him so,
Naked upon my knee.
How could he know
The sudden terror that assaulted me? …
The body I had borne
Nine moons beneath my heart,
A part of me …
If, someday,
It should be taken away
To war. Tortured. Torn.
Slain.
Rotting in No Man’s Land, out in the rain –
My little son …
Yet all those men had mothers, every one.

How should he know
Why I kissed and kissed and kissed him, crooning his name?
He thought that I was daft.
He thought it was a game,
And laughed, and laughed.

The event to which she refers, the British retreat from Mons in Belgium, took place in August-September 1914. However, there was no film made about the retreat at the time, as officially-sanctioned films of the war were not being produced at this date, and in any case no film at this date or later in the war would have included the word ‘retreat’ in its title. So commentators have speculated that the film could be The Battle of the Somme, made in 1916, or one of the other British official war films. However it would seem unlikely that the poet would confused Mons with the Somme, and a more likely candidate is the 1926 film Mons, made by British Instructional Films. BIF produced a series of dramatised documentaries in the 1920s which recreated key conflicts from the First World War. The films (all feature-length bar the first) were The Battle of Jutland (1921), Armageddon (1923), Zeebrugge (1924), Ypres (1925), Mons (1926) and The Battles of Coronel and Falkland Islands (1927). They were all produced by H. (Harry) Bruce Woolfe, generally with Army or Admirality assistance, and combined official actuality films of the war with recreations, models and animated maps. The films gained the remarkable triple of popular, critical and official acclaim, and while they were characterised by a certain amount of dogged literalism, the best sequences merit comparison with the Soviet documentaries of the twenties. Many a dramatised scene from them has ended up being used in television documentaries which take the scenes to show actual warfare. Mons itself was directed by Walter Summers and was given the re-issue title of The Retreat from Mons, which adds further credence to the theory that it was the film that triggered the poem.

It is unclear when Hooley wrote ‘A War Film’, though it was first published in 1927 in her volume Songs of all Seasons, which again suggests the 1926 film is the right one. That would make her reaction to the film one of the fear of another war that would engulf her child rather than a war that was then raging. Its tone is in any case a retrospective one – few on the home front thought of corpses rotting in No Man’s Land in 1914. Such grim visions came to haunt the public only as the war dragged on and as the enormity of the sacrifice made shook society in the years immediately after the war.

It would take cinema a while before it felt able to depict the war in terms of futility. Ironically, Mons the film was a sober minded drama-documentary with more of a mind to demonstrate military procedure and heroic achievement than to make its audience think of the horror and anguish. Hooley’s poem was perhaps inspired not so much by the film she saw as by the memories it triggered. It was a silent film, after all – no machine-guns rattled and no shells screamed. Hooley saw the film in her mind, while a plainer account unspooled itself on the screen.

Mons is held by the BFI National Archive and in incomplete form by the Imperial War Museum. You can get an idea of the BIF style, however, by seeing Ypres, which is available to view from the British Pathe website (the link is to reel one of seven on the site).

City Girl

February 21, 2010 By in DVD and Blu-Ray Tags: 4 Comments

http://www.eurekavideo.co.uk

We can still count the number of Blu-Ray silent film releases on the fingers of one hand, so the arrival of number five is an event. It’s F.W. Murnau’s City Girl (1930), now released by Eureka Video. City Girl was Murnau’s last silent, released after Sunrise and the now lost 4 Devils. It is set in the wheatfields of Minnesota, and covers the trials of newly-wedded life for a farmer’s son (Charles Farrell) and a Chicago waitress (Mary Duncan) among the mistrustful farming community.

The Blu-Ray only release is the 1080p high-definition 20th Century Fox restoration of the silent version of the film, with a new score, composed and arranged in 2008 by Christopher Caliendo. There is a full-length audio commentary by David Kalat and a 28-page illustrated booklet with an essay by Adrian Danks.

And what are the other fingers on the hand? As reported on in an earlier post, we already have The General (from Kino Lorber), Sunrise (from Eureka), a selection of early Oz films as extras to The Wizard of Oz (1939) (from Warner Home video), and the unlikely The Story of Petroleum (1923) which is an extra on the Blu-Ray release of There Will be Blood. Releases are promised for this year which will take us up to two hands’ worth: Battleship Potemkin (from a Swedish supplier), and Our Hospitality, Sherlock Jr. and the complete Metropolis (all from Kino Lorber).

The Bioscope on Flickr

February 18, 2010 By in Bioscope, Images Tags: 2 Comments

For some while now I’ve thought that it would be a good idea to have some sort of image gallery to go alongside the Bioscope. It wouldn’t really work as part of the blog itself, so instead I have established a set of images as part of my Flickr account and called it The Bioscope, surprise surprise.

It’s got 445 images there so far. Most of them come from two sources. One are illustrations taken from David S. Hulfish, Cyclopedia of Motion-Picture Work (1914), which is freely available in PDF form on the Internet Archive; the other is Charles Donald Fox and Milton Silver (eds.), Who’s Who on the Screen (1920), again available from the Internet Archive (and included in the Bioscope Library). In both cases I have copied and pasted images (for the later book with their descriptions as well), so the image quality isn’t high but I hope in this form they will serve as a handy reference source. Some may remember that the Who’s Who on the Screen images were originally made available on the Screen Research site that I launched a year or so ago and which I unceremoniously dumped last month. They have all been moved to the Flickr set.

The Niece and the Chorus Lady (Edison 1911), from David S. Hulfish, Cyclopedia of Motion-Picture Work (1914)

Additionally, I have added some photographs taken by myself, relating to the Pordenone silent film festival and Kinemacolor, some images from a silent era directory whose title I have mislaid (for the time being), and a few oddments like cinema postcards. I am no collector, and there are others who have made far more interesting silent film images available on Flickr (memo to self: must write post on these soon). But what I will do from now on is add images in full size from Bioscope posts where I have had to reduce them to fit the blog, where it is legitimate to do so.

There is now a link for the Bioscope Flickr set on the right-hand side under ‘Other Bioscope Sites’. The other Bioscope associate sites are the Bioscope Bibliography of Silent Cinema (records extracted from the British Library catalogue), the Bioscope on Twitter (a feed from the blog – I don’t add any additional material as tweets, at present) and Urbanora’s Modern Silents, a collection of modern silent videos on my YouTube site. So the Bioscope grows and grows.

Black Francis and The Golem

February 16, 2010 By in Music, Online videos Tags: 2 Comments

Part 18 of The Golem, from http://www.youtube.com/user/blackfrancisnet

In 2008 Black Francis, frontman for alternative rock band The Pixies, performed his score (with songs) for Paul Wegener’s Der Golem (1920) at the Castro Theatre as part of the San Francisco International Film Festival. He has now released the score as a deluxe boxed set, available for sale from his website, blackfrancis.net. The boxed set features two CDs of the score as performed live at the Castro, two CDs of the score recorded in the studio, a DVD of the film with the score, a book with Francis’ music and handwritten notes, plus photographs. The whole set is limited to 500 copies, numbered and autographed by the man himself, and one suspects that they won’t last long on the shelves.

But you needn’t miss out, because at the same time Francis has made the entire film with score available on his YouTube channel, divided up into 26 sections, plus a making of video. Not all may like to see silent films acompanied by songs, but it doesn’t happen every time, and this looks (from what the Bioscope has sampled so far) to be a strongly-felt response to the film’s imagery and its romantic yearnings. It certainly is interesting to contrast it with experimental rock guitarist Gary Lucas’ take on Der Golem, available in extract form on YouTube. I think I prefer the latter, because it is led by the imagery rather than having the images decorating songs, but it all goes to show that the silent film medium is alive and kicking in all sorts of directions.

Killruddery returns

February 14, 2010 By in Festivals, Modern silents Tags:

http://killrudderyarts.com

The Killruddery Film Festival has announced its 2010 programme. This excellent venture, now in its fourth year, is held in the delightful location of Killruddery House in Co. Wicklow, Ireland, close by Bray and a short journey from Dublin. To date the festival has been dedicated to silent films, but for this year they have introduced some sound films to what looks a well-rounded and effective programme. The theme of the festival, which runs 11-14 March, is Celebrating Lost, Overlooked & Forgotten Cinema. One might argue that not all of the titles on show fall into those categories, but every film screening is new to someone in the audience, so there are discoveries come what may. Here’s the line-up:

Thursday 11th March

Down Wicklow Way @ 6.15pm
Programme from the IFI Irish Film Archive, presented by Sunniva O’Flynn. With live musical accompaniment by Josh Johnston

A Cottage on Dartmoor (UK 1929 d. Anthony Asquith) @ 8.15pm
Introduced by Kevin Brownlow. With live musical accompaniment by Stephen Horne

Friday 12th March

Los Angeles Plays Itself (US 2003 d. Thom Anderssen) @ 2pm
With live musical accompaniment by Stephen Horne

Back Down Wicklow Way @ 6pm
More archive films presented by Sunniva O’Flynn

The New World (US 2005 d. Terence Malick) @ 7pm

Lucky Star (US 1929 d. Frank Borzage) @ 8pm

The Parallax View (US 1974 d. Alan Pakula) @ 10pm

Saturday 13th March

A Future Past @ 12am
Programme of science-fiction films presented Andrew Legge, including High Treason (UK 1929 d. Maurice Elvey)

Children’s Shorts Programme @ 12.30am

Poil de Carrotte (France 1925 d. Julien Duvivier) @ 2pm

Sita Sings the Blues (US 1008 d. Nina Paley) @ 2.15pm

Talk: On the developing art of the video essay @ 4pm
Given by video artist Matt Zoller Seitz

City Girl (US 1930 d. F.W. Murnau) @ 4.15pm
Introduced by Kevin Brownlow

Chang (US 1927 d. Merian C. Copper /Ernest Schoedsack) @ 6pm
With live musical accompaniment by Stephen Horne. Introduced by Kevin Brownlow

Seven Days to Noon (UK 1950 d. John and Roy Boulting) @ 6.15pm
Presented by John Boorman

I Know Where I’m Going (UK 1945 d. Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger) @ 8.30pm

Sunday 14th March

Talk: Unknown Chaplin @ 12pm
Illustrated lecture given by Kevin Brownlow

Britannica & other stories @ 1pm
Programme of artists’ films, including the work of John Latham

Ingeborg Holm (Sweden 1917 d. Victor Sjostrom) @ 2.15pm
Introduced by Charles Barr, with live music accompaniment by Stephen Horne

Budawanny (Ireland 1987 d. Bob Quinn) @ 4pm
Modern silent film about a young priest (played by Donal McCann) who becomes romantically entangled with his housekeeper

Red Dust (US 1932 d. Victor Fleming) @ 4.15pm
Introduced by Kevin Brownlow

The Patsy (US 1928 d. King Vidor) @ 6pm
Introduced by Kevin Brownlow, with live musical accompaniment by
Josh Johnston

Goddess/Devi (India 1960 d. Satyajit Ray) @ 6.15pm
Presented by Rebecca Miller

The Wind (US 1928 d. Victor Sjostrom) @ 8pm
With live musical accompaniment by Stephen Horne

Now that’s what I call an eclectic programme. Tickets are now on sale (you pay for individual screenings), and full details can be found on the festival site. Hope it does well.

The new Metropolis

February 12, 2010 By in Restoration, Screenings Tags: 4 Comments

Metropolis being screened in front of the Brandenburg Gate in an icy Berlin, from the Arte live video stream

Today saw the premiere of the restored version of Metropolis, complete with the previously missing sequences discovered in a version held in Argentina. The film has been restored by the Friedrich-Wilhelm-Murnau-Stiftung (the Murnau Foundation) in cooperation with ZDF and Arte, and the Deutsche Kinemathek, and with the Museo del Cine Pablo C. Ducros Hicken (Buenos Aires). It was given its first screenings simultaneously at the Alte Oper, Frankfurt am Main, and at the Friedrichstadtpalast, Berlin as part of the 60th Berlin International Film Festival. The film was also shown for free for the general public on a big screen in front of the Brandenburg Gate, with a live video stream (at some distance from the screen) of the Friedrichstadtpalast event, delivered by French TV channel Arte.

The film was presented with a newly adapted music score based on the original Gottfried Huppertz score of 1927. In Berlin the Rundfunk-Sinfonieorchester Berlin played under the direction of Frank Strobel, in Frankfurt the Staatsorchester Braunschweig was conducted by Helmut Imig. The missing sequences amount to some 25mins of screening time, though the Argentine film is a 16mm dupe neg and in poor condition.

The story has been told many times now (including on the Bioscope), but briefly to recap: when originally released Metropolis, though now one of the most iconic and revered of all silent films, was a bit of a flop. The film was drastically cut soon after its premiere to try and make it more appealing to audiences, but as is so often the case in these instances, dramatic logic suffered. Almost a quarter of its original length was lost. The film at its original length of 4189 metres (or 147mins at 25fps) was therefore only seen for a short while (until May 1927 in Berlin); thereafter a cut version of around 113 mins was all that could be seen. The most recent restoration of the film before this one, that overseen by Enno Patalas in 2001, runs at 118 mins. In 2008, Paula Félix-Didier, new curator of the Museo del Cine in Buenos Aires, learned of a curiously long screening of a print of Metropolis at a cinema club some years before, a print which had come to Argentina in 1928 and eventually a dupe neg found its way to Museo del Cine in 1992. Félix-Didier located the film, recognised its significance, the news went excitedly around the world, and now we have the results. The restored film runs for 147mins (it doesn’t say at what speed).

Design by Eric Kettelhut from the Deutsche Kinemathek exhibition on Metropolis

There is a website devoted to the restored film, put together by the Friedrich-Wilhelm-Murnau-Stiftung, with information on the film’s history, its restoration and the premieres, with a helpful set of FAQs (in English and German), which include these notes on what the new sequences show:

The METROPOLIS version 1927/2010 differs significantly from all the versions known so far. Although the plot of the film keeps its well-known framework the structure of the plot changes: It becomes more harmonic and more comprehensible. Especially the minor characters that Fritz Lang gives room emerge again. Two newly found scenes give Georgy, Josaphat and The Thin Man back their own profiles that through the cuts were almost downgraded to extras.

The now included sequences like Georg’s car ride through Metropolis as well as Freder and The Thin Man’s visiting with Josaphat turn out to be siginificant for the plot. But also the relationship between the inventor Rotwang and Joh Fredersen, the ruler over Metropolis, as well as the reason for their rivalry become clear through the current restoration: Finally one can see the famous scene “Chamber of Hel”, the departed woman loved by both rivals, from which up to now only one still and several descriptions existed.

Arte has a special feature on the film and a documentary on its restoration (Voyage à Metropolis), including a video clip from the restoration showing a sequence with Fritz Rasp and Alfred Abel in a taxi and a delightful sequence with lifts (the video is available in embedded form but can’t be embedded into a WordPress blog, curses). Other videos have interviews with those involved in the restoration, and there is a photo gallery and features on actress Brigitte Helm and director Fritz Lang. There’s an AFP news report on YouTube which has interviews and fleeting clips (embedding not allowed, sigh). The Deutsche Kinemathek in Berlin has an exhibition on Metropolis and its restoration which runs until April 25th.

The Bioscope saw about an hour of the live video stream, but as the image at the top of this post indicates, although of excellent quality it wasn’t the ideal way to experience the film (indeed it was as interesting or even more so for the people-watching experience, as people indifferently trudged by in the cold as high melodrama unfolded on the screen). However, judging as best one could from the live stream, and the video clips online, the new sequences have been cleaned up as well as one could have hoped for, and the transitions from 35mm to blow-up from the digitally restored 16mm do not jar at all. It looks to be a very professional piece of work.

Finally, and as an antidote to the hype, you might care to take a look at H.G. Wells’ notorious 1927 review of the film. He didn’t much care for it:

I have recently seen the silliest film. I do not believe it would be possible to make one sillier. And as this film sets out to display the way the world is going … It is called Metropolis, it comes from the great Ufa studios in Germany, and the public is given to understand that it has been produced at enormous cost. It gives in one eddying concentration almost every possible foolishness, cliché, platitude, and muddlement about mechanical progress and progress in general served up with a sauce of sentimentality that is all its own…

And then he really lays into it. Yes it’s a folly, but it’s a magnificent folly, and it’s now a coherent magnificent folly. A theatrical print of the restored film is expected to be available in the autumn 2010, with Transit Film, Munich in charge of sales. A DVD release from the Murnau Foundation is expected at the end of 2010.

The world before you

February 11, 2010 By in Festivals Tags: 3 Comments

J.B.L. Noel, cinematographer for The Epic of Everest (1924), from http://britishsilents.wordpress.com

No doubt taking its title from Charles Urban’s slogan “We put the world before you”, the British Silent Festival has announced the theme of its upcoming festival as being ‘The World Before You’: Exploration, Science and Nature in British Silent Film.

The festival is being held 15-18 April 2010 at the Phoenix Square Cinema, Leicester (home of the very first British Silent Film Festival, several moons ago). This, the thirteenth such festival, will focus on the relationship between the natural world and cinema before 1930, and will include films about the following:

  • science and nature
  • exploration and discovery of polar regions, mountains, jungles and oceans
  • early ethnography
  • natural phenomena, climate and weather
  • the British coast, maritime activities and natural history on film

The festival organisers promise us a four-day packed programme filled with many rare and re-discovered films, presentations and social events. All films will have live musical accompaniment from a star-studded array of the finest silent cinema musicians.

The festival has moved from its strictly British focus of past years to cast a wider net, and this year highlights will include screenings of The Lost World (US 1925), Drifters (UK 1929), The Bridal Party of Hardanger (Norway 1926), the Dodge Brothers performing to Beggars of Life (US 1928), Damian Coldwell’s new score for Tol’able David (US 1921) with more new music for The Battle of the Ancre and the Advance of the Tanks (UK 1917) and Ernest Shackleton’s epic South (UK 1919). Special presentations will include Everest on Film, The Perilous Life of the Wildlife Cameraman, Around the British Coast in Film, and the Race to the South Pole: Britain and Norway (so I hope that includes the film that exists of Amundsen’s team as well has Herbert Ponting’s record of Scott’s doomed party).

Full programme and timetable information are promised shortly. For bookings contact Phoenix Square Box Office (+44) 0116 242 2800. Ticket prices (which include lunch each day and tea/coffee) are Festival 4 day pass £95 (£70 concession) or Festival 1 day pass £45 (£30 concession).

Accommodation is available at the discounted rate of £45 pp per night (including breakfast) at the Ibis Hotel, Leicester. Please telephone the Hotel directly and quote ‘Phoenix Square’. The address is Ibis Hotel Leicester, St George’s Way, Constitution Hill, Leicester LE1 1PL tel. 0116 248 7200.

For any information contact the Festival Directors Laraine Porter (lporter [at] dmu.ac.uk) or Bryony Dixon (bryony.dixon [at] bfi.org.uk), or visit http://britishsilents.wordpress.com.