Blackmail

Something I've been meaning to flag up for a while is Hitchcock's Blackmail at the Barbican, on Sunday 31 October at 8pm, with the BBC Symphony Orchestra performing a new score by Neil Brand. This will be about the fourth score I'll have heard for it but if Neil Brand's past scores are anything to go by, it should be good.

Years ago (1993, a little research rather scarily tells me), I remember seeing Jonathan Lloyd's score which, after an initial flurry, doesn't seem to get done much any more. Perhaps the fact that the Lyons Corner House scene featured a set of variations on the (still-in-copyright) Tea for Two is a disincentive. Youmans comes out of copyright in 2016, so hang onto your hats...

Oddly enough I was only doing a session comparing the sound and silent versions a couple of weeks ago, so this will be an interesting addition to the mix.

Shamefully, you have to go to Germany to get a decent DVD of both the silent and sound versions of Blackmail [Erpressung] (even though it uses NFTVA material. It also turns up in a nice, but now, I see, quite expensive box called Master of Suspense, though the selection of titles is a bit random: Champagne (1928), two Blackmails (1929), Murder (1930) and its German-language equivalent Mary [Mord - Sir John greift an] (1931), Rich and Strange (1931) Foreign Correspondent (1940), Suspicion (1941) and Under Capricorn (1949).

Hopefully the BFI's Olympic project of restoring all nine of Hitchcock's surviving silents and commissioning new scores will bring forth a grand box to replace some of the less than satisfactory transfers that we currently labour under, perhaps (and this is mere speculation) including this new Blackmail score.

In the meantime, there's still a chance to donate to the restoration fund and, of course, to have one last look in the loft for that print of The Mountain Eagle!

Waterloo (near Waterloo)

A quick note to point out (to those who don't already know) that I'll be at the Royal Festival Hall on Thursday 22 April introducing Karl Grune's 1929 film Waterloo, with the Philharmonia Orchestra playing the UK premiere of Carl Davis' score, under the composer himself. The film starts at 7.00 but I'll be talking at 5.45.

Benya Krik

It seems a good moment to mention a forthcoming screening of Benya Krik at the Purcell Room on 29 November 2009. Among other things, it's a fascinating view of early 20th-century Jewish life, apparently shot partly on location in Odessa.

Made in 1926, it was directed by Vladimir Vilner, while Isaac Babel based the script on his own short stories The King and How It Was Done in Odessa. The Russian texts and the 'kino-povest' (illustrated, left) are here, and Jeff Glodblum - that's Goldblum - reads The King (in English) here.

But Krik, the leader of a bunch of criminals, is hardly admirable and the film had something to offend everyone.

For starters, Krik's gang seems to be first precursors of, and then profiteers from the Revolution. Even though they're ultimately foiled by the Bolsheviks, the regime, obviously, was not impressed.

Meanwhile, Jewish groups were alarmed that it might inflame anti-Semitism.

The Soviet Union spent 1921-22 struggling economically in the face of what Lenin called "the elemental forces of the petty-bourgeois environment", before initiating a limited return to capitalism, even de-nationalising some enterprises - excluding, of course, the 'commanding heights' of heavy industry, banking etc. This 'New Economic Policy' became increasingly divisive: on one hand it made available luxuries - and even some essentials - that state and collective organisations were so signally failing to provide, but NEP-men were despised as spiv-like semi-gangsters and, plugging into Russian anti-Semitism, were often seen as Jewish.

In such an environment, Krik couldn't do right for doing wrong. Not only did it upset the authorities, but it was accused of ignoring the proletariat and concentrating on Jews (as if they were inimical!). But of course, it 'concentrates' on them only to criticise them as cynical petty thieves who are happy to trash tradition and their Jewishness in the pursuit of profit.

A few months later Babel's astonishing play Sunset opened, in which Krik, fearing disinheritance, beats his father up then arranges an abortion for his gentile girlfriend, and forces his sister into marriage to obtain the dowry. After all this, he is praised by the local rabbi.

Ethnically even more confusing is that Babel based Krik on the well-known Odessa gangster Mishka 'Yaponchik' (Mike the Little Jap) Vinnitsky, though I'm not sure why - he was Jewish and born in Odessa. Allegedly this is a portrait.

He's also the subject of Juliusz Machulski's Polish film Déjà vu (1988), which takes the action to Chicago: I suppose the archetypal US gangster city - it's where Balabanov's Brother II goes. Babel, perhaps seeing that he had created a potentially long-running franchise, didn't kill Krik in the books but he does die in Vilner's film, suffering a fate based on Mishka's death. Maybe Babel felt (or was advised) that the more popular medium needed to show retribution.

Krik is still a popular hero, largely thanks to the panache which Babel gave him - the Russian movie Мишка Япончик (Mishka Yaponchik, 2007) is part of the series Great Russian Adventurers! You can see a silent movie style trailer here.

Vilner's film was released in January 1927 but pleased nobody. It was almost immediately banned in Ukraine and never shown in Moscow. It has since fallen into that huge well of forgotten curiosities. After a couple more films, Vilner returned to the theatre, from when he had come.

Nevertheless Eisenstein recommended the script to Ivor Montagu, whose English translation was published by Collett's in 1935 in a numbered edition of 500. That sold well enough to go to another numbered 500. I've never seen this tome but I suspect it's the 1925 script that Babel wrote with Eisenstein, who later remembered the author observing that "writing a script is like calling the midwife out on your wedding night".

Eisenstein, whilst eating stewed apples, sharing vodkas with Malevich, and corresponding with Stefan Zweig, was dividing his time between Krik, 1905 (aka The Battleship Potemkin) and a wartime front-line brothel comedy called The Bazaar of Lust. In 1932 he praised the 'laconicism' of 'the vastly underestimated play Sunset', though it had been heavily criticised and dropped from the repertoire five years previously. Babel got permission to go to Paris for a year and on his return he and Eisenstein would work on the banned and destroyed Bezhin Meadow. In 1939 he was arrested for being an 'anti-Soviet Trotskyite spy' (recruited during his time in Paris) and 'a member of a terrorist conspiracy'. He was shot in 1940 and dumped in a mass grave.

You can get a silent DVD of Benya Krik from The National Centre for Jewish Film, but better go to the South Bank where klezmerish live music is provided by Robin Harris in a screening that's part of the Jewish Music Institute's Jewish Culture Day.

LFF

A quickie on the LFF. The launch was last week and after a few days of digesting the programme, here are a few of the things I'm looking forward to (and not).

As per usual the galas are nice for star-spotting (though you'll be spending most of your time at the Vue West End, while the Odeon is redeveloped to include a hotel, flats, restaurants and, sadly, smaller screens) But in reality, wouldn't you rather see the very beautiful restoration of Asquith's Underground, with live music from Neil Brand and ensemble? - actually, in a welcome reappraisal of the archive strand it is a gala! Or how about Hollis Frampton's epic seven-film sequence Hapax Legomena?

As to the East European stuff, for the minute I'll limit myself to brief details:

Tales from the Golden Age (Amintiri din epoca de aur). A Romanian-French black comedy set under Ceaucescu, that's been picked up by Trinity Films. More info here.

Help Gone Mad (Сумасшедшая помощь, Sumasshedshaya pomoshch'). A Beckettian-Kaurismakian 'bleak and lugubrious comedy' from Boris Khlebnikov.

Morphia (Морфий). Balabanov's latest, scripted by the late Sergei Bodrov Junior and based on Bulgakov. Must be a candidate for proper distribution but, as yet, hasn't been picked up.

Osadné. A documentary about the titular Slovakian village and its relationship to the rest of Europe.

Protektor. A Czech drama about a journalist and an actress who gradually realise the implications of the Nazi occupation of Bohemia and Moravia.

A Room and a Half (Полторы комнаты или сентиментальное путешествие на Родину, Poltory komnaty ili sentimental'noe puteshestvie na Rodinu). A fantasy that realises exiled poet Joseph Brodsky's imaginary incognito trip back to Russia. Director Khrzhanovsky is best-known for his animation (The Glass Harmonica is a classic) and this live-action film interpolates animated sequences.

St George Shoots the Dragon (Sveti Georgije ubiva azdahu). A WW1 Balkan epic from Srdjan Dragojevic (director of Pretty Flame, Pretty Village). It's allegedly the most expensive Serbian film ever, though if East European cinema teaches us anything, it's that there's no necessary connection between budget and quality.

Sweet Rush (Tatarak). Just as Britain belatedly gets to see Wajda's Katyn, the LFF launches his new one. Counterpointing the fictional story are Krystyna Janda's meditations on the death of her husband, cinematographer Edward Kłosiński, As yet, nobody's picked up up, but hopefully we won't have to wait too long for a proper release.

Who's Afraid of the Wolf? (Kdopak by se vlka bál?) A Czech family drama that merges into a fairy-tale world, and specifically Little Red Riding Hood. Sounds intriguing, and the LFF listing specifically mentions the score by Jan P Muchow.

Meanwhile, there's the Russian Wolfy (Волчок, Volchok). Another redemptive, fantasy-tinged childhood story, this time loosely based on the dysfunctional family of lead actress Yana Troyanova.

The Ferrari Dino Girl (Holka Ferrari Dino) is a welcome return for Jan Nemec. An autobiographical look at the footage he shot of the 1968 Soviet invasion, how he smuggled it out of the country and its fate thereafter.

Victor Alampiev's enigmatic avant-garde 8-minute My Absolution will be shown on a loop in the studio on 25 October for anyone to drop in for free.

As for shorts, there are three Polish and two Latvians. I wish they'd put them on as supports to appropriate features (like the LFF used to many years ago - even if they were often unannounced so you might end up seeing the same thing three times). But unless there's been a change of heart, here are links to the programmes in which they appear. From Poland: Chick, Don't Look Back (Nie Patrz Wstecz) and A Story of a Missing Car (Historia a Braku Samochodu). The Latvian pair, both children's films (When Apples Roll (Kad Aboli Ripo) and Magic Water (Dzivais Udens) are at least gathered in the same strand. Also, Romka-97 is a Finnish film set in St Petersburg.

In the British film Perestroika, Sarah Turner re-enacts her Trans-Siberian rail trip from twenty years ago, and readdresses the footage that she shot at the time.

Elsewhere, Trimpin: the Sound of Invention, a doc about the sonic experimenter looks worthwhile. Again, no distributor but it's showing at the ICA who, if they have any money, might be tempted to give it a week or so.

Double Take, a Hitchcock mockumentary-found-footage-CGI-mash-up looked hilarious in the LFF trailer.

Another mash-up - this time about love and creation, destruction and death - comes from Gustave Deutsch with FILM IST: a girl & a gun.

I'm hoping no-one holds me to the rash predictions I made about the 'inevitable' inclusion of Terry Gilliam's The Imaginarium of Dr Parnassus, but there's always the possibility that it's the surprise film.

Another change is that there'll be a proper awards night (again, back to the future). Fest director Sandra Hebron said "The idea is very much to raise the festival both in terms of its public address but also in terms of its relationship with the industry. A lot of the things we’re doing are about trying to bring the festival up to a level of parity with festivals internationally that operate on a similar scale." But at the same time:"We are not an A-grade competitive festival and at the moment we are not aspiring to be one" and that she would personally resist copying the likes of Cannes by having a high-profile competition strand because it would not be true to London's aim to be a festival for audiences. So, is this the start of a (slow) march towards making the LFF more Cannes-ish, Venetian or Berlinian? We shall see.

Finally, I would say that Nowhere Boy, Sam Taylor-Wood's John Lennon biopic (though the LFF brochure denies it that description) has divided the people that I've talked to. Except I can't. Perhaps it's just who I knock around with, but everyone is shuddering with horror at the prospect. Certainly the trailer makes it look like a standard biopic, with no evidence of the 'authorial signature' that the programme cites. But who knows...

Méliès

Anyone who's passing through Paris before the end of August would be well-advised to swing by the Cinémathèque Française, where there's an excellent Georges Méliès exhibition.

The title, Méliès le magicien says what it's all about: linking Méliès' cinema work to his previous incarnation as a magician and performer.

Having bought a theatre from the illusionist Robert-Houdin, Méliès set about creating a series of magic tricks and the exhibition includes various pieces of stage apparatus and costumes. From there is was a short step to the new magic of the cinématographe. Méliès really was a polymath as is shown by some of his exquisite designs (here's the moon-landing from his famous Voyage dans la lune (1902).

Combining the techniques of the black theatre with cinema's superimposition and the tricks of editing enabled Méliès to achieve some fantastically sophisticated special effects, while a model of his studio at Montreuil, gives an idea how he used perspective tricks to achieve some of his grandest effects.

Fantastic in both senses of the word, his films often feature devils (the very beautiful Les 400 farces du diable ~ 400 Tricks of the Devil (1906) or other mythical creatures (La sirène ~ The Mermaid, 1904), while dismemberment is a regular occurrence.

Unsuprisingly, I was intrigued by Le Mélomane (aka The Music Lover, 1902) in which people are decapitated and theirs heads are strung across the five wires of a telegraph line to make a couple of bars of music. As Méliès was based in the US at the time, the melody turns out to be a snippet of God Save America, (or, for Royalists on my side of the pond) God Save the King.

Stenka

Стенькa Разин(ъ)*



I thought that for my first entry I'd almost follow Mary Poppins' excellent advice and start at the very beginning (it's a very good place to start), but will ignore the King's overly prescriptive "and go on till the end, then stop." Which is a roundabout way of introducing a few thoughts about the first completed Russian fiction film, Stenka Razin (1908).

In 1907, eleven years after the Lumières' cinématographe shows in Moscow and Nizhny Novgorod, a Russian got round to producing a fiction film. Even then, Alexander Drankov's film of the Eden Theatre performing scenes from Pushkin's Boris Godunov wasn't actually completed. How it was decided that it wasn't completed isn't clear as it was never going to be the complete play, so perhaps it's more accurate to say that it wasn't released. But Drankov, never a man to sanction waste, used the footage in Scenes from Boyar Life.

Undeterred, he started again, this time taking the 16th-century Cossack rebel Stenka Razin as his theme, and basing it on the folk song From Beyond the Wooded Island, as historically a questionable source as Pushkin's Boris (you may know it in this form).




Russia, like every other country, started early with cinematic rewritings of history.

To be honest, Drankov wasn't the greatest of directors: he was more like the Del Boy Trotter of early Russian cinema (doubtless future posts will help make a convincing case). On Stenka he served as producer and cameraman, with the since-forgotten Vladimir Romashkov helming.

What we have is a six-minute film comprising twelve shots and a few intertitles. It starts with a bang as, on board a boat, we run alongside Stenka's marauding horde for a few shots. Then the narrative unfolds in a series of land-locked shots of around twenty seconds each, some of which comprise an entire scene. Back on the water, it ends with an abruptness that would have impressed Hitchcock, though it seems more like incompetence - you can almost hear Drankov shouting "Hurry up - we're running out of film!" and the moment after the climax we see the old Konets.

A less than full-frame version is available on DVD from the French company Bach Films. They've replaced many of the attractive Russian intertitles or overlaid them with French translations which are, at their best, accurate, in the most mundane and inappropriate typeface they could find, making no attempt to replicate the layout of the originals.

The most egregious example is the text of the letter, though Bach's approximation would give you no idea of that. Perhaps it's superfluous to point out that they don't run the same length as the originals, making the film slightly shorter than it should be, to the annoyance of the few people in the world who care about such things. Accessibility (at least to Francophones) is welcome but the advantage to Bach is that it also creates a newly copyrighted artefact, circumventing the nightmare that is Russian copyright law.

Stenka used to be available on a BFI VHS and still is from Milestone in the USA. It's a better transfer than Bach's but for reasons understood only by those who understand, the BFI VHS has a burnt-in time code throughout. Not a huge one, but annoying nonetheless. I don't know if it's on the Milestone release as well, but I wouldn't be surprised as, PAL/NTSC apart, in every other regard they look identical.

Sadly, nobody makes any nod towards Drankov's coup of getting Mikhail Ippolitov-Ivanov to adapt the very famous and popular folk song, which apparently led to instances of sing-along-a-Stenka. True to type, Drankov later fell out with both Ippolitov-Ivanov and writer Vasily Goncharov. To the best of my knowledge, it's never been recorded, but surely the double whammy of the first Russian fiction film and the first Russian film score deserves some sort of acknowledgment?

* For those mystified by the bracketed final letter, Russian orthography changed in 1918 and the terminal hard sign (the 'yer') was dropped. I include it for pedantry's sake - it reflects what we see on the poster but not what we would see today.