"Be Natural" with Marya E. Gates | The Movie Racket

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2:19A star is born tonight, and with it comes a new love. I'm going Hollywood Hey folks, welcome to this special Au Naturel edition of The Movie Racket. I'm Michael Phillips, and in each new episode, I get together with an extraordinarily special guest to examine an unofficial law of motion pictures from the annals of cinema. This week's Axiom is the shortest of the ten we've taken on since this inaugural season of The Movie Racket premiered earlier this year. Two words this week, two only, only two words, championed by a pioneer of early cinema, Alice Guy Blachet, who worked with Gamon in Europe and then started her own studio, Solax, in 1910 in Flushing, New York, which then moved and expanded in Fort Lee, New Jersey, which for a time was the movie-making epicenter of the silent era.

3:21She pasted her two-word reminder on the walls of her studio, and those words were, Be natural. That's it. That was Guy Blachet's guiding principle. Whether she was making short slapstick comedies, crazy little beautiful little fantasies about infants born in cabbage patches, dramas about the refugee experience in America, she believed there really was no reason for her performers to deliver, to pretend like they were on stage in a big theater, acting theatrically, straining to be heard or seen in the second balcony. Just take it easy. That was the reminder. Be natural. Now, that's never as easy as it sounds, but the two words still point like an arrow in the direction actors should go, even if they're playing emotional extremists or literal robots or complete liars or barely human killers.

4:18The performances should feel like they're an authentic creation, an inevitable seeming, and yes, natural sort of character. Our guest this week is critic and author Mariah E. Gates, whose book Cinema Her Way persuasively argues that Guy Blaché, the subject of a really good 2018 documentary titled Be Natural, was the key creative spark behind the invention of narrative cinema. As a filmmaker, she's pretty unparalleled. She was the first of so many techniques, so many ideas on film. Just making a movie with black actors in 1912 in the United States. Here's what I think is really fascinating. She had two kids, she was married, she ran a studio, she produced, she directed.

5:07When did she have time to do this? How do you hold all that down? This is the eternal question for women. I think people will think you're making it up. There's just too much good stuff there. Guy Blaché is a fascinating subject, painful history in some ways, since she was marginalized, uncredited for many of her achievements, and then essentially erased from silent film history before her long overdue rediscovery. So, let's do it. Let's be natural about it. Here's Mariah. Let's go.

5:46Mariah Gates, you're in New York covering the New York Film Festival, yes? Yes, that's where I am. Yes, okay. And you came just straight from the Toronto International Film Festival. Pretty much, yeah. That's a lot. Do you want to lie down for a while in between or before we tape this? Yeah, I had like a four-day break, but I had all my non-festival assignments that I had to do. and also for those of you in Chicago I program at Facets and I had my day where I had to introduce all my films so I was at Facets for a whole day so I'm a bit tired and I took a last minute assignment like six hours before my plane was leaving so the life of a freelancer well thanks so much for jumping on for this edition of the movie Ragged and this piece of film history that has two of my favorite simplest words of advice any filmmaker could give any performer in front of a camera.

6:43And it comes from Alice Guy Blachet, a name I did not know before 10 years ago or so. Oh, wow. Yeah. And you knew her, this pioneer of silent film and of cinema, period. I mean, no need to qualify any of it. You knew her before I did, I think, yes? Yeah, I think I learned about her in college. So there was a documentary eight years ago called Be Natural, which is, of course, the key to this episode here, that made for what I thought was a really, really sharp introduction to this piece of history. And we talked about this when I talked to you for your book, Cinema Her Way, which came out two years ago from Rizzoli.

7:27And a great, great book of interviews with all these different women filmmakers. And that history, we kind of talked through a little bit about who Alice Guy Blaché was and why she was the pioneer she was and why we don't know her. Yeah, why she was forgotten. Yeah, I'd love to kind of hear some about that for folks like me eight years ago who didn't really know who she was. Yeah, she grew up in Paris and Switzerland and actually Chile. Her dad was a book publisher. So she was in Chile for a little bit. But basically, she's French. And she started working, I think it's at Galmont as a job. And she fell in love with what she saw they were doing there and said, hey, I could do that.

8:09Would you let me? And they were like, I mean, okay. And then she basically invented narrative cinema because they were really filming sort of documentary style stuff still and like joke things. And she created this thing called the Cabbage Fairy, which is the first narrative sort of fantasy about fairy that births children out of cabbages. And the original, actually, Cabbage Fairy is Lost, but she remade that film a couple of times, and you can watch one of the remade versions on YouTube. And it's beautiful and simple and a little funny, and a lot of her films are like that. She has a really wry sense of humor and mixes feminism and life into all of her films, practically.

8:50And these are short, very short films. Yeah. And these are, I think, the first of these in the 1890s, and then the one that exists— In 1896 was that first Cabbage Fairy, yeah. And the one that's on YouTube that is probably the easiest to find for folks who are new to her is, I think, 1900? Yeah. Or is that still in the 18... Yeah. Okay. 1900, yeah. So it's really almost 130 years ago, she's making this stuff. And she made thousands, literally thousands of films. She made one of the earliest films with an all-black cast when she came to America and had her studio in America. She really was a trailblazer in so many different facets of cinema.

9:31So she came to the States, is this correct, after she got married and her husband was transferred over, Englishman. Yeah, her husband was, his job was to set up Galmont in New York. And then eventually she just created her own studio instead. Wild, I mean. As you do, as you do. As one does. In New Jersey, a lot of, if you're unfamiliar, a lot of the early studios before Hollywood became the home base for Lee, New Jersey was really the home base for quite a lot. Edison was there. Solax was Alex Gies' studio. Solax, yes. A few others. Yeah. Yeah. And it was called that because her studio was this big glass building, so the natural light came in.

10:12But if it rained, you could still film. It was really genius. Ah, amazing. Okay. The two words we're addressing today, among other things, the story there is that she, and this is covered in the documentary titled Be Natural. She had apparently many pieces of paper, signs, whatever it was, and many different walls in her studio in Fort Lee, New Jersey, the Soul X studios. Simple reminder to the actors, be natural. Yeah. Why was this surprisingly new information for an actor back then? I think a lot of early actors in film came from the stage. They came from pantomime. They came from vaudeville.

10:55They came from these really unnatural stage movements, you know. And the way that Alice made films were using the natural light, using stories of real emotions and things, like subtle films like Falling Leaves, this really simple, beautiful story. she wanted to capture something a little more akin to real life. And so instead of the over-the-top things that you need for stage to come across to the back end of the theater, she wanted you to just be natural, how you would be as a person. What I love about it, seeing excerpts from her work in this documentary, which I just saw again, Be Natural. And it's a wonderful doc because a lot of it is just sort of the thrill of the hunt of a researcher in an archive is trying to find more and more information and more and more distant, not so distant, relatives of hers who are all over the country.

11:46And some of whom did not even know they were related to a film pioneer from the early, early silent movie days. But this predates, I mean, filmmakers like D.W. Griffith was not yet filming. The Great Train Robbery was not yet made by Edwin Porter. It's all kind of amazing and as you mentioned she made a lot of what you just call slapstick shorts right slapstick one one of my faves is the dog chasing sausage and like creating chaos because he's just trying to get this sausage that's funny it's funny you know i mean even even the dog was natural it was amazing yeah but to have that sort of natural impulse behind the performances instead of pushing for the laugh that would not come from most directors well it did not come from almost any other director of the time.

12:35And that's what really struck me about seeing some of these films again. But I guess now I'd like to talk about why did that particular piece of direction, which was born partly, I think, out of a bit of struggle with working with actors in the English language, just keep things very simple. But those are two words that would not necessarily have come from, as I say, other directors. You know, why were those the two that really helped make her kind of a key figure if you think she is one. Well, I definitely think she's a key figure. I think because she saw film, I think she saw it as a new art as opposed to a lot of, a lot of the early filmmakers saw it as like, let's film a play, you know, and she saw it as its own new refreshing art.

13:22And so why would you have your performers perform the way they would on stage for a new art you know and i think that's why a lot of her earlier films feel less stagey even some of the filmmakers that i really love like meliez who was really innovative in his own way with his trick stuff he was using magician tricks to innovate visual effects right but his films do for the most part still feel like stage and you know that worlds feel more artificial than her films so i think part of what makes her film stand out is this idea that she knew this was a wholly new art and you needed a wholly new form of performance or non-performance even.

14:01Yeah. Okay. So I probably, like a lot of other people watching silent films, I have to kind of just trust my shaky memory about the very, very first stuff I would have seen either in compilation films made in the sixties about the silent era. Yeah. There's a lot of those. A lot of that. And And we're looking at excerpts in that case of great artists, Buster Keaton, Chaplin, many others, but often with the world's worst rinky-dink accompaniment. Horrible, horrible scores, yeah. And also the wrong crank speed, right? It's like it's that sort of manic, speeded-up quality that a lot of people just came to associate with, oh, well, that was the way they did things back then.

14:45That's how it looked. I don't like it or whatever. or just that's what silent film is. Not true, right? And to see her work, it's just a very different quality. And I wonder if we couldn't get to our picks now about a couple of performances outside Guy Blashe that illustrate this idea that those two words of hers, her unofficial Fort Lee, New Jersey law of filmmaking, be natural to the actors, why they were crucial. And what kind of performances come to mind for you in the silent era that for you, that's exemplified that idea of people we remember, people we love, but it's more of the Guy Blaché kind of quality behind it.

15:29Yeah, you know, honestly, I was going to say, I think Greta Garbo kind of falls on that. Really? Because she, yeah, she's such an internal actress. So much of it is coming from her eyes and the stillness. She's like one of the great still actresses. And, you know, if you look at a lot of dramatic, like you look at Mae Murray or somebody, and even Gloria Swanson, and I love her, they do these huge, grand arm gestures and just pouty lips and insane stuff. And I love it. It's like high camp. When you watch Garbo came on, and it was her face and her stillness and the way she watched things that was so beguiling.

16:12And that's why, you know, when she did finally move to talkies, it was Garbo talks, right? because of all the silent film actresses, she was like the most silent, at least from that late era, you know? And I don't know if she studied Alex G. I doubt she did, but she had a naturalness. She's just an innate talent. Give me a whiskey. Ginger it on the side. And don't be stingy, baby. Well, shall I serve it in a pail? I'll have to sweet out to the ground. And I think you see it in a lot of those later ones, like the ones I love with John Gilbert where it's just they just look at each other you know what I mean you don't need dialogue you don't need movements for those who haven't seen Garbo with John Gilbert let's talk about like a film or two that really for you would be a good example of that I love Flesh and the Devil I think that's a great film a lot of that is she's frankly just so hot that she drives two men to like murder each other you know which who among us and you look at Greta Garbo I'd be like sure but quite a lot of that is like there's a scene that's used in it used to be in the tcm silent sunday night promo i don't know if it still is or not but she's literally just like in a tree and he comes and finds her in the tree and they look at each other and then she lights a cigarette and she uses her hand to like light it for him or whatever and it lights up her face and then he's just looking at her and then the light goes out and it goes dark and that's it That's the whole scene.

17:44And it's, I'm just getting for Clint thinking about it. It's such a beautiful scene. And I mean, it was a filmmaker. It was Clarence Brown, I think. And he trusted his actors the same way that Alice really trusted her actors. He really trusted his actors to have an instinct for what would work. Before I get to a couple other examples of this from the Silator, people talk about being natural or not seeming to act. And I've used phrases like that, I think. And you look for something more specific to kind of get closer to what does that really mean? What's the quality? It gets elusive. And it's kind of hard to pin down.

18:23But like with Garbo, for example, what is it really just a matter of that or is there something else sort of beneath those that sort of general description with her? I don't know. I definitely just feel when I watch a Garbo film, even though I feel her persona, I always feel like you are just watching the person. like I firmly believe she is all her characters even when she plays Anna Karenna like you would imagine that to be just like an over-the-top thing right because Anna Karenna is such a larger-than-life fictional character and somehow she feels Garbo makes her feel just like a mom who's out of her element you know and she's no longer Anna Karenna she's just this mom that fell love with someone who's not the father of her child.

19:12You will resign all claim to Sergei because it would be my duty to remove him from your influence. You say this, knowing this I cannot do. There is no life for me without my child. To leave him would be infamous and base I couldn't. And you know I couldn't. She taps into the internal emotions, I think, of her characters in a way that Again, she doesn't have to exude an over-the-top sort of performance style for you to feel those emotions coming out of her. And I think that's what natural acting is, where even though Garbo, she's so pretty, she can't just be a woman, right? But I think she is at the same time.

19:57She's one of the few sort of who is both a love goddess and just an ordinary person in her movies. So here's my comparable pick for the silent era. Janet Gaynor, who was born in Philadelphia, did theater and, you know, sort of training for, you know, did school plays and things like that as a kid, moved around a fair bit, you know, Chicago for a while, San Francisco for a while. and then she became an extra I think in 19 like 24 right in LA and within a little more than two years she was about the biggest female star in silent movies which is kind of amazing how the industry could sort of really send people fast into like a kind of stardom that's amazing I think of all the Oscar winners over the years that truly deserve the Oscar they won I can't think of a more deserving winner than the very first recipient of the Best Actress Award from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, which was 1929, right?

21:01And they were covering films made in 27 and 28. And she won, Janet Gaynor won for three films, Sunrise, Murnau's Sunrise, and Frank Borsegi's Seventh Heaven and Street Angel. I have no idea how different this is from The Blossom Room. That night, I competed for the first Oscar with Louise Dresser and Gloria Swanson. I mean, I knew Gaynor from the first version of A Star Is Born, the 37th sound picture, obviously. But to see her work with the best directors anybody could work with at that moment in Hollywood. Yeah. There's something about Janet Gaynor that is just not, there isn't a speck of performance nerves in any of her work.

21:45and yet there's this very kind of quietly she's taking care of an enormous emotional range she plays you know this potential doormat of a housewife who may or may not get murdered by her husband in the storyline of sunrise and then very different characters in the in the melodramas she played in the borzeji films to me that was when i kind of latched on this phrase being natural from what was then a generation earlier at the very dawn of cinema from Alice Guy Blaché that Gaynor's the one. I just don't, you don't associate her with anything like gestural, anything. I mean, she had all that in her.

22:25She was a trained acrobat. She did a lot of theater, more than many stars did when they were younger. But Gaynor is a killer dealer, man. And nobody, and people don't really, I think because it's not flashy, I don't know if she's recognized enough. no and she made a lot of films in that era that people don't go back to that early the late silent era early talkies unless it's like a really racy pre-code i think probably a star is born in sunrise are the two of her films that have been seen the most right right yeah and it doesn't help that she made so many of those silence with fox and they're sort of stingy about releasing their films from their vaults they did that big box set like 15 years ago and they were like we're done.

23:06Right, which is an amazing thing. That was the best freebie I ever got at the Chicago Tribune. Oh, you got that? Oh, yeah, that box set. We had a copy at TCM, and I almost stole it, but I am a good person, and I didn't, and I thought about it. If anybody wants to make an excellent purchase about, like, this crucial, beautiful, poetic, silent era movie making that at its peak. It's a Murnau, Borzeji, Fox box set of many, many different films and different versions of the same film. And it's just a gorgeous thing, beautiful booklet. But anyway, that's my advertisement for something that isn't even on the shelves anymore.

23:45I keep hoping they'll upgrade that to, someone will upgrade that to Blu-ray.

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27:42Charlie Chaplin, Buster Keaton. Yeah. I mean, my knee-jerk response is, okay, who's more in the Guy Blasier line? Be natural. I mean, Keaton, for me, definitely, because it's an entirely different impulse. It's an incredibly modern and American sort of stoic comic style that Keaton was developing, this sort of like steady, stoic, but not unexpressive face going on in every one of the films that Keaton made. Chaplin, Victorian era, English, but also at his best, I think, you couldn't really get a more effective comic or melodramatic actor. But it's amazing to me, right there, you have the breadth of the type of acting you can get in the silent era that sort of belies this whole like well that's just silent comedy and like you know what i mean i but yeah it's keaton for me though if i had a pick how about you it's you know what it's hard for me to shoot i love certain aspects of chaplain i love aspects of keaton i love aspects of arbuckle and i also love max linder who started out much earlier he started acting in films in 1905 had a really kind of a horrible if you want to look up something really sad look up what happened post-World War I with him and the shell shock, how it manifested in his personal life.