silent movie Sunday
Last Sunday I finally made it to a place I'd been meaning to visit for years, as it's a bit of an institution in London circles, the Phoenix Cinema. Apparently, it's the oldest continually-running cinema in Britain, and is a nice little place, with comfy seats and a friendly vibe. My friend Meimango had bought us tickets for a matinee performance of a 1926 silent movie from Soviet Russia, The Mother. Perhaps not the cheeriest thing for a sunny spring day, it was nonetheless a powerful piece of cinema, soundtracked by live piano which was at time incongruously jaunty.
The story is a familiar one, set during 1905's abortive revolution attempt; a classic tale of plucky underdogs versus corrupt ruling classes. Somewhere along the line a couple of the reels must have got swapped around as we were shown the arrests following the revolt before we'd even seen the actual revolt taking place. We were confused by this at first until we realised what had happened, and in actual fact it didn't effect the overall narrative too much. This was, I think, in large part down to the great acting, especially the focus on the characters' eyes and the way they were used to communicate. Visually, the tones of the black-and-white film bore quite a resemblance to the etchings and charcoal sketches of Käthe Kollwitz's, which was interesting as she was working in a later period. There seemed to be a lot more close-ups and less establishing shots compared to other films of the time, as well. Definitely worth checking out - you can watch it here. There's an interesting article on the director influence on 20th century filmmaking here.
Before the main programme, we were also treated to an enthusiastic introductory lecture from one of the cinema's directors, and four shorts from a north London film-maker, RW Paul. He was one of the first people in the UK to work with cinema cameras, and took the opportunity to experiment, taking his cameras out into his local neighbourhood of Muswell Hill. You can read one his patent applications here. I was hoping some of these would be viewable online, so you can see them for yourself, but sadly they don't seem to be. It's a pity, the one about the spiritualist is particularly splendid. However, there is a complete collection of his films available on DVD, which is worth a looksee, I bet.