Underground

If anyone's seen The Best of Everything and wondered if Mr. Shalimar could have ever been young, go out and rent the silent movie thirty years earlier: Underground. In my opinion, Brian Aherne looks exactly the same. He's still tall, handsome, charming, dashing, and adorable. In this movie, he plays a worker on the underground (London's version of the subway system). He falls for Elissa Landi at first sight, and they enjoy a very sweet meet-cute where she drops her glove and he rides up the escalator in the wrong direction just to hand it back to her. Wouldn't you fall for Brian Aherne if he smiled at you while standing on the wrong escalator and holding out your glove? Elissa agrees, and she floats on the same cloud the rest of the day as she dreams of her true love.

Where's the fly in the ointment? Cyril McLaglen plays a pool playing, beer drinking scoundrel who hits on Elissa on the train. She's not interested, but he's just as convinced she's his true love as she is about Brian. So begins a riveting love triangle with more twists and turns than you'll be prepared for. Anthony Asquith's direction is extremely surprising, and if you didn't know any better, you'd think the movie was made twenty or thirty years later as a tribute to silent pictures. Most silent film directors stick to static shots, brightly lit close ups with only the star in the frame, and simple compositions. Asquith fills up his frame with extras who are all moving and conducting their own business, even during the leads' close ups. He's clearly ahead of his time, and it's a pleasure to watch his films. It's also great fun to watch Brian Aherne before audiences knew he had a lovely speaking voice! As a bonus, you'll hear a beautiful music score written for the remastered version-hats off to Neil Brand.

A rather simple tale of two girls and two guys, both of whom are after the same girl. Although the tale itself is rather melodramatic and not very interesting, the local colour, streets, traffic and particularly the bus ride are marvellous. There is not as much action in the underground system as i had expected but there are glorious shots (and sequences within) the Lots Road power station - the very one that provided the power for the system. All participants are more or less working class, with one guy working on the underground railway and the other at the power station whilst one of the girls is a shop assistant (Selfridges?) and the other seemingly a seamstress working in her room. Fascinating to see those old picture postcard streets go by and even more on the extras provided on the BFI Blu-ray disc. Great watch.

A silent film of British director Anthony Asquith, recently has been restored by BFI, it is his second feature made at the age of 26, and he would later bring us many important play- adaptation classics like PYGMALION (1938), THE BROWNING VERSION (1951) and THE IMPORTANCE OF BEING EARNEST (1952), although UNDERGROUND is a creation out of his own wit, this incipient piece cogently concretises his astonishing cinematic aesthetics, particularly Stanley Rodwell's majestically composed cinematography and the slick final action stunts.

UNDERGROUND is about a working-class love story in the metropolitan London, Nell (Landi) is a shopgirl and Bert (McLaglen) is a power station worker, they both take the newly-inaugurated London metro to work and get off at the same station, where Bill (Aherne) works as an escalator operator (an obsolete job to the eyes of later generations), then the story evolves into a two-suitors-one-girl situation, although Bert is a well-groomed lady-killer, Nell chooses Bill eventually, the handsome and gentlemanly chap, their love story burgeons from a lost glove, here Asquith showcases his innovate camera movements of the two walking in the opposite directions in two reversely moving escalators, the comic timing is purely golden, which has already been effectively justified from its beguiling opening vignettes with a potpourri of interactions between passengers, including Bert and Nell. But Bert is far from a well-bred loser, he is brash, revengeful and manipulative, he coaxes Kate (Baring), a seamstress lives in the same lodge and his former lover whom he has gotten tired of, to set up a scene in public and defame Bill's reputation. On condition that he will treat her well, Kate complies and Bill is going to lose his job, hence undermines the marriage. But, Nell is no wide-eyed flapper, she doesn't give up easily, instead, by a sheer coincidence, she noses out the lead back to Burt and finds Kate, lays bare the truth. In the third act, an impending tragedy ensues and a white-knuckle chasing set piece brings Bill and Burt into an elevator in the underground station, and the good heroically defeats the evil.

The most significant feature of the film is its sterling utilisation of silhouettes and shades, glistening under the finely-restored monochromic texture and its futuristic layout of (almost) every and each shots, all promisingly denotes what a young talent Asquith is, and I must move his other works onto the top-tier of my watch-list now!

The four main cast thrive in their expressive performances, our heroine Elissa Landi is so unbridled in her facial expressions, the transition from kindness to sheer sneer can be impeccably accomplished in a jiffy, as a young woman inculcated by independence, she also functions as the antithetical specimen to the old-world Kate, a woman blinded and entrapped by her own fantasy of a man who only uses her as a disposable pawn. However a feline-like Norah Baring triumphantly brings out the ascending pathos in her lingering comportment which will lead to her fatal destruction. Aherne is squarely handsome, a leading man material indeed and McLaglen competently brandishes with his sinister edge whenever the plot requires.

In short, UNDERGROUND is an excellent genre-crossing silent picture, stylishly in the vanguard and entertaining as well, another bonus is the symphonic accompany score from Neil Brand, from lilting to gripping, hones up the atmosphere up to the hilt. It certainly deserves a wider audience in addition to the usual coterie who is fond of silent goodies.

This is a magnificent film, the first credited film directed by Anthony Asquith, who was then only 26 years of age. His youthful energy, verve, and daring innovation show! Probably Asquith never directed such a brilliant film again in his long career. From a film as wonderful as this one, it was impossible to climb higher. The title refers to the London Underground, and much of the film was shot in Waterloo Underground Station, where one of the main characters works as a member of staff, what was known as a 'guard', whose duty it is to be helpful to passengers (alas, if we only still had them!). The performances of the four lead players are positively electrifying. Norah Baring's portrayal of a highly-strung young woman who goes over the edge is one of the most finely-judged portrayals of madness precipitated by desperate emotional trauma which I have ever seen on the screen. It is a perfect marvel. Cyril McLaglen gives an equally well-judged performance as a 'cad' who uses and discards women, and who when thwarted turns to deadly violence. This is a very passionate film, showing great extremes of human emotion in an entirely convincing manner. The most charming and delightful presence on screen is Elissa Landi, a gamine working class enchantress whose lively and original expressions, captivating eyes, and intensity are truly overwhelming. She is every bit as captivating as Clara Bow in IT (1927). Landi should have risen to be one of the major stars of British cinema, but it never happened. Here she is 24 years old, but she had only 19 years to live, as she died of cancer at the age of only 43. She never appeared in genuinely major films, and most film-lovers will only have seen her in AFTER THE THIN MAN (1936). She must have been a most interesting person, as she wrote six novels in her short life, as well as poetry. The 'good guy' in the film who comes into conflict with McLaglen as the 'bad 'un' is sympathetically and charmingly played by the very gentle Brian Aherne, who loves Landi but has to fight for her. The shots of London in 1928 are amazing. A great deal of the action in the latter part of the film takes place at Lots Road Power Station in Chelsea, which generated the electric power for the Underground, and where McLaglen works. Some fantastic fight and chase scenes take place there, including some hair-raising ones on the roof, which were clearly inspirational to Alfred Hitchcock, who later emulated them. I was sad to see the scene in the park, which had such beautiful old elm trees. When I saw the young couple sitting with their backs up against the familiar corrugated bark of a large elm, I nearly cried. How long it has been since we had those elms, and they will never come again in our lifetimes! Dutch Elm Disease killed every one in Britain. The elms were the stately trees which once defined the English countryside and parks. The cinematography for this film by Stanley Rodwell, his very first screen credit, is outstanding, and there are many shots strikingly influenced by German expressionism. We get such wonderful shots of the Underground, including evocative moving shots going along the tunnels both towards and away from a point of light in the distance. The waiting crowds of 1928 on the platforms seem as real as yesterday in this crisp and brilliant frame by frame restoration by the British Film Institute of this great silent classic. There is a fascinating booklet with the DVD-Blu Ray box, and the extras are not to be missed. No one watching this classic can possibly be disappointed, as it is moving as a drama and spectacular as a vision of a lost era. I was amused to see a scene shot in the quaint little pedestrian street known as Thistle Grove, in Fulham, where a friend of mine once lived. It is a little-known charming secret of London, which has changed little in the past century. This film really sweeps one away, and ranks amongst the very best silent films ever made. It has been issued with a marvellous score composed by Neil Brand, which suits the film perfectly and greatly enhances its power and its sheer magic. Don't hesitate for one moment, but get this remarkable film without delay!

It's ironic that Anthony Asquith spent the lion's share of his long career thought of as an excellent director of wordy, sometimes outright theatrical pieces like "Pygmalion", "The Browning Version" or "The Importance of Being Ernest". A look at his early silent work like "A Cottage on Dartmoor" and "Underground" show a director deft with visual storytelling, using expressionistic lighting, muscular camera movements and inventive editing to combine with mostly impressively restrained and naturalistic performances to create films quite different than one might associate with him. Indeed, in "Underground" - which starts as a light, comic romance, and gradually grows into dark melodrama – there's a limited use even of title cards. The images and the actors faces and body language often tell us everything we need to know, even when watching a fairly lengthy conversation.

"Underground" is delightfully well made, and very effective – funny without trying too hard in its lighter moments, thrilling and tense in its later scenes, which include a sophisticated chase/fight/stunt sequence. If there's a flaw, it's that this story of two lovers ripped away from each other by a conniving, jealous suitor and the besotted young woman who will do whatever the bad guy asks, is far to reliant on corny coincidences and obvious plot turns to quite escalate to great movie status for me. But it's still highly enjoyable and effective.

I wasn't crazy about either of the two score choices on this visually excellent Master's of Cinema recent blu-ray restoration. One 'score' is really a bed of mostly naturalistic sound effects for each location and situation, which was interesting, but didn't add much emotionally. The other - the 'main score' - went too far the other way. The orchestral score felt a bit too florid, dramatic and insistent, often overstating the emotions of a moment, and occasionally becoming distracting. Asquith did a great job of getting some psychological complexity into his silent characters, and having music that can sometimes swamp that subtlety isn't a help. The score also felt annoyingly 'modern' to my ears, in that it often sounded like nothing so much as the score to a Hollywood melodrama from the 1950s or 60s. That too felt distracting at times, as the image and music seemed forced together from different eras.

But those were minor complaints. Overall I was wonderfully surprised – now for the second time – at just how strong Asquith's silent films were.