FILMS
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This month DENIS GIFFORD reports on an 8mm release strong in curiosity value
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IT'S A GRAND LIFE (102 mins; sound; standard 8; hire fee £3.75; used prints £27.50; Derann Films, 171 Stourbridge Road, Holly Hall, Dudley, Worcestershire).
Nineteen fifty-three was a year that will go down as a milestone in the history of the British cinema. For in that year I began to take films seriously and made my first tentative plunge into the archives, taking notes for what will be published soon as the first ever complete Catalogue of British Films.
And in that same year Mancunian Films made It's A Grand Life.
In the two decades following that fatal year, I laboured in the byways of memory lane, always suspecting that somewhere in those 77 years of cinematic history there must lurk a Neglected One, a major movie- making talent, forgotten by historians, neglected by critics. A director to rank alongside your creative Hitchcocks, your experimental Truffauts and your way-out Warhols.
Now, at last, after long years of devoted hope and heartbreak, I have uncovered just such a man. Experimental and creative, yet at the same time traditional, homegrown, true to his soil. Faith in our native cinematic heritage is justified; research is rewarded. Movie makers of the world, I give you - John E. Blakeley.
John E. Blakeley, film-maker extraordinary, was born in Ardwick in 1889. The film bug bit him early: not for nothing were Ardwick cinemas known as 'fleapits'. At the early age of 19, young Blakeley was already in pictures as a distributor. They called them renters in those flickering days of 1908.
Close study of Blakeley's productions reveals that the boy renter not only looked at the films that passed through his hands, he learned from them. Blakeley's directorial technique, his deployment of both camera and actors, retains clear traces of the early masters of the movie art. It's A Grand Life was made in 1953, yet through Blakeley's brilliance, his belief in the cinematic purity of the pioneers of the medium, we experience something of what it must have been like to go to the pictures in Ardwick in 1908.
Yet such is the genius of Blakeley that our experience is no mere return to the fleapit. Rather, it is unique, for in his film he dares to introduce sound - a modem extension of the art of cinema undreamt of 40 years ago. Brilliantly, Blakeley uses sound as if it had been known in 1908!
This is especially effective in his use of music. Not for Blakeley the artificiality of the specially-composed score, the imposition of the studio orchestra. By extending the tradition of the cinema of his youth, Blakeley makes his music a substitute for the pit orchestra, or possibly, in the case of Ardwick, the boosted acoustics of the hand-cranked gramophone. In a daring move, Blakeley actually plays old records during the action of his film. Thus, at one bold stroke, he ensures total directorial control over both visuals and aurals, subliminally imposes his personal taste - and saves himself a few quid.
Blakeley's camera control is equally authoritative. For although Ernest Palmer is nominally the cameraman, clearly Blakeley is in command. Even Palmer, as experienced a photographer as ever carried a tripod for BIP, would scarcely dare point his lens at actors in the pitch black of actual night with only one small spot at his command. And ' having pointed, would dare grind away for a full three minutes without a change of set up. No, it is clearly Blakeley who dares, letting this, the key scene in his story, casually pass us by while voices off (both screen and mike), vainly explain what is going on.
By obscuring his most dramatic moment, Blakeley cleverly maximises rather than minimises the mystery. He brings us, the audience, into the suspense and the con- fusion. It is a sequence worthy of Hitchcock.
Another reminder of that other master's style is Blakeley's use of the extended take. Not the full 10-minute take of Rope, true. Blakeley is too clever simply to copy. He makes us think his takes last 10 minutes.
Study the film and you will solve Blakeley's secret. It is simple. Unlike Hitchcock, Blakeley never moves his camera. Not for Blakeley the disturbing tracking and panning. He is content merely to observe. Some may call him reactionary; others inept; yet no better technique could Blakeley have adopted, when you consider his choice of star.
Here we come upon a further facet of the man. Blakeley, not content with direction, must produce as well: your whole man of the cinema. Those who believe the total film- maker came into the world with Frank Capra and Otto Preminger would do well to pause and consider our British Mr Blakeley. Thus Blakeley and Blakeley alone can be ac- counted responsible for his films - a sobering thought.
Far from sober was Blakeley's star. With a world of talent available it was characteristic of the director to select a man whose name was considered 'box office poison' by the smart men of Wardour Street. Blakeley cared not a fig for the fancies of big city sophisticates. He was a man of the people, and the people loved Randle's Scandals - which was not so much the name of his star's stage show, more his way of life.
Frank Randle, born in Wigan, was Music Hall favourite. A howl on stage, his cut-ups off were far from comic. His devotion to the bottle and the ladies made him a legend in his lifetime. To capture the essence of Randle upon celluloid, to convey Randle's curious comedy to a world larger than Wigan, to preserve his peculiar genius for posterity: these were the challenges Blakeley took upon himself. That he failed miserably is no fault of Blakeley's.
Blakeley did all he could in the only way he knew. He trained his camera upon his star and gave the command "Roll 'em", or possibly "Grind". Then he sat back and watched, as unsmiling as his future audiences, as Randle staggered his way through scene after unending scene. The script, if ever there had been one, was soon forgotten as Randle improvised his unpredictable mutterings to the obvious bewilderment of his co-stars.
And when they came to an end - they knew the end had come when Randle appeared on set with his teeth in - Blakeley took his reels, and reels, to the cutting room. Once again he showed himself master of his medium. Blakeley's editors were stickers. They stuck his sequences together in order - in any order - just so long as every inch of exposed film was used. This not only ensured the whole essence of Randle was preserved, it also ensured no costly film was wasted. Besides, at one hour and forty-two minutes, no exhibitor could run more than a second feature in support. Blakeley the director was still Blakeley the renter at heart.
Although his jigsaw style of construction may be seen as a pre-echo of Antony Balch's 'cut-up' technique, Blakeley remained true to tradition. To give his whole some form of continuity he used a linking device first seen and loved in his earliest years. Thus his slow fades into and out of black can be seen as hommages to his long- gone contemporary, Cecil Hepworth.
There are other little mementoes from those faraway days of pure cinema. Blakeley revives the subtitle. He introduces Randle as 'The Stage and Screen's Most Famous Comedian', and Diana Dors as 'Britain's Most Beautiful and Glamorous'. Most Beautiful and Glamorous what? Blakeley, evidently a sophisticate for all his regional origins, leaves that to our imagination. He even subtitles his title. Beneath It's A Grand Life appears the bracketed legend: 'A Musical Comedy Burlesque'. This is not only a daring device cinematically, it con- travenes the Trade Descriptions Act. Yet perhaps it is a joke, an in-joke for the cineastes, to savour as the only true joke in the film.
John E. Blakeley is dead, yet his style of cinema lives on - in the work of others. Hitchcock has continued the long take technique, as Warhol has allowed his camera to gaze at unblinking length upon a face or a place. Cassavetes, acclaimed for allowing his actors to improvise, was surely inspired by Blakeley, and Truffaut's love of location shooting, his return to the roots, is no more than a continuance of the Blakeley way. Less, for Blakeley actually built a studio in Manchester (or converted a Mission Hall, perhaps), and proudly emblazoned his films with his address - 3 The Parsonage, Manchester. What a magnificent gesture towards those stuffed men of Elstree who scorned him and his home-made films. As Churchillian as the V-sign.
It's A Grand Life was Blakeley's, and Randle's, last film. It stands as a fitting tribute to a man who did what he set out to do, unashamedly, defiantly. Let all those who doubt that British cinema ever threw up a genius, or indeed, ever threw up, see this film. It is a comedy guaranteed to wipe the smile off their faces.
This page was last updated 02 Dec 2002