East Is East

I saw this film as part of a Henry Edwards retrospective, but it was Florence Turner who was the sensation here. Edwards played most of the film on one level, as a cheery East End 'wide boy' with somewhat unconvincing verve, but Turner really brought her character to life. She is beautiful even as the shabby waif of the beginning of the film and grows into an elegant and poised maturity, and her facial expressions range from hilarious in their crudity to subtle shades of disbelief. You really can see everything the character is thinking.

In this day and age it's hard to disassociate 'Vicky' in her Cockney clothes from the filmed versions of Liza Doolittle, but since the film is set in contemporary (and now long since vanished) London, this only goes to show that the costuming, at least, of 'Pygmalion' and 'My Fair Lady' must have been accurate! To a modern eye the waist less fashions of 1916 high society are not very becoming, but this only helps to point up the moral that 'East' is good and 'West', for all its riches, will prove to have shortcomings of its own.

There is, of course, a certain 'Pygmalion' element to the plot. But Victoria is no fake but an acknowledged 'hop-field heiress', and her preceptor is no eccentric professor but a lady who is kind to her and with whom she forms a genuine bond of affection.

There is a good deal of comedy in the film, largely derived from the collision of the two worlds -- Bert's reaction to being offered a second cup of tea in the ladies' boudoir is priceless, as is Vicky's generous donation of a spare potato off her own plate to her neighbour at table. Her admonitions to Bert on the subject of chicken-stealing also roused general laughter in the audience! There is an in-joke when Bert takes Vicky to see the latest film... starring Henry Edwards.

This is not a masterpiece, and was somewhat handicapped in my view by Edwards' mugging -- as an experienced stage actor, he should have known better. The inter titles are, unsurprisingly, of the old-fashioned 'predictive' kind, explaining what will take place in the next scene rather than simply giving the dialogue, e.g. "The richest heiress in London borrows a 'tanner'" followed by a silent scene of Vicky doing just that on a street-corner. However, it was considerably more enjoyable as a drama in its own right than the only other film of this era I've seen, and Florence Turner is unmissable as the heroine -- it's not surprising that the title cards all give credit to "Florence Turner in East is East" at the bottom of every screen. It's also fascinating as a social document in its own right, from Bert's fishy emporium (with its own tie-in line of branded condiments!) to the glimpse of a 'London, South Eastern and Chatham' railway station of the pre-Grouping era, and the lost landscape of the hop-pickers.

This is more than a curiosity; it's worth seeing in its own right.

World War One created one of the first opportunities of England's separate societal classes to converge on a daily basis because of the war effort. Soldiers, manufacturing jobs and daily living were forcing the English from varying strata to rub shoulders with one another in ways they had never done before.

The universal theme of different classes interacting in either a romantic setting or because of necessity has a long, rich history in movies. George Bernard Shaw in his 1913 play "Pygmalion" (1964's "My Fair Lady" is adapted from Shaw's play) examines that wide breach between the classes in London. The 2019 Academy Awards Best Picture "Parasite," 1997's "Titanic", and even 1987's "Dirty Dancing," among many other films look at how people from distinctive economic backgrounds clash, manage to cope with one another or sometimes adapt each other's positivity despite their disparity.

The first movie in cinema to address this societal difference was September 1916's "East Is East." A young woman living on the East side of London stands to inherit a fortune from a distant relative, with the stipulation she adapt to the cultural traits of the sophisticats of London's West side. Actress Florence Turner is the Eliza Doolittle (to borrow Shaw's female lead), named Victoria Vickers in "East Is East," and her attempts to learn the ways of cosmopolitan West London. She has a boyfriend back in the East (London) who has borrowed from her inheritance, but has paid her back when his fish and chips business skyrockets in that section of the city. Victoria is somewhat frustrated with the lifestyle of the West side, until a marriage proposal comes her way.

Despite the interaction of the varying classes during WW1, England reverted back to its class separations soon after that war's conclusion. This distinction is still in evidence today with the two sides of London almost polar opposites--just as it existed in 1916.

Florence Turner was the unnamed actress the public nicknamed "The Vitagraph Girl" in 1907 when she appeared regularly for one of the biggest film studios at the time, Vitagraph Studios. Her name was finally revealed when Florence Lawrence and Mary Pickford's star status was publicized by their respective studios to hype their movies. But Turner's special spotlight was no longer shining by then. She journeyed to England and made a number of movies there, earning enough money to start her own production company, Turner Film Company. It was at this time she teamed up with director Henry Edwards, her co-star in "East Is East," to make this highly successful and influential movie.

By 1924, Turner was virtually forgotten when she moved back to Hollywood, securing just supporting roles and uncredited extra positions.

An impoverished East End girl struggles to come to terms with high society after she's left a fortune by a distant relative. With its fish out of water storyline this ancient British movie shares many similarities with Pygmalion, and benefits from a nicely measured performance from Florence Turner, one of the big stars of early British cinema. It's thin on plot, though, and the brief running time feels a lot longer than it actually is.