Le Giornate del Cinema Muto 2006 Sommario / Contents

Fred Paul (1880-1967) is one of the undeservedly forgotten figures of
British silent cinema. Born in Lausanne, he first appeared as an actor in
British films in 1910, and was soon playing leading roles. In 1916 he
abandoned acting to turn director, making a speciality of the “famous
players in famous plays” style of the time, starring stage luminaries in such
literary subjects as The Vicar of Wakefield, The Second Mrs.Tanqueray,
and Lady Windermere’s Fan (all 1916).The culmination of this period of
his career was Masks and Faces (1917), designed to raise money for the
Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, and featuring every major figure of the
British theatre of the day, including George Bernard Shaw and J.M. Barrie.
After Masks and Faces, Paul seems temporarily to have left films, for
reasons that have not yet been explained. His career as both director and
actor resumed in 1920, and in 1921 he played the title role in Percy Nash’s
How Kitchener Was Betrayed. In 1923-1924 he played Nayland Smith,
the nemesis of the villainous Dr. Fu Manchu (Harry Agar Lyons), in more
than a score of short films based on the Sax Rohmer thrillers. In 1926 Paul
and Lyons appeared as the antagonists Lt. John Byrne and Dr. Sin Fang in a
series of shorts evidently derived from the earlier films.
As a director his work was henceforth limited to short subjects, and barely
survived the coming of sound, though he managed to make a handful of
musical shorts between 1929 and 1931. His “Grand Guignol” series is
barely mentioned by historians of the British cinema, yet reveals him as a
true master of the art of the short story film. Despite the name, the series
has little connection with the Parisian theatre of horrors, and Michael Eaton
considers that the generic title was suggested by the repertory of playlets
presented as “Grand Guignol” at the Little Theatre, London, in 1920, with
Sybil Thorndike as one of the regular cast. Paul’s description of his films, in
an article in Kinematograph Weekly (24 March 1921), significantly titled
“Concentrated Production”, sounds less like Grand Guignol than Feuillade’s
manifesto for La Vie telle qu’elle est:“I attempt to show life as it really is,
its sordidness and cruelty; the diabolical humour of the destiny we call fate,
which plays with us as it will, raises us to high places or drags us to the
gutter; allows one man to rob the widows and orphans of their all and
makes a criminal of the starving wretch who in his misery has stolen a
mouthful of bread.”
The five series of “Grand Guignol” films, numbering 28 in all, were issued
between March and October 1921. Paul himself directed all the films,
though the actor and future director Jack Raymond (1886-1953) has a codirection
credit on the last eight. Paul himself was credited with three of the
scripts; of the other nine writers individually involved, only one is now
remembered, the distinguished Jewish novelist G.B. Stern (1890-1973; her
story “The Ugly Dachshund” was filmed by Disney in 1966).
From the original 28 films, 14 are so far known to exist in the National
Film and Television Archive, while the Archive Film Agency has recently
discovered two titles. The films (whose rediscovery began at the 2006
Nottingham British Silent Cinema Festival, thanks to some dogged
research by Paul Marygold) show a consistency in the story-telling
method. The narratives are well constructed, concentrated without ever
seeming rushed; and characters are established fast and confidently.
Surprisingly, the stories tend to embrace wide time periods, with a
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preference for a pattern of cause (in a distant past) and effect (in the
dramatic present). Paul, abetted by his writers and equally unsung actors,
knew how to capture and hold the attention. – DAVID ROBINSON
UN FILM MISTERIOSO / THE MYSTERY FILM
A LIVELY AFFAIR (US, c.1912?)
Regia/dir: ?; cast: ?; 35mm, 490 ft., 7’ (18 fps), Library of Congress.
Didascalie in inglese / English intertitles.
Questa vivace commedia sulle suffragette è proprio un mistero: su
di essa non sembrano esistere infatti documenti o informazioni di
sorta. I suoi divertenti rovesciamenti di genere vedono le donne
sgattaiolare fuori per andare a giocare a poker e a spassarsela,
mentre i mariti se ne stanno a casa a prendersi malamente cura di
quei bambini che non sono ancora stati abbandonati per strada.
Quando, in seguito ad un alterco, le donne vengono portate in
prigione, sono gli uomini a ridersela. Il film è privo dei titoli di testa,
ma per il resto appare sostanzialmente completo. Dalle didascalie
sappiamo che s’intitola A Lively Affair; per andare alla “riunione del
Club delle Suffragette”, le donne percorrono le vie di quella che
pare essere una città dell’Est degli Stati Uniti, ma il resto è un
mistero. Contribuisce a confondere le cose la presenza di un altro
cortometraggio con lo stesso titolo, sempre del 1912, che dovrebbe
ragionevolmente essere anche l’anno del nostro film. (Quest’altro
Lively Affair, che pare sia andato perduto, è un Vitagraph con Leo
Delaney nei panni di un ricco “uomo d’affari” che ha una realzione
con la domestica interpretata da Clara Kimball Young.) La National
Film Preservation Foundation intende includere questa commediola
sulle suffragette nel suo prossimo set di DVD, Treasures from
American Film Archives 3, dedicato ai primi film sulle problematiche
sociali, perciò confidiamo nell’esperrto pubblico delle Giornate per
una qualche identificazione. Forse lo stile delle didascalie risulta
familiare? (Selig Polyscope?) Qualche interprete è riconoscibile?
(Mabel Van Buren?) Eventuali fondate ipotesi possono essere inviate
all’indirizzo e-mail info@filmpreservation.org. Grazie anticipate!
SCOTT SIMMON
Here’s a puzzle: There seems to be no record or information of any sort
about this high-spirited suffragette comedy. Its amusing gender role
reversals find women rushing off to play poker and carouse while their
husbands are left home to tend incompetently to those children who aren’t
just abandoned on the sidewalk.When the squabbling women are hauled
to jail by the police, the men get the last laugh.The film lacks its head title
but appears otherwise essentially complete. From its intertitles, we know it
is called A Lively Affair, and the women travel for their “Suffragette Club
meeting” down the streets of what appears to be an eastern U.S. city – but
beyond that it’s a mystery. One confusion arises from there being another
short film of the same name in 1912 – which is a reasonable guess for the
year of this film as well. (The other Lively Affair, apparently lost, is a
Vitagraph production with Leo Delaney as a rich “man of affairs” involved
FUORI QUADRO
OUT OF FRAME