Two films out this week that are even better than Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit

Film #1 That Is Out This Week And Is Even Better Than Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit is Inside Llewyn Davis. Here is a review which I wrote for someone else.

Film #2 That Is Out This Week And Is Even Better Than Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit is the 4K restoration of The General, which I haven't reviewed anywhere but is the greatest silent movie ever made.

Please go and see one or both of these instead of Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit. It's in everyone's interest.

Talking silents with Neil Brand

One balmy evening in the summer of 2009, I wandered into a free outdoor screening of the first silent comedy I'd ever seen: Buster Keaton's The General, accompanied on the piano by Neil Brand. I was amused by the prospect because several hundred years ago when I was at university in a dark and damp corner of the midlands, Brand delivered a guest lecture about the music of silent films. Tragically I remembered nothing about the lecture, probably because I was a student and, in a tiresomely stereotype-conforming way, either drunk, hungover or still in bed. Sorry Neil.

Nevertheless, The General was a revelation. I felt like someone had lifted up a corner of the universe to reveal a black and white, silent landscape which offered infinite possibilities for new and fantastic film experiences. As it turned out none of them would rival The General for sheer jaw-dropping, beautifully-constructed physical comedy, but I've spent the intervening years soaking up as much of the work of Keaton, Charlie Chaplin and Harold Lloyd as I can regardless. Neil Brand, meanwhile, has spent the intervening years accompanying silent films all over the world, continuing to be one of the foremost authorities on film music, and last year presented BBC Four's tremendous The Sound Of Cinema series, so I suppose he wins.

That unsolicited and somewhat tedious insight into my past is by way of introduction to a decidedly untedious event at London's heart-burstingly gorgeous BFI, to the name of which I shall allocate an exclusive line on this blog post:

Buster’s Music: An Illustrated Talk by Neil Brand

The talk is part of the BFI's Nobel prize-worthy 'Buster Keaton and the Cinema of Today' season, and includes a screening of a newly-discovered cut of Keaton's 1922 short The Blacksmith, which features some excellent automobile destruction and a scene in which Keaton nearly gets a train driven up his bottom.

All this excitement takes place on Monday February 3rd at 8.30pm. In case for some unfathomably insane reason you haven't yet bought tickets to see the work of a genius discussed by another genius, I asked Neil Brand to explain a bit more about the evening in a transparent attempt to sell more tickets. In return for this free publicity I expect my lifetime membership to the BFI to be confirmed any minute now.

Aaaany minute now.

Hello Neil. So this thing you're doing all looks a bit good. What will the evening entail? I'm trying to get under the skin of Keaton's personality when he's in character. When we think of archetypal Lloyd or Chaplin in character we get a good sense of their characters' backgrounds and status and what makes them tick, but not so with Keaton. The stone-faced acrobat doesn't say "vaudeville" or "1920s go-getter", is neither high nor low status, yet seems somehow to be both. The through-lines in all his films are an (eventual) ability to cope with everything that life throws at him, and a flat hat. Yet from the earliest shorts right up to The Cameraman, we never stop to question who he actually is. To try and unravel the mystery, I'm looking at his body language, his use of props, his abilities with the set-piece scene (that fantastic wrestling match in the changing room in The Cameraman, particularly), his own sense of humour, his amazing use of speeded-up camera (when you see some of his work at the actual speed he filmed it, it makes his performance even more magical) and what kind of music his comedy generates. The audience will be very surprised at some of the results. Is scoring for Keaton markedly different to scoring for Chaplin, Lloyd or Laurel & Hardy? It tends to be much sparer: there's a sense that one is accompanying a dazzlingly good soloist who only needs the slightest prod to be able to stay on top of the music. He allows you to use slower, more repeated patterns and hardly ever demands a tune. He's not sentimental, and he never stays in one place for very long, so Keaton's signature, again and again, is discreet speed and deftness. It's a real challenge to come up with anything that really does him justice. What's so great about this new print of The Blacksmith? The Blacksmith in its original form has some slow moments - it tends not to be among most fans' favourite shorts for that reason - yet this 'new' cut has nearly five minutes of much better action, including two absolutely side-splitting gags that are as good as anything else he did at the time. It's a complete mystery why he dumped them in favour of the cut we all know, except that one of them could be thought a bit risqué: in the middle of a chase Keaton and Joe Roberts stop to watch a woman undressing. Also, thanks to John Bengtson, who has made a lifetime's study of the original locations of silent comedy, we get to see Doug Fairbanks' Robin Hood castle looming behind one of the dusty streets Keaton is haring down. That's how we know he shot the 'new' stuff first. I expect you'll cover this on the night, but is it tricky to make the music support the comedy on screen without taking over and blowing the gags? It really is. Accompanying comedy is about finding the hidden rhythm behind a comedy sequence and the points at which that rhythm changes. It's almost never about individual gags. It's impossible to give a Tom and Jerry-style piano accompaniment to a ninety-minute comedy feature because it would simply be too busy, too theatrical. It may hit every sound cue on screen but it would drive the audience crazy. This is what's led me towards looking at silent comedy from the point of view of body language: it's the most important indicator of the speed the music should move, and other visual references give you indications of style, momentum, pauses and so on. It's an obvious thing to say but all we accompanists have to go on is what we're watching, and what clues we can glean from it. Over the years I've tried to say more by doing less. I still haven't managed it but the intention's there. While I've got you, are there any plans for further programmes like The Sound Of Cinema? I hope so. I don't know if the BBC want any more film music docs (I hope so because there's a huge amount we simply couldn't cover in the series - Europe and the UK, for instance), but I am in negotiation for a series on a different (although still musical) subject, which I hope we may get some news on fairly soon. I'll keep you posted.

Tickets for Buster’s Music: An Illustrated Talk by Neil Brand are available right here, right now. You know what to do. (Buy tickets)

I'm Still Going On About The BBC Archives

The sharp-witted among you will remember with warm, fuzzy nostalgia the post I did a while back about the amazing BBC Archive microsite and the treasure of Bondy booty within. Since then, and hopefully not as a direct result of my post, the BBC have announced a 25% cut in their online budget, which is about as welcome as the removal of a favourite genital. Whether or not this affects the BBC Archive I don't know because nobody replied to my query. Perhaps they've been sacked already.

Anyway in order to drum up a bit more business for them, I am hereby directing you to another of the movie-type collections on there, Hollywood Voices, an internet pie whose filling is made of the tastiest radio interviews with actors and directors from America's golden age of cinema. Chaplin, Hayworth, Huston, Stewart, Flynn, Cagney, Lemmon, Marx, Crawford, Welles, Karloff... all the greats are there. And John Wayne.

There are currently 71 clips in the collection and in all honesty I haven't listened to them all. But in the interests of knowing vaguely what I'm on about, I have listened to some. Here's what I thought, as if you care:

Talking Of Films: Buster Keaton (Network Three, 1961)

A 66-year-old Keaton treats interviewer Herbert Feinstein like a retarded child, which is exactly how you would hope Buster Keaton spoke to interviewers. He talks about how Houdini gave him the nickname "Buster", how his films were cheaper than Chaplin's and Harold Lloyd's and goes on to call Chaplin "very lazy" for making anything less than two films a year. He even finds time to have a pop at Bob Hope's physical comedy skillz, the old grouch. It's the first time I've heard Keaton's voice and he's as tetchy and irascible as his 1920s screen persona implies, thank Christ.

Alfred Hitchcock (1972)

The Greatest Director What Ever Lived talks to Anthony Friese-Greene about the use of music in his films. Broadcast as Hitchcock was in post-production on Frenzy, Friese-Greene spends a lot of time referring to an interview Hitch did in 1933 and asking him if he still feels the same way, which seems almost as lazy as writing a blog post about something you already wrote about a few weeks ago. Still, The Master talks acres of common sense about how music should or shouldn't be used in film, refuses to be put off by a phone ringing in the background and hints at a vague contempt for musicals because they can't be translated into other languages and therefore don't succeed in foreign markets. Has he never heard of dubbing? Or subtitles? Honestly, what an amateur.

Woman's Hour: Fay Wray (Radio 4, 1990)

Silken-voiced broadcasting goddess Jenni Murray interviews a then-83-year-old Fay Wray about her experiences on King Kong, and with various other, less hairy leading men. She reveals, with more lucidity than most 83-year-olds I know, how she intended for her screams to be heard a mile away, and what it was like to act in front of a rear projection screen so big she couldn't even tell what was on it. Wray goes on to describe with woozy, golden-tinged nostalgia what it was like to be caught up in the magic of 1930s Hollywood and how writers are sexier than actors because "they think more widely", whatever that means. I think it might be sexual.

And because I couldn't resist it, I went back to the James Bond collection to check out another of its ancient gems:

Tonight: James Bond Car (BBC1, 1964)

In the kind of piece Top Gear would do nowadays only with more exploding caravans and unbearable presenters, plummy Tonight reporter Kenneth Allsop presents an offbeat film as part of the massive Goldfinger promotion machine in which he trades his E-Type Jaguar for Bond's Aston Martin DB5. In the process he demonstrates the trick number plate that rotates with all the smoothness of a rusty mangle, a radar scanner built into the wing mirror that never featured in the film and, inexplicably, a fake finger he finds under the driver's seat. There's every chance it's the gold finger (DO YOU SEE?) that Honor Blackman wore at the premiere but as it's in black and white it just looks like Bond's left an uncomfortable-looking sex toy behind.

So do yourself a favour and visit the BBC Archives before some bureaucrat deletes it as part of a cost-cutting measure. Chances are you've already paid for it with part of your TV licence so you may as well enjoy it. At any rate it's better than anything on BBC Three.

The Arena Of Destiny: Not Starring Charlie Chaplin

Viewers with exceptional memories may recall a competition I ran several years ago to win two copies of the BFI's quite spanktacular Chaplin At Keystone DVD box set. I asked you to place the following silent comedians in order of greatness according to the only scale that matters, i.e. mine:

The correct answer, as anybody who checked the properties of the picture would have discovered, is:

1. Buster Keaton
2. Charlie Chaplin
3. Harold Lloyd.

Of the countless (five) entries received, three got it right. This was quite annoying because if only two had got it right I could have just sent the DVDs off and everyone would have been happy, but instead I had to spend an entire day inventing another Arena Of Destiny. Still, original video content and all.

So here it is, and don't forget - three contestants enter, only two leave with a prize. Take it away, not Charlie Chaplin!

Congratumalations to the winners, uncontrollable commiserations to the loser. At least you got your name on the world's greatest movie blog to be called The Incredible Suit.

Thanks to Dave, Paul, Cath, Lisa and the one and only Martin for helping to bring The Arena Of Destiny to life. Consider this paragraph as your payment.

Win A Ridonkulous Amount Of Charlie Chaplin Films!

THIRTY-FOUR Charlie Chaplin films, to be precise, although most of them are shorts but there's nothing in the rules against that.

Yes, now that you've spent the weekend salivating over the BFI's Chaplin At Keystone four-disc set I almost soiled myself over on Friday, I'm orgasmically excited to be giving away two copies, courtesy of the increasingly delicious folks at the British Film Institute, God bless it and all who sit in its slightly uncomfortable reclining seats.

All you have to do is rearrange the following silent comedians into descending order of greatness (i.e. most bestest first, least bestest third) according to The Incredible Suit:

When you've done that, email your answer to me here. If there are more than two correct entries, contestants will enter The Arena Of Destiny to see who emerges victorious. You've got until midnight on Monday 13th December to enter. GO!

Buster Keaton: Cops

Professions You Are More Likely To Find In A Silent Comedy Than In Real Life: No.1 In A Series Of 1

From Buster Keaton's Cops (1922)

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Buster Keaton: One Week

This film was made NINETY YEARS AGO. Just think about that for a minute.

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Gagalanche

On a recent day off from whatever the hell it is I do for a living, I treated myself to a triple bill from the holy trinity of silent comedians – Harold Lloyd, Buster Keaton and Charlie Chaplin. Not that this applied to me, but if you’ve had the kind of day where it would have been improved by an elephant defecating on your dining room table just after you’ve served up dinner then you could do a lot worse than sit down with these guys for a couple of hours.

Harold Lloyd’s short film Number, Please? is, it has to be said, not one of his best, but it does feature some of his typically inventive gags, especially a scene in which all he has to do is make a phone call, but is prevented in doing so by a cigar, a midget, a stupid woman, a bad memory, a lack of cash, a screaming baby and a Jewish stereotype. The film also features two excellent performances by dogs, which I realise is neither here nor there but canine thespianism is a much-overlooked aspect of cinema these days so I’m just doing my bit to big it up.

Charlie Chaplin’s first feature (although that’s pushing the limits of what qualifies a film as a feature – it’s 50 minutes long), The Kid, is a rare thing in silent cinema – a comedy with emotional depth, featuring as it does an abandoned child, a heartbroken mother, a fiercely protective father-figure and the social services sticking their oar in. Rest assured, however, there are plenty of people getting kicked up the arse and Charlie gets baby wee on his hands, so there’s something for everyone. Chaplin took a year to make The Kid, starting just after his own son died when he was just a few days old, and shot about 44 hours of footage, but it paid off. You’ll laugh, you’ll cry, and you’ll praise the dream sequence at the end for featuring another great dog, this time one that actually flies.

Buster Keaton, as regular viewers of The Incredible Suit will know, is worshipped as something of a god round these parts. His 1920 short Neighbors is a seventeen minute gagalanche* of gobsmackular stunts and astonishing use of props. Here’s the whole thing, but the first three minutes give you a fair idea of what to expect, and if it doesn’t make you want to watch the rest then there’s a small bit of you that isn’t working properly. Get it seen to.



Sadly no award-winning mutts there; in Keaton’s defence his previous short The Scarecrow had a great dog in it but it’s not as good. Conclusion? A brilliant dog does not a great film make. Although Digby, The Biggest Dog In The World is awesome.

* An avalanche of gags. Did you really need that explaining?

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Twitted

Warning: A rudimentary knowledge of Twitter and its distinctive linguistic and syntactic idiosyncracies may be an advantage in understanding this post. If you’re having difficulty, why not ask a small child to translate?

7,055 Twitter users would have seen this last Friday:

Which is pretty much the second most awesome thing on the internet. Just to reiterate, that's THE BBC calling this an EXCELLENT MOVIE BLOG, which means I can now sit back and churn out a load of third rate bellyfluff, as opposed to the second rate bellyfluff I've been churning out thus far, knowing that I've finally made it. The Incredible Suit looks forward to similar tweets in the future:




I’ve honestly no idea what they’re on about.

In further Twitter news, The Incredible Suit has gone all multi-platform, or something. If I can’t be bothered to review a film at tedious length on the blog, I’ll bung a bite-sized reviewette on Twitter that’ll take about four seconds to read because I know how busy we all are these days. It’s just an experiment, probably one doomed to hideous failure like that of poor old Henry Frankenstein, except I’m hoping my tweets won’t chuck little girls in the lake or try to kill me. Still, stranger things have happened.

Click here to be Twitted, and if you’re on Twitter, why not follow me? After all why should Stephen Fry get all the attention?

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Tickling The Ivories And Frottling The Ebonies

“What did you do at the weekend then, The Incredible Suit?” I hear you ask. Well, I’ll tell you, if you’d just shut up and let me get a word in edgeways.

On Friday I watched Mamma Mia! at The Scoop. For those unfortunates unfamiliar with The Scoop, it’s an open-air amphitheatre next to London’s City Hall, and every summer they shove on a bunch of free films and the audience gets sloshed and occasionally lobs objects at City Hall in the hope of hitting any insufferable floppy-haired twits bumbling about pretending to run the city.

I was fully prepared to hate Mamma Mia!. I don’t mind Abba and I like a good musical but it looked like it could out-camp a tent full of Kenneth Williamses, and Pierce Brosnan getting his warble on was not an enticing prospect.

However, watching a film at The Scoop is like watching a film through magic goggles. Everything becomes 13.7 times better and by the time you’ve necked a bottle of wine it practically becomes a spiritual experience. And so it was that by the time the credits rolled, Mr & Mrs The Incredible Suit, along with 1500 other booze-fuelled berks, were on their feet dancing and singing (badly) having thoroughly enjoyed what was probably, in the cold light of day, a daft old stinker of a film.

My point here is not to recommend Mamma Mia! but The Scoop’s annual film screenings. If you can get to any of them, do so. They show all sorts; musicals always go down a treat, and last year I saw Buster Keaton’s The General there, which is why I now frequently subject you to clips of Keaton, Chaplin and Harold Lloyd falling over.

Which, in a bloggery segue so smooth you could give it a cheeky grin and call it George Clooney, brings me to Sunday, when I saw Buster Keaton’s Our Hospitality at the Barbican, with live piano accompaniment by the legend that is Neil Brand.

Putting aside the genius of Keaton, Neil Brand is a freakishly amazing dude. He played to The General at The Scoop (awesome) and I’ve seen him on tour with Paul Merton doing their Silent Clowns show (awesome) as well as his own show, The Silent Pianist Speaks (awesome), in which he demonstrates how ace he is with the aid of a few long-dead comedy legends and a piano. Essentially he plays solidly for the entire duration of a film, without sheet music, making it up as he goes along, which has to be seen to be believed. I don’t usually go to the cinema to see a film I’ve got at home, but if Brando’s going to be there tickling the ivories and frottling the ebonies then I’m there with nobs on.

Here’s a YouTubular Busterfest with music by Pixies; I wanted to stick up a nugget of Our Hospitality or Neil Brand in action but there aren’t any good clips out there. Why? Damfino!*

*Tediously smug in-joke for Keaton fans

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Mr Hammer Is Supper Nice

About 90% of my DVDs are currently cheesed off, sitting on the shelf gathering dust and complaining that they’re not getting the airing they deserve. It’s the 90% that was made after about 1923 and I think they’re planning a revolution against the old folks.

The thing is, I’ve suddenly got no desire to watch anything longer than about half an hour and that doesn’t feature Charlie Chaplin, Buster Keaton or Harold Lloyd falling over, getting kicked up the arse or failing to impress a lady. And as The Incredible Suit is a public service I’m sharing the joy of silent comedy with you guys, by which I mean I’m going to relentlessly force it down your throat till my blog has fewer readers than Vanilla Ice’s. Although having said that, it is almost certainly already the case.

Incidentally, Vanilla Ice’s blog is every shade of amazing. Here are some highlights from his recent meeting with former rapper and proponent of the Hammerpants, MC Hammer:

“Hammer and I had a nice talk backstage. He was supper nice and cool and I now have new respect for him.” Good to know that Mr Hammer is supper nice, which I think means ‘as nice as a late evening snack of biscuits and Ovaltine’.

“We did talk about doing a WORLD TOUR, and he said he was all in 100%. I think the world need's it. There has been nothing hit on the impact level of what we did 18 years ago.” Damn right, Iceman. I can literally think of NOTHING AT ALL from the last 18 years as important as Ice Ice Baby, U Can’t Touch This and all those hundreds of other epoch-defining records you guys made. The world need’s a WORLD TOUR more than it need’s lesson’s in how apostrophe’s should be use’d.

Almost as hilarious as Vanilla Ice’s blog is A Dog’s Life, one of Charlie Chaplin’s 1918 shorts which I watched again the other day. Chaplin got a bit mawkish in later films but he kept his shorts (films, not trousers) light, zippy and crammed with gags till the seams popped, especially in those he made between 1916 and 1923 when he was under unimaginable pressure to succeed - at this time he was probably the most famous person in the world; kind of like a Vanilla Ice for the 1920s.

You can watch A Dog’s Life on YouTube (in four parts), but if you haven’t got half an hour to spare then a) you work too hard, and b) here’s a 2½ minute master class in comedy timing to take away the acrid taste of all that Metal Molten Hip Hop, as Vanilla describes his parpings.


I’ll be lobbing more silent comedy grenades your way in the future, so get yourself a sturdy chuckle helmet, dig a giggle trench and pile the guffaw sandbags high.

Apologies for stretching that metaphor out to Partridgesque lengths.

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Ambassador Of Bloggery

As if the excitement of yesterday’s revelation that Singin’ In The Rain was voted The Greatest Musical, Like, Ever by almost five readers of The Incredible Suit wasn’t enough, I can now bring you more earth-shattering news of a poll result! I know!! So sit down and have a stiff drink handy because you might not be able to withstand the exhilaration of the next paragraph.

With the total number of votes running a close second to the previous poll’s tally (this time over five of you put mouse to mousepad), Buster Keaton’s masterpiece The General scored 50% to become readers of The Incredible Suit’s Greatest Film From The 1920s. Hooray! I’m particularly ecstatic because that was my favourite, and this result vindicates my choice and proves that I have my blogging finger on the entertainment pulse of the nation – nay, the world.

Because of this I now await the inevitable government invitation to become Minister of Movies, or perhaps Mrs Queen herself will ask me to be some kind of ambassador of bloggery for this great nation. Fear not though viewers, if this happens I shall endeavour to continue blogging as much as my schedule allows, for I know that your hopes and dreams rest on the well padded shoulders of this, The Incredible Suit.

Noel Edmonds Was Right All Along

ShortList Magazine today published the results of a poll to find readers’ Top 20 films from the 1980s. The results were predictable but I more or less agreed – except for their Number 1, Raging Bull, which is as overrated a piece of cinema as Citizen Kane if you ask me, which you probably don’t, but then this is my blog so I’m afraid you’re just going to have to sit down and be quiet. The definitive five greatest films from the 1980s are obviously:

1. Raiders Of The Lost Ark
2. The Empire Strikes Back
3. Back To The Future
4. Die Hard
5. The Shining

But I digress. Publishing a list of top films from the ‘80s is as inspired as putting the front page at the front, and about as interesting. Now obviously ShortList is a free rag and is intended to be read by bleary-eyed commuters dribbling overpriced coffee onto their suits at christ o’clock in the morning, but come on now, really. Must try harder.

So imagine a magazine like ShortList, only much better, called The Incredible Suit, only it’s not wasting acres of trees only to end up in a landfill somewhere thanks to selfish tykes who can’t be arsed to locate their nearest recycling point, it is in fact online and in the form of a “web log”, or “blog” for short. Now stop imagining, because it’s right before your eyes! How amazing is that? It’s like you can make your wildest dreams come true just by imagining them! Noel Edmonds was right all along.

The Incredible Suit refuses to do anything as lacklustre as the Top 20 from the 1980s, but in a groundbreaking act of inversion and self-congratulatory smart-arsery I hereby present…

***THE TOP 80 MOVIES FROM THE 1920s!!***

Except, good grief, that would be a long and tedious list wouldn’t it, so let’s use some artistic licence and just make it the Top 8.

Now this was a decade before CGI, before colour, before surround sound, in fact much of it before sound full stop, so obviously it was rubbish. And I say that with little in the way of justification, knowledge or proof, but let’s be fair – if there were stacks of good movies made in the ‘20s they’d still be knocking around today, but most of them aren’t. However the Top 8 that are, I can officially announce in this exclusive poll of myself, are:

1. The General (Buster Keaton)
2. Sherlock Jr (Buster Keaton)
3. The Lodger (Alfred Hitchcock)
4. Why Worry? (Harold Lloyd)
5. Our Hospitality (Buster Keaton)
6. Seven Chances (Buster Keaton)
7. The Kid (Charlie Chaplin)
8. The Kid Brother (Harold Lloyd)

No doubt you've spotted there's no Metropolis or Dr Caligari, and I realise that this list is populated almost exclusively by silent comedians (Mr Hitchcock being the notable exception, although he was a bit of a silent comedian himself – look at his cameos), but that’s what I’ve been watching a lot of lately so that’s the way the silent cookie crumbles. DEAL WITH IT!

Thanks to Jeremiah McDonald for the video!