Saturday 9 March 2024

Ebony Pictures & The Mystery Of The Black Sherlock Holmes


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Over the past decade or so there has been an increased interest in the beginnings of Black Cinema in America with note being taken by the works of Oscar Micheau in particular (who I had previously written about here). However even as  Micheaux's serious, somber and ambitious films were aiming to "uplift the race" there were others who sought to simply provide entertainment producing lowbrow slapstick and low budget adventure films to match those in the larger world of white cinema and Vaudeville.

Vaudeville had in fact taken some of its tropes and traditions from the earlier genre of Minstrel Shows which had swept the country in the mid-nineteenth century and provided the first example of mass entertainment in America. The history of Minstrelsy is too long and convoluted to detail here but it began as an authentically black form of comedy, music and dance which by the mid-century had developed a star system of touring acts both black and white. By about the 1880's the large and rather formalized travelling Minstrel shows had in effect been broken down into smaller parts that would make their way into smaller and cheaper white owned Medicine Shows in rural areas and Vaudeville in the cities. A network of Vaudeville theatre chains would stretch across the US and Canada much as later movie theatre chains would do and while these theatres would provide opportunities for black entertainers they would also have to put up with the insults and indignities of the Jim Crow era and by the 1890's a parallel network of black owned theatres had sprung up  across the country.

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Inevitably once movie theatres largely replaced Vaudeville this model would eventually be recreated with chains of black owned movie houses. These theatres, usually small, existed in black neighbourhoods in big cities like New York and Chicago to smaller towns into the South along with travelling tent shows in more rural areas that could set up a screen and projector. Besides these black owned enterprises in some cities white owned theatres in black neighbourhoods would set aside a day of the week to program movies with black stars or all-black casts for what were called Midnight Rambles. Naturally the existence of such networks required a regular stream of such movies which would be filled by a variety of movies of various genres ranging from the serious minded social melodramas of Oscar Micheaux to more lowbrow fare including musicals (including by Louis Jordan who I wrote about here), comedies, film noirs, romances, even westerns (including those of Herb Jeffries (which I also wrote about here) and at least one monster movie in "Son Of Ingagi" (written about here). Most if not all of these films were made quickly on a low budget, were largely unknown to the larger white audiences and have until recently been largely ignored by film histories with many being presumed lost.              

Some of these all-black movies were indeed produced and directed by black filmmakers the first of which was the Lincoln Motion Picture Company which ran from 1916 to 1923 making only five films from which remains only one feature and fragments of a second. Other films were actually produced by the same white owned Poverty Row studios who spotted an opportunity to churned out low-budget westerns and comedies albeit under different studio names. One of the first and most controversial of these studios was Ebony Films which operated of of Chicago in the 1910's. While the Lincoln Company's films were of a similar serious and ambitious nature as those of Micheaux, those of Ebony Films were another matter.

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Ebony Films was in fact a white owned company which started out as Historical Features Films based in Chicago in around 1915. The name suggests that either they had ambitions to be making feature length epics or more likely that they wanted to create the illusion that they were and they do seem to have made some educational films. In the event the bulk of their films (most which do not survive) appear to be limited to comedies and a few rumored westerns. Given that they shot their films in Chicago one can assume their "westerns" were shoddy low budget affairs although in the 1910's when most films,including westerns, were still shot in New York and New Jersey (including "The Great Train Robbery" and the many shorts of Bronco Billy) this was not unusual. The studio's bread and butter however were its one reel comedies which by all accounts were of the lowest common denominator type of slapstick and full of "ethnic" humour which they openly marketed as such. By "ethnic" we of course mean "racist" with crude and insulting stereotypical tropes ridiculing various groups including Blacks, Asians, Jews, Mexicans, Irish, Italians and Native People among others long being popular fare in film and Vaudeville. However by the 1910's some of these tropes were becoming less fashionable with members of these groups begining to make their displeasure known. The 1915 release of DW Griffith's uber-race baiting "Birth Of A Nation" led to such a backlash from the Black Press and a organized campaign, probably the first of it's kind, to address not only protest the treatment of and portrayal of Blacks in show business but more importantly the creation of an alternative that would be owned and staffed by Black filmmakers and directed at Black audiences and t's not a coincidence that both Oscar Micheaux and Lincoln Motion Pictures began the following year.

"TWO KNIGHTS OF VAUDEVILLE" (1915);


The plot of this film, such as it is, is simple even by the standards of the slapstick genre. Two guys stumble onto tickets to a vaudeville show which have been dropped by a wealthy white man and they invite a lady friend to join them. At the show after a couple of (white) acrobatic and juggling acts the two men become so disruptive they are kicked out. They then decide it will be easy to put on their own show so they set up a theatre (in what appears to be an empty warehouse) and put on a show for an all black paying audience. However they are so inept that the audience heckles and pelts them with trash ultimately rioting and destroying the theatre.

This is slapstick film with performances of the two main characters (played by the obscure Jimmy Marshall and Frank Montgomery) being clownish buffoons behaving as naughty and rambunctious children, unsophisticated and dim with the ill-fitting clothes they wear being either oversized or too small. Defenders of the film may point out that such broad clownish characters were common in slapstick films of the 1910's including those of Mack Sennett, Charlie Chaplin, Fatty Arbuckle, Ben Turpin and Larry Semon and this is true. In fact some of these white characters are actually more clownish than those in this film. However these white characters are presented as exaggerated trickster characters living among the otherwise normal world of straight society and reacting to it in over-the-top ways. In this film the other Black characters (represented by the audience who riot at the end) are also childish and immature whereas the white characters are either authority figures (represented by the wealthy man, a theatre usher and a cop) or the vaudeville performers who may be slightly clownish but are clearly doing so in the context of performing on stage. The white theatre itself is also shown as an imposing building with columns and box seats compared to the warehouse the Black show is held at with plank benches and improvised curtain. The Black characters are in fact following the traditional tropes of the Black Face minstrel shows, with Blacks as clownish, childish, silly, unsophisticated and prone to violence. The one exception is the role of the Lady Friend of the two main characters. She dresses smartly and fashionably, attempts to restrain the others, does not get thrown out of the vaudeville theatre and in effect acts as both the straight man and mother figure. It may or may not be a coincidence that she is also notably lighter skinned than the other characters. The Black audience at the second show is also dressed respectably enough although they are quickly unruly.

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However what really gives the film's attitude towards Blacks which any Black viewer was bound to notice is the use of exaggerated and outdated Minstrel show speech for the characters who say things like; "What yo' go and mess up the party fo" and "Jest all time messin' up something. Nevah again". It's not just the two main clownish characters who talk this way as the signs put up announcing their performance are even worse with signs saying; "Vodevil 5 Sense", "Too famuz akters prezented on a big stage. Hear to day" and the performers billed as "Akrobats". Some of the letters are also transposed backwards as if written by a child. The obvious inference being that they are semi-literate and the all-black audience seems to accept this. The real life Black film audiences would not.  

By the 1910's some of the use of racial and ethnic tropes were becoming less fashionable with members of these groups organizing to protest such treatment and even some white middle-class audiences becoming uncomfortable with such overtly demeaning subject matter. The 1915 release of DW Griffith's pro-KKK "Birth Of A Nation" led to such a backlash from the Black Press and a organized campaign, probably the first of its kind, to not only protest the treatment of and portrayal of Blacks in show business but more importantly call for the creation of an alternative that would be owned and staffed by Black filmmakers and directed at Black audiences and it's not a coincidence that both Oscar Micheaux and Lincoln Motion Pictures began the following year.

Meanwhile the white owners of Historical Films were facing a dilemma; their comedies were fairly successful enough with white audiences but were condemned in the Black Press as demeaning in ways they were no longer prepared to meekly accept. Faced with the choice of continuing to make their lowbrow films which while fairly profitable were embarrassing and had limited appeal or they could make some attempt to clean up their act. Somewhat surprisingly they not only opted for the latter option but they went all in on a complete makeover to appeal to Black audiences. Starting in 1915 they changed the name to Ebony Studios and hired an all (or at least mostly) Black creative staff and all-black theatre troupe and tried to appeal to both black and white audiences. For the next two years Ebony Films would make two dozen films, a respectable number, most of which appear to be comedy shorts, some of which parody white films including "Birth Of A Nation", westerns, adventure and spy films (including a Sherlock Holmes parody) and even monster movies. Until recently the output and quality of these films was mostly a mystery and none appeared to survive aside from some promotional material but over the past decade a collection of several of them have surfaced and can now be seen albeit in somewhat distressed or incomplete condition.

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LUTHER POLLARD

While the owners of Ebony Films may have been of limited talents the black directors and actors they hired were not. Chief amongst these were the Pollard Brothers, Luther and Fritz. Chicago native Luther, a writer and sometime director and was appointed President and General Manager and set to work bringing in his younger brother Fredrick Douglas (AKA Fritz) Pollard a charismatic figure who like the later Paul Robeson was an actor, writer and star football player who would also serve as a talent scout and casting director. It was presumably Fritz who hired George Lewis, an actor and director who already had his own theatre troupe in the George Lewis Players who would make up much of Ebony Pictures regulars in all of their subsequent films.

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FRITZ POLLARD

Among the players were leading man Sam Robinson, Rudolph Tatum, a sidekick, Sam Jacks, a tall straight man foil and pretty young leading lady Evon Junior (also billed as Yvonne). George Lewis himself would appear in supporting roles usually as a dignified authority figure foil as would the Pollard Brothers on occasion. Given that the troupe was named after Lewis it's likely Lewis played some sort of role behind the camera as well. He also appears older than Robinson, Tatum or Junior. From 1917 the cast of all of Ebony Pictures films seem to have come from the George Lewis Players. One notable difference in the later Ebony films of the era under the direction of the Pollard Brothers and George Lewis (at least those that survive and what can be gleaned from the others) from the earlier films is that not only are the casts are entirely or mostly black but they would exist in a world where Blacks would not simply be Minstrel Show stereotypes but also respectable middle-class figures. The clownish characters would remain as these were accepted slapstick tropes but they would exist in a larger world of respectable Black bourgeois society that would include Black professors, lawyers, doctors and businessmen as well as policemen and few white characters would be shown at all and if so only incidentally if needed by the story.

"THE RECKLESS ROVER" (1918)


Sam Robinson is a layabout named Rastus who is behind on his rent. His landlady gets a cop to throw him out of his room and after a chase he takes shelter in a Chinese laundry where the owner gives him a job. However due to Sam's incompetence and irresponsibility he soon causes chaos. Rummaging around the shop he stumbles on to an opium pipe and proceeds to get stoned. His over enthusiastic flirting with a young woman (Evon Junior) leads her to call for a policeman who of course turns out to be the one who chased Sam earlier and he again has to flee. Finis.

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Here we see what would become the basic standard for Ebony films; broad slapstick humour and energy with Robinson playing a roguish bumbling oaf who gets himself in trouble. His character can be seen as perpetuating some racial stereotypes from Minstrelsy but is mostly within the bounds of a Mack Sennett slapstick film of the era. However the intertitle cards do use images obviously taken from the most racist Minstrelsy tropes as is the character name Rastus and it's not hard to see why Black audiences were outraged even if the cast is all Black. Besides Minstrelsy the film also includes a stereotypical Chinese coolie (complete with opium pipe). Trivia note; As in an early example of an Easter Egg as Rastus runs away we can see a poster for the DW Grifith movie "Hearts Of The World", but at least it's not "Birth Of A Nation". If Ebony was hoping to broaden their appeal this film can hardly be considered a good omen.  

"THE COMEBACK OF BARNACLE BILL" (1918);


This is a rural based comedy in which Sam Robinson plays a bumbling farm hand with a crush on farm girl Evon Junior who is the daughter of owner Sam Jacks. After Junior rejects him Sam decides to go off into the woods and shoot himself but instead stumbles on to a couple of thieves who are in the process of hiding some ill-gotten money. He accidentally fires his gun and scares them off, discovers the money and takes it back to the farm where he hides it. Meanwhile Junior has a young suitor, Hector, visiting from the city and the family head off to pick him up at the train station in a horse buggy during which Sam tries to foil his bumbling. Arriving at the farm Hector tries to impress with his golf skill which more of Sam's bumbling interferes with causing more chaos. Meanwhile a lawyer (George Lewis) arrives to foreclose on the farm for its unpaid mortgage. Hector attempts to raise the money to pay off the debt but is informed by telegram he does not have the money (here the print is too damaged to actually read it) so Sam runs off and eventually finds the robber's money he stashed and pays off the debt. Suddenly here the film runs out so we don't know how it ended.  

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Like all the other surviving films of the later period of Ebony Pictures this film is in a distressed and fragmentary state suffering from significant water damage which makes parts of it impossible to make out (including two important letters the contents of which we must speculate) and the ending is also missing. The title make no apparent sense as the original Barnacle Bill was a character taken from a 19th century drinking song and was supposed to be a sailor, unless that is somehow explained by the missing footage although it's hard to see how. We can however see that this film is an improvement over the earlier film in that while the character played by Sam Robinson is an oaf he is within the bounds of white slapstick clowns as are the other more straight characters. The lawyer coming to enforce the foreclosure is also black and not a figure of mockery. The film does not rely on tropes left over from Minstrelsy and there is no use of the demeaning semi-literate dialogue. The George Lewis players appear to provide the cast for all subsequent Ebony Pictures and it's notable that the main two actors from the 1915 vaudeville film do not make an appearance again although it's possible the female character from that film is Evon Junior from this and subsequent films.

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EVON JUNIOR

This film is a slight improvement over the previous film and less demeaning. The performances are slightly less broad but still fall within the slapstick genre. The plot is rambling and unfocused but at least it does have a plot. However while this film is better it was still subject to criticism in the Black press who wanted more serious and thoughtful portrayals of Black characters of the sort that Lincoln Pictures and Oscar Micheux were now making while Ebony Pictures were still focused on low-brow comedies. This would continue even while leaving behind the rural setting of this film for the big city that was more familiar to the Black audiences Ebony was aiming for.

"MERCY THE MUMMY MUMBLED" (1918);


Sam Robinson plays a hustler who comes up with a scheme to sell a fake mummy to a Professor (George Lewis) and buys a prop mummy case from a stage costumer and pays a sidekick (Tatum) to be wrapped up and pretend to be the mummy. He contacts an agent who examines the mummy and falls for the ruse buying it for $1000 after getting into a fight over the money. Meanwhile two agents for the Egyptian government are searching for lost mummies taken by American missionaries. Two delivery men are hired to transport the money by horse drawn wagon. While doing so the coffin with Tatum still inside falls off the wagon and is dragged through the streets. As the lid comes off Tatum scrambles to try to escape but the wagon drivers hit him on the head knocking him out, force him back into the coffin band continue to the professor's lab where he takes possession. Meanwhile the two Egyptian agents have tracked the delivery and show up at the lab to demand the return of the mummy but the professor throws them out. At this point the film halts with the ending being lost. Presumably they return and some sort of melee ensues with the "Mummy" coming back to life and emerging from his coffin, terrifying everybody into fleeing or causing a chase.

This film print is in better condition but it's also more truncated with more missing footage,inlcuding the ending which can only be guessed at. The story, what survives, is more coherent with more openings for slapstick hijinks. The plot is silly and outlandish but shows some imagination and could easily be the basis for a white Three Stooges short of later years. As in the previous film there is a scene involving an object containing a character being dragged behind a wagon at some speed which would have involved some skilled camerawork. Moving the story from a rural setting means the secondary characters are less country bumpkinish. The film's title had led some horror film historians to wonder if this film (long considered lost) might have been an early Mummy movie but we have enough to see that it clearly is not.

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GEORGE LEWIS

While the white owners of Ebony were willing to hire black artists and even put them into positions of production it's clear that whoever was in front or even behind the camera those in the office and marketing dept were clearly white and still aiming at a mostly white audience as one of their promotional packages sent out to theatre owners helpfully explains;

"Ebony Pictures are something different. Actors are Negros, just plain folks. If you know anything about THESE PEOPLE (emphasis mine) you must admit they are funny. Funniest people in the world. Bring a laugh when no others can. THEY (emphasis mine) are natural comedians, full of innate humor and pantomime which enables them to portray comedy as no one can. What colored Vaudeville acts mean as attractions to Vaudeville managers, Ebony Pictures will mean as attractions to the motion picture exhibits."

Obviously this was written by a white PR flack and aimed at white theatre owners appealing to white audiences as the use of terms like "these people" make clear. In spite of their, probably somewhat sincere attempts to broaden their appeal to black audiences they are also promising nothing more than cheap laughs with no suggestion of anything more. Another promo sheet enthuses;

"Ebony Comedies are not an experiment but a big success. What has heretofore been considered impossible by producers has been successfully accomplished in these comedies; The agreeable Black Faced act of the spoken stage is now paralleled in motion pictures."

Adding; "Think! Real Negro humor successfully portrayed on the screen." With another ad specifically chiming in "Unsurpassed as attractions for children".

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Not all the promo sheets are this patronizing but the obvious target for them was clearly white theatre owners who are assured that these films are acceptable to white audiences with some (but not all) specifically using the term "Black Face" which was obviously aimed at white audiences. The only concession to Black sensibilities was the use of the term "Negro" which was then favoured by the Black Press and intellectuals instead of terms like "colored" (which also shows up) or the more insulting terms left over from Minstrelsy like "darkies". However in the same paragraph the unknown but almost certainly white writer switches back to using the term "colored". The Black press was not fooled with theatre and film editor Tony Langston of the black owned Chicago Defender urging theatre owners not to book the films saying they caused "respectable ladies and gentlemen to blush with shame and humiliation".

New Gerneral Manager Luther Pollard tried to push back on the image of Ebony Pictures being simply a ron t-for it's white owners writing in one to George P. Johnson of the black owned Lincoln Motion Picture Company, Pollard wrote that his comedies “proved to the public that colored players can put over good comedy without any of that crap shooting, chicken stealing, razor display, water melon eating stuff that the colored people generally have been a little disgusted in seeing. You do not find that stuff in Ebony comedies.” But his attempts, while by all accounts sincere, were constantly being undermined by the marketting tactics of his white employers.

One note that while production and casting of Ebony films after 1917 would be handled by Black artists there was at least one exception in Robert J Horner, a white screenwriter of less than savoury reputation who was listed as the writer of several of these films. One has to wonder if he was responsible for some of the Minstrelsy tropes that would remain.

After such an unpromising start at least some later Ebony films would show some improvements and while still sporting limited budgets would also include some somewhat more ambitious parodies of white films. It's worth remembering that the original black minstrel shows were also full of parodies of white fancy dress dances and fashions and had indeed started that way although white audiences were largely oblivious to this.  

"A BLACK SHERLOCK HOLMES" (1918);


Sam Robinson is again the lead as a private detective Knick Garter (a play on the fictional detective Nick Carter already the subject of several books and films) who dresses like Sherlock Holmes wearing a deerstalker hat (sideways) and tweed suit sporting a large pipe and magnifying glass with his bumbling sidekick (Rudolph Tatum). The case involves a chemist (Lewis) who has invented a new type of explosive and is targeted by a conman (Sam Jacks) who eventually kidnaps the  daughter (Evon Junior) who Garter/Holmes has a crush on. Garter/Holmes who is of the Inspector Clouseau school of inept detectives spies on the conman and gives chase ending in a shootout and rescue of the damsel in distress after which the conman meekly surrenders and one of his henchmen switches sides and runs off to elope with the daughter and they all live happily ever after which Garter/Holmes graciously accepts.

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This one is actually complete albeit heavily distressed by water damage in some parts making those scenes a little difficult to fully follow however the story is essentially complete. The story is workable enough and Robinson has a more clearly defined character and look. Although long considered lost this is probably the best known Ebony film by the same sort of roundabout way that "Mercy The Mummy Mumbled" got a bit of notice by horror film historians, Sherlock Holmes historians had noticed this tile as an intriguing early Holmes film with a Black Sherlock but without having any details to work with. Now by actually viewing it we can see that it is obviously a parody of sorts. The story has nothing to actually do with Holmes of course and the characters are the usual broad comedy foils without too many carry-overs from Minstrelsy. Robinson is competent enough and the studio apparently saw enough potential in his bumbling detective to make a sequel of sorts.

"SPYING THE SPY" (1918);


Robinson's bumbling detective returns wearing the same deerstalker cap and tweed suit although this time his name has changed to Sam Sambo and he has no sidekick. With America now involved in World War One he has taken it upon himself to search for German spies and thinks he has found one named "Schwartz" who he makes a citizen's arrest of by throwing a bag over him and marching off to the police station. Once turned over to the police Schwartz is revealed to be a respectable black man (Schwartz is literally German for black) who the police promptly release, throwing Sam out of the station. Sam is however still convinced that Schwartz is a German spy and tails him as he goes into a building. It is revealed that Mr Schwartz is in fact a member of a Masons like secret society who are in the process of having an initiation ceremony dressed in dark hooded robes emblazoned with a skull & crossbones when Sam sneaks in. Recognizing Sam, Schwartz decides to turn the tables and put him through the ritual which includes dumping him into a jail cell with an animated skeleton and a simulated beheading. After terrorizing Sam the group allows him to escape by slipping him a gun with blanks and when he shoots it they all fall "dead" and he runs off. Finis.

Unlike "A Black Sherlock Holmes" this film has not been noticed by Holmes historians but Robinson clearly plays the same character (albeit with a different name) although if anything he's even dumber this time. This is still a lowest denominator slapstick; some film historians have suggested that there might be a theme of mocking "A Birth Of A Nation" in the secret society with their robes and hoods terrorizing Sam. However this is reading too much into this film (probably based more on the promotional posters rather than viewing the actual film which was long thought lost) the robed figures are clearly black and are not real villains committing any actual violence and Sam is not a real victim but is a oafish clod who besides being in the wrong has even assaulted and kidnapped Mr Schwartz early in the film. Schwartz and the robed characters are presented as respectable middle-class men and definitely not Klansmen. In fact there actually were all-black counterparts of the all-white Masons including the Prince Hall Masons who still exist. Additionally unlike most of the later Ebony films of the Pollard era there are white characters in the role of the police officers who are minor characters but they behave fairly and responsibly. There is no explicitly or implicitly racial critique to be found here. In fact, changing the name of the Robinson character from Nick Garter, a mild parody of a white fictional character, to Sambo, an explicitly racist Minstrelsy trope is even a step backwards.

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We can't be sure exactly in what order the later Ebony films were actually made. At least two dozen films were released in 1917 and 1918 with "A Black Sherlock Holmes" listed as released in April 15 1918 and "Spying The Spy" in April 22 however they were probably not filmed in that sequence as there are clearly large snow drifts to be seen in "Spying The Spy" so it must have been filmed in the winter of 1917-1918 but no earlier as America did not declare war in Germany until April 1917. Thus "Sherlock Holmes" might have been filmed afterwards with the name change from Sambo to Nick Garter being an update for a character who was considered as a possible recurring role.

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SAM ROBINSON

That would never happen as Ebony Films attempts to rebrand for Black audiences would never be really accepted and would continue to face criticism from the Black press like the Chicago Defender who called for a boycott. To make things worse the studio continued to re-release their earlier films. As the studio was trying to market to both Black and white audiences some of the promotional posters and title cards also continued to use blackface imagery which may have amused whites but did not go unnoticed by the Defender. Ebony's attempts to play both sides were bound to fail and by 1919 Ebony closed up shop for good. There may have been other factors; at the end of the Great War there was an economic recession and more importantly the larger film industry which had originally been based in New York and New Jersey was packing up and moving to Hollywood. Ebony would not be among them, in fact out of Ebony's Black cast and producers virtually none would have any known film credits after Ebony shut down. It could be that none of them made the move to Hollywood and instead stayed in Chicago or made their way to New York and worked on the Vaudeville stage. While the films of Ebony Pictures have some historical interest as artifacts of early Black cinema it can't really be said that Ebony itself left any real legacy as all it's films were soon lost and forgotten and unlike some other failed studios, record labels and publishing houses none of it's creative staff would use their experience to make other films. The one odd exception was white screenwriter Robert J Horner who did make his way to Hollywood where he would have a long if undistinguished career as a director and producer in spite of having only one eye, no working legs and no apparent talent. He would carry on the fringes of Poverty Row making notoriously low quality B Movie (or lower) Westerns considered some of the worst of a not very demanding genre and dodging lawsuits, creditors and fraud arrests until his death in 1949.          

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ROBERT J HORNER

Sam Robinson has been named by some sources as a younger brother of Bill Bojangles Robinson, later known as the famed tap dancer and already fairly well known as a Vaudeville player. But was he really? The backstory is complicated. Bojangles (whose actual birth name was Luther) is known to have had a younger brother named Bill. As he entered show business Luther decided that Luther wasn't a good stage name and switched to his brother's name of Bill. In spite of his cheery and unflappable public image in private Bojangles was known to be rather stubborn and quick tempered and he convinced (or bullied) his younger brother to go along with this and so when he then in turn eventually entered show business as a musician he changed his name to Percy. It's possible that before adopting the name of Percy as a musician he started out as an actor under the name Sam. Sam Robinson's film credits (which include an early Mary Pickford film) have has no other (known) film credits after Ebony Films shut down so if Sam and Percy are indeed he same person he could have quit acting and switched to music under the name Percy in order to dodge the bad press these film had gotten in the Black press. No other Robinson brother is listed however there is also a problem with the birthdate given for Sam as he is listed as being born in 1888 in Richmond, Virginia, which was the home of Bill who was born in 1878. However the brother's parents are known to have died in 1884 whereupon the brothers were raised by their grandparents with no known step brothers. It's possible that Sam is also Percy and the 1888 birth date given is simply wrong. It's also possible Sam might have been a cousin rather than brother who billed himself as such however it's more likely that the later claim that Sam was one of the Robinson Brothers was a mistake made by a later writer based on the coincidence of having the same name (admittedly not uncommon) and coming from the same town at roughly the same time.
All this leaves open the possibilities that Sam Robinson;
a) May in fact have been Percy, the younger brother of Bojangles acting under yet another different name (his real name being Bill remember) and the listed birthdate of 1888 is simply wrong as both parents died in 1884. Since Percy was known as a working musician he may have used the alias Sam since the Ebony Films were not popular in the black community and might have detracted from his musical career.
b) He may have had some other family connection with Bojangles and Percy, perhaps a younger cousin, exploiting the same last name by claiming he was yet another brother.
c) He may have had no connection at all and had adopted the persona either coincidentally having the real name Sam Robinson (hardly an unsusal name) or with that being an entirely made up stage name.
d) It's also possible that Sam Robinson was indeed his real name and that some latter day researcher just assumed that he was a younger brother to Bojangles and listed him as such and since everybody involved is long dead there is nobody to ask.

A close look at the census reports for Richmond, Virginia in the 1880's might clear this up but we may never know for sure. At any rate Sam Robinson is listed as dying in 1971 (assuming that's true) but with no other film credits. As Ebony Films was closing up shop in Chicago the film industry was also moving to Hollywood and if Sam didn't want to relocate and stayed in Chicago then that would explain why he has no other film credits. He could have stayed on in Chicago with the George Lewis players and worked in vaudeville, continued on as a musician (as Percy) or perhaps he simply retired from show biz. At any rate the question as to who exactly Sam Robinson was or wasn't is a bigger mystery than the ones faced by Knick Garter.

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SAM ROBINSON

The failure of Ebony Films to attract a Black audience can be traced to a few reasons. While the later films are typical enough of white slapstick films of the era and are usually competently done and performed and if they had been made a few years earlier or perhaps even a few years later they might have been acceptable enough if not exactly respectable guilty pleasures. By modern standards they are not notably different from the films then being made by Mack Sennett starring the likes of Fatty Arbuckle, Ben Turpin and the Keystone Kops with one promotional flyer actually shows a group of dozing Black policeman implying they may have made a Keystone Kops type short now lost, with the Sergent showing a distinct and probably not coincidental resemblance to the white actor Ford Sterling who played the same role in the actual Keystone Kops series. If anything in fact they are actually more restrainedthan the Sennet films. Sam Robinson is photogenic enough and shows some skill with physical comedy and it's easy to see how Ebony producers saw him as a possible comedy leading man.

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PROMO SHEET SHOWING BLACK KEYSTONE KOPS

Indeed at the same time these films were being made the Black comic Bert Williams was a legitimate star playing bumbling sad sacks, and in the early sound era Spencer Williams would have career as both an actor and writer/director making a series of all-black films that were popular with Black audiences in the 1930's and 40's including broad comedies. In fact Bert Williams was the first Black multi-media star as a success on film and stage with hit records and sheet music and if he hadn't died in 1922 he almost certainly would have continued into the twenties and would be better remembered today. Williams was certainly more talented than Robinson with his characters having depth and vulnerability and he was seen as a figure who had worked his way for years through the white world while maintaining his dignity and was a genuinely popular figure with both blacks and whites as well and among the major stars of the day. For comparison note the subtley and pathos in his most famous routine from "A Natural Born Gambler" (1916) in which Williams, playing a luckless card-shark, ends up in jail playing a hand of invisible poker with himself and still losing.

BERT WILLIAMS IN "A NATURAL BORN GAMBLER" (1916);


Ebony were never able to shake their image of being a white owned studio cynically attempting to appeal to black audiences by hiring some black performers and those audiences saw through this whether or not that's entirely fair, especially to those performers themselves. This perception was certainly not helped by the continued use of Minstrel show images in the title cards in some of the films, the use of Minstrel show names like Sambo and Rastus and the patronizing tone of the promotional material which even if the general public did not see was seen by the press. Ultimately in the wake of "Birth Of A Nation" the Black community, it's leaders and especially the Black press was simply no longer prepared to put up with the slights, insults and patronizing attitudes they saw in the entire Ebony Pictures project. They wanted films and literature that treated them seriously and thoughtfully and they were already getting that from filmmakers like Oscar Micheux and Lincoln Pictures. In fact from the end of Ebony Films in 1919 and the death of Bert Williams there were no known Black comedy films made for a decade until the sound era. A decade later when Spencer Williams was making his films, at least some which included some broad slapstick humour (he would infamously later appear in "Amos & Andy" films) black audiences were more prepared to accept some silliness but 1917 to 1919 were no time for frivolity. Even if Ebony had been more thoughtful and sensitive in their presentation there was simply no demand for what they were offering in Black America at that time.

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Tuesday 9 January 2024

The Many Ghosts Of Ebenezer Scooge


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Two years ago for Christmas I wrote an article covering all the surviving versions of Charles Dickens' "A Christmas Carol" so this year as a somewhat belated follow up I decided to review all the black and white sound versions, at least the ones I could find or are currently available. The previous article can be found here so there's no reason to do a recap.

BRANSBY WILLIAMS;

The first sound production of "A Christmas Carol" would come as early as 1926, before sound films would even become standard releases. In fact this version was merely a short film done as a demonstration of some of the new sound film technology. The sound in this case was played on a phonograph that would be synched up to the screen, a cumbersome process that would not catch on and this film would become lost although a sound recording of what appears to be the soundtrack or at least a recreation of it does survive. Scrooge is played by Bransby Williams, a popular star of stage and radio who had played the role before. However here he is not so much playing the role as reciting the basic plot and doing a couple voices. There are no other cast members. The entire disc is only about ten minutes which is far too short and instead of presenting the various Spirits Williams merely describes them and moves on to the end. While of some historical interest this can hardly be considered a proper portrayal. Williams would later play a proper version on the BBC in 1950 which like most British TV is lost or not currently available.

BRANSBY WILLIAMS AS SCROOGE (1926);


It's appropriate that the first proper sound version should come from Britain and would star possibly the most qualified actor to ever take on the role and who had already played the role on film. Sir Seymour Hicks (1871-1949) had been a major star of the London stage for years including working with stars Sir Henry Irving and Charles Frohman, when he began playing the role of Scrooge with a script he wrote, starting in 1901 playing the role hundreds of times with great success allowing him to set up his own company and build his own theatres, the Aldwych and Hicks Theatres. His company included family members including his wife, Elaline Terriss and brother-in-law Tom whose father William Terriss was a well known actor in his own right who Hicks had worked with until Terriss was murdered in 1901. Hicks was the best known Scrooge of the Edwardian stage so his moving the role to film was a natural. Like most stage actors of the 1900's Hicks showed little interest in the crude film vignettes of the early era, however by the 1910's film as a medium had advanced in its ability to tell a proper story lasting longer than a single reel. Hicks would star in an 1913 version which included his wife and other notable figures of the Edwardian stage which is still extant and which I already discussed in my previous article. Hicks would continue to play Scrooge and other characters on stage along with making some movies into the sound era which would lead to the first sound remake in 1932.

SIR SEYMOUR HICKS;

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"SCROOGE" (1935);


Directed by Henry Edwards
Cast;
Sir Seymor Hicks ~ Ebenezer Scrooge
Donald Calthrop ~ Bob Cratchit
Robert Cochran ~ Nephew Fred Holliwell
Mary Glynne ~  Belle
Barbara Everest ~ Mrs. Cratchit
Eve Gray ~ Janet Holliwell
Philip Frost ~ Tiny Tim
Claude Rains ~ Jacob Marley (voice only)
Marie Ney ~ Spirit of Christmas Past (voice only)
Oscar Asche ~ Spirit Of Christmas Present
C. V. France ~ Spirit of Christmas Future
Athene Seyler ~ Charwoman
Margaret Yarde as Scrooge's Laundress
D.J Williams ~ Undertaker
Robert Morley as Rich Man (uncredited)

All of the silent versions, including the previous 1913 Hicks version, suffered from making shortcuts to the plot, sometimes eliminating entire important characters with most also taking a fairly perfunctory attitude towards the actual filming which tended to show a lack of any real sense of style. This time however we have a proper film treatment and it's this film that sets the template for every subsequent Scrooge film. It's fortunate that Hicks waited a couple years after the first introduction of sound and filming techniques caught up with the need to record so we do get a camera that is mobile enough to avoid seeming overly stage-bound. Twice we get a sweeping view of how London celebrates Christmas and the camera soars over a miniature of the city and then to a rain and windswept lighthouse and a storm lashed ship at sea with sailors shouting their season's greetings through the maelstrom. This evocative sequence, which would later be reproduced almost identically for an animated version in the nineteen sixties, resembles a similar sweeping vista in the 1926 FW Murnau version of "Faust". Other more obvious influences from German film comes in the sequence with the Ghost Of Christmas Future which is the highlight of the film. Previously the film has been shot with gritty realism but now we switch to classic Expressionist shadowplay with Scrooge being shot as a shadow silhouette or even a disembodied head superimposed onto it's own shadow while the Ghost's skeletal hand points over him. While these scenes have a nightmarish quality they are essentially dreamlike compared to the even darker scenes where the Undertaker, Mrs Dilber the Charwoman and the Laundress haggle with Old Joe the Fence over Scrooge's stolen possessions. Here we get a London underworld with characters shot as disembodied learing faces and grasping goblin-like hands fondling their ill-gotten coins. The later classic 1951 Alistar Sim version would do it's own take on this scene with some fine acting but even that excellent version doesn't match the Stygian gloom of this version. While there are some Expressionist flourishes here as well the main influences here were likely closer at home. In 1872 the French illustrator Gustave Dore did a series of iconic views of London including its underground in the age of Jack the Ripper showing London in its seedy, grimy glory and it's Dore's London we see here.  

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GUSTAVE DORE'S LONDON UNDERWORLD

The sets and costumes here are vividly Dickensian; dark, cold and gloomy with none of the ornate decoration of some later versions. The building interiors are sparse, spartan and unadorned although the streets are busy and vibrant. This is a harsh London with none of the usual romantic escapism of other portrayals of the Victorian Era with the entire main cast seeming to be cold, hungry and worn down, an effect accented by their often threadbare clothes. Instead of the glamour that the Victorian Era is usually shown with here we get the dreary, desperate city of the muckraking photographers like Jacob Riis showed in his contemporary series of photos of New York. It's probably not a coincidence that this film was shot during the depths of the Great Depression and in Britain. America had spent the previous Roaring Twenties in an extended economic boom, however illusionary, as had Weimar Germany. By contrast in Britain the twenties had already experienced an extended recession and political instability by the time the actual Depression hit Britain. In American and German film the thirties were a time of lavish escapism but there is none of that in this version which can truly be called Dickensian. As evidence that this was a conscious artistic decision and not due to budget constraints we have the scenes of Christmas for the Upper Crust at the Lord Mayor's Ball which is indeed lush and ornate.    

  This version is not without its flaws. Chief amongst them was the bizarre decision to not show Jacob Marley but to instead have him as a disembodied voice thus depriving the film of one of its most iconic images. As by 1932 film techniques were fully capable of shooting a double exposure ghostly image the decision to not do so here is frankly inexplicable. As Hicks was known for having played the role on stage for over twenty years it's possible that this was how the character was done on stage but it shows a lack of film technique that the film does display elsewhere. Similarly the Ghost of Christmas Past is only shown one once as a ghostly silhouette and then only briefly cutting the visit to Scrooge's past too abrupt to have much impact. Unlike most later versions we also do not really see a young Scrooge presumably because again this was not done on stage and Hicks, being in his sixties by this point, was too old to pull off the youthfulScrooge and didn't want to share the role with another younger actor. Shortening these scenes also makes Scrooge's rehabilitation too abrupt. Unlike some other versions Scrooge's where transformation takes time as he slowly realizes how his past life shaped him and what it has cost but by rushing through things we miss the whole point of this transformation as Scrooge caves almost instantly. As is common with many films of the era the musical soundtrack can be a bit overpowering at times.

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As Scrooge, Hicks is an ill-tempered, glowering presence. Stocky and florid with wild hair, bushy caterpillar eyebrows and a lumbering, bullish walk. For a stage actor he is not especially histrionic and avoids going over-the-top in his portrayal. Setting aside the relative absence of Jacob Marley and the ghost of Christmas Past the supporting characters set the template for most of the succeeding decades. As Cratchit Donald Calthrop is appropriately frail, stooped, servile and weather-beaten. The trio of greedy Charwoman, Laundress, Undertaker and the Fence are vividly decadent and debased. The actor playing Tiny Tim is not as cloying as others would be in this maudlin role.

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DONALD CATHROP AS CRATCHIT

Sir Seymour Hicks was born in 1871 and had appeared on the stage from the time he was a teen and would continue acting almost up to his death in 1949 aged 78. Director Henry Edwards (1882-1952) had a long career as an actor and director dating back to 1915. Donald Calthrop (1888-1940) also had a career starting in the silent ear and would later include five of Alfred Hitchcock's UK productions. The voice of Jacob Marley was played by Claude Raines in one of his early roles which was ironic as he would later become famous as the Invisible Man. Another actor making an appearance in an early role was Robert Morley as one of the gentlemen asking Scrooge for alms for the poor. 

REGINALD OWEN; The Hicks film was successful enough to inspire an American version just a few years later giving the story the patented Hollywood treatment.

"A CHRISTMAS CAROL" (1938);


Directed by Edwin Marin
Cast;
Reginald Owen ~ Ebaneezer Scrooge
Gene Lockhart ~ Bob Cratchit
Kathleen Lockhart ~ Mrs Cratchit
Terry Kilburn ~ Tiny Tim
Barry MacKay ~ Nephew Fred Holliwell
Lynne Carver ~ Bess (Fred's Fiancee)
Leo G Carroll ~ Jacob Marley
Ann Rutherford ~ Ghost Of Christmas Past
Lionel Braham ~ Ghost Of Christmas Present
Ronald Sinclair ~ Young Scrooge
Elvira Stevens ~ Fann Scrooge
Olaf Hytten ~ School Master

After the grime and gloom of the British Hicks version this American shows the kind of flair of most Depression era Hollywood with lush detailed sets, elegant costumes and a soundtrack of swirling strings. Even the house and clothes of the Cratchits are comfortably bourgeois and cozy especially compared to the spartan and beleaguered ones in the Hicks version. Similarly Scrooge's home is richly furnished and not the chilly tomb of Hicks' version. The same is true of the exteriors which don't really look like Victorian London and could be any major city. This is all pretty to look at but it can hardly be called Dickensian. It does however reflect the escapist tastes of American Depression era audiences (the same trend can be seen in German films of the era) at least in major studio productions and this film was an immediate hit. This film does have some improvements over the Hicks version starting with having an actual visible Jacob Marley and Ghost of Christmas Past instead of a disembodied voice. Marley was played by veteran character actor Leo G Carroll and his portrayal has been the standard ever since with its chains and lock boxes, spectacles askew and jaw held in place by a bandage. Similarly while in the Hicks version the Ghost of Christmas Past was a vague (and presumably male) ghostly presence with a menacing echoing voice here she is a beautiful blonde (Ann Rutherford) who speaks and interacts as any mortal would thus allowing for more meaningful dialogue. This allows for the film to spend more time on Scrooge's backstory that has also become standard in all subsequent versions.

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REGINALD OWEN & ANNE RUTHERFORD AS THE GHOST OF XMAS PAST

This version also clearly looks better than the Hicks version with it's bright and clear cinematography. There are however also some weaknesses compared to the Hicks version. As a tradeoff for spending more time with Scrooge's past we spend less time on the Christmas present and we do not get any version of the sweeping panorama of the city. It's possible that this may not have been a creative decision but may be that shooting on existing Hollywood studio sets they simply did not have the appropriate sets and miniatures to recreate Dickensian London handy and decided to dispense with them. It's noticeable that the exteriors we do see could basically represent any Victorian city and were probably already in place. There is also nothing to compare to the nightmarish scene selling Scrooge's last effects at the Old Joe the Fence's darkened lair.

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GUSTAVE DORE'S LONDON UNDERWORLD

Reginald Owen as Scrooge is solid but unremarkable, lacking the brooding glower of Hicks or the self-loathing menace of the later Alister Sim and coming off as merely a crotchety old coot. Owen in some other roles had been a rather stolid and stocky presence even as he played Sherlock Holmes but here he is unrecognizable seeming to have lost weight and with an odd scuttling gait that would later be copied by Albert Finney in his 1970 musical adaptation. The Cratchits were played by actual married couple Gene and June Lockhart and they do have a natural familiarity and ease however Gene looks far too well fed and comfortable compared to Donald Calthrop's careworn, stoop shouldered version. Cathrop was believably meek and servile while Lockhart was so oppressively upbeat as to seem almost imbecilic and even getting fired (which doesn't happen in most versions) can't dampen his good cheer for long. The Cratchit's middle daughter was also played by their daughter June who would later go on to star in the 1950's and 60's on TV shows "Lassie", "Petticoat Junction" and "Lost In Space" and as of this writing she is still alive. We also spend more time with Scrooge's nephew Fred and his fiancee Bess who are a typical blandly attractive and wholesome Hollywood couple. One exception is Tiny Tim as played by Terry Kilburn who is sickly cloying even by the standards of the day. Kilburn would appear in "The Adventures Of Sherlock Holmes" (1939), "The Swiss Family Robinson" (1940), "Black Beauty" (1946) and some Andy Hardy and Bulldog Drummond films. As of this writing he is also still living.

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REGINALD OWEN & GENE LOCKHART AS CRACHIT

Reginald Owen (born 1887) was British actor who had a long film career as far back as 1911 in Britain before moving to Hollywood which had already included appearing in early two sound Sherlock Holmes films including appearing as both Dr Watson (opposite Clive Brook in 1932) and Holmes himself in 1933 giving him the odd and somewhat unenviable distinction of playing not one but three classic characters of Victorian fiction (Scrooge, Holmes and Watson) only to see them taken over and personified by other actors (Alistar Sim, Basil Rathbone and Nigel Bruce) in his own lifetime. Owen was not actually the first choice to be Scrooge with the role originally planned for Lionel Barrymore who had played the role on radio and was a bigger star but he was not available, they did get him for the trailer. Owen would have long life and career into the TV era usually in supporting roles in such films as the notorious epic bomb "Hotel Imperial" (1939), an adaptation of Robert Louis Stevenson's "Kidnapped" (1938), the 1962 adaptation of Jules Verne's "Five Weeks In A Balloon" and on TV in "Bewitched" and the supernatural anthology series "One Step Beyond" before dying in 1972.

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REGINALD OWEN
The Owens version was an immediate hit and would become the standard version for (at least in North America) until the classic 1951 Alistar Sim version and even today there are some Americans who list this as their favorite version but frankly that's a hard argument to see. It's attractive and its acting and direction are perfectly competent and I can understand preferring it to the more downbeat Hicks version but it's basically bland and lacks the personality, atmosphere and depth of the Hicks Scrooge let alone the masterful 1951 version with Alistar Sim.

ALISTAIR SIM;

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The Hicks and Owens films became the standard versions that would be rereleased every Christmas season with the Hicks version in the UK and Owens version in North America for the next twenty years with no other film production until a British production would become the iconic portrayal.

"SCROOGE" (1951);


Directed by Brian Desmond Hurst
Cast;
Alistair Sim ~ Ebaneezer Scrooge
Mervyn Johns ~ Bob Cratchit
Hermione Bradley ~ Mrs Cratchit
Michael Hordern ~ Jacob Marley
Michael Dolan ~ Ghost Of Christmas Past
Francis De Wolf ~ Ghost Of Christmas Present
Kathleen Harrison ~ Mrs Dilber the Charwoman
Louise Hampton ~ The Laundress
Miles Malleson ~ Old Joe the Fence
Glyn Dearman ~ Tiny Tim
Carol Marsh ~ Fanny Scrooge
Rona Anderson ~ Alice
George Cole ~ Young Scrooge
Patrick Macnee ~ Young Marley  

By the time this version was made over a decade had passed since the previous versions and the lush and syrupy  escapism of the Owen version was quaintly old fashioned in the age of stylish Film Noir and gritty Realism and this version has elements of both. It's a return to the dark and gloomy Dickensian world of the Hicks version but done with a better budget. Scrooge's mansion and office are dusty tombs with cobwebs and tattered drapes, Cratchit's home is spartan and London looks cold and lonely except in the scenes from Scrooge's past and again at the end when everything seems more lively meaning this was a creative decision rather than a budgetary restraint as may have been partially the case in the Hicks version. The costumes are however not as threadbare as those in the Hicks version. Everything looks authentic and lived-in as only an English production could have pulled off. There are also better special effects particularly in the scene where Marley's Ghost visits and shows Scrooge the street scene where the massed spirits ineffectively try to aid a homeless mother and child in the snow below. The music is used more sparingly than in the 1938 version but it has more impact.

For the first time this version narrative structure gives plenty of time to vividly establish Scrooge's miserly character as well as spending enough time with each of the Spirits to justify his redemption which unlike in the previous versions happened more slowly rather than abruptly as the realization dawns on him making his final redemption scene more satisfying.

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While the whole film is well made and true to the source in it's writing the focal point and the thing everybody remembers is always Alistair Sim's Scrooge. Sim brought a depth and complexity to the role. His Scrooge wasn't just crotchy, rude and cheap, he was cruel, cynical, arrogant and full of sheer disgust and revulsion for his fellow man, a true misanthrope. In the scene where he is seen signing Marley's death notice and inheriting his miserable estate has no actual dialogue or action other than the sneer on his face as the Spirit describes him as a miserable, grasping, covetous old miser but the sneer indeed tells us all we need to know about Scrooge's character. At the same time Sim manages to convey something else about Scrooge that wasn't made clear before. That he is also a frightened old man full of self-loathing. His Scrooge is self aware, he knows he is a bad person however much he may justify it, and so watching him learn (or relearn) how he got that way and what the consequences are make his redemption arc feel earned in a way previous efforts had not. The famous scene where at the end where Scrooge wakes up and is overjoyed at getting a second chance was criticized by some as being overly broad and indeed he does seem to be almost having a nervous breakdown but given the real depth of Sim's performance and after watching the film spend enough time to develop his Scrooge it does feel like an organic reaction. Perhaps more revealing and far more subtle is the scene where he arrives at his nephew's house for dinner and hesitates at the door, shoulders hunched with a look of his fear of rejection before being wordlessly encouraged by the maid. The entire scene is in fact worldless but has more emotional power beyond what may have been in the script.  

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Besides Sim the rest of the cast was solid with Mervyn Jones also being the best Cratchit so far, certainly more believable than Gene Lockhart and with more depth than Donald Calthrop. Michael Hordern's Marley is more ghostly and anguished than Leo J Carroll in the 1938 version although he is helped by better special effects. One notable change from the Owen version is switching the Ghost of Christmas from a beautiful woman to a wizened old man. This is a lateral move but perhaps it ultimately better served the story to have the spirit be a remote figure rather than the lovely Ann Rutherford. Another change is the increased prominence given to Kathleen Harrison as Mrs Dilber the Charwoman. The role had existed in the Owen version but here she is given much more dialogue and Harrison plays off Sim well in his classic morning after scene. She is also excellent in the scene with Old Joe the Fence as is the rest of her partners in crime although this scene isn't as creepy and nightmarish as in the Dore influenced Hicks version it is more realistic. As a final note modern audiences will spot as young Marley Patrick Mcnee who would later go on to become John Steed in the classic 1960's spy series "The Avengers".      

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Sim was a Scottish actor who was previously best known as a comic actor but he seems to have been the filmmaker's first choice and this role would become his legacy. He would take much of the decade off as he was apparently somewhat typecast and seen as being something of a relic as tastes changed in modern British cinema. Sim was a private man who gave few interviews so if he had become somewhat resentful of being overshadowed by his creation as basil Rathbone had been about his Sherlock Holmes he never said so. In fact he would later reprise the role in an animated version in 1971 but that will have to wait for another year. He died in 1976.

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The Alistair Sim performance became instantly definitive in Britain but while it took longer for Americans to catch up once they did the 1951 production would become an annual Christmas tradition effectively discouraging any more large screen productions until 1970's musical production with Albert Finney and Alec Guinness. Instead for the rest of the 50's and 60's productions would be limited to TV.

TAYLOR HOLMES (1949);

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Most of the various TV productions do not survive and included a 1947 starring John Carradine and his young son David and an even younger Eva Marie Saint as Cratchit children. Other versions were made as early as 1943 but like most if not all early TV shows they were done live and no copies were preserved with the oldest surviving version coming from 1949 in a short half hour version narrated by Vincent Price.

"THE CHRISTMAS CAROL" (1949);


Cast;
Narrator ~ Vincent Price
Taylor Holmes ~ Ebaneezer Scrooge
Pat White ~ Bob Cratchit
Nelson Leigh ~ Jacob Marley
Queenie Leonard ~ Mrs Cratchit
Jill St John ~ Bessie Cratchit

At only a half hour this version obviously skimps on the details and races through the story although unlike some longer versions it actually does include all the major characters. The cast of mostly no-names (aside from Price obviously) was probably obscure even then and would remain so. Taylor Holmes is the least intimidating Scrooge yet seeming merely cranky and the rest of the cast are similarly competent but bland and it's a shame they didn't just get Price to play Scrooge or at least Marley which would have added an interesting touch. The sets are also bland and lack character. This version could best be described as perfunctory. Aside from Price the best known actor here was Queenie Leonard who played Mrs Crachit, she was a veteran stage and cabaret star from Britain before moving to America and a long career in TV and doing voice work for Disney. She died in 2002. One of the Cratchit daughters was played by a young Jill St John, future starlet and Bond Girl then only nine and still under her real name of Jill Oppenheim, as of this writing she is still alive. Taylor Holmes died in 1959.

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TAYLOR HOLMES & NELSON LIEGH


FREDRICK MARCH (1954);



Directed by Ralph Levy
Cast;
Fredrick March ~ Ebaneezer Scrooge
Basil Rathbone ~ Jacob Marley
Bob Sweeney ~ Bob Cratchit
Fred Middleton ~ Nephew Fred Holliwell and the Ghost of Christmas Present
Sally Fraser ~ Belle and the Ghost of Christmas Past
Queenie Leonard ~ Mrs Cratchit
Bonnie Franklin ~ Susan Cratchit

Part of an anthology series called "Shower Of Stars" which featured treatments of stories from a variety of sources ranging from contemporary melodramas to ghost stories and works of classical literature usually featuring a couple of stars from the big screen. It was originally broadcast in both black & white and colour versions but only the B&W version has survived. Unlike other TV treatments of the era it took a full hour and had a more suitable budget for sets allowing for a more cinematic look. This is partially a musical with several musical numbers mostly in the first half, these tend to the maudlin and overwrought and slow the proceedings down and affect the erratic pacing. At times there are scenes with more dialogue than other adaptations while others race along too abruptly particularly towards the end as if the filmmakers suddenly remembered they needed to wrap things up. There is not even a Ghost of Christmas Future instead having Scrooge visit a graveyard accompanied only by a cackling raven as he finds his own grave. The graveyard does have a spooky b-movie look and the other sets look authentic enough although without either the lushness of the Reginald Owen Hollywood production or the seedy grandeur of the Sim or Hicks versions. Fredrick March was by this point an established Hollywood star since the beginning of the sound era including appearing in "Dr Jekyll & Mr Hyde" (1931), "Death Takes A Holiday" (1934), "Les Miserables" (1935), "Anna Kerenina" (1935) and "A Star Is Born" (1937) and was certainly capable of playing a cantankerous old bastard and he effortlessly does so here although he doesn't have the larger-than-life quality of Alistar Sim. Perhaps to make the rather square jawed March look more like the classic image of Scrooge he is given a distractingly large fake nose.

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FREDRICK MARCH

Marley is played by Basil Rathbone, then even more famous from the iconic Sherlock Holmes series whose ghost is even more desparing than usual and also gets more dialogue. Given that this is at least partially a musical much of the rest of the cast were chosen for being singers rather than actors and are merely competent. This is true of the other Ghosts of Christmas Past and Present who also appear as Scrooge's past fiancee Belle and nephew Fred. Having some characters doing double duty as ghosts was unusual if not unique but has occasionally been done since notably in the 1979 American/Canadian TV adaptation by Henry Winkler, a 2004 TV musical starring Kelsey Grammer and a "WKRP" special episode with mixed results.

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BASIL RATHBONE AS MARLEY

Another difference from most other but versions (with the notable exception of the Reginald Owen Hollywood version) the Ghost of Christmas past is played by a beautiful woman, here the tall blonde Sally Fraser, a TV actress better known from various B-Horror movies like "It Conquered The World" (1956), "Giant From The Unknown" (1958), "War Of The Colossal Beast" (1958) and "Earth Versus The Spider" (1958) and the TV anthology series "One Step Beyond". She retired by 1970 and lived until 2019. Mrs Cratchit was played again by Queenie Leonard returning from playing the same role in the 1949 Taylor Holmes version. Once again one of the Crachit daughters was played by a future star in Bonnie Franklin who would later star in the popular 1980's sitcom "One Day At A Time".

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SALLY FRASER

BASIL RATHBONE (1956 & 1959);

Already an established star for his iconic portrayal of Sherlock Holmes in a series of films in the forties would play Scrooge twice becoming the second actor to play both Holmes and Scrooge after Reginald Owen. This first being a musical version.

"THE STINGIEST MAN IN TOWN" (1956);


Cast;
Basil Rathbone ~ Ebaneezer Scrooge
Martyn Green ~ Bob Cratchit
Robert Weede ~ Jacob Marley
Johnny Desmond ~ Nephew Fred
Ian Martin ~ Ghost of Christmas Past
Vic Damone ~ Young Scrooge
Patrice Munsel ~ Belle
Robert Wright ~ Ghost of Christmas Present
The Four Lads ~ Carolers

This is a musical version which is twice as long as previous TV versions, longer in fact than the film versions and a fairly major production by the standards of 1950's TV. Most of the cast are not surprisingly singers rather than actors with Vic Damone, Johnny Desmond and the Four Lads being Pop stars (but most definitely not Rock & Roll or Jazz) of the era. And then there's Basil Rathbone. Best known as the iconic version of Sherlock Holmes in the previous decade on both film and radio although by this time his career was in decline having been somewhat typecast as Holmes on the big screen he had retreated to TV and B-horror movies. He was still a respected figure and had previously played Marley so his casting made sense and he does indeed provide whatever heft this version has. It needs it too. The sings can be generously described as slight and forgettable ranging from sappy to histrionic styles that were already old hat and they often drag out the pace. Most of the performances are merely adequate aside from Rathbone who is too skilled an actor to simply phone it in. With his cadaverous face, fright wig hair and harsh, creaking voice he is the image of Dickens' Scrooge and he does a credible job although he can not match the depth of Alistair Sim. On the other hand while a skilled actor he clearly can not sing so it's fortunate that he is given few chances to do so.

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BASIL RATHBONE AS SCROOGE

Given the restrictions of TV productions of the era this does a reasonably good job of working with the stagebound sets which are more detailed than previous TV versions. As for the story, although this version is twice the length of previous TV versions since most of that time is spent on extended musical numbers this does not mean that we really spend much greater time on the character's development. This can be seen in the scenes from Scrooge's past which are done as syrupy and over-wrought song and dance routines which lack the bitter-sweet mood the scene requires for Scrooge's future redemption to have real impact. The final scene at the graveyard with the Ghost Of Christmas Future discards the treacle ballads for an interpretive dance number which is rather spooky leading to Rathbone's emotional breakdown. Among the rest of the cast besides the singers sharp-eyed viewers will notice one of the Gentlemen from the beginning seeking a donation for charity is John McIver who would later show up in "Twilight Zone".  

    After the musical version Rathbone would finally get to play Scrooge again in a non-musical version, albeit another brief one.

"A CHRISTMAS CAROL" (1959);


Cast;
Fredrick March ~ Host & Narrator
Basil Rathbone ~ Ebaneezer Scrooge
Wilfred Fletcher ~ Jacob Marley
Bob Townley ~ Bob Cratchit
Walter Hudd ~ Ghost Of Christmas Past
Alexander Gauge ~ Ghost Of Christmas Present
Brian McDermont ~ Nephew Fred

This was part of an anthology series hosted by Fredrick March who played Scrooge in the 1954 version and narrates here as Vincent Price had done previously. Once again this is another version that is too short and perfunctory to do more than a basic if credible job of telling the story, in fact it appears to basically be a restaging of the Taylor Holmes version from a decade earlier along with some scenes being lifted word-for-word from non-musical Rathbone version albeit with better sets and direction and a stronger cast. The Ghost of Christmas Future scene does show some more artistic directorial choices but given the abbreviated nature of this version it is too short to make much of an impression. Rathbone, whon had played Marley opposite March in 1954 is fine and could have easily done an effective Scrooge in a proper version as it is; he still ranks near the top in our survey of black and white Scrooges behind only Alistar Sim. Rathbone died in 1967 having been reduced to mostly playing in low budget drive-in theatre horror fare like "Tales Of Terror" (1962), "Voyage To A Prehistoric Planet" (1965), "The Ghost In The Invisible Bikini" (1966) and "Hillbillies In A Haunted House" (1967). Fredrich March had better luck, appearing in prestige films like "Inherit The Wind" (1960) and "Twelve Days In May" (1964) dying in 1975.

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BASIL RATHBONE

STERLING HAYDEN (1969);

The last major black & white Scrooge production would come from some high powered names including Joseph Mankiewicz and Rod Serling and star an impressive cast.

"A MODERN CHRISTMAS CAROL" (1965);


Directed by Joseph Mankiewicz Cast;
Sterling Hayden  ~  Daniel Grudge
Ben Gazzara ~ Nephew Fred
Steve Lawrence  ~  Ghost Of Christmas Past
Pat Hingle  ~  Ghost Of Christmas Present
Robert Shaw  ~  Ghost Of Christmas Future
Peter Sellers ~ The Imperial Me
Percy Rodriquez ~ Charles the Butler
Eva Marie Saint ~ Navy Nurse Lt Gibson
James Shigeta ~ Doctor
Britt Ekland ~ Mother
Peter Fonda ~ Marley Grudge

Written by Rod Serling this version updates the Dickens story into a modern America to present a different political story focusing on anti-war. Serling was of course an innovative and thoughtful writer however he could be overly wordy and at times preachy. In the context of the half hour "Twilight Zone" episodes these urges were usually kept in check but given ninety minutes to play with (that's actually longer than any previous version) and under the direction of the the equally intense Mankiewicz he is allowed to let his typewriter work overtime and the results are more like a dour and angry sermon than even Dickens himself allowed.

In this version Scrooge, renamed as Dan Grudge and played by Sterling Hayden, is a millionaire who is grieving the loss of his son in war and has turned his back on humanity becoming a belligerent Cold War isolationism motivated more by fear and bitterness rather than Scrooge's greed. The various Ghosts show Scrooge, I mean Grudge, the results of war and isolationism and lecture him on his selfishness. And I do mean lecture. Each visit is an extended hectoring monologue which drag on without any of the quirky touches Serling was known for. There are a few scenes creatively shot but the whole show is dour and slow moving. There is an impressive cast including Ben Gazzara as Grudge's nephew, Robert Shaw as the Ghost of Christmas Future, Pat Hingle (best known from Clint Eastwood movies) at the Ghost of Christmas Present, Steve Lawrence (best known as a singer) as the Ghost of Christmas Past along with Eva Marie Saint ("The Manchurian Candidate"), James Shigeta ("The Flower Drum Song" and a later Christmas classic, "Die Hard") Peter Sellers and a cameo from Sellers then wife Britt Eckland. Unlike most versions this is very talky and so Shaw's Ghost gets to make his own speeches with which his cold, clipped, accent gives added bite.

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STERLING HAYDEN AS GRUDGE & ROBERT SHAW AS THE GHOST OF XMAS FUTURE

Hayden is fine as Grudge although lacking the depth of Sim's Scrooge or even Owen. Hayden and Sellers were fresh off appearing together in "Dr Stangeglove" and while Hayden is more understated than his character in that film Sellers is typically over-the-top in a scenery chewing which has no comparable character in the traditional story, or any other. While this version is longer than previous versions and far more dialogue heavy it is shallower as we don't actually see any of Grudge's past or evolution and the characters lack depth being instead stock archetypes who declaim somber lectures so there is no real connection with the viewer. Even the ending is thoughtful and understated rather than joyous so Hayden does not get a version of Sim's giddy Christmas Day speech. Long as this is it was originally even longer as Grudge's son was played by Peter Fonda but he was cut out of most of the finished product and so only appears as a ghostly image and in a large painting. Other actors reportedly cast but dropped or cut out were Christopher Plummer and Richard Harris. Sterling Hayden had already starred in Stanley Kubrick's first important film "The Killing" (1956) and would later appear in "The Godfather". He died in 1986. Eva Marie Saint had made her debut in the lost 1947 TV version with John Carradine and as of this writing is still living (at 99 years old!) as is Britt Eckland.

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STERLING HAYDEN & EVA MARIE SAINT

This is typically stagebound but unlike the earlier TV entries there is some creative camera work and innovative set design. There is also a solid musical soundtrack from Henry Manicini including a guest appearance from the Andrews Sisters. In future years there would be other attempts to update the Scrooge story including versions starring Henry Winkler, Bill Murray and the cast of WKRP all of which, whatever their shortcomings, are more watchable and certainly more entertaining than this dour, hectoring sermon which however sincere and well meaning does not show Rod Serling at his best and lacks the sense of humour he was certainly capable of instead replacing Dickens' more maudlin excesses with his own. This version was in fact originally planned as a political broadside during the 1964 Presidential election promoting the work of the United Nations and taking pointed swipes at the Vietnam War, segregation and GOP candidate Barry Goldwater for his isolationism and sabre rattling rhetoric in the however reportedly the ABC censors insisted on making cuts and toning down some of the dialogue for fear of offending the GOP. The entire cast felt strongly enough about the project that they each took substantial pay cuts to appear (including the prickly Sellers who was also coming off a serious heart attack) however the show received poor reviews and after airing was shelved for the next fifty years when it was rediscovered and aired again on TCM and released on DVD.  

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ROD SERLING


THE FOUR LADS

Tuesday 7 November 2023

German Expressionist Film In the Nazi Era


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Expressionism is the defining film genre of Weimar Germany and indeed one of the most important of the entire interwar film era. It's themes of exploring loneliness, alienation, madness, dehumanization, nightmares, hallucinations and untamed emotions and it's esthetic world of shadows, fog, pools of light and artificiality would influence future genres of horror, film noir and science fiction from Hitchcock and James Whale down to Tim Burton and Ridley Scott. Not to mention any number of rock videos. However, it's time in German film barely survived the decade and would be stamped out, as would so much art, by the coming to power of the Nazis in 1933. In fact Expressionism as a genre was already in decline by then, made passe partly by the inevitable change in tastes encouraged by the coming of sound and it's change of focus away from the purely visual and partly by the coming of the Great Depression when the public's desire was to escape from the gloom of their lives than to watch it on screen.

Nevertheless there's no doubt the nail in the coffin was the Nazis. Adolf Hitler (a failed artist) and Propaganda Minister Josef Goebbels (a failed novelist) were convinced they were experts in art and music and like all Fascists the Nazis taste in art was reactionary in the extreme and like everything else was to be at the service of the state in fostering "patriotism". Fascist art celebrates hyper traditionalism with plenty of bombastic pseudo Greco-Roman and Nordic art, equally hyper masculinity (which often crosses over into unintional homoerotic self-parody which is even more hilarious since Fascists seem to be the only ones who can't spot it), militarism and absolute conformity and obedience to strongman leaders and strict social hierarchies. There is no room for or tolerance Modern Art (basically from the Impressionist Era onward) with it's themes of abstraction, self-reflection, decadence, loneliness and the inner world of dreams and the psyche. Fascism allows for no inner world at all demanding instead constant outward displays of mindless fealty. The Nazis classed virtually all Modern Art as officially "Degenerate" including the distinctly German creations of Expressionism, Dada, Cabaret and the Die Bruke movement and Bauhaus Design school as well as Surrealism, Cubism, Futurism, Fauvism and Art Nouveau which they publicised with the infamous display of "Degenerate Art" in 1937 which became something of an embarrassment as some of the art turned out to be more popular with curious audiences than the officially sanctioned art exhibit that happened at the same time.    

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"DEGENERATE ART" EXHIBITION

Hitler and Goebbels paid special attention to the film for it's propaganda potential. They had no doubt noticed how the Soviets had used film as a propaganda tool coining the name "Agitprop" including the films of iconic director Sergi Eisenstein such as "The Battleship Potemkin". They were also notably fans of Sherlock Holmes films, westerns, Disney cartoons and even Charlie Chaplin's "The Great Dictator" which Hitler screened several times in spite of the movie being banned. A particular favorite of both was "Gone With The Wind" as a pro-Confederate epic and were envious of Germany not really having an equivalent, which would eventually lead to an attempt to make their own historical epic in "Kolberg" (1945) considered to be possibly the biggest money losing bomb of all time.

The Nazi attitude towards German film and Expressionism was contradictory. Upon taking power in 1933 they imposed an immediate stop to most productions while they were evaluated for their value to the state and the Party with many films being banned including "All Quiet On The Western Front" (antiwar), "Tarzan & His Mate" (too erotic), "The Prize Fighter & The Lady" (starring Jewish boxer Max Baer), and even Chaplin's "The Kid" for some reason along with of course any films with obvious gay content (as I already wrote about here). Directives were swifty issued banning Jews from the industry entirely and when to their credit Dacho, the film actors and directors organization, bravely protested it was immediately disbanded. Many actors and directors spotting the writing on the wall took the chance to flee the country leading to an exodus in talent that included actors Marlane Dietrich, Peter Lorre, Conrad Veidt, Elizabeth Berenger, Oskar Homolka, John Gottwott, directors Billy Wilder, Hans Richter, Otto Preminger, Douglas Sirk, Robert Wiene and composer Kurt Weill. At first Geobeels was happy to see them go but then rather belatedly he realized the brain and talent drain would hurt the German film industry and made attempts to woo the film community. Many top Nazis including Hitler, Goebbels and Goering were shameless starfuckers both figuratively and in the case of Geobbels and Goering literally with both carrying on affairs with actresses, leading to personal appeals to certain actors and directors. Danish actress Asta Neilsen had been a major star in German film since the Great War when photos of her had been posted in the trenches by soldiers and while by 1933 she was in her fifties she was still popular enough for Goebbels and Hitler to invite her to dinner and offer her her own studio. She instead announced her retirement and returned to Denmark where she would quietly oppose the Nazis.

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ASTA NIELSEN

If Asta was no longer thought of as a sex symbol that was certainly not true of Brigitte Helm of "Metropolis" fame. Helm was the very epitome of an Aryan sex symbol, tall, slim, statuesque, blonde, blue eyed and stunningly beautiful. Helm was no Nazi though, even having a Jewish banker as a boyfriend. Goebbels did have additional leverage on Helm as she also had a taste for speed known for her reckless driving which ended in a serious car crash that resulted in a death and Helm being charged with manslaughter. Hitler was a fanboy and intervened to make the charges go away and she was invited to yet another dinner with offers of film roles but she instead wasted no time in skipping to Switzerland with her Jewish boyfriend who she married and retired from film.

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BRIGITTE HELM

The Polish born Pola Negri was a special case. She had been a huge star in the early twenties Germany before moving to Hollywood to further success however with the coming of sound she returned to Europe living in France and working in Germany as well. As she was Polish Goebbels hated Negri as not being insufficiently Aryan as well as difficult and refused to give her the official certificate to allow her to work in Germany but ever the Diva she simply went over his head to Hitler himself where the Fuhrer, ever the fanboy, was instantly charmed and gave her the prized certificate granting her carte blanche to continue working much to Geobbels' fury. She was not even required to make propaganda and instead focused on her beloved costume dramas until the Nazis invaded France when she quickly packed up and returned to Hollywood. Famously Fritz Lang claimed that Goebbels personally offered him the chance to be the head of the German film industry but Lang instead took the chance to flee to Hollywood. Lang was probably exaggerating his importance. As we've seen it's likely that he was offered a prominent role in German film but it's impossible to picture a micromanaging control freak like Goebbles handing control of the entire German film industry to a figure like Lang with an established reputation and obvious talent and who was not even a member of the Nazi Party. By contrast Lang's wife screenwriter Thea Harbau stayed in Germany and became a Nazi as did actors Werner Krause ("The Cabinet Of Dr Caligari"), Emil Jannings ("The Last Laugh" & "Faust"), Heinrich George, director Carl Froelich and of course Leni Riefenstal. Most seem to have kept out of politics, kept their heads down and kept their jobs such as directors GW Pabst, Herbert Selpin and Walter Ruttmann and actors Lil Dagover ("Caligari"), Erna Morena (the original "Pandora's Box" & "Diary Of A Lost Girl"), Paul Wegener ("Der Golem") and Hans Albers ("The Man Who Was Sherlock Holmes"). With Wegener and Albers (and Asta Neilsen) making occasional covert gestures against the Nazis.

Quickly Goebbels would impose strict quotas on foreign films, nationalized the entire German film industry (in fact being practically the only industry the Nazis actually nationalized) and appointed a Reichsdramaturg to oversee all productions. There would end up being a series of these officials and it's telling that none of them had any legitimate film experience and were instead obscure film critics for Nazi papers and loyal party members none of whom lasted more than a few years while Goebbels himself appointed the army of censors who would rule what would be allowed. Goebbels would also famously screen at least one film a night even at the height of the war often sending notes and "suggestions" for changes to be made for his approval.

Besides being a genuine film fan Goebbels was no fool and he quickly learned much to his annoyance that overt propaganda films were simply not popular with the general public who performed the light comedies, musicals and lush costume dramas fashionable at the time so he eventually decided that such escapism had some value in distracting the public from their problems and the bulk of the films of the Nazi era would thus fall into these genres and it is estimated that less than a quarter of films produced under the Nazis were actually propaganda films. The sort of films inspired by Expressionism such as horror, film noir crime films, supernatural mysteries, sexually provocative dramas or challenging art films were another matter however. Such films might provoke people to look inward, think negative thoughts, question official conformity and think creatively, always a danger to authoritarians. Besides the Expressionist methods and tropes of elliptical and non-linear storytelling, obscure symbolism, the sympathetic portrayal of the ugly, explorations of sexuality, the mocking of authority and the rejection of logic in favour of the celebration of the world of dreams and nightmares, simply make authoritarians uncomfortable and angry for reasons they can't quite nail down.

Accordingly in German films there would be no more horror like "Nosferatu". No more master criminals like Dr Mabuse or Dr Caligari. No more dark psychological or sexually charged dramas like "Die Strasse" or the films of Asta Neilsen and Lousie Brooks. No more weird fantasies with foreign 9or worse Jewish) themes like "Der Golem". Instead film, like all art must be positive, uplifting and patriotic or at least frothy escapism. However no system is perfect even in a dictatorship and a few odd exceptions did sneak though. The classic books on German film of the Weimar years; Sigfried Kracauer's "From Caligari To Hitler" (1947) and Lotte Eisner's "The Haunted Screen" (1952) do not deal with this era at all unfortunately as is the case with most books on German film but "Film In The Third Reich" by David Stewart Hull (1969) does a thorough job although he does miss a few films. Hull does list three or four films which would fall into the category of if not strictly Expressionist than certainly Expressionist themed films that somehow managed to make it through the layer of Nazi censors. Hull's book does have some glaring omissions, possibly due to the difficulty at the time of finding copies of some films, a problem he mentions, and he largely seems to have limited himself to films he could actually view which leaves out such notable films a version of "The Hound Of The Baskervilles" (1939), "Der Schimmelreiter", an adaptation of a novel with a supernatural theme and crime films "Ich War Jack Mortimer" (1935) some of which can now be seen publicly.

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The first of these was "Anna Und Elisabeth" which was released in April 1933 only four months after the Hitler was appointed Chancellor and only a month after the Enabling Act was passed giving him dictatorial powers and the same month Goebbels started to take control of the film industry. Thus it was one of the last films made under the old Weimar system although released under the Nazis before the imposition of a full censorship pre-clearance system who probably would not have otherwise allowed it through with it's theme of dark and mysterious supernatural powers and a vaguely lesbian subtext with the two stars of the acclaimed overtly lesbian themed "Madchen In Uniform'' (1932).  

"ANNA UND ELISABETH" (1933);


Directed by Frank Wisbar
CAST;
Hertha Thiele  ~  Anna
Dorothea Wieck  ~  Elisabeth Testa
Carl Bathaus  ~  Martin, Anna's Brother
Mathias Wieman ~ Mathias Testa
Maria Wanck  ~  Margarete, Elisabeth's Sister
Willy Kaiser-Heyl  ~  The Priest
Karl Platen  ~  The Doctor
Roma Bahn ~ Mary Lane
Dorothea Thiess  ~  Anna's Mother
Plot Synopsis (spoiler alert); Anna is a young woman in her late teens living with her parents and brother in a small town who seems to have a faith based power to cure illness and even death by her touch as she is able to raise her brother from the dead after an unexplained illness. The town Doctor declares it a miracle but the town Priest is skeptical. Local villagers hear about the miracle and begin to gather outside the house wanting to be cured, including an old woman with a spinal neck injury. Anna is hesitant to accept her new powers but the woman takes her hand and claims that she has been cured. The Priest tells the townspeople to go home but the old woman tells them of her cure and they stay.
Elisabeth is a wealthy woman who lives with her husband Mathias and younger sister on an island outside town and who has suffered and unexplained illness or injury which has confined her to a wheelchair. She is desperate for a cure and hearing about Anna sends her husband to summon her. He is reluctant and does not believe in faith healing but he does meet with Anna. She tells him she is scared and tired and he is sympathetic but he does convince her to visit the island and meet with Elisabeth. The next moring she heads out alone in a rowboat to the island and meets with Elisabeth who begs for a cure. Anna again denies she has any powers and turns to leave. As she does, Elisabeth rises from her wheelchair and suddenly has the power to walk. The two women return to town where word has already spread and the old and sick of the town are waiting for them. Elisabeth insists that Anna come and live with her so her healing powers can be properly managed and she will be safe from the crowd and she agrees. Elisabeth keeps Anna isolated from the town and her family. Mathias and her sister try to talk Elisabeth out of the arrangement as does the Priest. Anna's brother Martin sneaks into Elisabeth's manor to talk Anna into leaving but while Anna says she is unhappy she also now believes in her powers. Elisabeth's husband visits the Priest and expresses his continued doubts. Elisabeth is visited by Mary Lane, a promoter who proposes a partnership to send them on tour to publicize Anna's gift but Elisabeth sends her away. Elizabeth meets with the Priest who tells her that the Church has heard about Anna and is sending an investigator to evaluate her. Elisabeth suggests a public demonstration at the Church. Elisabeth's husband has been ill and has been getting worse and now Elisabeth is informed that he appears to be dying. She sends for Anna to cure him. Anna comes to his bedside and prays but it is no use and he dies anyway. Both women are upset and run away separately. Back at the Church the villagers are gathering bringing their sick relatives to be cured. Elisabeth finds Anna to convince her to come to the Church but Anna refuses saying she failed to cure Mathias. Elisabeth says he died because he had no faith and Anna says she has lost her faith as well and again refuses. Despondent Elisabeth wanders off alone. Anna tells Martin she is now concerned about her. Elisabeth wanders to the edge of a cliff and Anna has a vision of her jumping off. She and Martin run to the Church for help and we are next shown Elisabeth in bed dying with Anna, Martin and the Priest present. She says that she will soon be free as will Anna as the scene fades out. Finis.  

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In "Madchen In Uniform" Hertha Thiele had played a teen sent to a girl's boarding school where she falls in love with one of the headmistresses played by Dorothea Wieck in a film that is widely seen as one of the finest of the Weimar's brief sound film era and is now considered a minor classic especially for it's largely sympathetic portrayal of a same sex relationship and the performances of it's two stars. The film was not only acclaimed by German critics but also in foreign countries where it was exported to rave reviews. Accordingly the reunion of the two stars was anticipated and modern film historians have noted a gay subtext in the relationship between the two women here they may be reading too much between the lines. Elisabeth's obsession and possessiveness of Anna is certainly unhealthy it appears genuine and aside from a few lingering close up shots of the two gazing inscrutably at each other it's hard to see any real sexual subtext here especially as Elisabeth is clearly in love with her devoted husband. The film's religious theme is clearly more central as Anna is seen as a sincere if conflicted believer whose power comes from prayer and is accepted as such by everybody else. When she is successful in curing people it is seen as her being a vehicle while her failure to save Mathias is blamed on his lack of faith. Interestingly the only other figure besides Mathias who doubts her powers is the town Priest with even the Doctor calling her cures miracles. The ending is ambivalent; Anna says she too has lost her faith and thus her powers yet she does have a vision of Elisabeth jumping to her death and while at the end Elisabeth is show apparently on her death bed and it's implied she is about to die she doesn't actually do so as we fade out and the fact that she has survived such a fall at all is something of a miracle. Does Anna still have her powers after all? It is unclear.

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With it's religious and supernatural themes this is an oddity in German film and while not exactly Expressionist, with its themes of fantasy, the supernatural, isolation and self doubt it does show some Expressionist imagery that would become rare in the Nazi era. The town is typically Expressionist with it's crumbling houses and winding claustrophobic lanes looking like those of "Der Golem" and the various Street Films such as "Die Strasse" and "The Joyless Street" and the island that Elisabeth and Mathias live on seems like a fantasy with their grim manor surrounded by jagged trees although the manor's interiors are simple and unadorned. The film makes little use of Expressionist tropes of shadowplay with most of the action taking place during the day aside from a scene where Elisabeth, still in her wheelchair, is presented with the shadows of window blinds appearing to show her behind bars and when Elisabeth is upset or Anna has her vision of Elisabeth at the cliff's edge we get some soft focus blurriness.

The films setting of an ancient looking village and Elisabeth's mysterious island further the film's odd dreamlike atmosphere as does it's sense of being slightly out of time where most of the characters dress in contemporary clothes but there seem to be no modern devices such as phones or even electricity until the publicist Mary Lane drives up in her car and her very modern clothes and being very pushy and arrogant. It's worth noting that aside from the cynical Mary Lane the other character who has a distinctively modern look is Mathias who does not believe in miracles. In a scene where he is at the manor waiting for Anna he is shown sitting at the piano bathed in light although looking forlorn. In the end he dies but we never really learn whether Anna's powers are real or not or what will become of her or what the nature of her symbiotic relationship with Elisabeth was. Like most early sound films, director Wisbar seems unsure of what to do with music in the film and it's used sparingly aside from the typically overly melodramatic opening.  

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FRANK WISBAR

  As this film was actually made before the Nazis took over the film industry, Goebbels imposed his film vision so it had little interference of the sort he would become notorious for. In fact it's an open question as to whether he would have even allowed the film to be made at all. The Nazis were hostile to most portrayals of the supernatural, magic and mysticism aside from their own official glorification of their supposed sacred Aryan mythological past (which Goebbels and even Hitler privately ridiculed to some degree) and the very Catholic mysticism of this film would have made them uneasy. There were other Fascist regimes (especially Franco's or Vichy France) that would have accepted the films's mystical premise but this was a poor fit for the Nazis. Despite the fame of its two leads the film was not a success with critics puzzled by it's ambivalent theme, muted tone and downbeat ending. It got an even more lackluster reception abroad. This was was actually one of the last German films to be exported as soon Geobbels would impose restrictive quotas on foreign imports aside from a few friendly countries like Italy. Predictably those countries, including America and most of Europe quickly responded with quotas of their own and along with boycotts of Nazi goods essentially collapsed the German export market for the rest of the Nazi era. Previously "Machden In Uniform" had gotten rave reviews but American critics found this film slow and muddled. Eventually Goebbels did get around to banning the film after it had already been shown and unlike "Madchen" it has been largely forgotten today although Hertha Thiele always listed it as one of her favorite roles. In their books Kracauer mentions the film only in a footnote while Eisner dimisses in in passing as "not a success".

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HERTHA THIELE

The two leads would have different careers under Nazi rule and afterwards. Hertha Thiele (born 1908), being another young pretty blonde, was naturally popular with Nazi feminine ideals and like Brigitte Helm was offered big roles if she would agree to play ball with the Nazi propaganda machine but as a supporter of leftist causes she breezily refused and soon found herself sidelined and in 1937 also like Helm she moved to Switzerland. After the war she moved back and forth between Switzerland and East Germany where she found some work in theatre and TV. Late in life she was able to see her work be reconsidered by German film historians, especially for "Madchen". She died in 1984 aged 76.

Dorthea Wieck (born 1908, note that while in their films together Wieck always played the older woman they were actually the same age) was originally Swiss but moved to Germany as a child and started acting onstage and silent films in her teens. She was noted for her soulful but dignified dark eyed beauty and racked up a long list of film roles even occasionally appearing in American films. Like Asta Neilsen, Brigitte Helm and Theile she was popular with the Goebbels and Hitler but unlike them she was willing to be wooed by the new regime with her husband, a wealthy Baron, being a Nazi supporter and she continued to work easily throughout the era even being given special praise by Goebbels. After the war such an association would be enough to effectively end the careers of the likes of Leni Reifenstal, Emil Jannings and Werner Krause but Wieck seems to have convinced the West German authorities that she hadn't played any significant propaganda role for the regime and she was allowed to continue her career albeit in supporting roles into the sixties when she effectively retired. She died in 1986 aged 78.              

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DOROTHEA WIECK

Director Frank Wisbar would have a unique career under the Nazis. Born in 1899 but not starting his film career until 1932 meant that unlike most directors of his time he did not make any silent films although he reportedly did work as an assistant director on the aforementioned "Madchen In Uniform" and Carl Dreyer's near silent "Vampyr", His own tastes seemed to run from odd supernatural themed melodramas to frothy comedies. It was the latter films that were popular with Nazi authorities including winning an award in 1935 and although he made no overt propaganda films it was probably these films that allowed him enough freedom to make the few supernatural films released in that era including the strangely Gothic Expressionist "Farmann Maria" in 1936.

"FAHRMANN MARIA" (1936);


Directed by Frank Wisbar
CAST;
Sybille Schmitz  ~  Maria
Albert Moog  ~  The Refugee
Peter Voss  ~  Death
Karl Platen  ~  The Ferryman
Carl De Vogt  ~  The Fiddler
Gerhard Bienert  ~  The Wealthy Farmer

Plot synopsis (spoiler alert); Set in the late nineteenth century in a rural village which is in a moor on a river which must be crossed via a small wooden ferry run by an old ferryman, one day a mysterious man appears waiting for a ride across the river. The stranger is tall, silent and dressed all in black. He does not speak but as the he is crossing the river the Ferryman suddenly dies and the stranger returns to the other side of the river leaving the village without a ferryman. Maria, a young woman passing through in need of money agrees to take the job which requires living in a small cottage on the river bank. One night a man arrives on the opposite bank exhausted and begging to be ferried over the river saying he is being pursued. Maria ferries him across just as six men ride up dressed in black and riding white horses. Seeing the man has crossed the river they turn and ride off without a word and the man collapses and Maria hides him in her cottage. The next morning the Refugee tells her he comes from a rich farm country which is under attack from an unknown enemy he has being on the run from which she had rescued him from and now he intends to return when but he promises to return. Other men appear from the village to crudely try and seduce Maria including a wandering fiddler and a wealthy farmer but she rebufs them as she has become infatuated with the Refugee. He becomes sick and feverish and has visions of the Black Riders returning. As he sleeps and the village prepares for it's harvest festival the tall silent stranger in black returns to the far bank and waits to be ferried across. As Maria pulls him across the river he asks her if she has carried across an injured man and at first she denies it but when the Stranger turns to look in her cottage she tells him the Refugee has gone to the village. She takes the stranger to the village where the festival is in swing. All the villagers regard the Man in Black with fear. The wealthy farmer who had accosted Maria earlier assumes she and the Man In Black are on date and challenges him to shoot dice for the honour of a dance with Maria which the stranger wins. As the Man In Black searches for the refugee Maria tries to distract him by dancing with him during which she feels faint. The farmer, now jealous interrupts the dance and accuses Maria in front of the villagers of having harbouring the stranger in her cottage and she runs away. Fleeing to a church she prays for help saying he would give her life to protect the refugee but the stranger Man In Black and says her prayers are useless. Maria tries to ring the church bell to summon help but no sound comes out. She breaks down and agrees to guide him through the moor to her cottage but she leads him astray and he stumbles into the marsh and is dragged down to drown. Maria returns to the cottage where the Refugee has awakened and she agrees to go off with him. They cross the river which is revealed to be rich farmland and they walk off together. Finis.
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This is a more explicitly Expressionist film than "Anna & Elizabeth"  both in its subject matter dealing with death, nightmares and the supernatural and in it's visual themes. Much of the film is shot at night and the swamp looks appropriately eerie and dreamlike. In fact the swamp looks remarkably similar to that in FW Murnau's "Sunrise; A Song Of Two Humans" which is probably not a coincidence. The Black Riders are especially arresting visually and in turn bear a striking resemblance for modern viewers to the Black Riders of Tolkien's "The Fellowship Of The Ring" although that probably is a coincidence. The figure of Death (assuming that's who he is) resembles classic Expressionist villains such as Dr Caligari, Count Orlack and Scampinelli from "The Student Of Prague" and his death as he is wordlessly sucked into the dark mire is a striking image that resembles the death of the villian Stapleton in the classic Sherlock Holmes "Hound Of The Baskervilles" and Dreyer's "Vampyr" suffocated in white powder. The character of the old Ferryman in turn exactly resembles the Renfield character from "Nosferatu" although they are not the same actor. As Maria, Sybille Schmitz is not the typical blonde Aryan leading lady but instead with her dark hair, sharp features and brooding stare she reminds one of classic Expressionist heroines Lil Dagover ("Caligari"), Lyda Salmonava ("Der Golem" and "The Student Of Prague") and Greta Schroeder ("Nosferatu") like Schroeder's Ellen, Maria is prepared to sacrifice herself for her love and again like Ellen she defeats Death by tempting him and then leading him to his doom. Unlike Nosferatu however who lusts creepily after Ellen here Death is impassive and seems to have little actual interest in her and she succeeds not by tempting him but through trickery. In another similar trope from Expressionist films Maria is in fact the only character to have a name as the others are essentially two dimensional symbols or archetypes with only Maria having any real character development.

  This is a better film than "Anna & Elisabeth" with a more coherent story and a stronger lead character. The visual themes are also better done and more consistent. Like "Vampyr" this could just as easily have been a silent film although it does make better use of music especially the menacing fanfare when Herr Death appears to Maria the first time although like other films of the era it does pad things out through musical interludes using the Fiddler character that could have been left out.      

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THE BLACK RIDERS

Besides the mystical themes some observers even at the time noted some veiled analogies to the Nazis in the form of Death and his Black Riders dressed in impecable black like Hitler's SS and the film is unique in the Nazi era. In fact Geobbels for his part disliked the film and considered it a failed experiment yet he still allowed it to be released partly because he was still trying to reassure the film community he would not micromanage them and possibly because he thought it might find a potential export market. In the event it found no audience either in German or abroad and was largely ignored by critics and has been all but forgotten today. Although it is sometimes referred to as the last example of pure German Expressionism it does not even rate a mention in Siegfried Kracauer or Lotte Eisner's books.

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PETER VOSS AS DEATH

The same year Wisbar teamed up with Sybille Schmitz for another odd mystery film. "Die Unbekannte" (AKA "The Unknown") was based on a German novel "The Unknown Woman Of The Seine", which was in turn based on the true story of a woman whose body was fished out of the French River Seine in the 1880's. She was never identified even after her body was put on display and hundreds filed passed and her death mask was published in the papers. The mystery of her identity and the apparently serene look on her face fascinated artists in Europe in the 1890's inspiring books, paintings and sculptures. In this telling of her story the woman is named Madeline (played by Schmitz) and she is a high priced courtesan who tires of her life of parties and affairs and decides to leave Paris and falls in love with a wealthy German adventurer Thomas Bentick (played by French actor Jean Galland in a likely play for the export market) who invites her to stay at his house and and her to join him on a planned trip to Africa. However she is recognized by one of her past clients who threatens her with blackmail. Bentick is also a diplomatic agent for the German government and he is charged with a last minute secret mission forcing him to cancel his trip with Madeleine. Hearing about the cancelled trip and fearing her past will be used against her and will ruin his reputation the distraught Madeline drowns herself in the River Seine where she is found by the police who can not identify her.

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This film has similar themes to the 1927 film "A Tragedy Of The Streets" starring Asta Neilsen (which I wrote about here) and could have certainly been shot in an Expressionist style however this time Wysbar chose to film the story as a straightforward romance which is rather bland as well as being overly talky and having little chemistry between the two leads. This is not an Expressionist film and has no such imagery so we need not spend more time on it. As a trivia note one of the supporting roles was played by the young Curt Jurgens who would later play the one of the most iconic Bond villains in "Goldfinger". Once again this film was not a success and hereafter Wisbar would return to the kind of frothy escapist romances that were favoured by Goebbels and the public at large for the next few years. Before the war he gave up and moved to Hollywood where he would have a long career mostly making low budget thrillers and later into television. In 1946 he made "The Strangler In The Swamp", inspired by and using some of the same imagery as "Fahrmann Maria".

"THE STRANGLER IN THE SWAMP" (1946);


The comparisons with "Fahrmann Maria" are obvious with its swamp, ferry, beautiful ferryman and mysterious stranger. But while this film is often billed as a remake of the earlier German film it is substantially different in it's story and themes entirely lacking the mysticism and mystery of the earlier film and is really a melodramatic ghost story. Instead of the enigmatic figure of Death the stranger is a vengeful ghost knocking off those who unjustly hanged him years before after framing him for murder. Since the stranger is a ghost there is no need for the Black Riders and they are completely absent, robbing the film of one of the earlier film's most memorable images. The Refugee on the run from an unknown foe is now a son returning home from the big city and there is still a Maria but while in the earlier film she was another wandering stranger her she is also a daughter returning from the city leaving a fairly conventional romance. This time she does not stand alone as there is the young man's father who sides with her and while as in the earlier film she does offer to sacrifice herself once she does so the ghost vanishes willingly rather than being lured into the swamp and drowned thus removing the earlier film's second most memorable image. This film does keep some of the visuals of the earlier film and even improves on the atmosphere of the swamp which is even more dark, foggy and eerie but the overall mood of this film is different and this is basically a romantic ghost story. Note the young man here is played by a young Blake Edwards who would later go on to become a writer and director responsible for the classic Pink Panther movies.      

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Sybille Schmitz would also star in another crime film which would make effective use of some themes from Expressionism and the related genre of Street Films from the Weimar era, this time directed by Carl Froelich who had produced "Madchen In Uniform".

"I WAS JACK MORTIMER" (1935);  


Directed by Carl Froelich
Cast;
Anton Wohlbruck  ~  Fred Spooner
Eugen Klopfer  ~  Pedro Montemayor
Sybille Schmitz  ~  Winifred Montemayor
Marieluise Claudius  ~  Marie Polikow
Hilde Hildebrand  ~  Daisy

Plot Synopsis (spoiler alert);  

Fred Spooner (Wohlbruck), a struggling Budapest taxi driver, is frustrated because he wants to marry his girlfriend Marie (Polikow) who works in a restaurant with her Russian emigre family. His big break seems to come one day when he assists a beautiful and wealthy Daisy (Hildebrand) with the engine of her car and is hired by her to act as her chauffeur on a trip down to Monte Carlo on very good wages. Fred tells Marie about his new job but tries to conceal that his new boss is a beautiful woman. On the same day celebrated conductor Pedro Montemayor (Klopfer) arrives in the city for a concert, accompanied by his younger wife Winifred (Schmitz). He is jealous, possessive and arrogant and his bullying has led her into a romance with American Jack Mortimer, who is also scheduled to arrive in the city that day and stay at the same hotel. Pedro has been spying on Winifred and has become aware of the affair.
Shortly after Fred picks up Mortimer in his taxi from the station, Montemayor shoots him dead from another car, then he dashes off to appear at a concert he will be conducting that night. At first Fred does not notice his passenger is dead when he does he at first tries to go to the police, but they are preoccupied and he becomes suddenly alarmed that he will be blamed for the murder he goes to his new boss Daisy and explains what happened, she advises him to go to the police and she dismisses him. Distraught, he drives through the city before dumping the body in a pond several miles away; however he forgets the suitcase left in the cab. He returns home and tells Marie of his plight, she too advises turning himself in and telling his story to the police but he refuses and she agrees not to tell the police.
Increasingly desperate, he remembers that he still has the dead man's bags in his cab. Realizing he bears a strong resemblance to the dead man and reasoning that if the American was known to have turned up at the hotel he won't be linked with his death he changes into Mortimer's elegant clothes and goes to impersonate him at the hotel for a brief time to establish his own alibi.
Winifred has become worried about Pedro's suspicions and tries to warn Mortimer by sending him a note and trying to call him but gets no answer. As she sits in the audience at the start of Pedro's concert Daisy arrives and tells her male companion about Fred's plight and Madeline partially overhears enough to be afraid that Mortimer may be the victim and she quickly leaves to try and phone Mortimer at the hotel. Unable to raise him on the phone she rushes off to his hotel and arrives to find Fred instead of Mortimer. In the midst of his concert Pedro notices Madeline has left but must wait until after the concert before he can leave and he too rushes off to the hotel to find Madeline and Fred. In the confrontation Fred blurts out that Mortimer is dead and Pedro accuses him of the murder. Madeline faints and Fred runs away, locking Winifred and Pedro locked up together in the hotel room.
A worried Marie sets out to look for Fred who has gone to the restaurant where she works but they miss each other and he sits down to wait for her. Her father who also works at the restaurant asks where Marie is but Fred brushes him off. A fellow cabbie shows up and tells him that blood has been found in the cab and the police are looking for him. Marie's Father overhears and demands to know what fred has done to Marie and fred runs off again. Marie has returned home but seeing police arriving dashes off to warn Fred. She hides in a party where a dance is going on and Fred finds her and she convinces him to turn himself in and they return to the hotel. Meanwhile Madeline and Pedro locked up together have been talking and he confesses to her. She tells him his jealousy has destroyed their marriage and he decides to call the police and turn himself in. Fred and Marie arrive at the hotel as Pedro is confessing and fred confesses to dumping Mortimer's body and impersonating him saying "I was Jack Mortimer". Pedro is led away accompanied by Madeline and the final shot is of a poster of Pedro being papered over. Finis.      

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The film starts slowly and conventionally, shot in realistic style but once Mortimer is shot director Froelich makes use of the full arsenal of techniques from Expressionist and Street films as the cab races through darkened streets through pools of light reflecting off damp pavement. As Fred becomes more distraught his state of mind is shown through a rapid montage of blaring trumpets, close-ups of accusing faces, honking car horns and a dramatic shot of the empty cab with it's lights shining menacingly. Once Pedro notices Madeline is missing we get another montage of blaring musical instruments and a shot of Madeline's empty chair bathed in light glaring down at him. Significantly while the early part of the film was shot in daylight with regular edits and shots after the shooting most of the action is at night and sometimes obscured by shadow with faster edits and closeups to reflect the emotional states of Fred and Pedro. As Pedro, the possessive overbearing husband, Eugen Klopfer bears a strong and probably not coincidental resemblance to classic Expressionist villains played by Werner Krause, Emil Jannings and especially Paul Wegener. Unlike Frank Wisbar's films Froelich has plenty of music and makes good use of it during the scenes of Fred's cab racing through the streets and the montage of his thoughts with a tense blaring fanfare. Another clever use of sound that would not have been available in a silent film is the scene where Madeline strains to overhear as Daisy tells her date about Fred's story but is drowned out by the applause of the audience. Unlike classic Expressionist films which made use of artificial stage sets for a sense of unreality, something the two Frank Wysbar films did, this film uses realistic looking sets and street scenes which are clearly shot on location which is something it does have in common with the later Street Films like "Asphalt" (which it most closely resembles) and the sound crime film "M". Like many of the male characters in the Street Films the lead character Fred is a naive sap who is largely responsible for his own troubles through his own lying, panic and childlike short sighted stupidity (he is wrong every step of the way) and Pedro is an arrogant, jealous bully while the women; Marie, Madeline and Daisy being the only sensible ones who the men of course largely ignore.  

While this film is not strictly Expressionist it makes excellent use of Expressionist techniques and is probably the best German Film Noir of the era. Goebbels disapproved of crime films in general feeling they encouraged moral relativism and such films were uncommon but once again he allowed this film through perhaps recognizing its obvious quality and once again hoping it might find an international audience in the export market he had not yet quite given up on. Another possibility in getting the film the green light might lie in director Carl Froelich. While some directors who chose to stay in Germany such as Frank Wysbar and GW Pabst who basically stayed away from controversy to keep their jobs but avoided making overt propaganda Froelich became a Nazi and willingly made propaganda films for the regime. Froelich had a respected career going back to the Great War specializing in lush historical dramas including a biopic of Wagner, Hitler's beloved opera composer. He didn't actually join the Nazi Party until 1933 suggesting he was at least motivated more by opportunism but quickly became a favoured director being given the honorific "Filmprofessor" and being appointed director of the Reichskulturkammer, a trade organization which regulated all artistic activities in the Third Reich in 1933, a title he held until the fall of the regime. After the war his activities earned him an arrest and trial at one of the Denazification tribunals although he managed to evade a jail sentence his career was essentially over and he would make only two films before his death in 1953. In his book about cinema under the Nazis David Hull notes Froelich's genuine talent but laments his willingness to serve the Nazis which has likely led to this otherwise fine Noir genre film being forgotten.

Eugen Klopfer, who plays the bullying Pedro, also became a Nazi appearing in the notorious hate film "Jud Sus" (1940) and being awarded various titles and official positions in film and theatre. The fall of the regime also earned him an arrest along with a two month prison term in 1948. He would be banned from film work although after his release he was able to return to stage productions before his death in 1950. Leading man Anton Wohlbruck was no Nazi and being both half Jewish and gay he fled to Britain in 1936 where he continued acting in film including twice playing Prince Albert in biopics of Queen Victoria and the original version of "Gaslight". He retired from film in 1958 and returned to Germany where he worked occasionally on stage and TV until his death in 1967.

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SYBILLE SCHMITZ

Sybille Schmitz would become a tragic figure. Born in 1909, had began in small roles in the low budget 1928 street film "Polizei Uberfall" (which I wrote about here) and the big budget GW Pabst/Louise Brooks film "Diary Of A Lost Girl" and Dreyer's "Vampyr" (which is presumably where she met Wysbar). Besides the Wysbar films she would also appear in the usual popular big budget romances where with her non Aryan looks and moody persona she was never popular with Goebbels who was probably also wary of her scandalous personal life which included alcohol and drug abuse and numerous affairs with both sexes. While she was not considered a leading lady she still continued to find decent roles playing exotic or vaguely dangerous fallen women in unusual (in the Nazi era) films like the crime film "I Was Jack Mortimer" (1935) and the sci-fi film "Master Of The World" (1934) and the big budget "Titanic" (1943). Although she played no significant propaganda role her continued success in the Nazi era and particularly the notorious "Titanic" dogged her in the post war era and she found herself shunned and harder to find work. By now in her forties and increasingly mentally fragile she died of a drug overdose in 1955 with the suspicion that her then live-in female lover, who was also her doctor, had been draining her funds and keeping her dependent may have been responsible for her overdose. She was 45.  

Marie Louise Claudius was only aged twenty two at the time she played Marie here but she had been acting since she was a teen. She would also appear in the odd and popular Sherlock Holmes reworking "The Man Who Was Sherlock Holmes" (1937) but her career would be short however as she died of a sudden heart attack in 1941 aged only twenty nine and her grave would be lost in the chaos of the war and bombing. Hilde Hiledbrand at Fred's employer Daisy had appeared in the original version of "Victor/Victoria" (1933) and continued on with her career into the TV age, dying in 1976 aged 78.      

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Speaking of Sherlock Holmes as I mentioned in a previous article the character was always popular in Germany (Hitler himself was reportedly a fan) with adaptations going back before the Great War.The aforementioned "The Man Who Was Sherlock Holmes" was more of an odd light comedy filmed in a straightforward style and mostly in daylight but the "The Hound Of The Baskervilles" with its setting of foggy moors at moonlight was a natural fit for Expressionist techniques with two silent versions directed by Richard Oswald in 1914 and 1929 with a sound version being made in 1937.
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"THE HOUND OF THE BASKERVILLES" (1937);


Directed by Carl Lamac
Cast;
Bruno Guttner ~ Sherlock Holmes
Fritz Odemar ~ Dr Watson
Peter Voss ~ Henry Baskerville
Fritz Rasp ~ Barrymore
Erich Ponto ~ Stapleton
Alice Brandt ~ Beryl

Unlike Holmes films of the era this film actually does keep reasonably close to the original Conan Doyle story and the acting from the mostly b-level cast while non-descript is competent enough with Bruno Guttner as Holmes oddly resembling Raymond Massey who had already played Holmes. The two previous silent German Holmes films directed by Richard Oswald made some use of Expressionist techniques with some fine camera work of dark and foreboding sets at night and some fairly kinetic camera work, this film is far more conventional until the characters get to Baskerville Hall and the windswept Grimpen Mire when director Carl Lamac gets to make use of by now standard Expressionist techniques and we get some appropriately foggy and gloomy moors these scenes are perhaps inevitable given the novel's plot and setting but Lamac also does some good interior scenes at Baskerville Manor which has the appropriate shadowy rooms, stairways to nowhere and a scene where Watson questions the suspicious looking maid and she is entirely in shadow silhouette. This is otherwise a conventional Holmes film largely forgotten by most Holmesians but it is arguably the best of the early sound era pre-Basil Rathbone classic Holmes films of which there had already been several starring the likes of Clive Owen, Reginald Owen, Raymond Massey and Arthur Wotner. These films were most pretty perfunctory while this film's use of Expressionist tropes does at least have a definite sense of visual style. Director Lamac was actually a Czech who had started his career around 1918 when Czechoslovakia was still part of the Austrian Hapsburg Empire continuing after the Great War in Czechoslovakia, Austria and Germany. After Czechoslovakia was annexed by the Nazis in 1938 he fled to Britain where he served the Airforce and made war documentaries. After the war he worked in Hollywood as a cameraman and technician before returning to West Germany where he made a few more films before dying in 1952 of kidney disease.

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One of the classic Expressionist Horror films and also one of the first was "The Student Of Prague" (1913) starring Paul Wegener, best known for the even more iconic "Der Golem". These films established the basic Expressionist themes of dehumanization, isolation, madness and a nightmare world of shadows and fog and would later be remade in an even better and more artistic version in 1926 that reunited masters of Expressionist Horror acting Conrad Veidt and Werner Krause from "Caligari" (I already wrote about both films here). Perhaps inevitably there would be a sound remake in 1935. There had been a remake of the lesser known but still excellent "Alraune" (1928) with Brigette Helm of "Metropolis" fame in 1930 (both which I wrote about here) but otherwise few Expressionist Horror films would get the sound remake treatment. There would be no remake of "The Cabinet Of Dr Caligari" as it was probably considered too weird as well as being vaguely anti-authoritarian and "Nosferatu" had already been made as the American "Dracula" in 1931 while "Der Golem" was out of the question due to it's Jewish themes and setting. "The Student Of Prague" would then be the only such film to be remade in the Nazi era (aside from the partial exception of the version of "The Hound Of The Baskervilles" if that counts) and thus providing a unique chance to compare a classic Weimar silent with a Nazi era remake. This version would have some recognizable names in Anton Walbrook from "I Was Jack Mortimer" and Dorthea Wieck of "Anna Und Elisabeth" and "Madchen In Uniform" directed by Arthur Robison who had directed the 1923 Expressionist psychological film "Warning Shadows".

Rather than recapping the entire plot here I recommend reading the prior article I wrote about the earlier silent versions (which also has the actual full film of course, found here) but to cover the basics the plot revolves around Balduin, the titular student in late 19th century Prague, then part of the Austrian Hapsburg Empire. Balduin is handsome, popular and a champion fencer who has designs on Julia, an attractive & wealthy woman of higher social status played here by Dorthea Wieck. His rival for her affections is Krebs, a friend and fellow student and fencer. At the same time Lydia, a pretty serving maid (Edna Greyff) has a crush on Balduin who likes her but she is of clearly lower social status. Frustrated by his lack of money and status Baldwin is seduced by the promises of Scampinelli, a Svengali type figure who promises he can improve Balduin's prospects through shadowy magical means and Baldin accepts.Balduin than watches horrified but mesmerized as his reflection steps out of a full length mirror and comes to life. The Doppelganger seems to be a version Balduin without a soul or conscience and thus free to pursue Balduin's goals without being restrained by guilt and thus goes on spree of drunken debauchery, cheating at gambling, discarding Lydia to openly pursue Julia and ultimately killing his friend Krebs in a duel even though both had promised the duel would not be fatal. When the real Balduin discovers this he is appalled and confronted by the Doppelganger at first tries to flee but everywhere he turns the Doppelganger is there. Ultimately the Doppelganger returns to the mirror and dares Balduin to shoot him which he does shattering the mirror and his reflection but then he has a heart attack and dies. The story has obvious influences from the classic German fable of "Faust" (which would be made into a film version in 1926 directed by FW Murnau and starring Emil Jannings) along with "Dr Jekyll & Mr Hyde" (also made into a now lost 1920 version again by Murnau and starring Veidt) and Oscar Wilde's "The Picture Of Dorian Grey" so it's resonance in Germany was not a surprise and may be why Goebbels gave this film the green light along the the possibility that this story was universal enough to be a potential export product, a goal he never fully gave up on until the start of WW2.

The sound version has some notable differences from the two silent versions (both of which are almost identical in their plots and characters if not film techniques) some of which are more obvious than others.

"THE STUDENT OF PRAGUE" (1935);


Directed by Arthur Robison
CAST;
Anton Wohlbruck  ~  Balduin
Theodor Loos  ~  Dr Carpis
Dorothea Wieck  ~  Julia
Edna Greyff  ~  Lydia
Karl Hellmer  ~  Krebs

One clear difference was that in the original films at least some of the characters appear to be Jewish including a scene where they talk in a Jewish cemetery. This is not a major theme in the film unlike in "Der Golem" which takes place entirely in a Jewish ghetto and the villains are the Austrian Hapsburgs but clearly any Jewish characters at all would be impossible unless they were some sort of lecherous, conniving moneylender, so it's no surprise to find all such traces removed here. Since this was only incidental to the original films this has no effect on the actual story here. More noticable is the change in the character and behavior of Balduin and his Doppelganger. In the silent films the Doppelganger appears as in effect Balduin's Id (to use a Freudian term the filmmakers may or may not have been aware of), capable of carrying out his not-so-secret desires without conscience or restraint. It is the Doppelganger that cruelly discards the devoted but lowly Lydia to pursue the wealthy upper class Julia, it is he that cheats at cards and ultimately kills his friend and rival until the real Balduin, plagued by guilt, rids himself of the interloper and thus destroys himself. This time Balduin himself carries out these acts (sometimes egged on by Scampinelli, especially during the duel) while the Doppelganger seems to be his conscience appearing to haunt him and remind him of his sins until Balduin destroys both. In the silent versions Balduin is horrified by the actions of in what is effect his own dark side which has committed crimes in his name and finally confronts him while in the sound version Balduin is instead appalled by what is in effect his own conscience reminding him of his own sins and it is that he destroys.

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BALDUIN & CARPIS

I don't know if this subtle but real change in focus was intentional or what exactly it says about attitudes in Nazi mythology. In the silent versions Balduin is essentially a passive figure after making the deal with Scampinelli and it is the Doppelganger that commits the crimes which he only later becomes aware of and is horrified by. Unlike Faust who is fully aware of who the Devil is, Balduin does not even fully realize the deal he has made and is thus even less responsible for its ramifications. In the sound remake Balduin himself takes all actions and the Doppelganger appears as his conscience to plague him who he then confronts. Notably in while in silent versions the Doppelganger can and does interact with the real world characters, including killing Balduin's former friend in a duel, here the Doppelganger does not and does not appear to even be visible to anyone other than Balduin and Carpis. Both the silent and sound Balduins end up destroying himself but in doing so the silent versions at least perhaps regain their soul while if the sound version had been prepared to shake of his conscience (which never does more than basically nag him) as so many other Germans did under the Nazis, he would could have simply walked away without real consequences. In death the silent Balduins are also somewhat relieved to have vanquished their dark sides, sound Balduin gets no such release, he dies lamenting his lost innocence but having accomplished nothing.

The character of Scampinelli is also subtly different. In the silent versions he is a clear Mephisto character as in Faust with obvious powers both supernatural (including at one point controlling the weather) and Satanic while the sound version's powers are less overt. Here (remaned Dr Carpis) he is more of a scheming Svengali with some more subtle magical powers who manipulates through lies and temptation. Although the Nazis encouraged a lot of traditional turgid German pseudo-mystical blood & soil Aryan mythological claptrap at the same time Goebbels, and to a certain extent Hitler, were suspicious of and uncomfortable with overt supernatural themes in general and Christian themed ones in particular as distracting from the Nazi personality cult which had to be to a certain extent secular if it were to claim to speak for all Germans while excluding non Germans even if they be Christian. Which led to some cognitive dissonance in Nazi propaganda with the likes of SS leader Himmler spending millions of marks digging up ancient artifacts and party ideologue Alfred Rosenberg writing ponderous books to prove the Aryan's supposed timeless and mystical roots while behind closed doors Goebbels, Goering and sometimes even Hitler sneeringly dismissing Himmler's finds as "dirty shards of pottery" and Rosenberg's books as unreadable drivel. Downgrading Carpis from the divine Mephisto is well within the German Expressionist tradition anyway. Such spider-like manipulative villains were not uncommon in Expressionist films starting with Dr Caligari and continuing to the mad scientists in "Metropolis" and "Alraune" and the master gangster Dr Mabuse and having that character appearing to be a scheming foreigner was certainly acceptable to Nazi sentiment without even needing any supernatural powers. Note that in what was almost certainly a "suggestion" from Goebbels the character's name was changed from Scampinelli, an Italian name since Italy was now Germany's most important ally, to Carpis, often a Jewish name although the character is not explicitly so.

Setting aside the film's themes the addition of sound allowed for and indeed encouraged departures from Expressionist techniques as this film is of course much more talky and thus slower moving than the silent versions. The addition of sound allows the film to do something common in early talkies, add in plenty of music. Here the character of Julia is not a wealthy upper-class heiress but a successful opera singer this allows for her to sing two songs along with a few other numbers which also slow the film down and detract from the claustrophobic atmosphere so essential to Expressionism. Changing Julia from a noblewoman to a singer also changes what she represents from the old aristocracy always viewed by the Nazis with jealousy and suspicion to the kind of celebrities created by the star system they actively encouraged. In fact unlike most of the earlier films we have surveyed here which used music sparingly this film uses lush melodramatic and romantic background music through out with the same soaring strings and blaring horns as in any similar conventional Hollywood which further distances the viewer from the sort of immersive dream world of Expressionism. Whereas the silent versions are horror films this film is more firmly in the already popular and mainstream of historical romances already popular in Germany and prefered by Geobbels and Hitler albeit one apparently set in the Twilight Zone.

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BALDWIN & JULIA

Another difference is in the sets which, while up to the high standards of UFA, are realistic and lack the claustrophobic artificiality of the 1926 version. This difference is particularly noticeable in the scenes at the end as Balduin attempts to flee through the city streets at night. The darkened streets here are shadowy enough but lack the menace of the 1926 Expressionist streets and are as pretty as the rest of the film. (Note that these are still clearly artificial sets as at one point Balduin leans against a wall and it can be seen to buckle being likely a painted canvas). The acting is similarly conventional with Anton Walbrook doing a perfectly solid job as Balduin (he is in practically every scene) but he clearly does not compare to the deep emotional turmoil of Conrad Veidt or even Paul Wegener in the silent versions. Similarly the Carpis character here as played by Theodor Loos is different from the character as played by Werner Krause and John Gottowt in being merely maliciously cold and arrogant but lacking their supernatural creepiness. Dorothea Wieck is typically fine in a more conventional role than in "Anna & Elisabeth" or "Madchen In Uniform" but there is another difference in the character of Lydia played here by Edna Greyff. In the silent versions the character once dumped by Balduin takes revenge and it is in fact she who sets up the duel by setting Krebs against Balduin but here she does no such thing and is a completely passive figure mooning loyally but ineffectually over Balduin until the end as befits a proper maiden in Nazi mythology. It's fitting that while in the silent versions she was played by dark haired and exotic actresses this time she is played by the properly blonde and open faced Greyff.

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DOROTHEA WIECK

What Goebbels' attitude towards the film was is unknown, but it got poor reviews and was not a success. In his book David Stewart Hull mentions it only in passing but it's worth noting that there would be no further Expressionist remakes under the Nazis. This would also be Arthur Robison's last film as he died suddenly that year. Comparing the silent and sound versions of "The Student Of Prague" show how Expressionism was probably never going to survive the sound era even without the ideological interference of the Nazi censors. Audiences would certainly be happy to accept some Expressionist techniques in an appropriate story as was shown in the most successful films seen here; "Hound Of The Baskervilles", "I Was Jack Mortimer" and "The Student Of Prague" but they also wanted the sort of frothy escapist tropes that would undermine the essential Expressionist nightmare world namely in using a lot of music, lush and essentially realistic sets and costumes and a fair amount of expositional dialogue that removes the mysteries of the earlier era. It is generally acknowledged that Expressionism would leave a heavy influence in Hollywood in the genres of Film Noir and later Sci-Fi and there's no reason to doubt that such an evolution would have happened in German films as well if left to their own devices, in fact the three films just mentioned are perfectly solid genre films with "I Was Jack Mortimer" even being a fine Film Noir and "The Student Of Prague" having the makings of a decent psychological thriller if it had leaned more into it's supernatural themes while "Farman Maria" is clearly superior to the American remake even while having the same director although one suspects non-German audiences would have found it's very European mysticism even more baffling than Germans did and would have prefered the cheesiness of the American version.

Ultimately the very qualities that defined Expressionism as a theory; it's explorations of loneliness and alienation, sexual frustration, temptation and unconvention, the world of nightmares and dreams, and the examination of the darkness of the soul, which many film and cultural historians such as Sigfried Kracauer, Lotte Eisner and Peter Gay have cited as precursors to and warnings of Fascism, were also incompatible with the esthetics of Fascism with it's celebration of conformity and complete surrender of free will to a strongman. Expressionism even with all its darkness which some see as self defeating passivity still allowed for some qualities Fascism will alway see as a threat to its core; unconventionality, guilt and self-reflection. Expressionism was not seen as deeply threatening as Dada, Germany's other great Weimar art and film movement which the Nazis truly hated and did not even try to appropriate, but it turned out to require the messiness of democracy to flourish and eventually it would do so when it made its way to the very non-German and non-European world of Hollywood.

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SYBILLE SCHMITZ