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Andrew Smaje
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Jack was on good form in Bristol yesterday, and enjoyed a good hour and a
bit's worth of anecdotes in conversation with Matthew Sweet. It was nice to
have some illustrative clips - BN (the scene where Sister Ruth puts on her
lipstick and escapes a sleeping Deborah Kerr - Jack explained his DIY approach
to getting the candle to seem to be blowing in the wind), plus African Queen
and a section of Jack's own film The Lion. An opening salvo of clips from a
Sky Movies broadcast of Jack's Honorary Academy Award (?) caused some
considerable gasps from this viewer. There were a few seconds here and there
of The Red Shoes, and I've never seen it on a big screen before (even on a
video-projected clip from Sky Movies ...). Blooming heck, it takes your
breath away, doesn't it?
The screening of The Informer was, bizarrely, slightly better attended that
the interview - and Jack stayed to watch his dad make a brief appearance in
the film (which is splendid: if you thought The Lodger was a sophisticated
British silent, this is ten times more gutsy and well-told). Hurrah for the
superb live score, which wasn't appreciated enough, I felt (anyone else there
thought otherwise?)
Jack signed a lot of books afterwards. Some even bought Matthew Sweet's
fascinating book Shepperton Babylon (although there wasn't exactly a queue to
get his autograph on it). Sweet was a good host, although he couldn't help
himself. Jack had just told a delightfully coy anecdote about the fim's
female star, Lya De Putti (about how as a 14-year old runner on the film, he'd
been told to go see if Miss de Putti had arrived, walked up to her dressing
room, opened the door and found she was completely naked with her dress coming
over her head - unseen, young Jack skulked away to report that Miss de Putti
had indeed arrived...) - Sweet had to add that she died a few years later a
forgotten figure and had choked to death on a chicken bone. He's a smart man,
Sweet, but it wasn't the moment: I doubt he knew it, though. He does come
across as having an ego the size of a small moon. There were mutterings from
audience members about him being 'cocky'. A shame - I'd like to hear him talk
about British silent films; when his greed for a sticky end which Shepperton
Babylon so lustfully displays, can find a correct context.
Sorry, I've gone right off topic. The Informer is listed on imdb as being a
sound film - which clearly ruins it. It's a film set in Dublin, filmed in
Elstree, with a largely Scandanavian (and Hungarian) cast. No wonder the
accents sound odd on a sound version added at the last minute, in response to
Blackmail coming out.
Right, I've had me moan.
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Mark Fuller
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Hi Andrew,
You should have made yourself known, and said Hi....although I
wasn't wearing my name badge....I'm the leaflet hander-outer.
I'm glad it was the Red Shoes clip from the Oscar tribute that
made you gasp, not our cavalier way with copyright law...
and I'm glad you enjoyed The Informer...it is a silent film, some
prints of which had soundtrack added post-sync as you suggested; I haven't
seen any of those, but I can't see how it could improve it. Only Hitch's
Blackmail comes close to an improvement on the silent version, but then the
two versions are quite different.
and I will pass on your thanks to Stephen Horne, he is superb,
his work on Cottage in Dartmoor has to be heard to be believed. In almost
any other country he would be seen as THE silent film pianist, but we also
have Neil Brand, and the States have Phil Carli, .... so Stephen is probably
only the third best in the world right now... I thought the applause he got
was terrific, although Matthew did forget to introduce him, when he was
stood with Jack just before the film. ...
re. Matthew I will leap to the defence; if he comes across that
way ON STAGE I can assure you, he is not at all like that off it; he is a
seriously nice guy, and as far as I have seen universally popular with those
who know him. With his achievements, he has to be a nice bloke or he would
be universally hated. The mini-cv on the handout (if you still have it)
missed out such minor stuff as his spell as theatre critic for the Evening
Standard, and writing for Dr Who - and that's just what I happen to know
about; he is pretty ego-free considering....I remember him going on the
radio in an effort to save Mike Read's musical on Oscar Wilde on the basis
that it was so bad it was great fun; it was his ES review that had closed it
down.
Shepperton Babylon is a gossip's history of British Cinema; people
tend not to gossip about how clean living someone was, but the opposite. And
much of the history of British Cinema has its sordid moments.He presented a
season for the NFT on Henry Edwards earlier this year, which perhaps you
might have preferred; we would like to get him back to Bristol for a repeat
of that; fingers crossed. Try and get hold of his Inventing The Victorians;
a great book, microscopically resarched, on how, actually, the Victorians
were thrill-seeking, broad minded, and that the stern stereotype was an
invention largely of the Bloomsbury set and Strachey in particular.
I'm with you about his Lya de Puti story - but you have to
understand that he collects bizarre showbiz deaths. He was particularly
delighted with my story of Billie Ritchie, a veteran Fred Karno actor who
went to Hollywood in Chaplin's wake, and died of ostrich bites sustained
while filming a slapstick comedy.
Glad you enjoyed yourself...say hi next time!!
Mark
Jack and Nicki enjoyed themselves too, which was nice.
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Andrew Smaje
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Hi Mark
Yes, I thought you would be there but there were quite a few
leaflet-hander-outers with no name badges.
I managed to sound a bit more down on Matthew Sweet than I intended - I
thoroughly enjoyed Shepperton Babylon, and if any members of the list haven't
read it, it's a brilliant portrait of the chaotic world of early British film,
and uniquely (and finally, very convincingly) he manages to tie together the
opposite ends of the spectrum: the pioneers of silent film, and the similarly
ad-hoc soft porn film makers of the late 60s and 70s. I didn't agree with his
views on John Mills, I have to say: but he'd died about 2 days before I read
that section, and only a month or two after I'd seen Scott of the Antarctic -
one of the most beautifully photographed films ever made, especially those
surreal and deeply moving last few minutes (our Jack again, of course).
