Malc participated in 2 magazines whilst at Cambridge - Venture and Experiment. He had 2 short stories published by Experiment - 'Port Swettenham', story, pp. 22 - 26 No 5 and 'Punctum Indifferens Skibet Gaar Videre', story, pp. 62-75 No 7.
The magazine was edited by Editor: William Empson, Jacob Bronowski, Hugh Sykes, Humphrey Jennings, published in Cambridge, Publisher: Nos. 1-2: Cambridge University Press; Nos. 4-7: G. F. Noxon, Trinity College, Cambridge/G. F. Noxton, 68a St. Andrew's Street, Cambridge. Published from November 1928 - Spring 1931. There were only seven editions which came out on a Quarterly-Irregular basis priced one Shilling and sixpence. You can find full details of each edition on the Modernist Magazine Project.
I did come across a very good article on Jacket 20 by Kate Price on the magazine:
We are concerned with all the intellectual interests of undergraduates. We do not confine ourselves to the work of English students, nor are we at pains to be littered with the Illustrious Dead and Dying. Our claim has been one of uncompromising independence: therefore not a line in these pages has been written by any but degreeless students or young graduates. It has been our object to gather all and none but the not yet too ripe fruits of art, science and philosophy in the university. We did not wish so much that our articles should be sober and guarded as that they should be stimulating and lively and take a strong line. We were prepared in fact to give ourselves away. But we knew that Cambridge is painfully well-balanced just now (a sign, perhaps, of anxiety neurosis) and so we were prepared also to find, as the reader will find, rather too guarded and sensible a daring. Perhaps we will ripen into extravagance.
[Experiment Number 1, November 1928]
The concern of Experiment with ‘all the interests of undergraduates’ was not simply a matter of having literary-minded mathematicians on the editorial team, nor one of including poetry produced by students reading Natural Sciences or Economics. Even taking Experiment as a literary magazine with an inspired eye on contemporary science, the ‘scientific’ content appears somewhat thin on the ground. The occasional article on biochemistry or biology, some hopeful remarks about the development of aesthetic science and Empson’s relativity poems are about the size of it. A distinctly literary and cinematic avant-garde emerges, giving the impression of an exclusively aesthetic kind of experimentation.Read full article here
Apologies for the poor image quality as I haven't been able to locate copies of the magazine to date.
You can watch all of Dovzhenko's Earth 1930 on YouTube. I did find it difficult to locate a copy and eventually got one from South Korea via Ebay.
Earth (Russian: Земля, translit. Zemlya; literally translated as "Soil") is a 1930 Soviet film by Ukrainian director Alexander Dovzhenko concerning an insurrection by a community of farmers, following a hostile takeover by Kulak landowners. It is Part 3 of Dovzhenko's "Ukraine Trilogy" (along with Zvenigora and Arsenal). Read more on Wikipedia
Alexander Petrovych Dovzhenko 1894 –1956) was a Ukrainian screenwriter, producer and director of films, and is often cited as one of the most important early Soviet filmmakers, alongside Sergei Eisenstein and Vsevolod Pudovkin, whose films often celebrated the lives and work of his fellow Ukrainians. Read more on Wikipedia
I will be posting on other films mentioned by Lowry in his work and letters in the forthcoming months especially during his visits to Vancouver in the late 40's and early 50s.
It took me some time to track down a copy of Abram Room's The Ghost That Never Returns. You can find copies on French Amazon.
Jose Real is a worker at an oil-well who is sent to prison in an unspecified Latin American country for his revolutionary ideas. Because of his charisma and political beliefs, he becomes very popular among the prisoners, while attracting the negative attention of the authorities. The latter decide to elimante him, but with the help of his comrades he will overcome all obstacles in the end. Very strong cinematography, rapid montage and moving story based on a story by Henri Barbusse make for an exciting movie. It´s not a completely silent movie, there is a spoken word every now and then, accompanied by intertitles.OSA. Also check out DinaView for more information.
There is little information in English on the Net for Abram Room. The OSA site has the most information on his films
The End of St. Petersburg is a 1927 silent film directed by Vsevolod Pudovkin and produced by Mezhrabpom. Commissioned to commemorate the tenth anniversary of the October Revolution, The End of St Petersburg was to be Pudovkin's most famous film and secured his place as one of the foremost Soviet montage film directors. Read more on Senses Of Cinema.
Storm Over Asia (original title Potomok Chingis-khanа (The Heir to Genghis Khan)) is a 1928 Russian film directed by Vsevolod Pudovkin and starring Valéry Inkijinoff. It forms part of Pudovkin's "revolutionary trilogy", alongside Mother (1926) and The End of St. Petersburg (1927). Read more on Silent Film
I recently came across a very useful blog dedicated to Soviet era movies which with reviews, images and downloads including Pudovkin's Storm Over Asia.
Vsevolod Illarionovich Pudovkin (Russian: Всеволод Илларионович Пудовкин) (16 February 1893 – 20 June 1953) was a Russian film director, screenwriter and actor who developed influential theories of montage. Pudovkin's masterpieces are often contrasted with those of his contemporary Sergei Eisenstein, but whereas Eisenstein utilized montage to glorify the power of the masses, Pudovkin preferred to concentrate on the courage and resilience of individuals. Read more on Wikipedia.
We have our second feature tonight from the Cambridge Film Guild in the shape of Turksib from 1929.
Directed by Victor A. Turin. Written by Yakov Aron, Viktor Shklovsky. Cinematography by Boris Frantsisson, Yevgeni Slavinsky.
Turksib is a fine Soviet documentary on the building of the first railroad across the Asian continent from Turkestan to Siberia. The focus is patriotic, not political, so Turksib is a celebration of the accomplishment, not a recruiting film. The land in Turkestan is rich, but there is enough water for only one crop, so the people grow grain. A thousand miles away in Siberia, there are abundant natural resources- timber and grain. So if Turkestan could get Siberian grain, they could grow cotton instead. The building of the rail link from Turkestan to Siberia- Turksib- is the subject of this documentary.
Much of the film consists of beautiful images documenting the hardworking people and good land of two very different regions of the Soviet Union. They use methods unchanged probably for hundreds of years, shearing flocks of sheep, with a migration of people and animals reminiscent of Grass. One excellent sequence shows a camel caravan caught in a sandstorm, and their precious cotton blown away by the raging storm.
The entire film is well planned to show the unity of different people and regions to a common goal. Just when the images have lulled the viewer, the film really takes off with the planning of the railroad. Director Victor Turin uses stop motion animation and maps to communicate the immensity of the undertaking by progressively increasing the intensity of the editing. In one memorable sequence, the first train goes down the newly constructed tracks. The workers who built the tracks had never seen a train. Rather than be scared, they are enervated and they chase after it on horseback in a sequence that would fit in any western.
Turksib was prepared for U.S. release by John Grierson, better known for his later work as father of the documentary film movement. The role of the adapter included writing new intertitles, making any necessarily political corrections, and making the pacing and narrative structure more like popular American films. This Kino on Video edition was seamlessly compiled from two different prints, so we have the benefit of the well-worded titles but the structure of the original Soviet release version.
Grierson's titles would work well as narration, as they use the images to draw specific conclusions on the wealth and vastness of the country and land. While the film is a little heavy on titles by modem standards, many times the titles are part of the film, sometimes alternating text titles and images.
We are back in Cambridge circa 1930 with Malc at the Cambridge Film Guild with the next film up being En Rade.
Cavalcanti's Sea Fever was originally released in France in late 1927 as En Rade. Catherine Hessling, better known to film enthusiasts for her work in the early Jean Renoir silents, stars as a seaport barmaid who falls in love with sweet-natured sailor Georges Charlia. When Charlia unaccountably disappears one day, Hessling is plunged into the depths of melancholia. Her sad story is counterpointed with the bizarre behavior of the local laundress' son (Philippe Heriat), who dreams of a life at sea.
I cannot yet find a copy of the film or any clips to view. I think the plot synopsis above would have appealed to the young Malc after returning from his sea voyage to the Far East.
Actress/artist's model Catherine Hessling was the last model of painter Auguste Renoir and the wife of his son, distinguished filmmaker Jean Renoir. Soon after her marriage to the latter in 1920, Hessling, born Andrée Madeleine Heuchling in Alsace, began starring in Renoir's first films. She sometimes appeared in the films of other directors as well. Though the stunningly beautiful Hessling was a noted performer, her film career abruptly ended after her marriage to Renoir broke up in the early 1930s.
While I was researching this post, I came across the above photograph of Catherine Hessling from the Jean Renoir film Sur un air de Charleston. I found this fantastic clip on YouTube:
French filmmaker Jean Renoir would later remark that he directed the sensual dance fantasy Charleston because he'd "just discovered American jazz." He also had some stock footage left over from his previous silent success Nana, and decided it would be provident to fashion a new film from these leavings. Even without the benefit of sound, one can hear the jazzy rhythms of Charleston through the exuberant gyrations of an African-American dancer whom Renoir and his star, actress Catherine Hessling, had discovered for this picture. Originally titled Sur un air de Charleston, the film was also released as Charleston Parade in English-speaking countries. In some areas of the US and Europe, the film was greeted with protests from censorship boards who simply couldn't appreciate the aesthetic value in Catherine Hessling's near-nude dance numbers. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
I am sure Malc would have approved of Renoir's appreciation of jazz and we can only wonder whether he saw the movie.
Jacques Feyder's 1928 adaptation of Emile Zola's Therese Raquin is the next film featured in my review of films shown at the Cambridge Film Guild in 1929/30 while Lowry was a student.
Jacques Feyder's 1928 adaptation of Emile Zola's Therese Raquin was also released in Germany as Du Sollst Nicht Ehe Brechen and in the U.S. as Shadows of Fear. Produced in Berlin, with Gina Manes in the title role, the film is regarded by many cineastes as Feyder's best effort. The director perfectly captured the bourgeois stuffiness of the Raquin household and the unspoken passions of the faithless Therese, who despises her small-minded husband and wishes him dead. In concert with her lover, Therese arranges for Raquin to "accidentally" drown in a boating accident. Subsequently, Therese marries her paramour, but their union is forever blighted by the memory of their horrible deed. Upon stumbling onto the truth, Therese's mother is shocked into muteness, but the couple knows that she knows. And in the end, it is the mother who is the sole and silent witness to the couple's downfall. All Movie.com Again, I couldn't find a clip of Therese Raquin to show with the post so I fell back on Feyder's classic 1921 film L'Atlantide.
The actress in the above film was called Renée Claire Angèle Élisabeth Napierkowski usually known as Stacia Napierkowska, who was a French film actress and dancer.It struck me as a coincidence that I chose this clip before I knew her name and the similarity to René Clair of the previous post.
Back at the 19th Hole after a break including a trip to Lowry's burial place in Ripe Sussex. More about my trip later, in the meantime, René Clair's Les Deux Timides 1928is the next in a series of posts on the films shown by the Cambridge Film Guild in the season 1929/30 while Malc was a student at Cambridge.
An Albatross Film produced by Alexander Kamenka at the Gaumont Studios in Billancourt, France. Directed by René Clair and based on a play by Eugene Labiche.
Running time of 62 minutes when released in 1928.
The cast includes Pierre Batcheff, Jim Gerald, Vera Flory, Maurice de Feraudy and Yvette Andreyor.
"Les Deux Timides" revolves around petit-bourgeois puppet characters consisting of a young marriageable daughter, a timid wooer, his blustering rival and a complacent father-in-law.
Our story begins with Fremissin (Pierre Batcheff), a timid young lawyer, pleading his first case and attempting to defend his client, burly wife beater Garadoux (Jim Gerald). Garadoux was charged with beating his wife, trashing his dingy apartment when he had returned to his sparse, dingy home after having one too many drinks.
Lawyer Fremission gives the court the version of the incident that he was given by Garadoux in which Garadoux states that he had actually returned home and, kissing his wife, he gave her a bouquet of flowers. He then entertained her with a violin concerto. Fremission repeats the story over and over again and bores all of the spectators in the court including the judges. Then chaos occurs when a mouse runs through the court room. Garadoux is none too pleased with his lawyer's defense and constantly interrupts the proceedings which annoys the judges and amuses the court spectators. Fremission, thoroughly confused by the proceedings, pleads to the court that his client should be given all of the sternness of the court. The judges give Garadoux three months in jail, and he angrily attempts to beat Fremission until he is set upon by the spectators and Fremission's aunt who is one of the spectators.
Two years go by, and Fremission, who is still timid, is courting a timid young lady, Cecile Thibaudier (Vera Flory), who lives in the countryside. Garadoux, now a widower, has made the small town his home, and, having seen Cecile, he arranges to encounter her wealthy father, Mr. Thibaudier (Maurice de Feraudy) outside a commercial building. Garadoux gives Thibaudier the impression that he owns the building. The persistent Garadoux gets himself invited to Thibaudier's home to court Cecile, and, glancing out of a window, he sees Fremission approaching the house, who also is coming to court Cecile.
Garadoux recognizes Fremission as his incompetent lawyer who bungled his case and had him serve three months in jail. Realizing that Fremission is also courting Cecile, he begins a campaign to frighten Fremission. Garadoux, wearing a mask, surprises Fremission on a lonely road in the vicinity where Cecile lives. Fremission receives a letter that his life will be in jeopardy if ventures out of town. A Mack Sennett chase for Cecile's hand begins with the timid lawyer being constantly foiled by the blustery Garadoux. Fremission has to decide if Cecile's hand is worth the danger.Rare And Obscure Films The film was René Clair's last silent movie. You can read a review of a showing of the film at the 2008 Tribeca Festival.
I couldn't find a clip to show of Les Deux Timides so I opted for the clip below from À Nous la Liberté to demonstrate the talent of Clair.
I just came across a copy of an interview on the Net originally given by Conrad Aiken to the Paris Review in 1968. There are many references to Lowry in the interview.
The painting above is Edward Burra's John Deth(Homage To Conrad Aiken)1930. This painting must date from when Conrad Aiken returned to Rye, Sussex to mentor Lowry while Lowry was at Cambridge. Burra, who by all accounts had a fraught relationship with Lowry, would have met Malc in Rye in late 1930. I wonder whether Malc is featured in Burra's painting?
In a later post, I will return to Burra and his love of jazz which would have at least given him some connection with Malc.
This post returns to the films shown at the Cambridge Film Guild in the season 1929-30 while Lowry was a student at the University. The Club Of The Big Deed is an early collaboration between Kozintsev and Trauberg, the originators of F.E.K.S. (Factory of the Eccentric Experimental Actor), is set during the revolutionary period of the Decemberist movement of 1825.
Born in 1905 in Kiev, Ukraine, Grigori Kozintsev started to make films after his studies at Imperial Academy of Arts in Leningrad (St. Petersburg). In 1921 together with Leonid Trauberg he founded The Factory of the Eccentric Actor (FEKS). Rooted in the Soviet avant-garde of the 1920s, his first silent feature films "The Overcoat" (1926) and "New Babylon" (1929) collaborations with Leonid Trauberg) which are influenced by expressionism. I have not been able to discover any stills for the film. You can read a synopsis of the film on Silents Are Golden. You can also view the film on Fimografia Cine Mudo but you will need to download peer to peer software to view.
The above clip is taken from Kozinstev & Trauberg's other collaboration entilted The Overcoat 1926 which is based on the Gogol story. Gogol was one of Lowry's favourite writers and I will return shortly with a post about Lowry on Gogol. You can watch the whole of The Overcoat on Youtube in segments.
The Man With Movie Camera attempts to cinematically reproduce visual appearances without the help of subheadings (a film without subheadings), a script (a film without a script), or any theatrical means (a film without actors and stage design). This new, experimental work focuses on the creation of an authentic, international language of film, on an absolute cinematography, and on decisively separating film from theatre and literature.
Dziga Vertov (Russian: Дзига Вертов, Ukrainian: Дзиґа Вертов) January 15 (New Style), 1896–February 12, 1954) was a Soviet pioneer documentary film and newsreel director. Born David Abelevich Kaufman (Russian: Давид Абелевич Кауфман) into a family of Jewish intellectuals in Białystok, Congress Poland, then a part of the Russian Empire. His father was a librarian. He Russified his Jewish patronymic to Arkadievich at some point after 1918. Kaufman studied music at Białystok Conservatory until his family fled from the invading German army to Moscow in 1915. The Kaufmans soon settled in Petrograd, where Denis Kaufman began writing poetry, science fiction and satire. In 1916-1917 Kaufman was studying medicine at the Psychoneurological Institute in Saint Petersburg and experimenting with "sound collages" in his free time. Kaufman adopted the name "Dziga Vertov", which means "spinning top"[1] in Ukrainian; Vertov's political writings and his work on the Kino-Pravda newsreel series show a revolutionary romanticism. Read more at Wikipedia. Or read an excellent short biography by John MacKay.
You can view Finis Terrae at Mundosilente website but you will need to download a peer to peer programme to view the film.
In “Finis Terrae”, Herr Epstein forsakes the avant-garde and chooses a more realistic cinema. The film is a kind of documentary set in French Brittany and part of a trilogy (completed by “Mor Vran” (1931) and “L’Or Der Mers” (1932)) dedicated to that French coastal region for which the director had a special predilection.
Though the film belongs in the documentary genre, Herr Epstein is moreinterested in the experimentation he can do. He dramatizes the story in a way consistent with his artistic purposes but does not forget to reflect in it the area, the people and customs with their special characteristics. However, the movie lacks the evident ethnologic importance of Herr Flaherty or Herr Grierson’s films.Read more here
Jean Epstein started directing his own films in 1922 with Pasteur, followed by L'Auberge rouge and Coeur fidèle (both 1923). Famous film director Luis Buñuel worked as an assistant director to Epstein on Mauprat (1926) and La Chute de la maison Usher (1928). Epstein's criticism appeared in the early modernist journal L'Esprit Nouveau.
During the making of Coeur fidèle Epstein now chose to film a simple story of love and violence "to win the confidence of those, still so numerous, who believe that only the lowest melodrama can interest the public", and also in the hope of creating "a melodrama so stripped of all the conventions ordinarily attached to the genre, so sober, so simple, that it might approach the nobility and excellence of tragedy". [1] He wrote the scenario in a single night.
Epstein had been much impressed by Abel Gance's recently completed La Roue, and in Coeur fidèle he sought to apply its techniques of rapid and rhythmic editing as well as the innovative use of close-ups and superimpositions of images. These techniques are most apparent during the first half of the film: the opening sequence establishing Marie's situation in the harbour bar through a series of close-ups of her face, her hands, the table and glasses that she is cleaning; the use of images of the sea and the port, either intercut or superimposed, to convey the yearnings of Jean and Marie; and the film's most celebrated sequence at the fairground in which a highly complex series of rhythmically assembled images charts the tension of the relationship between Marie and Petit Paul. The later scenes of the film are relatively conventional in the techniques employed and depend more upon situation and action than upon photography and processing of the images.Read more at Wikipedia
Though I am unable to show any long clips of Finis Terrae on my blog, I have been able to find a copy of Epstein's Fall Of The House Of Usher to compensate:
The Fall Of the House Of Usher was a significant film to Lowry and I will be returning to look at the film in more detail in another post..
Lowry visited the Valentine Museum in Richmond to see Poe's relics in 1947.
He later copied this down in his notebook from one of Poe's leters:
"It will however be the last time I ever trouble any human being - I feel am on a sick bed from which I shall never get up.. I am wearing away every day, even if my last sickness has not completed it"
Georg Wilhelm Pabst (25 August 1885 – 29 May 1967) was an Austrian film director. Pabst was born in Raudnitz, Bohemia, Austria-Hungary (today's Roudnice nad Labem, Czech Republic), the son of a railroad employee.
Returning from the United States, he was in France when World War I began. He was interned there near Brest until 1919.
Some of his most famous films concern the plight of women in German society, including The Joyless Street (1925) with Greta Garbo and Asta Nielsen, Geheimnisse einer Seele (1926) with Lili Damita, The Loves of Jeanne Ney (1927) with Brigitte Helm, Pandora's Box (1928), and Diary of a Lost Girl (1929), the last two starring American actress Louise Brooks. He also co-directed with Arnold Fanck a mountain film entitled The White Hell of Pitz Palu (1929) starring Leni Riefenstahl. Read more on Wikipedia
Lowry had a life-long love of cinema which began with his childhood visits to cinemas in the Wirral area.
Paul Tiessen in his essay A Canadian Film Critic In Lowry's Cambridge has given us an insight of how that love of cinema developed when Lowry attended Cambridge University. At Cambridge, Lowry met Gerald Noxon then a Trinity College undergraduate. Noxon was a Canadian film critic and writer who helped shape Lowry's enthusiasm for film in the early part of their friendship.
Noxon was one of the founders of the Cambridge Experiment magazine which published an early Lowry story called Port Swettenham in Issue 5 of the magazine. Noxon was also the founding president of the Cambridge Film Guild.
Noxon with his wife Betty Lane
You can read more about Lowry's friendship with Noxon in Noxon's memoir Malcolm Lowry 1930 available in Malcolm Lowry: Psalms And Songs in which Noxon details their shared passion for cinema and jazz. Lowry and Noxon also exchanged letters for many years which are available in The Letters of Malcolm Lowry and Gerald Noxon, 1940-1952.
Noxon exposed Cambridge University students to the some of the best European cinema of the period - "in order to afford people interested in the Cinema an opportunity of seeing films which are otherwise unavailable to them."
Tiessen in his essay details the following films which were shown:
Some of the above films are referenced in Lowry's letters and other writings.
Tiessen in several pieces and Kilgallin in his 1973 book Lowry have written about Lowry and cinema. However, there is still considerable scope for further research and a larger piece of work pulling together Lowry's visits to cinemas on the Wirral, his Cambridge days and a visit to Germany and his love of German Expressionist cinema, the time he spent in Hollywood as an abortive screen-writer, the fact he married a film actress Margerie Bonner, his film-script for Tender Is The Night (Tiessen did a fine job on the edition published in The Cinema Of Malcolm Lowry), the many references to films in all his work including his letters as well as the impact of cinema on his writing style.
In subsequent posts, I will offer up clips, posters, photographs detailing the films in the Cambridge Film Guild between 1929-31.
I set this blog up to mark the centenary of Malcolm Lowry's birth in July 2009.
I want to use the blog to publish my on-going research into Lowry's Wirral and to document my psychogeographical wanderings around Wirral and Liverpool in search of Lowry's spirit.
I will also use the blog to document the various themes that run through Lowry's work such as his love of cinema and jazz which I share with him.
Draw up a stool and join Malc and me at the bar in the clubhouse and enjoy the night!
Colin Dilnot
colin.dilnot@gmail.com
The photograph shows the original Caldy Golf Clubhouse, Wirral (not actually the 19th hole because the course was only 9 holes when first developed!) circa 1910.
You can see Caldy in the background which was just being developed by David Benno Rappart.
The clubhouse would have looked like this when Malcolm Lowry as a youth used the course which was near to his home at Inglewood in Caldy.
The clubhouse was located to the west of the Hooton to West Kirby Railway line near a bridge crossing what is now Shore Road. The building still stands and has been converted to residential accommodation though the landscape has changed considerably in a 100 years.
I will be sharing more information and photographs detailing Lowry's Wirral both on the blog.
An essay detailing some of my research is now published in a book called Malcolm Lowry: From the Mersey to the world.
I am currently working on a bigger project entitled 'Gutted Arcades of the Past' detailing Lowry's early life and works.
Malcolm Lowry: From the Mersey to the World Biggs, Bryan & Tookey, Helen (eds)
Malcolm Lowry described Liverpool as ‘that terrible city whose main street is the ocean’. Born on the Wirral side of the river Mersey, Lowry’s relationship to the Merseyside of his youth informs all of his writing and Liverpool itself continued to hold tremendous significance for him, even though he never returned. Published in conjunction with a festival and exhibition at Liverpool’s Bluecoat arts centre celebrating Lowry’s centenary, this beautifully produced book showcases a variety of creative and critical approaches to Lowry and his work, and includes twelve specially commissioned pieces of new writing. There is a particular focus on place and on journeys; contributors write from the UK, Europe, Canada and Mexico, and reflect both on Lowry’s ‘voyage that never ends’ and on their own journeys with and through Lowry’s work. The book also demonstrates the richness of Lowry’s influence on contemporary visual artists and includes full-colour illustrations throughout. It will be an indispensable companion for anyone interested in the creative legacy of Malcolm Lowry’s life and work.
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