Let's re-appraise Lillian Gish

Thoughts on:
Annie Laurie (John S. Roberton, 1927) - Tue, 28 April
La Bohème (King Vidor, 1926) - Sun, 17 May



The Lillian Gish reappraisal starts here – who’s with me?

You wouldn’t have thought that Lillian Gish needed re-appraising. After all, she did virtually invent modern screen acting, in collaboration with noted bigot and revolutionary filmmaker D. W. Griffith, starring in his notorious Birth of a Nation, and the follow-up, Intolerance (contrary to popular rumour, that film wasn’t a mea culpa for the racist sentiment of his earlier film, but a response to people he thought were being intolerant of his worldview. Lol).

She does, though.

The mighty Gish wasn’t name-checked at all in Paul Merton’s most recent series on the history of silent film, appearing just once as he made a facile point about over-acting. In the book I’m reading at the moment, William J. Mann’s Wisecracker, the author gleefully notes that Gish had been excluded from a contemporary list of people with a commodity known as ‘It’ (broadly sex appeal), writing that she “was widely presumed to have no sex drive at all”. Even in the introduction to Annie Laurie at London’s Barbican Centre on Sunday, the marketing person from the Hippodrome Festival who presented the film had just three things to say about Gish: that she had made Annie Laurie to try to change her screen image to something sexier, that she was one of the hardest working actresses in silent cinema, and that when she emoted, people outside the studio walls often came running to see if she was OK, as she was so loud they thought she was in genuine distress. Aside from the fact I’m calling bullshit on that, since post-1920 soundstages were almost all indoors, and encased in massive studio lots, there’s a more important point at stake here – the reputation of arguably the greatest actress who ever lived.

Louise Brooks, who was no-one in terms of popularity in the heyday of silent film but is now an iconic figure across the Western world, wrote a superb essay on Gish in the 1970s, where she cast the actress as a proto-feminist who bought and adapted her own stories, chose her directors, starred in them and even handled the publicity. She argued, very persuasively, that Gish’s career as a leading actress was wrecked not by changing tastes but by sexist studio heads who resented her power and her pay packet. (Incidentally, it’s worth noting that the ass-kicking, non-conformist Gish was also a staunch Republican who was vehemently opposed to child labour laws, having gone on the stage as a kid to support her family!)

Beyond the trendsetting, though, there’s something just as important: the sheer acting talent of the woman. There are only a handful of artists in the field of acting whose mastery of the medium is so complete that they seem to be doing something utterly new: Jason Robards, Emily Watson, Wendy Hiller – it doesn’t happen very often. Gish is one of those. You can see it in Annie Laurie. Everything that works here does so because of her.

The plotting is perfunctory – some fictionialised, Hollywoodised rubbish based broadly around the Glencoe Massacre, as Gish’s aristocrat falls in love with the world’s burliest man (Norman Kerry) and finds herself caught between warring Scottish clans – and the first half is frankly quite boring, but the second has some magical moments, including tremendous use of the titular song, and two action scenes in which Gish loses her shit. The idea that she was melodramatic simply isn’t true: hysteria was just a card she could play, and play beautifully. Here she does it for, what, 15 seconds, then 20, across two hours? It’s in keeping with the plot, and artfully done, creating two of the best sequences in the movie.

The second is one of the few times that director John S. Robertson actually does anything half decent: a thrilling, high-octane chase, with a wide-eyed Gish legging it up a mountainside, pursued by a dude with a gun, the camera scurrying ahead of her, framed on her face and frame. An interesting footnote, though: Robertson was later the local, Stetson-wearing eccentric in the small Los Angeles town where Byrds songwriter Chris Hillman grew up, and the band’s song Old John Robertson (from their classic Notorious Byrd Brothers record) is about how he was ridiculed by the local kids, who knew nothing of his past as a Hollywood director. Here, the music accompanying his film came from Shona Mooney’s folk trio, playing their specially commissioned score for just the second time, which was both inventive and familiar, in all the right places.

And throughout, Gish – while plagued by personal problems that meant she saw this one as simply a job of work – is transcendent. Take the moment where the plot promotes that pernicious myth that, whatever they say, women do want you to kiss them. A load of dangerous, sexist bollocks, but her character’s conflicted emotions: fear of him, fear of herself, anger, confusion, arousal and joy, are beautifully conveyed in just a few flickers of a moment. It’s not sexless, she’s not over-acting, and there’s no-one rushing from outside a studio wall to check she’s OK. It’s art, pure and simple.

And no-one rocks a Tam o'Shanter like Lillian Gish.

***



The main ethical problem with La Bohème - based on the same stories as Puccini's opera - is that it's a romance in which the hero (John Gilbert) is a violent, suspicious and abusive bully who spends the first hour gaslighting his girlfriend.

Its main technical problems are that the script is alternately melodramatic or lacking in incident, that the sets are largely dull, and that most of the cast is mediocre.

Lillian Gish, though, is absolutely mesmerising, as another of her gentle, selfless heroines tortured by an unkind world, exhibiting a range of complex emotion, rendered both subtly and explosively, that's pretty much off-the-scale in terms of artistic genius.

And King Vidor, while never approaching the lyrical, ironic brilliance he displays in something like The Crowd, does stud this sometimes clunky-looking film with a handful of gorgeous shots, most utilising windows, railings or Gish's beautiful, matchlessly expressive visage.

Gilbert's performance, by contrast, is pretty big and unfulfilling: like a parody of silent movie acting by someone who's only seen two of them.

But in the end the film's myriad flaws won't be what stay in the mind. It won't even be Edward Everett Horton looking terrifyingly young as one of Gilbert's bohemian cohorts. Instead it'll be Gish telling her lover that he's foolish to be jealous, a look of fond, intense compassion on her funny little 1920s face.

Annie Laurie: (2.5)
La Bohème: (3)

***

Thanks for reading. #GishFest15 continues with A Romance of Happy Valley and True Heart Susie (both screening as part of BFI Southbank's D. W. Griffith season) over the next couple of weeks.

Lincoln on film: 1915-2012

"I... emancipate... your... milk-slave!"

To shamelessly piggy-back on – sorry, "celebrate" – the release of Spielberg's Lincoln, I've compiled a maddeningly incomplete round-up of big-screen appearances by the only president you can imitate by taking some old hair off your hairbrush and holding it up to your chin with your thumb.

As anyone who's just been searching on IMDb knows, Honest Abe has appeared as a character in more than 300 movies and TV shows. He's been given the biopic treatment from three pivotal figures in cinema: noted racist and inventor of movies as we know them, D. W. Griffith, the greatest American director of them all, John Ford, and now the creator of the popcorn movie (and possibly popcorn itself), Steven Spielberg. He's fought vampires, been saved from assassination by John Kennedy and needlessly contravened the separation of powers just to please Shirley Temple. Here are some of the most memorable Lincolns on film (i.e. the ones I've seen).

Joseph Henabery in The Birth of a Nation (D. W. Griffith, 1915) – Griffith's hateful, bilious epic sees America overrun by scary black people after the assassination of Lincoln. It's morally repugnant but technically groundbreaking, while Henabery makes for an excellent Abe – he certainly wears more eye-shadow than any later incarnation. Griffith's first talkie was Abraham Lincoln, a biopic starring Walter Huston.



Frank McGlynn, Sr. in The Littlest Rebel (1935), The Prisoner of Shark Island (1936), The Plainsman (1936) and many others – McGlynn first played Lincoln on stage in 1919, toured in the part for two years, revisited the role for a short film in 1924 and featured as the president in a slew of '30s movies. The Littlest Rebel has him as an avuncular, folksy figure who loves kids and has time for everyone. Will he grant a last-minute reprieve to adorable curly top Shirley Temple's widowed father? If he doesn't, Depression-era audiences are probably going to be a bit miffed. John Ford presented Lincoln as an almost Christ-like figure throughout his work. In The Prisoner of Shark Island, which deals with the supposedly wrongful imprisonment of Dr Samuel Mudd - the physician who treated Lincoln's killer - McGlynn reprises his most famous role, getting a band to play Dixie, before a chilling, unforgettable and low-key restaging of the assassination that feels eerily like the real thing. He was miraculously reincarnated for Cecil B. De Mille's The Plainsman later the same year, kicking off that festival of questionable history in fine style.

John Carradine in Of Human Hearts (1938) – For those who found the Lincoln in The Littlest Rebel a bit too grittily realistic, here's John Carradine as The Great Emancipator, who has a few words to say to Jimmy Stewart about how he should be nicer to his mother. It's possible this may be a misuse of Lincoln's image. Let's see if the scene crops up in Spielberg's film too.

Henry Fonda in Young Mr Lincoln (1939) – Having featured Lincoln as a supporting character in his epic "coming of the railways" Western, The Iron Horse, John Ford gave him a film of his own: a peerless slice of Americana. Wearing the iffiest false nose this side of Looper – making him look a lot like Gary Neville – Fonda makes for a touching, funny and, well, young Mr Lincoln, who expounds much of his energy standing up for the little guy, but has an extraordinary predilection for laying down zingers. The star had expressed some reservations about being cast as the former president, saying it would be like playing Jesus, only for Ford to put him in his place. “You think Lincoln's The Great Emancipator?” he said derisively. “He's just a jack-legged lawyer from Springfield.” Written by Lamar Trotti – who'd penned a similar piece of legal-minded myth-making for the director, Judge Priest – this semi-fictionalised hymn to Ford's favourite president is overflowing with symbolism, humanism and subtle foreshadowing. It also contains arguably the most beautiful and moving scene of Ford's career, a wintry graveside chat, with Fonda bidding goodbye to his lost love. Simply put, it's by far the best Lincoln movie I've ever seen.



A giant piece of marble as the Lincoln Memorial in Mr Smith Goes to Washington (1939) – He's just a bit of marble. He doesn't even move. He's being back-projected in a Hollywood studio. But he inspires our hero. Sob. Since 1939, a succession of filmmakers have basically stolen Capra's idea, which is used when anyone is in Washington in a film and feeling a bit sad. A statue of Lincoln comes to life in Night at the Museum 2. The less said about that, the better.

Leslie Kimmell in The Tall Target (1951) – He wouldn't be so tall if he took off that sodding hat. Can Sgt John Kennedy (Dick Powell) prevent Lincoln being shot? For now, I suppose.



A massive stone carving of Lincoln's face in North by Northwest (1959) – Hitchcock's best film of the '50s (no, you are wrong) includes a terrific suspense sequence at Mount Rushmore. It's also worth mentioning that the crack squad of Team America are based inside the mountain and exit via Lincoln's mouth, which is frankly a brilliant touch.



Charles L. Brame as Lincoln in Heaven in Happy Gilmore (1996) – If you ask me, this is where Lincoln officially sold out, looking down from Heaven to congratulate Adam Sandler's annoying golfer.

Tom Willett as the resurrected Lincoln in Kiss Kiss Bang Bang (2005) – Hurray - all the characters are alive again! And so's Abraham Lincoln!

Pete Antico as The Ghost of Abraham Lincoln in Black Dynamite (2009) – One of the more laboured non-sequiturs in this spotty spoof has Black Dynamite (Michael Jai White) aided by the ghost of Lincoln in a White House fight-to-the-death against President Nixon. Honest Abe karate-chops Tricky Dicky.



Benjamin Walker in Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter (2011) – I saw a trailer for this. It looked a bit crap.



Daniel Day-Lewis in Lincoln (2012) – A faithful 90-minute biopic, followed by a superfluous hour in which Lincoln helps a child thwart his parents' divorce and then they send a homesick alien back to his folks. Probably.

I know I missed out Abe Lincoln in Illinois. That's because I'm watching it tomorrow. The actors who've appeared as Lincoln most often are, if you're interested, Frank McGlynn, Sr. (14), Benjamin Chapin (14), Ralph Ince (9), Francis Ford - John's brother - (8) and Raymond Massey (5). Thanks for reading. Let me know your favourite below. Ah, gwarn.

Paul, D.W. Griffith and Hancock's 46 minutes of magic - Reviews #56

CINEMA: Paul (Greg Mottola, 2011) - As Simon Pegg and Nick Frost said on Radio 5 Live recently: if you're spending $50m of someone else's money, you've got to make a certain kind of film. So gone are the offbeat sensibility and obscure pop culture references of the show that made their name - Spaced - and the genre movies that followed, Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz. The nods to E.T. and The X-Files here are more like headbutts. Gone too is the razor-sharp sense of humour. There are plenty of laughs, but the humour is so broad you could park a spaceship on it. This one's as straight-down-the-line as a movie about a foul-mouthed, chain-smoking alien is going to get. Pegg and Frost play a couple of nerds who plan to follow their visit to San Francisco's comic convention with a tour of the Deep South's UFO hotspots. They've barely gotten started before a car flips over in front of their camper van and - examining the wreckage - they come across Paul. He's an alien. A peaceful but rude alien. And he needs to get home. But before that the mismatched gang are going to have to do battle with an FBI agent (Jason Bateman), two childish cops, a couple of good ol' boys, a shadowy megalomaniac and a gun-totin' father. Yes, I think they probably have seen The Blues Brothers. One can lament the absence of Edgar Wright, the stylish director who co-wrote Shaun and Hot Fuzz with Pegg and was single-handedly responsible for their frenetic visual style. And it's easy to pick holes in a film that jettisons its creators' distinctiveness in search of a bigger audience - though there is at least one blessing: Pegg said he wanted to make more of the creationism subplot, the most smug and misguided bit of the film. But at the same time, it seems churlish to be too down on a film this solidly entertaining, with its likeable performances, strong supporting cast and a dozen genuine laughs. (2.5)

***



Sally of the Sawdust (D. W. Griffith, 1925) is a nice film from the director of The Birth of a Nation, with nary a heroic Klansman in sight. The engrossing storyline, adapted from a hit stage musical, sees carnival barker W. C. Fields looking to restore orphaned waif Carol Dempster to her rightful place in society. The much-maligned Dempster is actually very good here (save for a bit of over-acting among the rushes as the police close in on her), backed by a couple of unimpeachable heavyweights: Fields and Effie Shannon. There are flaws. We could probably have done without the knockabout comedy for a start. The slapstick interludes aren't as jarring as in Way Down East, where the wrenchingly powerful narrative is offset by some of the most inscrutable alleged comic relief ever slapped onto the screen. For one thing, it's quite funny. But it does jar a little with the dramatic elements, particularly when we see Dempster striving desperately to avoid capture and ruin, intercut with Fields bouncing down a hill in an old banger. And there's also the sense of a missed opportunity. For a film that's not afraid to be melodramatic, the climactic reveal doesn't really carry an emotional punch at all, let alone the assault on the tear ducts I was anticipating. But I liked the film on the whole: interesting story, strong performances and - once you adapt to Griffith's style, revolutionary in 1915, a touch staid 10 years on - very watchable indeed. (3)

Trivia notes: Alfred Lunt, who plays Dempster's love interest, was Monty Clift's mentor and acting tutor. The film was remade as the talkie Poppy, also starring Fields, in 1936.

***



Hancock (Peter Berg, 2008) - If the credits had rolled after 46 minutes, I'd be raving about this as one of the best films I've seen in years. Hilarious, profane and bracingly original, with a killer performance from Will Smith and a deliciously dry one from Jason Bateman. Unfortunately it completely falls apart after that, morphing into a metaphysical love story of rare incoherence and tedium. Rarely have I come across a film - or a book, or a record, or a meal - with such a gaping gulf between the quality of its first half and its second. Gaah. The script was in development for 10 years, being fundamentally re-written with no input from the original author. Could that by any chance be something to do with it? (2.5)

***



Working Girl (Mike Nichols, 1988) is the second most '80s movie of all time (The Secret of My Success, obviously) - a hymn to business (urgh, business) with a sweet performance from Melanie Griffith, a fun one from Sigourney Weaver (boo, hiss) and a slightly lacklustre turn from Harrison Ford, making a then rare foray into romantic comedy. The story is formulaic in the extreme and there aren't many jokes, but it's entertaining and Griffith is an appealing presence. (2.5)

***



Out of Sight (Steven Soderbergh, 1998) is an enjoyable comic thriller, scripted by Scott Frank, though patently not one of the best films of its decade, as it's regularly described. The leads are good - I've never seen Clooney and Lopez as attractive or amusing as they are here - the labyrinthine, time-shifting script is mostly pretty neat and there are some strong scenes, including an opening bank robbery that's the ultimate in lo-fi insouciance. But the movie also drags in places, with an abundance of uninteresting subplots, and it's never quite as clever, smart or sexy as it seems to think. (3)

***



Anne of Green Gables (George Nichols, Jr., 1934) - This is a short, sentimental highlights package that turned out to be RKO's sleeper hit of 1934. Anne Shirley is Anne Shirley (she used her character's name for the rest of her screen career), the cheery, melodramatic, eternally appealing redhead created by L. M. Montgomery. Mistakenly placed with adoptive parents who were rather hoping for the boy they'd requested, her hot temper proceeds to get her into scrapes with friends, neighbours and that cheeky, good-looking boy in her class. There are production and pacing issues. The first hour is a little lacking in atmosphere, then - upon finding loads of the stuff - the film proceeds to race through the rest of the narrative at breakneck speed, with a succession of short scenes that cover five years in about five seconds. It also omits the most memorable bit of the book: Anne dyeing her hair green. For all that, this is a really gentle and rewarding movie, with absolutely charming performances, particularly from Shirley and O. P. Heggie, best-known for his turn as the blind hermit in Universal's seminal Bride of Frankenstein the following year. (3)

***



Bee Movie (Steve Hickner and Simon J. Smith, 2007) - The story doesn't always work, but the script's very funny and the animation's good. Not Pixar-good. But good. Apparently it got a bit of a kicking on release, which is a shame. Unless the critics were suggesting that a relationship between a bee and a woman constitutes quite an inappropriate romantic subplot, in which case they would be correct. (3)