APR 26, 2019 | 5:00 AM
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| Kevin Brownlow will be presented with the second annual Robert Osborne Award, recognizing an individual who has helped keep the cultural heritage of classic film alive, at the 2019 TCM Classic Film Festival in Hollywood. (Allison Zaucha / For The Times) |
Kevin Brownlow has been the voice for silent films and their
preservation and restoration for six decades. In fact, the 80-year-old British
filmmaker, historian and author earned an honorary Oscar for his work in 2010.
Brownlow, who began collecting silent films at age 11, has written
acclaimed film books including “The Parade’s Gone By” (1968); “Hollywood: The
Pioneers” (1979); and “The Search for Charlie Chaplin” (2005). He also directed
two feature films with Andrew Mollo, “It Happened Here” (1964) and “Winstanley”
(1975).
In 1980, he and David Gill produced and directed the landmark 13-part TV
series “Hollywood.” Other documentaries from the pair include “The Unknown
Chaplin” (1983) and “Harold Lloyd: The Third Genius” (1990). His most recent documentaries include “Garbo”
(2005).
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| Film legend Greta Garbo, pictured n the 1931 film "Susan Lenox (Her Rise and Fall)" was the subject of the TCM documentary special "Garbo" from veteran British documentarian Kevin Brownlow. (Turner Classic Movies) |
Among the countless silent movies he’s restored are Abel Gance’s 1927
epic “Napoleon,” the 1925 “Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ” and 1927’s “Sunrise:
A Song of Two Humans.”
The sweet, “Mr. Chips”-esque Brownlow was in Los Angeles earlier this
month for the TCM Classic Film Festival to receive the second annual Robert
Osborne Award for his work preserving and restoring films. TCM screened “It
Happened Here” and his restoration of the 1928 Greta Garbo-John Gilbert romance
“A Woman of Affairs,” complete with Carl Davis conducting a full orchestra in
his original score for the silent classic.
Before the festival, Brownlow sat down to talk about his lifelong love
affair with silent films at — appropriately enough — the Gable & Lombard
suite at the Hollywood Roosevelt.
Q: What are your feelings
about digital restoration versus photochemical restoration?
A: I was bitterly
opposed to it until I did the digital work on “Napoleon” and it looked
absolutely terrific. One forgets how many times people have come up to me to
say that film has changed my life.
Q: Almost three-quarters of
all silent films are considered lost. But I imagine you have a list of films
you’d love to find and restore.
A: Well, I can give you
17 pages closely typed, but one that stands out is called “Hollywood.” Made in
1923 with a new un-tried girl in the lead with a wonderful name of Hope Drown.
And it had everybody in Hollywood in it.
Q: Carl Davis composes the
wonderful scores for your silent film restorations. But I can’t tell you how
many times I’ve heard inappropriate scores that ruin silent movies.
A: I think the modern
enemy of silent films is music from modern composers who have no sympathy for
the film at all. I saw “The Four Horseman of the Apocalypse” in Paris with a
band they'd picked up off the street, and it was just unbearable.
Q: Is it harder to get
younger people interested in silent movies today?
A: Because the National
Film Theatre [in London] has cut back on silent films, it's fallen to an
organization at the Cinema Museum, which, oddly enough, was the workhouse where
the Chaplin family was incarcerated every so often. And the young people who
come to that are extremely enthusiastic.
When sound came in, there was a danger that people would watch a few
sound films and want to go back to silent. So producers took very, very
primitive [silent] pictures, ran them too fast with honky-tonk music. As a
result, that generation, the World War II generation., absolutely hated silent
films. What is so fascinating is that there isn't that prejudice against them
anymore. In my youth people would say, “Oh, stay away from silent pictures;
they're so badly made, the photography is terrible, and the acting is
ridiculous.”
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| Director Abel Gance, left, director of the epic "Napoleon," with Kevin Brownlow in 1967. Brownlow began hunting for lost footage when still a schoolboy in the 1950s. (Photoplay Productions) |
Q: I read that your
boarding school was so awful that one way to keep students from running away
was to show silent films.
A:This place was like
Colditz. I'm not exaggerating when I tell you the boys escaped; they had to be
rounded up by tradesmen’s vans going all over the countryside. The only decent
thing the headmaster did was to show us films every third Sunday in the winter
in the cold chapel.
I think what attracted me first was the fact that you could put a
cinema, which I thought had to be a gigantic bunker in the high street, in your
own home, and that transformed things for me. I begged my parents to give me a
projector, and indeed they did, that same Christmas. But because they
misunderstood, they gave me a still projector. But then next Christmas, I got a
hand-crank projector and two films.
It wasn't enough, of course. I wanted some more, and I went out into the
streets of London. I tracked down a photographic shop off Baker Street with a
little pile of these films, which were in metal cases. I took them home, and I
didn't know what on earth they were. The first one I ran was missing a main
title. I put it on, and my mother said, “That's Douglas Fairbanks,” her
favorite actor. Even I'd heard of that name, and I remember rushing off to the
library to look up and see if I could find more information on it.
Anyway, I thought what would happen was I would pull out a book from the
library, it would fall open at a picture of my film, and that's exactly what
happened. I went to the library and this one book, “History of the Film,” fell
open at a picture and gave its proper title, “American Aristocracy.”
I just had discovered the British Film Institute, found the full cast of
this film. The villain was [played by] Albert Parker, so I rang him up and
said, “Does the name Douglas Fairbanks mean anything?” And he said, “Doug?
Jesus Christ, I directed him.” So, I said, “Oh, what did you direct?” He said, “The Black Pirate.”
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| John Gilbert, Lillian Gish and director King Vidor on the set of La Bohème (1926). The film was featured in "Hollywood" a 13-part TV series about the world of American silent film written, produced and directed by Kevin Brownlow and David Gill. (Turner Broadcasting System) |
Q: Oh, my God.
A: My words exactly. I
told him about this little film and he said, “Bring it over.” And he was so
entranced to see himself in 1916, so he and he wife organized an evening for
his clients because he was an agent. So we got Trevor Howard, Clive Brook,
Hardy Kruger. Parker was very friendly and warm. We had dinner after dinner
after dinner. It became a thing of silent films at Al Parker's, and visiting
American filmmakers would be invited. It was fantastic. Then he'd ring me up
and say, “Kevin, King Vidor is at the Hyde Park Hotel. Tell him I sent you.”
Q: So that’s how you began
interviewing all of those legends of the silent screen.
A: I took a huge tape recorder
the size of that chair to the Hyde Park Hotel, and King Vidor described the
making of “The Big Parade.” I will never forget what he said about his
directing style: “I didn't actually say very much, but I felt it and I've
realized that they were doing what I thought. Osmosis, you know. And I'd think
something, and John Gilbert would react a few moments later.”
Q: I’m jealous that you
were friends with Harold Lloyd and visited him at his famous mansion,
Greenacres.
A: Harold opened the doors of
Greenacres and said, “Only 42 rooms, but it’s home!”
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