Film Notes

BEAU GESTE 1926

Director: Herbert Brenon
Producer: Jesse L. Lasky, Adolph Zukor
Cast: Ronald Colman, Neil Hamilton, Ralph Forbes, Alice Joyce, Mary Brian, Noah Beery, Norman Trevor, William Powell, Victor McLaglen, Donald Stuart, Mickey McBan, Maurice Murphy, Philippe De Lacy, Betsy Ann Hisle
Adaptation: Herbert Brenon, John Russell
Screenwriter: Paul Schofield, Based on the best selling novel by Percival Christopher Wren
Cinematography: J. Roy Hunt
Editor: Julian Johnson

This stunning new restoration of the original Beau Geste allows the full haunting spectacle of honour, sacrifice and treachery set against the sweeping desert landscape and the French Foreign Legion to shine once again.

Recently director Quentin Tarantino stated that, “it was the best film he’s seen this year”.

But let’s get better acquainted with one of the first star directors in the USA, Herbert Brenon. His name is now rarely mentioned in the top 5 or even 10 best known silent era directors, but it should be as his artistic and quality output stands up to the test. Starting his career at IMP as a screenwriter and editor, he took the director’s chair in 1911 and turned out 2 of Universal’s ambitious productions-Ivanhoe in 1913 and 1914s Neptune’s Daughter. Several studios changes followed before he finally set his cap at Paramount in 1923. It was there that he achieved his greatest creative heights, carving out Peter Pan in 1924 and A Kiss for Cinderella in 1925 and eventually the studio’s crown jewel-the massive production screen adaptation of the popular novel Beau Geste.

From the Rialto Pictures website: “Beau Geste thrums with action and drama as a trio of British brothers — future Oscar-winner Ronald Colman, Neil Hamilton forty years before he became Commissioner Gordon on TV's Batman, and the prolific Ralph Forbes — find themselves in the French Foreign Legion and at the mercy of a sadistic commanding officer (Noah Beery). William Powell shines in the supporting cast, eight years before he portrayed Nick Charles in the The Thin Man movie series.

One of Paramount Pictures' most popular films of the 1920s, Brenon's epic spectacle inspired multiple sequels, remakes, and, eventually, parodies.
Awards:
Medal of Honor (Photoplay Awards, 1927)- a precursor to the Academy Awards
Best Pictures of the Month - November (Photoplay Awards, 1927)
Best Performances of the Month - November, Noah Beery, Ronald Colman, and William Powell (Photoplay Awards, 1927)
Restoration
The 2 year restoration undertaken by The Maltese Film Works, Robert A. Harris and James Mockoski; The Library of Congress; The Film Preserve and The San Francisco Silent Film Festival supervising and in collaboration with the Museum of Modern Art, the UCLA Film and Television Archive, and Paramount Pictures.

Not one of the six different film sources used were free from issues-the 1939 Paramount print that was struck for director William A. Wellman as he prepared for the remake was the last known print. That print, held at LoC is now missing the left side of the image. All print sources had image quality issues. The original negative went through major wear and tear with numerous splices. The restorers certainly had their work cut out for them. In the end, they used the 35mm nitrate print struck for Wellman, 3 reels of the 35mm tinted nitrate print held at UCLA, a 35mm Safety Dupe of those same 3 reels, a 35mm Diacetate print from the MoMA, a 35mm Safety Dupe that had softer focus and a 16mm reduction reversal from the George Eastman Museum.

All this is another important reminder that even famous films rarely come through time unscathed. While there’s still a few minutes missing, this print is now the closest to the original roadshow version. Up until now, the best way to have seen the classic was through inferior transfers on 16mm films with questionable quality. No wonder it faded from view.

The original running time at the August premiere in NYC was 129 minutes. It was re-cut twice, and from the original camera negative-in late 1926 and then again in 1927 for its general release to run at 119 min at 20fps.

Production

Unquestionably one of the best films of the late Silent Era, Beau Geste is also one of the most impressive and ambitious in the adventure genre due to its many layers. Brilliantly adapted for the screen by John Russell and Paul Schofield from P. C. Wren’s bestselling 1924 novel, that included an opening intertitle of a completely fabricated new “Arab proverb, the script allowed all Brenon’s to weave the interlinking strands of mystery, action and treachery around the love and loyalty of the Geste brothers.

Originally planned to film in the book’s original locales-England, France and North Africa, an ongoing war in what is now Morocco forced the studio to relocate to the Imperial Dunes in SW California. While the sets and the story surrounding those scenes are worth noting, the incredible feat of creating the production camp nearby deserved equal billing. It was there, that the stellar production design by Julian Boone Fleming and beautiful cinematography of J Roy Hunt comes to the forefront and should be included with the best from the Silent Era.

This from the New York Times August 22, 1926

“There for three months Mr. Brenon worked enthusiastically in producing Mr. Wren's story. It was the director's theory that well-fed, well-housed and contented men make the best workers. Therefore a commissary was supplied by motor trucks and sand sleds from Yuma with the best fresh fruits and vegetables obtainable. It is said that something like one hundred cooks and assistants prepared the meals for the army of picture makers. In the camp there were 2,000 head of live stock, including horses, mules and camels. Seventeen freight trains at different times brought supplies from Los Angeles to Yuma, and motor trucks relayed these supplies as far as they could go. When shifting sands stopped these trucks, a plank road was built for a mile and a half, and one hundred men had the job of keeping this road from being buried in the sand. Fifty tons of supplies were hauled over this plank road every day.

Mr. Brenon was in absolute command of the camp. His production superintendent, Frank Blount, looked after the building of the camp and maintaining its efficiency. Military methods were employed. Reveille was sounded at 5:30 A. M., and breakfast was served half an hour later. A long rest was taken at noon to avoid filming during the hottest part of the day. The evening meal was served at 7 o'clock and at 10 o'clock the bugler sounded taps, and the 2,000 men in the camp were then only too ready to take to their beds.”

LAFFS IN THE AFT: JUST KIDDING

THE KID + BRATS + SURPRISE

Since the dawn of cinema, mini mischief makers like the Our Gang kids, ‘Sunshine’ Sammy Morrison, Mickey ‘Himself’ McGuire (Mickey Rooney), Baby Peggy, Malcom ‘Big Boy’ Sebastian, etc. made the silver screen their playground. Cue the kids!

FEATURE PRESENTATION: Charlie Chaplin in THE KID 1921 with Jackie Coogan

“A picture with a smile — perhaps a tear.’

With that opening title, Charlie Chaplin made it clear that his first feature length film would present deeper, richer Charlie — no longer a slapstick tramp with hints of melancholy, the Chaplin of THE KID maintains all the comic elements that made him the most recognizable film star in the world, while amping up the drama to create a wholly human serio-comic tale.

As the titular “kid”, 5-year-old Jackie Coogan was the perfect vessel for Chaplin to pour his own childhood pain and survival instincts into. Coogan’s performance is almost otherworldly, and he and Chaplin work spectacularly well together as two halves of the same soul.

TSFF’s screening is accompanied by an orchestral score composed by Chaplin himself for THE KID’s 50^th anniversary theatrical reissue in 1971.

PLUS: Stan Laurel & Oliver Hardy in BRATS 1930

Producer Hal Roach said of Laurel & Hardy: “Basically, the Stan and Ollie characters were childlike, innocent. The best visual comedians imitate children really. No one could do this as well as Laurel and Hardy.”

In BRATS, Laurel and Hardy take Roach’s words literally as they play poppa to their own doppelganger progeny, Little Stan and Little Ollie.

TFSS is presenting the extremely rare silent version of Laurel & Hardy’s 9th “talkie” — prepared for movie houses not yet wired for sound by 1930. It likely hasn’t been seen in any theatre in nearly 100 years!

But wait — there’s more: We’ve lined up a couple of surprises, including the very first child star on celluloid and the biggest little child star you never heard of!

-notes by programmer Chris Seguin

LOVE 1927

Director: Edmund Goulding

Cinematographer: William Daniels
Screenplay: Frances Marion, adapted from the novel Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy
Editor: Hugh Wynn
Producer: Irving Thalberg
Greta Garbo, John Gilbert, Brandon Hurst, Philippe de Lacy
“Gilbert and Garbo in Love” screamed theater marques and movie magazines in December 1927. How could it be otherwise in the rapidly growing Hollywood fandom universe with a nationwide public keenly lapping up any type of story-true or not. The couple took off when news of top star John Gilbert and still newcomer Greta Garbo red-hot romance started when filming Flesh and the Devil 1927. Fans began minute notes of every smouldering look, every sexually charged scene, and MGM took note of that and was only too eager to capitalize on it. So, it came as no surprise that what eventually hit the screen was a (very) loose adaptation of Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina. The studio did not go unrewarded as the fans loved it to the tune of it becoming one of MGM’s top films at the box office.
Adding to the glamour of the moment was top rated director Edmund Goulding and the exceptional William Daniels at the camera making beautiful people more so. It’s a good-looking film all round.

But it was initially to be a far different picture. The original Anna was to be Lillian Gish-when that fell through, Garbo was in but not with her director of choice nor her co-star of choice. The original director was Dmitri Buchowetski, and Ricardo Cortez was Vronsky. Cortez had already been filming for a while when word came down that Garbo was sick and he might as well go to another film. Then Garbo got what she wanted--Gilbert as Vronsky, Goulding as director. The studio, concerned about the original book ending, had two endings filmed-one in keeping with the book and the other a bit different, giving the choice to different exhibitors. Both ending proved to be successful at the box office.

Time wrote in December 1927, “It isn’t Tolstoy, but it is John Gilbert and Greta Garbo, beautifully presented and magnificently acted.” Variety, “They are in a fair way of becoming the biggest box office team this country has yet known.”

Gilbert and Garbo would appear in one more silent film together, A Woman of Affairs in 1929, and one talking picture, Queen Christina, in 1933. Garbo would go on to remake Love in a more faithful retelling in 1937s Anna Karenina with Frederic Marsh taking the Vronsky role.

By their last film together, their lives had dramatically shifted. Their romance had cooled. The sound era began and Garbo remained a huge star. Gilbert, The Great Lover, couldn’t find his footing again after such a stellar strand of remarkable films in the mid 1920s-He Who Gets Slapped, King Vidor’s Bardelys the Magnificent, The Big Parade and La Boheme, Stroheim’s The Merry Widow, Tod Browning’s The Show and the little seen Monte Bell directed Man, Woman and Sin plus the 3 he made with Garbo. His well-known animosity with his studio coupled with changing audience tastes and poorly received films fueled his alcoholism and the steep decline of his career and he died of a heart attack at age 38 in 1938.

Both actors suffered from common myth making. Garbo was often cited as a recluse-she was not-Gilbert faired much worse as he’s so often associated with the “silent stars couldn’t transition to talkies” usually due to his high-pitched voice or “sabotage by the studio of his voice”-yet no mention of voice issue in contemporary critical reviews were noted. While Garbo retains her fandom, Gilbert has dropped out of sight and unjustly so.

Recommended Biographical Reading: Dark Star by Leatrice Gilbert Fountain (John Gilbert)

Garbo by Barry Paris

Greta Garbo: The First Modern Woman by Scott Reisfield

STRIKE 1925

A Master Filmmaker Debuts.

That Sergei Eisenstein was to become a master of his craft was apparent from the beginning. In creating the story of a pre-revolutionary strike set in 1903, triggered by a worker’s suicide after an unjust allegation of theft and its subsequent brutal suppression, a young 26-year-old Eisenstein invested it with montage, parallel editing, expanded time and intercutting of symbolic images. Using those techniques built both the story and deepened the emotional impact as it entwined with the characters. It would be a coming out as a director that would change the look of cinema for many. Apart from Orson Welle’s feature debut, Citizen Kane, it marks one of the most profound cinematic entrances in film history.
It has all the seeds of his later works but the with an edginess that anchors with the rawness of the story. While certainly, his next film and masterpiece, Battleship Potemkin, was more mature and focused, for some, this first feature spoke for its sheer brilliance and power.
Years later, Eisenstein described “Stachka (Strike) has being “awkward, angular, surprising, bold. It contains the seeds of nearly all the elements that, in more mature form, appear in my works of later years. It’s a typical first work, bristly and pugnacious, as I was in those years. These qualities spill over beyond the limits of the film.”
Strike was never to be a “stand alone” film, as it was originally to be part of a much larger 7 part series entitled “to the Dictatorship” about the proletariats’ movement toward that dissolution. Each part was supposed to teach the mechanics of the class struggle through a specific example. In the case of Strike (the 5^th instalment), it was setting up and operating a strike. However, Strike was the only one made for the series.
The story, divided into six parts, follows factory unrest posed to explode, then pushed into a strike after a suicide of one of the workers, who was unjustly accused of theft. What follows is an increasingly vicious suppression by management, owners and the Czarist government by any means they deemed necessary from pressure to provocation, infiltration and finally ending in utter violence (and that ending is brutal). Influenced by the theatrical inventions of Vsevolod Meyerhold, and D.W. Griffiths’ Intolerance, the young director broke away from his theatrical work and signalling the end of his association with the Proletkult theater troupe and his movement into auteur territory.
Eisenstein also found his main collaborator cinematographer Eduard Tisse, whom he continued to work with for the next twenty years. Tisse personally vouched for him after initial test shots failed to impress the studio. Tisse had also filmed a short documentary about a factory and Eisenstein liked his use of camera movement and lenses. You’ll note the use of light reflectors in Strike-one he put to effective use in Potemkin later that year. The overall effects of their work together—the severe geometry, motion and lighting created an impression of controlled chaos. Montage cinema, especially from filmmakers of the young Soviet Union became one of the idiosyncratic movements in film history. It also turned out to have long range influences. During the final years of the Silent Era, cubists, modernists and others began exploring more deeply film as an art form and proposing new ideas on how to use “the language of cinema” to do more than entertain. Realizing the ability of film to reach a diverse audience, they used film to convey complex sociopolitical ideas both as a persuasion and to enlighten. While the use of film as “propaganda” goes back to much earlier, Eisenstein and other filmmakers use favouring imagery, and especially the relationships between images over storytelling is an interesting and still used technique.

Recommended reading: Film Forum: Essays in Film Theory by Sergei Eisenstein

THE GARDEN OF EDEN 1928

Director: Lewis Milestone

Screenplay: Hanns Kräly, based on the play by Rudolph Bernauer and Rudolf Österreicher

Cinematography: John Arnold

Art Director: William Cameron Menzies

Principle Cast: Corinne Griffith, Louise Dresser, Lowell Sherman, Maude George, Charles Ray

If this film looks and feels like a Ernst Lubitsch film, it may be because the script was by Hans Kraly-Lubitsch’s collaborator on thirty films. Director Lewis Milestone, may be thought to be more of a dramatic director (soon to be well known for winning Best Director for All Quiet on the Western Front) but he did win Best Director (Comedy) for his previous film Two Arabian Knights (1927), and his light touch and brisk pacing is on full display for this one. As befitting a top level film, William Cameron Menzies (Thief of Bagdad 1924, Rebecca) art directed and it was shot by John Arnold (The Wind TSFF2025, The Big Parade) combining to bring out all the beauty and depth of this unjustly forgotten late Silent Era feature.

Garden of Eden is all about deceptive appearances and mistaken identities-starting off more of a drama but then soon morphing into a bright Riviera comedy and it pushes that right through to the end.

Corinne Griffith is Toni, a naive young woman who bakes pretzels in a Viennese bakery. Naturally she has dreams, and those dreams include singing opera. After answering an ad, she sets off to Budapest, the bright lights now closer to dazzling her eyes than ever before. It doesn’t go as planned as the serious singing role she was after evaporates as she walks through the door of a less than reputable nightclub and hired by the cabaret “madam” (Maude George in a very lesbian-coded role) to entertain their decidedly less than opera seeking patrons. Thrown on stage, embarrassed by a see-through dress, and enthusiastically pursued by a wealthy Lothario (Lowell Sherman at his best-worst sleazy man-about-town-- who literally equates women to food ("May I see your menu?) she winds up escaping to Monte Carlo with the wardrobe lady (Louise Dresser) and arrives at the aptly named Hotel Eden-haunt of the rich and famous. Meeting up with a young man (Charles Ray) should just mean a happy ending-but the past has a way of checking in. That’s when the comedy becomes the delightful farce we’ve been set up for.
It’s easy to see that if this film was made in the 1930s, it would have been a hit screwball comedy. It could be the best Lubtisch film Lubtisch never made! However, as happens to many silent films made during the rough transitional period to talkies, it got forgotten and was only mentioned in passing or as titles in books. Hopefully this beautiful restoration by the San Francisco Film Preserve will make this late silent dazzler better known. Their gorgeous 4K restoration that was the hit of Il Cinema Ritrovato 2025 and now it returns to the big screen here in Toronto.