Tag: Performers

My Wonderful Visit

Source: Charlie Chaplin, My Wonderful Visit (London: Hurst & Blackett, 1922), pp. 142-143

Text: Wells and I go into the dark projection room and I sit with Wells. I feel on my mettle almost immediately, sitting at his side, and I feel rather glad that we are spending our first moments in an atmosphere where I am at home. In his presence I feel critical and analytical and I decide to tell the truth about the picture at all costs. I feel that Wells would do the same thing about one of mine.

As the picture is reeling off I whisper to him my likes and dislikes, principally the faulty photography, though occasionally I detect bad direction. Wells remains perfectly silent and I begin to feel that I am not breaking the ice. It is impossible to get acquainted under these conditions. Thank God, I can keep silent, because there is the picture to watch and that saves the day.

Then Wells whispers, “Don’t you think the boy is good?”

The boy in question is right here on the other side of me, watching his first picture. I look at him. Just starting out on a new career, vibrant with ambition, eager to make good, and his first attempt being shown before such an audience. As I watch he is almost in tears, nervous and anxious.

The picture ends. There is a mob clustering about. Directors and officials look at me. They want my opinion of the picture. I shall be truthful. Shall I criticise? Wells nudges me and whispers, “Say something nice about the boy.” And I look at the boy and see what Wells has already seen and then I say the nice things about him. Wells’s kindness and consideration mean so much more than a mere picture.

Comments: Charles Spencer Chaplin (1889-1977) was a British comic film actor and director. He paid a visit to Britain, France and Germany in 1921 at the height of his fame. His acount of the trip, My Wonderful Visit, is strikingly introspective and frank account of the effects of mass fame. During his London visit he was invited to the offices of the Stoll film company in London to see a preview of Kipps (1921), a British film directed by the American Harold Shaw, starring George K. Arthur (the ‘boy’ referred to in this passage). He saw the film alongside H.G. Wells, on whose novel it was based. Arthur (who had made two films previously) went on to enjoy a moderately successful film career in America.

Poor Pauline

Source: Charles R. McCarron, ‘Poor Pauline’, lyrics from sheet music (New York: Broadway Music Corporation, 1914)

Text:
I’m as worried as can be, all the movie shows I see
Have that awful mystery, “Pauline and her perils,”
On a rope they dangle her, then they choke and strangle her,
With an axe they mangle her, always something new.
To make you shake they give her Paris green,
Of course her horse will neigh, “Nay Nay Pauline.”

Poor Pauline, I pity poor Pauline,
One night she’s drifting out to sea,
Then they tie her to a tree,
I wonder what the end will be,
This suspense is awful.
Bing! Bang! Biff! They throw her off a cliff
They dynamite her in a submarine,
In the lion’s den she stands with fright,
Lion goes to take a bite
Zip goes the film – Goodnight! Poor Pauline.

Handsome Harry’s always near, he will save her never fear
Just in time he will appear, when Pauline’s in peril.
On a roof she fights for life, villain sticks her with a knife,
“Marry me or be my wife!” what will Pauline do?
But soon balloon with anchor swings around.
Pauline is seen and rescued upside down.

Poor Pauline, I pity poor Pauline,
One night she’s drifting out to sea,
Then they tie her to a tree,
I wonder what the end will be,
This suspense is awful.
Bing! Bang! Biff! They throw her off a cliff
They dynamite her in a submarine,
Then the villain takes her on his knee
Wonder what we’re going to see –
Zip goes the film – Oh Gee! Poor Pauline.

Comments: ‘Poor Pauline’ was written by Charles R. McCarron (lyrics) and Raymond Walker (music). It capitalised on the huge popularity of the Perils of Pauline serial, starring Pearl White, who endured perilous situations on a weekly basis only to recover to face another peril the next week. The recording by Billy Murray for the Victor label given above has some different lyrics to those given in the sheet music available from the Margaret Herrick Library and other online sources, with a second verse in which Pauline is captured by an Arab band. The song was very popular at the time, being sung by Fanny Brice and others.

Links: Sheet music at Margaret Herrick Library Digital Collections
History of the song by Larry Harnisch at Daily Mirror blog

Sociology of Film

Source: J.P. Mayer, Sociology of Film: Studies and Documents (London: Faber and Faber, 1946), pp. 136-138

Text: Another possibility of getting at the children’s film taste is by listing their answers to question 23 of our questionnaire. They are as follows:

What Kind of Film would you like to have made?

1 . A film which has Deana [sic] Durbin in it and George Formby that what I would have liked made. (Girl, first preference ghost picture.)

2. The films I want are the news reels. (Girl, first preference, news reels.)

3. Musical films. (Girl, first preference, musicals.)

4. A sad film. (Girl, first preference, detective pictures.)

5. Cowboy film called The Famous Cowboy Joe. (Girl, first preference, cartoons.)

6. I would like a cow boy film that lasted for six hours. (Girl, first preference, love pictures.)

7. A Detective film like The Hound of Basivile [sic]. (Girl, first preference, detective pictures.)

8. A film of Walt Disney’s. (Girl, first preference, cartoons.)

9. A sad film called When Will the Happy Life Come about a poor family. (Girl, first preference, cartoons.)

10. A Murder film. (Girl, first preference, gangster films.)

11 . Gone with the Wind which had Clark Gable in it thats what I would like to have made. (Girl, first preference, Historical pictures.)

12. One from the stories of the Arabian Nights. (Girl, first preference, ghost pictures.)

13. I would like a musical film with dancing in it. (Girl, first preference, love pictures.)

14. I would like a film with a lot of music in it (Girl, first, preference, love pictures.)

15. I would like to make a Cartoon about Donald Duck. (Girl, first preference, cartoons.)

16. I would like to make a Murder film. (Girl, first preference, detective films.)

17. I would like to have a film made with a lot of dancing in it. (Girl, first preference, musicals.)

18. One of Shirley Temples films. (Girl, first preference, love pictures.)

19. A Cowboy film from Roy Rogers. (Girl, first preference, ghost pictures.)

20. A very funy [sic] one, and it must have some very pretty girls in it. (Girl, first preference, love pictures.)

21. I would like a film of somebodys Life. (Girl, first preference, love pictures.)

22. The Film Bambi in Technicolour [sic]. (Girl, first preference, ghost pictures.)

23. I would like a ghost film that would last 3 hours. (Girl, first preference, ghost pictures.)

24. A Walt Disney Film. (Girl, first preference, detective pictures.)

25. A Happy-go-Lucky film with dancing, singing, and funny bits, sad bits, happy bits and some of my favourite film stars. (Girl, first preference, cartoons.)

26. I would like to have a musical film made in technicolour [sic]. (Girl, first preference, love pictures.)

27. A Detective film. (Boy, first preference, detective films.)

28. I would like a long Walt Disney’s Cartoon made. (Boy, first preference, gangster pictures.)

29. A Tarzan Film. (Boy, first preference, detective pictures.)

30. I would like a nice Detective film. (Boy, first preference, detective pictures.)

31. A good film of the prehistoric ages to the present. (Boy, first preference, historical pictures.)

32. I would like a Cowboy film with Roy Rogers acting. (Boy, first preference, cowboy pictures.)

33. Comedy. (Boy, first preference, ghost pictures.)

34. A Cowboy Picture. (Boy, first preference, cowboy pictures.)

35. The Life story of ‘Winston Churchal’ [sic]. (Boy, first preference, comedies.)

36. Walt Disney Cartoons. (Boy, first preference, cartoons.)

37. I would like to have a Walt Disney film made. (Boy, first preference, cowboy pictures.)

38. A cowboy. (Boy, first preference, cowboy pictures.)

39. Gipsy Wildcat. (Boy, first preference, cowboy pictures.)

40. A funny ghost picture with Monty Woolley acting. (Boy, first preference, ghost pictures.)

41. I would like a cowboy film to be made with all the famous cowboys in it. (Boy, first preference, ghost pictures.)

42. A cowboy Picture. (Boy, first preference, cowboy pictures.)

Comments: J.P. (Jacob Peter) Mayer was a German sociologist at the London School of Economics. His Sociology of Film draws on a large amount of evidence gathered through questionnaires and submissions received through invitations published in Picturegoer magazine. The above comes from the section ‘Children and Adolescents and the Cinema’ and lists comments made by children as part of a questionnaire on their film tastes.

Bertolt Brecht Diaries 1920-1922

Source: Bertolt Brecht (trans. John Willett), diary entry for 29 October 1921, in Herta Ramthun (ed.), Bertolt Brecht Diaries 1920-1922 (London: Eyre Methuen, 1979), pp. 140-141

Text: Then I saw a little one-acter of Charlie Chaplin’s. It’s called The Face on the Bar-room Floor and it is the most profoundly moving thing I’ve ever seen in the cinema: utterly simple. It’s about a painter who enters a bar, has a drink and ‘because you folk have been so good to me’ narrates the story of his own downfall, which is that of a girl who has gone off with a bloated plutocrat. He sees her again, drunk and in rags, and it’s ‘the profanation of his ideal’, she’s fat and has children, at which he puts his hat on askew and goes off upstage into the darkness, staggering as if he had been hit on the head, all askew, my God, all askew as if he’d been blown off course by the wind, all windblown like no one you ever saw. And then the teller of the story gets drunker and drunker, and his need to communicate ever stronger and more painful, so he asks for ‘a bit of that chalk you put on the tips of your billiard cues’ and draws the loved one’s portrait on the floor – only to produce a series of circles. He slithers around on it, quarrels with all and sundry, gets chucked out and goes on drawing on the pavement – more circles and gets chucked back in and goes on drawing there and chucks them all out and they pop their heads in at the windows and he’s drawing on the floor and the end of the whole thing is: suddenly, just as he was trying to add a particularly artistic curl to the loved one’s hair, he let out a dreadful shriek and collapsed on top of his picture, dead … drunk … (ivre… mort…). Chaplin’s face is always impassive, as though waxed over, a single expressive twitch rips it apart, very simple, strong, worried. A pallid clown’s face complete with thick moustache, long artist’s hair and a clown’s tricks: he messes up his coat, sits on his palette, gives an agonised lurch, tackles a portrait by – of all things – elaborating the backside. But nothing could be more profoundly moving, it’s unadulterated art. Children and grown-ups laugh at the poor man, and he knows it: this nonstop laughter in the auditorium is an integral part of the film, which is itself deadly earnest and of a quite alarming objectivity and sadness. The film owes (part of) its effectiveness to the brutality of its audience.

Comments: Bertolt Brecht (1898-1956) was a German dramatist and poet. Chaplin’s The Face on the Barroom Floor (1914) is a spoof of a poem by Hugh Antoine D’Arcy about an artist who loses his love, is driven to drink, and draws the face of his lost love on a barroom floor before dying. The film was produced by Keystone Studios. Brecht wrote a poem about the film in 1944, ‘A Film of the Comedian Chaplin’.

A Hospital-Ceiling as a Screen for Moving Pictures

Source: S[amuel] Begg, ‘A Hospital-Ceiling as a Screen for Moving Pictures: a Cinema for Bedridden Wounded Soldiers at a Base in France’, The Illustrated London News, 10 August 1918, p. 1, reproduced at http://www.illustratedfirstworldwar.com/item/a-hospital-ceiling-as-a-scren-for-movig-pictures-a-cinema-for-bedridde-iln0-1918-0810-0001-002/

Comments: Samuel Begg (1854-1936) was a British artist, who was raised in New Zealand, and who became well-known as an illustrator for the British magazine The Illustrated London News. The text that accompanied it says:

A novel use of the cinematograph has been introduced into certain American base hospitals in France. For the amusement of wounded men who are unable to sit up or leave their beds, pictures are thrown on the ceiling above their beds by means of portable projectors. Thus they are enabled to enjoy the antics of Charlie Chaplin and other heroes and heroines of the “movies,” like their more fortunate comrades, who can move about and attend the ordinary type of cinema entertainment. How great a boon this ingenious device has proved to bedridden patients may be easily realised by anyone who has ever spent long and tedious hours in bed watching the vagaries of flies crawling on a ceiling.

The image and text were based on this original published in the American magazine Popular Mechanics, July 1918 p. 163 (unnamed artist):

Links: Illustrated London News image available from illustratedfirstworldwar.com

Popular Mechanics illustration available from Hathi Trust

The March of Japan

Source: Edgar Lajtha, The March of Japan (New York: Frederick A. Stokes, [1936]), pp. 109-114

Text: The twentieth century has allowed the Japanese to live again their middle age through the cinema, and when the Japanese wants to escape from glaring modernity, he can find solace in the world of the Japanese fighting-spirit films when he sees the virtues of his ancestors rise up from their graves.

In Tokyo’s film street, where every building is a cinema, there are posters with gigantic coloured photographs of the stars and dramatic scenes from the film displayed at every entrance. Japan’s history lives again on these façades, and sometimes a large flaming sword covers the front of one cinema, or two warriors’ heads, or simply the head of a weeping woman. But the swords predominate, for in these eventful days the sword is the matinée idol of the people.

Between two historic heroes a good looking Tarzan may be jumping naked out of the jungle on to a crocodile’s back, laughing down at the blonde head of Greta Garbo, his vis-à-vis. The heads of the Western stars look unfamiliar; for the Japanese the faces of Garbo, Barrymore and Bergner would lack character, and the poster-artist retouches their faces, as the Japanese photographer does his portraits, thereby suppressing their true personalities.

The Chinese use other methods, and when I saw the Garbo’s head outside a Hongkong cinema, she had wrinkles at the side of her mouth and almond-shaped eyes.

An endless stream of people pass through the Asakusa from morning till night, the men in grey kimonos, the women in colour, and the children most brightly dressed of all. The clatter of their wooden sandals on the hard street blends with the music from the cinema doors. Flags displaying the tides of the films in large letters flutter in profusion in the glare of street-lights. Sometimes the names are written in Japanese characters on net flags and fly like dragons above the heads of the crowds.

As the people pass along on both sides of the streets, they often stop in front of one cinema trying to decide whether to go in. It is no easy decision, for the choice is so wide and the prices so cheap, seats can be had from five sen. The propaganda in the street is cleverly conceived and it dims their eyes. Who can withstand the power of a flaming sword as big as a rowing-boat? So I, too, reeled into a cinema.

A samisen orchestra accompanies the silent historical films and an announcer, who stands following the film like one of the audience, speaks the actors’ parts out of the darkness. He follows the lip-movements of men, women and children and adjusts his voice accordingly. As I was at the last evening performance, the announcer was becoming hoarse.

The audience had their eyes fixed on the screen. Women clutched crumpled handkerchiefs, wrapt in another world. In these warrior-films Japan is again shut off from contemporary life. Japanese fight only Japanese; the clock has been put back a hundred years.

The Japanese landscape was unfolded before us in black and white. We could see silver lakes glinting in the light, dark islands and black trees. White steam rose out of a deep crater and rice fields basked in the sun. Suddenly the black silhouette of a Samurai overshadowed this peaceful picture. Two swords hung at his side, the long one for his enemy, the short one for himself; for the Japanese warrior is never taken alive. The excitement began when a speck could be seen on the horizon, gradually becoming bigger and bigger, till we could see that it was the enemy of our Samurai.

The two Japanese warriors were now face to face, staring silently with unwinking eyes and proud mouths. Only their fingers twitched, convulsively clutching their swords.

The moment they drew their swords with a lightning movement the scene became alive with other warriors jumping from behind bushes and rocks. There were about fifty of them, Japanese against Japanese, and if one was threatened in the back, he whipped round as if he had eyes there too. The Samurais’ training in fencing, which lasted for years, was no ordinary one, for it taught them to concentrate their five senses on one thought, so that they learnt to feel the sword-point in their backs the instant before it was thrust.

The Samurai turned round with a sudden spring that repulsed his enemies for a yard or so; while he cut in two the man who had been about to kill him, the others had time to regain breath. Swords clashed. This catlike stratagem came off again and again; if he did it once, he did it five times until he had reduced his fifty enemies to ten.

In a short time they fled and disembowelled themselves.

Similar warriors attacked the Samurai on his way home through the countryside. When he finally reached his village, he found that his home had been plundered of his goods and his loved ones. He knew at once that it was the work of these same enemies, and set out to find his young lover.

A steep coast on the ocean. A weeping girl was wandering under the steep cliffs, dressed in a light striped kimono, with her hair arranged in the old style, above her white, oval, classical Japanese face.

She strayed from one rock to another. Sometimes jumping down, and sometimes springing from stone to stone to keep her kimono from trailing in the sea. At other times she would be high up, where one false step meant certain death. She had been wandering on this coast for days, for every minute represented months, and her hair began to fly in the wind. Now she held a new born infant in her arms, her tears falling on its little face while she stood far above high rocks and the surging sea. She looked down hopelessly at the waves. Then a strong hand drew her back.

The Samurai had at last found his lover. He laughed and wept with joy, but she no longer wept but only laughed shrilly. She was mad. She handed him the child, and even as he bent down to see the first smile on his first-born’s lips, the waves were surging over the woman’s head.

The Samurai, still wearing his two swords in his belt, and with the child in his arms, looked down dumbly at the waves. They soon surged over his head too.

The Samisen orchestra burst into jazz, for the second film on the programme was more modern.

Two marriages seemed to be going awry! In one the husband was too Westernised and the wife too conservative, in the other the situation was reversed. After an hour of complications the husbands and wives reached a compromise and the film closed with a happy ending.

The third film was at last a sound film. It was concerned with the problems which Western civilisation have brought to Japan, the problems of the middle-class youth who are still undergoing wedekindian trials. A “modern boy” had fallen in love with a “modern girl.” When the girl’s father found his daughter in the boy’s flat, he shot her, whereupon the boy came out of his hiding place and shot the father. The youthful murderer then became a haunted wanderer of the night. Homeless and at the end of his strength, he fled to a friend’s house. The friend forgave him and the murderer wept on his breast. Later he gave himself up to the authorities and was acquitted.

The films were not directed properly and the stories were drawn out to appalling length with streams of dialogue. But that did not seem to disturb my neighbours who must have been paragons of patience. The great fault of all film producers is also committed by Japanese directors. They do not stick to realities, and their players are not true types. The sets in the films are always ultra-modern milieus where the Japanese would like to live but will never see in all their life. A foreigner is particularly struck by the absence of mimicry and gesticulation. The gamut of passions is never expressed with more than a nervous twitching of the lips, and kissing does not exist. In love scenes two heads nestle together and tears fall, and one comes away from the Asakusa cinemas with the impression that the sons of one of the manliest nations in the world weep more than any of their fellow men.

But if the photography of Japanese films is considered by itself, all the faults are forgotten. Every picture is a feast for the eye and even the most prosaic scenes are filled with poetry.

The educational films are the most beautifully photographed of all. They enlighten the people and they pulsate with the force of Japanese life. The possibilities of expansion are pointed out in a lovely series of pictures, showing an immense landscape of cherry blossom. Suddenly a volcano erupts: “Strengthen your spirit. … That is the fate of the Japanese.”

The young Japanese intellectuals do not often frequent the Asakusa for its cinemas cater for provincial tastes; but provincials are typical of the Japanese taste as a whole.

The cinemas outside the Ginza district show American films principally. Two hundred and fifty films are imported annually from Hollywood, and while the Japanese film predominates in the suburbs and the provinces, American productions are more popular in the better quarters of the large towns. These films teach the youth about the latest developments of Western civilisation, and pleasure is a secondary consideration. They are also useful as a means of giving English lessons to those who cannot go abroad. But the mogas find them useful for showing the latest Hollywood fashions.

Comments: Edgar Lajtha (1910-?) was a Hungarian travel writer. His account includes a description of a benshi performer, who provided audiences with Japanese an interpretation of the action. Silent films continued for a longer period in Japan than they did in the West, and programmes in the mid-1930s could comprise a mixture of silent and sound films. I have not been able to identify the films he describes.

Links: Copy at Hathi Trust

The Last Ballad

Source: George Mackay Brown, ‘The Last Ballad’, The Listener, 20 June 1968, p. 800

Text: In a primitive community what happens circulates as story or ballad. During the Napoleonic Wars an Orkney sailor called Andrew Ross died under the lash. The news came to the islands, carried by other seamen, in many versions. The ballad-maker is not interested in the details, only in the central situation, the skeleton of the story: he allows the corruptible flesh of time and chance to rot. He fits out the story with a mask and dress of his own making, till it has a new life in the word.

Andrew Ross, an Orkney sailor,
Whose sufferings now I will explain,
While on a voyage from Barbados,
On board the vessel Martha Jane.

The mates and captain daily flogged him
With whips and rope, I tell you true,
Then on his mangled bleeding body
Water mixed with salt they threw.

This, though it is a very crude piece of balladry, becomes the story of Andrew Ross for all time. […] It is part of a seamless fabric that has been there from the beginning, where all stories are gathered, a part of a great story. […]

‘Andrew Ross’ was the last ballad. Everything changed when the first newspapers arrived. […] Language was no longer a mystery: it was machine to be exploited for social and utilitarian purposes. […] Wireless, in the 1930s, was another step along the road. […]

The island people, always hungry for new gadgets, bought television sets in the Fifties when they were still out at range of the transmitters. Endless blizzards slanted across the screen. Still they watched.

Several frightening things have happened in the course of a few years. TV personalities like Cliff Michelmore, Inspector Barlow and Fanny Craddock are spoken about more familiarly by islanders now than are the people who live in the outlying farms. The shadows on a screen have become more real than their flesh-and~blood neighbours. The gradual loosening of the sense of community goes on. Families stay at home in front of then TV sets on winter nights; the old social gatherings with fiddle and ale and story are rapidly fading into the past. A third frightening thing is the new tyranny of facts actively fostered by TV programmes (though it began in the islands a century ago with the newspapers). Facts, figures, graphs, statistics, are the important things. What has happened in the past generation, in consequence, is that the story-teller is being pushed out by the frightful bore who will give you his opinions about Vietnam and the colour problem and heart transplants: not really his own opinions at all but some prejudiced odds and ends that have stuck in his mind from a discussion witnessed on Panorama the night before. In the old days, one imagines, such a bore would have been courteously ignored, or otherwise put in his place. Today he is listened to with all reverence.

The crude ballad of ‘Andrew Ross’ was an attempt by a pastoral community to explain a terrible thing that had happened to one of their own press-ganged boys. They experienced it themselves, ritually, in a ballad, and so it became a part of the total experience of the community. There is no attempt to subsume horror into man‘s total experience, in this particular way, in the modern modes of entertainment. Aberfan and Belsen and Agadir remain black, unabsorbed horrors, underlined but in no way illuminated by all the ‘realistic’ treatment they have been given – the intricate columm of statistics, the photographs, the eye-witness accounts. No meaning emerges from all the swathings of fact. It is significant that when a TV dramatist recently attempted to enter imaginatively into the Aberfan situation, in Softly Softly – and I thought he did it very well – there were howls of protest the following week in Talkback. I listen to the wireless and watch television quite a lot, and the BBC pays me an acceptable guinea here and there for work l do. Many of the programmes are of high quality. But what seems to be happening is that small fruitful units of culture are being merged into larger, noisier, cruder units, so that, as T.S. Eliot said,

There is not enough silence
Not on the sea nor on the islands.

There is little we can do about it.

Comments: George Mackay Brown (1921-1996) was a Scottish poet and author, who was born and lived most of his life on the Orkney islands. The above extracts come from an essay written for the BBC’s journal The Listener. The full article goes into greater details about the ballad tradition, the arrival and newspapers (in the 1820s) and radio listening. Cliff Michelmore was a current affairs presenter; Inspector Barlow was a character was a character played by Stratford Johns in the police dramas Z Cars and Softly Softly; Franny Craddock was a TV cook. Panorama is a current affairs series, launched in 1957 and continuing to this day. Talkback was a BBC right-of-reply programme. The T.S. Eliot lines come from his poem ‘Ash Wednesday’.

The Desirable Alien

Source: Violet Hunt (with a preface and two additional chapters by Ford Madox Hueffer), The Desirable Alien at Home in Germany (London: Chatto and Windus, 1913), pp. 281-287

Text: I had never seen a cinematograph show until I came to live in Germany. I was then told that England abounded in them, and that this wild joy was at hand, and had been at hand for years in the two main streets that bounded my dwelling. I had never, so far, discovered them never known this famous form of amusement. Now I live in them. I am only sorry that the censor has lately been allowed to have anything to do with them; for now I shall never see again what I saw in the course of my first cinematograph the … No! Joseph Leopold, taking upon himself the office of the much-abused functionary, says that I am not to set down what I saw. At any rate, it was the triumph of the unexpected, and that surely is the salt of cinematographs and entertainments generally. And it was nothing wrong it was only out of place, and would not have been out of place in a musical comedy nay, it would have been indicated. … I burn to say what it was. …

Joseph Leopold does not take a frivolous view of this enormous international development. The cinematograph is an institution; it is educational; it is, at any rate, reading without tears.* It is vastly inducive of a philosophical attitude of mind; it is a vivid, cogent object-lesson in the sequence of events. The couple of stories usually given historical, cosmopolitan, revelatory of varieties of national character, as even the more laughable films are must be provocative of something like the prophetic powers that a study of history, past and present, gives.

A Hoch Spannendes Detective Drama may, in its details, pander to a vulgar taste, but it is pretty certain to reach the level of the intelligence it is designed to impress. Possibly some forger has been turned from his wickedness, some fool from his folly, some potential murderer from his crime, by the sight of one of these dramas of financial ruin, of blood and revenge, even though, owing to the obvious imperfection of the medium, blood cannot run red or the face of the ruined man blanch. It is better so; it is better, as Shakespeare’s Helena said, that “the white death should sit on their cheeks for ever,” for the coloured films are abominable. But as it is, I should not mind wagering that conscience money has been paid as a result of some evening spent in a red plush-covered armchair, with an antimacassar slung over the back of it a square of tawdry lace that is apt to follow you out into the street.

And are no simple souls induced to a more tolerant rule of piety after seeing, say, “The Bellringer,” where the devil terrifies the ancient functionary from ringing the Angelus, and only gives him leave to pursue his calling on condition that the devil shall take the first soul that enters the church while the bell is ringing? It is hard on the soul, but the philosophy of the scapegoat is sound enough. The innocent, since medieval times, must suffer for the guilty. And an angel from Heaven, her wide wings disguised under a beggar’s cloak, enters the church, and rings the bell for the charitable old bellringer, who has stooped in the porch to succour her.

This is, of course, a film which would not obtain in a Protestant town. And others which I have seen in Germany would be prohibited in England for the sake of the young person.

People rail in England against this large-looming personage, and her invasion of the library committees and the stalls at the “problem” plays, so dear to the English soul. But we have a short way with her in Germany. English people, who have a reasonable zest for seeing life as it is, complain that they are driven by their parental susceptibilities to read milk-and-water stuff, and view plays that are only fit for babes. But no one suggests that the onus of chaperonage might be thrown on the police, as it is in Germany, and the young person, deaf to moral suasion of parents, kept by armed force from the book or the play, instead of the play or the book from the young person! Yet it is practically so in Germany as far as the theatre is concerned. Reasonable plays are put on and enjoyed by the elders. An angel with a flaming sword stands at the gate of the theatrical Eden and forbids the young of both sexes to enter Paradise before their time i.e., eighteen years old. The Chief of Police prescribes to what plays young men and maidens under this age shall be admitted or no, and places a simple policeman at the doors of the theatre to enforce his behest.

And as for children of tender years, the Germans see that the lesson shall not be too strong, too deeply driven home to the tender intelligence. When a film that may prove a bugbear is presented, or one holding the powers-that-be up to execration or vilifying the Army, and any other lawfully consstituted authority, children are not allowed to enter at all.

It is impossible for local governments to take such a tender interest in the morals of their subjects without the conflict of authorities producing some odd results. It must never be forgotten that Germany is a mass of little, ill-welded nationalities, all under a First War Lord. That is what the Kaiser literally is. The curious local jealousies existing between one State and another are the unknown factor, and make a topsy-turveyness which in operation remind one of an opera of Gilbert and Sullivan.

There is one famous film, “Heisses Blut,” which was prohibited in Frankfort and forbidden to be performed in Trier. That is why I was able to see it in H—, because H— is in Hessen-Darmstadt, not in Prussia. And it is really, as its name denotes, a “Spannendes Drama.” A beautiful and famous Danish actress has played in the preparation of the film the part of the woman of strong passions united to a gentleman unable to satisfy them. She casts her affection on the new chauffeur, and makes an assignation with him during her husband’s absence. He returns and surprises the pair, and turns the temperamental lady and her lover out of the house. The degraded one becomes a burglar’s mate, and we see her in a thieves’ kitchen concocting a plan for the breaking into her former abode. She is persuaded by her truculent chauffeur lover to dress as a boy, to scale the window and let him in. She naturally chooses the nursery window. By her boy’s cot the ex-husband finds her; she confesses, and he takes her back. Hoch Spannendes, indeed!

For novelists like Joseph Leopold and me the rage for picture theatres is a distinct gain. It may be the novel-form of the future. When there will be so many books published that no one has time to read them, the author, wise before his time, will devote his intelligence to the presentation of his message, whatever it is, through this hasty medium, to all who will not wait for the development of style, niceties of dialogue, and so on. It is not perhaps generally known that the actors who take the parts of characters in a film accompany all their gestures, for the sake of vraisemblance, with speeches appropriate thereto half gag, half set down for them.

But without envisaging such a total abnegation of the merits of style in the future, let us see that in so far as the present condition of things affects authors they have all to gain by the tales that are told nightly in dumb show. The audience, composed pretty nearly of rustics in the classical sense, unsophisticated, unlettered, slow at apprehending the contortions, the mysteries of a good plot, will gradually get more and more used to following its peripatetics, tracing out its issues, holding the multiple strands that go to make a story, weaving them gradually, skilfully, into the main one, till by the time the light suddenly grows in the “Saal,” and the Pathe cock seems to stand on the empty sheet and crow triumphant, the whole has grown coherent in their minds. It is magnificent training for readers. We see in “Das Gefahrliche Alter,” another good German film, the spendthrift at the restaurant confronted by la douloureuse, and the elegant harpy who has cost him so dear at his side egging him on: “Get the money to pay it!” Her speech is given in writing on a board, but it is hardly necessary the context is explanatory enough. The slide shifts, we see his mother weeping over her secretaire, where notes for fifty pounds are tumbling about, mixed with correspondence cards, as they will in the desks of mothers in films. We see her go to bed. And in the next slide her son appears, walking in the peering, creepy way which is suggestive of proposed criminal attempts on secretaires. … And so on and so on, to a mother’s inevitable forgiveness.

Yes, I consider the advent of the Boy Scouts, the invention of picture postcards, and the rage for picture theatres, as the three most important developments of this age of brass and iron.

* The village of Kreuzberg on April 14, 1913, allocated £50 of its yearly revenue to purchasing seats for poor children at the local cinematographs on Sundays throughout the year. J.L.F.M.H.

Comments: Isobel Violet Hunt (1862-1942) was a British author, feminist, associate of the Pre-Raphaelites, and literary hostess. Closely linked with many of the literary notables of her age, she was the lover of the Anglo-German novelist Ford Madox Hueffer, who later changed his name to Ford Madox Ford and portrayed her as Sylvia Tietjens in his novel series Parade’s End. He collaborated with her on this book, which is a record of her impressions of time spent in Germany over 1911/12. ‘Joseph Leopold’, identified as her companion in the book, is Ford Madox Hueffer (his giveaway initials J.L.F.M.H. follow the footnote about poor children in cinemas). Heisses Blut (Germany 1911) starred the Danish actress Asta Nielsen. There were two German films entitled Das gefährliche Alter made in 1911. I have not been able to identify the ‘Bellringer’ film. Eyewitness accounts of cinemagoing at this period which refer to artificially coloured films are rare.

Links: Copy at Hathi Trust

British Cinemas and their Audiences

Source: J.P. Mayer, British Cinemas and their Audiences: Sociological Studies (London: Dennis Dobson, 1948), p. 123

Text: AGE: 16 SEX: F
OCCUPATION: ASSISTANT LIBRARIAN NATIONALITY: BRITISH
FATHER’S OCCUPATION: BUILDER MOTHER’s OCCUPATION: HOUSEWIFE

I first became interested in films when I left school at the age of 14 years. I gave up most of the games I was so fond of. Such as Netball and shinty. I took up a position in a small library to begin with and I have succeeded to better myself within the last month.

At first I used to like a Detective film, but I soon grew tired and uninterested in them. A musical, ‘did something to me’, and as soon as I had seen one I felt lively. That was up to my 15th year. This last year has been wonderful in my film world. I visit the cinema not less than twice every week, and I have found myself keeping a record of every Picture I’ve seen since this year 1945 began.

I like a film to laugh and cry about, such as Love Story starring Stewart Granger. The Seventh Cross with Spencer Tracy and Signe Hasso, Days of Glory with Gregory Peck. The Climax with Susanna Foster and Tur[h]an Bey, and Old Aquaintance with Bette Davis and 30 Seconds Over Tokyo with Van Johnson.

As a very little girl I used to visit the cinema with my youngest brother who is five years my senior. We used to play scenes from gangster films, until we grew tired. Even now we still take a great interest in discussing our dislikes and likes together. My friends and I used to have concerts but no one took an interest to organise us
properly.

I saw Sonjy [sic] Henie many times and each time, I used to come home, put on my roller skates, and skate until I had my hearts content. I can not say I have been frightened by any Picture, but I find the love scenes holding my attention and longing to have a boy friend after the style of Gregory Peck or Van Johnson.

I hate girls who giggle and I often find myself immitating [sic] the Haughty laughter of Bette Davis.

I once fell in love with Alan Ladd only to find that he was married and has a child and possibly children by now.

If I go out with a boy it sometimes gets on my nerves because he does not say nice things as Robert Taylor probably would. When Ive seen a Susanna Foster film I feel like singing just like her. I have often wanted to be away from home in one of the services, such as being a nurse, but I am too young.

In other words, ‘I’m just an in-between’.

When I look at my friends I often feel bored especially the girls; their favourite conversation is about their new hat or dress.

I have always wanted to have my voice trained and be a singer like Deanna Durbin or Susanna Foster.

I shall probably end up in the same old town, but I don’t want to really.

Comments: J.P. (Jacob Peter) Mayer was a German sociologist at the London School of Economics. His British Cinemas and their Audiences collates motion picture autobiographies submitted through competitions in Picturegoer magazine. This contribution comes from the section ‘Films and the Pattern of Life’. Contributors were asked to trace the history of their interest in films, the influence films had on them (including if they were ever frightened by films), what they imitated from films, if films made them more receptive to love-making, if films made them want to travel or to be dissatisfied with their way of life or neighbourhood, and if films gave them vocational ambitions.

Laughter in Leningrad

Source: Dorothea Eltenton, Laughter in Leningrad: An English Family in Russia 1933-1938 (privately printed, 1998), pp. 141-142

Text: Lil and l had planned to go and see Charlie Chaplin in Modern Times which was showing in town, and as Sasha was still with us I suggested he come too. He was delighted. The film was having a terrific success (Shura, who, by the way, very much reminded us of Chaplin, had seen it in Moscow six times), but we were there early and got good seats.

It was wonderful to see Chaplin again, Chaplin better than ever but with those same touches of human vulgarity which he is unable to resist in every film. Lil and I were helpless with laughter, our sides were aching and still we went on. But at times I noticed that we were the only ones in the audience laughing, and sometimes even someone would look round as though we were laughing when we shouldn’t. Sasha was very solemn, not all the way through, for the whole audience thoroughly enjoyed the film and roared with laughter, but there were lots of places were Lil and I laughed and they didn’t.

I was out of breath when it was over. We stood up. Sasha’s face was sad. He sighed.

‘A tragic picture,’ he said slowly.

‘You mustn’t take it so seriously,’ I said.

‘You mustn’t take it so lightly,’ he replied. ‘It’s far too real to take lightly. You see so clearly the tragedy of the “little fellow” being kicked around.’ He sighed again, ‘A tragic picture.’

But Lil and I couldn’t help laughing all the way home as we recalled the funniest bits. The feeding machine in the factory, the conveyor belt.

‘And yet it is tragic, Lil,’ I said.

‘I know it is.’

Comments: Dorothea Eltenton (1904-2001) was born Ada Dorothea Hamilton in Manchester and lived in the Soviet Union with her physicist husband George Eltenton 1933-1938. They subsequently moved to San Francisco where she worked for the American Russian Institute for Cultural Relations with the Soviet Union. Both came under suspicion from the FBI for communist sympathies. Charlie Chaplin’s Modern Times (USA 1936) is a comic picture of the plight of a little man in an industrialised world.