Film Culture (Winter 1963-64)

Ben Turpin. I think what bothers me about him is his later films full of politics and dialogue. I think when he was concerned with surface things and not big issues he was better. I don’t think I’ve seen all of his silent films, but when he was clowning around on a very simple, low level I enjoyed him. GW: Someone referred to you as a “happy” film maker. Do you think that would sum you up? EP: Oh, no. Not at all. (Laugh) I don’t see hap piness in my films except on a superficial level; others have referred to my films as being very sad. There are certain consistencies in them, but not in content. The consistencies seem to be in the technique, surface interest, realistic and outspoken dialogue, especially with a Jewish accent. I see each of my films as being very different, each expressing a different philosophy or theory, but the consistencies are there because I’m me — and I do things in a certain way. COFFEE, BRANDY & CIGARS XLI Herman G. Weinberg “Everybody likes things they don’t understand; that’s what God’s for.” —Gretchen in conversation: about the current cult of unintelligibility in the movies. The latest cinema “discovery” appears to be “cinema verité” (vide, Joli Mai, Hitler, Connais Pas, etc.) — a discovery made 43 years ago by Dziga Vertov via his Kino Pravda (Russian for “cinema verité”). These were a series of newsreels edited by him in the Twenties to give this documentary footage its maximum effect before an audience. New film books in work are on Flaherty by Flavia Paulon, Stroheim by Denis Marion, Murnau by Lotte Eisner, Lang by Alfred Eibel, and Sternberg by Editions Seghers of Paris for its Cinema d’Aujourd’hui series. Also in work, an autobiography by Louise Brooks, and the first exhaustive account of all the films, planned, finished or unfinished, which have disappeared, by Jean Linnemann and Jean Suyeux. And on the agenda, the recently completed autobiographies of Chaplin and Sternberg. For all aficionados: The Society for Film History Research (Secretary: Rosemary Heaword, Flat 12, 70/72 Westbourne Terrace, London, London, W.2) dedicated to the collating of historical research on the cinema, “to encourage, or even to undertake, the basic research necessary to enable satisfactory historical writing to take place and to accumulate an adequate and accurate knowledge of the facts about the cinema... for good critical standards to become established. Its field is the whole period of the cinema in all countries and in all its aspects, from the develop 58 FILM CULTURE ment of optical toys and apparatus in the 19th century to the Free Cinema and Nouvelle Vague movements of today.” A salutary organization that deserves your support. Subscription to the society and its journal, Cinema Studies, is £1. I have seen two reels of the African footage Stroheim shot for Queen Kelly that survived the years. (It will become part of the archives of the Cinémathéque Frangaise following a “gala world premiere” there.) It begins after the arrival of Kitty Kelly to Dar-es-Salaam in German East Africa at the bordello of her Aunt, who’s sent for her, as the Aunt is dying and wishes Kitty to marry the degenerate, crippled and whisky-swilling trader, Jan (Tully Marshall), because he is very rich and her future will be assured. The footage comprises the meeting of Kitty with her Aunt, two of the bordello girls (one black, one white) preparing Jan for the frightened Kitty, the marriage of Jan and Kitty and the death of the Aunt, after last rites (in Latin) by a black priest (and his black acolytes) who also performs the wedding ceremony. Readers curious as to where this fits in the entire original story as conceived by Stroheim are referred to the first number of FILM CULTURE where I reprinted a synopsis by Stroheim of the complete Queen Kelly. Some details: the white girl inmate of the bordello is tatooed, very pretty, and so tough as to make all previous screen female tough gals look like nuns in comparison. Tully Marshall as Jan hobbles on two crutches, is accoutered in a dirty white tropic suit and Panama hat, smokes long thin stogies, has a diamond crocodile tie-clip, a quart of whisky in his jacket pocket and a holster with a German Luger revolver strapped around his middle. He is also given to smacking his lips uncontrollably over the sight of the virginal young Kitty Kelly (Gloria Swanson).