Miles Mander

[DB7]

Miles Mander: the true pioneer of sound films

Although known for his silent movies, Miles Mander was a pioneer of the 'phonofilm', paving the way for directors such as Alfred Hitchcock

The BFI's restoration of the 1928 silent The First Born, with Stephen Horne's new score performed live, was one of the big events of the BFI London film festival. Full of surprises, including two racy "making eyes" scenes that had the Queen Elizabeth Hall audience all aflutter, it lives up to Michael Powell's description of the "fluent, expressive, visual story-telling" of late silent cinema that had been cut short by the introduction of synchronised sound. Directed by Miles Mander – a black-sheep Old Harrovian with a background in boxing promotion, aviation and sheep farming – it's a topical tale of a hypocritical, philandering politician who exploits his wife to mop up the women's vote. It was released just after the 1929 "Flapper Election", which brought women under 30 into the franchise for the first time, and in which Miles's brother Geoffrey became an MP.

Co-scripted by Alma Reville, an experienced screenwriter and Alfred Hitchcock's wife, and starring the future Hitchcock blonde Madeleine Carroll (Powell had hair-raising things to say about her relationship with Mander), it's no wonder the BFI has played up the film's connections to the big man. Whereas Hitchcock's Blackmail, which also premiered in 1929, entered the sound era with aplomb, Mander, it is said, faltered – all but abandoning the director's chair for life as a character actor. He eventually moved to Hollywood, where his credits included the Merle Oberon Wuthering Heights in 1939, Lubitsch's To Be or Not to Be from 1942, and the noir classic Farewell My Lovely two years later.

But that story is too neat: before making his silent debut, Mander had, in fact, been a sound-film pioneer. Hitchcock and Mander had first got to know each other in the early 1920s as members of what Michael Balcon, producer of The First Born and of Hitchcock's first films, called "the Pack"; a group who "assembled at the Legrain coffee shop in Brewer Street, Soho, on the days we were not working (which were all too frequent)". Mander, having come into the business as a producer, had started acting for the director Adrian Brunel, before going on to star in Hitchcock's debut feature The Pleasure Garden in 1926. Later that year Mander, too, moved into direction, but in almost uncharted territory.

Mander joined the staff of De Forest Phonofilms, based in a tiny, poorly equipped studio at Cranmer Court, Clapham, managed by West End showman Vivian Van Damm (later played by Bob Hoskins in Stephen Frears's Mrs Henderson Presents). Mostly comprising music hall sketches, songs and extracts from plays, short "phonofilms" had begun to be shown in the supporting programme at British cinemas in the autumn of 1926, almost a year before the American release of The Jazz Singer, the movie that changed the industry.

Hitchcock ally and Evening Standard critic Walter Mycroft, among those who feared that sound would reduce a new art form to canned theatre, wrote that "to talk of it as the 'hope of the British film industry' is to disclose a fundamental inability to understand the function of the film". But intellectual celebrities, including the Sitwell siblings and George Bernard Shaw, made the trip to Clapham, with the latter authorising Van Damm to make the first ever filmed adaptation of one of his plays – Saint Joan, released in 1927.

In April 1929, when Mander's Clapham films were still in circulation, now joined by the first rush of full-length talkies, the notorious gossip columnist Nerina Shute wrote that Mander "probably knows more of 'talkie' production than any man in this country". From contemporary descriptions, most phonofilms appear to be quite straightforward recordings of stage performances, but in the likes of As We Lie, based on his own one-act play, and Sentence of Death (1927), based on a John Collier painting, Mander said he "used exteriors, talking 'off', tacit periods and angular set-ups, but although I used no titles, I obstinately refused to put dialogue on every foot, as one of the financiers suggested. In one film I think I had as many as 51 shots in 1,300ft." Mycroft, won over, called As We Lie "the highest development yet in this, the very newest medium of dramatic expression".

Unfortunately, none of Mander's phonofilms are known to have survived, and his plans to add a soundtrack to The First Born apparently came to nothing. But might his almost forgotten achievement help explain how his friend Hitchcock – who cast Lilian Hall-Davis in his 1927 film The Ring after seeing her in As We Lie, and Dorothy Boyd from Sentence of Death in Easy Virtue in the same year – made the transition to sound with such confidence?

[didi-5]

The First Born, recently shown restored at the Queen Elizabeth Hall, shows Mander to be an excellent and accomplished director whose career behind the camera was probably scuppered by the coming of sound. As an actor he has too many 'silent mannerisms' and theatrical touches but there are lovely performances from Madeleine Carroll (understated) and John Loder (appropriately viperish).

Although the plot is a bit proposterous and soapy for modern tastes, it is a well-done entertaining film with fitting retribution for those who deserve it. Perhaps Mander is a great forgotten directorial talent after all.

[CaptainWaggett]

The First Born is notable as another forgotten film that F Gwynplaine MacIntyre claimed to have seen though his review suggests otherwise. It's a great film and I hope the BFI don't keep it under wraps (though, apart from the tinting, we could see any difference from the print they screened a couple of years ago )

[didi-5]

The First Born is notable as another forgotten film that F Gwynplaine MacIntyre claimed to have seen though his review suggests otherwise. It's a great film and I hope the BFI don't keep it under wraps (though, apart from the tinting, we could see any difference from the print they screened a couple of years ago )

I think there were quite a few additional (if short) bits which had been added back in as was explained in the introduction given before the screening. I think it was vastly improved from the last version screened which is why it was given the LFF Archive Gala treatment. I hope it becomes far more well-known and perhaps, just as Underground is getting a DVD release, this film will too.

[CaptainWaggett]

I think there were quite a few additional (if short) bits which had been added back in as was explained in the introduction given before the screening. I think it was vastly improved from the last version screened which is why it was given the LFF Archive Gala treatment. I hope it becomes far more well-known and perhaps, just as Underground is getting a DVD release, this film will too.

I think the short bits had already been added in (three of us, including a prof of silent films who'd seen it a couple of tmes before, ddn't spot any extra bits though if you did I'd be very interested) and the contrast was with the original unrestored print. There is a tendency to claim that every new print is a major restoration - this one certainly wasn't like the improvement to Underground. It was very good anyway I just wish the LFF would ever show any 30s or 40s British films in their archive section

[Stephen Horne]

As the composer of the score I can confirm that the version which premiered at the QEH had several small but important improvements. These vary from (near) flash frames being lengthened, to a hitherto vanishing maid now entering and exiting the room. Perhaps the most important however, are two additions: one brief shot and an intertitle. The former shows Hugo rushing out of the room after Nina attempts her initial seduction - in other words, not giving in to temptation on this occasion. Before, it was always assumed that this was the start of their affair. The latter explains that two years have passed, during which time Madeleine has naturally conceived and given birth to a second child. As the pianist for most previous screenings, I remember that the scene which followed (where Madeleine is seen cradling a baby while 'the first born' has suddenly become a toddler) frequently left people confused.

Nothing to quite compare to the work done to the final reel of Underground, it's true, but they definitely make the film a smoother viewing experience