Borderline

It is very difficult to write a review of this experimental silent film. The people involved in making it (in Switzerland) are very interesting people for numerous reasons. Of some of them, no other moving film images exist. And then there is the strange presence of Paul Robeson in a film without sound, so that he has no chance to sing with that magnificent voice, as his rendition of 'Ole Man River' in SHOW BOAT (1936, see my review) has made so famous to those who might not otherwise have heard of him. During his lifetime he was very famous, but memories fade and people are soon forgotten, even people as tall, forceful and charismatic as he was. Here he appears in numerous shots shooting up at his face shown against clouds in the sky, as if he were a god. The director must have had a crush on him. Robeson's wife Eslanda Robeson also appears in the film opposite him, which was her only credited appearance in a film (she appeared in two later ones uncredited). Apart from the Robesons, none of the actors in this film ever appeared in another film. Despite their complete lack of training or experience, they all do a really good job. Moral: is drama school really necessary? Before describing the largely incomprehensible film itself, we need to consider the personalities involved, apart from the Robesons whom I have already mentioned. The key figures were the lesbian couple consisting of Hilda Doolittle, who wrote under the pseudonym H. D., and Winifred Ellerman, who wrote under the pseudonym of Bryher (the name of her favourite Scilly Isle). Although Bryher's work is largely forgotten today, the poetry of the famous imagist poetess H. D. is very much still in print and continues to be highly regarded, not least by myself, I must say. I have some of her early publications including one or two signed by her. She and Ezra Pound had a fling when they were young together in Philadelphia. She later moved to London to join Ezra and Dorothy Pound. Dorothy told me that in those days her two closest friends were Hilda Doolittle and Gaudier-Brzeska, and she truly adored them both. (Gaudier was at that time having his affair with Nina Hamnett.) Hilda lived in the same building with the Pounds for a while in Kensington, but she did not follow them to Paris and Rapallo later. Bryher married Robert McAlmon in order to hide from her parents the fact that she was gay. McAlmon was gay himself, so the marriage was for show. For an account of all this one should read McAlmon's wonderful memoir BEING GENIUSES TOGETHER. (It is very much better to read the original than the heavily edited and hacked-about version by Kay Boyle.) In 1927, Bryher tired of McAlmon and divorced him, marrying instead Kenneth MacPherson, who directed this film and also had been having an affair with H.D., who unlike Bryher was vaguely bisexual. They all lived together. All three of them were film-mad and they founded an arty film magazine called CLOSE UP in 1927, which lasted for a few years. I do not have a complete set of it, alas, but I do have a bound volume of numerous issues. They also founded an entity of some kind called Pool to make some experimental films, of which this is apparently the only survival. They had meanwhile introduced Sergei Eisenstein's films to the Western world. This film has countless examples of jump shots and rapid editing in imitation of Eisenstein's style, without the ability to make it work effectively, however. But at least MacPherson was trying. They had all seen and been influenced by the earlier silent experimental films of Man Ray, and this film is much better than anything he ever achieved on cinema. They were also heavily influenced by the German expressionists, as the angles and shots and atmosphere show clearly. To go into all their theories about the cinema would be out of place here, as taking too long. This film therefore has historical significance both for the history of experimental filmmaking and for those interested in the people appearing in it, and many of those will perhaps have little or no knowledge of or concern for the cinema per se. Lovers of poetry will get a shock when they see Hilda Doolittle, because her photos tend to be idealised and serene, but when you see her in this you can see how scary and weird she really was. She wrote a lot about ancient Greece, which was her chief obsession, but if one were to class her as a character at that time, one would have to place her amongst the maenads. One wonders whether one would really have wanted to know them. Both they and the film itself, and much that they wrote as well, concern extremes of passion. I don't have much interest in extreme passions myself, being too cerebral perhaps. And anyway, extreme passions do take up a lot of time and require a great expenditure of energy which could more profitably be put to use in studying something far more interesting. But this film is nothing but extreme passion, shown disjointedly and with insufficient continuity to make out who is really doing what to whom or why. Hilda Doolittle ends up dead, which is pretty shocking. It all goes to show that quarrelling lovers should never play with knives. The protracted knife scene in this film is very harrowing. The film also strenuously promotes the cause of black people, and as an example of racial prejudice, has a little old lady saying that all 'negroes' should be removed from Switzerland immediately (another n word is used also which I do not repeat). In the story it seems that Hilda's husband has had an affair with Robeson's wife and it drives them all mad. Most of the film consists of them being overwrought.

I saw Borderline several years ago on AMC. I've been looking for it ever since. It was haunting: visual, textural, sensual. This movie took me somewhere like a dream and I didn't care where. I will never forget the curtain blowing in the breeze. I still remember the way it made me tilt my head. I remember my facial expression when I saw it. I didn't know what had happened when the movie was over, but I find life is that way. It didn't bother me. The unfairness of the ultimate rejection of an innocent character strikes me as sadly real. I loved the faces, the way the camera dwelt upon them. The camera gazed at the set with the unfocused eyes of a daydreamer. Borderline was real to me in a way movies aren't. It was exactly the lack of explanation, color, sharpness that made it enter my consciousness like a thief in the night. I love this movie. Someday I will own it.

In the fall of 1927, a British film magazine appeared titled "Close Up." Of its purposes, it was trying to elevate film to the status of "art", it was trying to promote the educational qualities of film, it was trying to kick the British film industry into high gear (indeed, all the articles lamenting the poor British film industry grow wearisome), etc., etc. Of these purposes, it was also championing the minorities, blacks in film being one of the main focuses of this purpose.

The brainchild behind this "Close Up" was a man named Kenneth MacPherson, whose name you'll also notice under the Writing and Directing credits of "Borderline", the film in question of this review.

I watched "Borderline" because I'm a fan of this old magazine. Back in these days, the writers had a much clearer sense of film and its potentials, and their writing has a pop and vigor, the type that would transform into the raging "wit" that today's writers pass off. With MacPherson, two others edited and contributed to "Close Up". The first of these is Winifred Ellerman, pen-name Bryher. The second is Hilda Doolittle, pen-name H.D., American poet, actor in "Borderline." Other personalities, of course, frequently appear in the publication, but it is these three whom I'm quite fond of, especially the two women. Quite naturally, I had to see these personalities materialize on film, their only film.

It's amazing how well this film corresponds to these personalities I've loved. The rhythm, the technique, the good-humor of "Borderline" is so apparently theirs. Of course, I say this from bias, but I still say it is uniquely the product of MacPherson, of his person and people. And the jazz score on the Criterion disc compliments this personality well, I feel. It compliments the film. It compliments the rhythm, the technique, and the good-humor. Oh, I should probably define these. Hmm... The rhythm is difficult to describe. The cutting is strange and... jazz-like (undoubtedly, the jazz score again biases me). The story is more rhythmic than coherent, and apparently this throws people off (as evidenced by the few uninformed narrative junkies who have submitted embarrassingly bad reviews to this humble IMDb page). The technique is often impressionistic. "Borderline" is beautifully photographed, if I may say so, and the Criterion quality is the standard of excellence. The thoughtful angles, the focus and lighting, the good-humor... all shines through on the DVD. Oh, the good-humor! Well, that's something you have to experience.

I'm thankful MacPherson made a film. He should have made more. Well, anyone who's interested has some writings they can turn to. In fact, more than "Borderline" I'd like to recommend "Close Up" to the intelligent film-scholar. You'd be surprised how finely clear these writers' thoughts are and you'll get a very good look at the industry of the time (and the people who drove it). Worthwhile.

P.S. Robeson is really good, too.

This experimental silent film, made in Switzerland by an independent British film company, is chiefly remembered as Paul Robeson's first film. It's very artistic, with shots often seeming meaningless to the story, which is difficult to understand anyway because of the lack of enough inter-titles. From what I gathered, Robeson's wife, Adah, is in an inter-racial love affair with a white man called Thorne. It doesn't bother the cigar-chomping owner of the bar/hotel where Thorne lives (and she seems to be having a lesbian relationship with a barmaid), but an old lady expresses the town's point of view in an inter-title: "If I had my way, we wouldn't allow negroes in here." Thorne is also called "nigger lover" by someone in the bar. Adah tries a reconciliation with Pete (Robeson), but eventually leaves him. Thorne's wife, Astrid, goes off the deep end, brandishes a knife, cuts Thorne's arm and cheek, and somehow dies. Thorne must have been accused of murder because we learn he was acquitted. As for Pete, he gets a letter from the mayor telling him it is best for everyone that he leave town. So the film is more about racism than anything, but in an up note, the owner tells Pete "The sad thing is, they think they're right. That's the way we are." The meaning of the title is a mystery. It may refer to Adah being light-skinned (a borderline negro) or to the borderline behavior of of the main characters.

Yes, and odd and confusing and a dozen other adjectives that make you think just what kind of movie this is!

This is not a movie for most people. It's more like an experience, an ahead-of-its-time extended music video. Most of the action is stifled, static and repressed. The images seem like set-pieces, paintings in time, feelings encased in poses. All which remind me of famous Greek director, Theo Angelopoulos and his static images - which were not static at all - since they housed emotions and a participation of audience in conjecturing what they were seeing by a process of mental elimination of causes and possible actions.

BORDERLINE - instead of being images of things, gazes at people and we are challenged to discover just what it is they are thinking. Mostly because the number of intertitles is scant and far between.

All this is to say -- this is not an easy film to watch. I enjoyed immersing myself in the images, however. The story is rather odd in itself - perhaps it was risqué for its time. In fact, I am sure that a biracial relationship was off-center for those times. As were its sexual undertones.

Indeed, I think the film's title is about the BORDERLINE type of lifestyle that these people wanted to live. And in turn, the consequences, emotional and social, which affected their decisions surrounding this.

This sort of "experimental" film has been done and redone thousands of times by professionals and film students during the 20th century. Perhaps never as compelling as in this film - which is a landmark of sorts for film buffs.

Yet, I repeat, not for everyone.

The film is really about the myriad psychological states that we go through during a relationship -- and racial prejudice is the juice that runs this study. But there are sometimes subtle and sometimes obvious moments of homosexual metaphor scattered throughout.

Don't watch this movie if you are in a hurry. The film won't go faster just because you want it to.

Intriguing but not altogether successful - but highly recommended for film buffs and Gothic types. Both in which I've dabbled through the years.