00:00Welcome back to the 44th edition of Le Giornate del Cinema Muto, Pordenone Style and Film Festival.
00:23Today is market day in Pordenone, as you can see. Here we have a fantastic kiosk of cheeses, friuli cheeses, one of which is Bastardo del Grappa.
00:34Bastardo del Grappa, I don't think needs an explanation. It's definitely a cheese you need to try and it's a perfect segue for me to talk about today's film, The Blood Ship, 1927, George B. Sites directing.
00:47Now The Blood Ship is based on a 1922 novel by Norman Springer. It's a bloodthirsty, violent novel about a sadistic sea captain, the sailors that he shanghaies into service.
01:01And the moment that the great star Hobart Bosworth read the novel, he knew it was for him.
01:07Now Bosworth had become already famous for playing in sea pictures, particularly sadistic ones.
01:13He's in several Jack London adaptations, including Martin Eden, but perhaps most famously at this point for Behind the Door, the 1919 film.
01:22His reputation was such, or rather his screen persona was such, that in 1921 Margaret Driscoll, writing in Picture Play magazine,
01:30said that a Bosworth picture is no place for anyone looking for a mild and peaceful existence.
01:37Obviously Bosworth, actually not obviously, Bosworth didn't want to take the role of the sadistic sea captain, but the man who takes revenge upon the sadistic sea captain.
01:49The novel was adapted to give it a more romantic element.
01:54Jacqueline Logan plays the young woman, Richard Arlen plays the young boy, both of them delightful.
02:00But I particularly want to draw your attention to another actor, and his name is credited as Blue Washington.
02:08Edgar Blue Washington, one of the few African-American actors at the time who was able to get good roles.
02:15Washington has a fascinating backstory, which I do need to tell, and I urge all of you to look up Mark V. Perkins' entry
02:23in the Society for American Baseball Research Online, because he goes into great depth about Washington's career.
02:31He was a childhood playmate of Frank Capra's, apparently.
02:35He seems to have been, or it's said that he was an extra in Birth of a Nation, among many other films,
02:41but he started his professional career as a boxer.
02:44He played professional baseball with what were called then the Negro Leagues,
02:48and he's moving around and making films here and there, but then the bloodshed comes along.
02:56And this is an extraordinary role for him.
02:59Now, I say this because not only is he given a character to play, he's humorous, he's also angry as well.
03:07Everybody noticed.
03:08So when I say everybody noticed, I mean not just the African-American newspapers and magazines who are writing and even saying
03:15this is an extraordinary development, and thank you to Columbia Studios, and I'll talk about Columbia in a moment,
03:22thank you to Columbia Studios for giving us a character who, in a sense, is more of a role model than we've seen.
03:29Not that the character is really a role model, but he's given substance.
03:35Even Variety, even the non-African-American papers pointed this out and noted the importance of this performance.
03:46Washington was a bad boy.
03:48In Perkins' essay, he quotes, rather, from Woody Strode, the great actor Woody Strode's autobiography,
03:55where Strode talks about the fact that after the bloodshed, basically, Washington even had his name on the dressing room door,
04:02but he liked to party.
04:04He liked to drink a lot.
04:06He wasn't on time coming into the studios.
04:08And so it can be said to a degree that he sabotaged his career.
04:11However, let's also remember the time that we're living in, particularly once the sound era comes in.
04:18He's given far more stereotyped roles than he was given in the silent era.
04:22By the way, he's also in Beggars of Life, the wonderful William Wellman film, also with Richard Arlen.
04:28But when sound comes in, Hollywood, I don't know if one can say that they became more racist,
04:34but it was far more difficult for African-American performers to find good roles.
04:40So much so that the same newspapers, the African-American ones, that were praising him in The Blood Ship,
04:47waged a campaign against his performance in a B-Western with John Wayne,
04:53which was just played in the worst kind of stereotypes.
04:57Now, of course, here in Blood Ship, the character, rather, doesn't even have a name.
05:02He's called The Negro, which obviously isn't great.
05:04It robs him in one way of a personality.
05:07But let's also remember that other characters, the Cockney, the Knitting Swede,
05:12they also don't have names.
05:14And more than that, while the intertitles for his dialogue
05:19are the expected kind of pseudo-black patois that we know of from this period,
05:26The same can be said of the intertitles for The Knitting Swede and The Cockney,
05:32which one can say racism in this case is much more widespread, shall we say.
05:38But Washington is very much a character to look out for.
05:44He also, by the way, his son, Kenny Washington, became a very important UCLA football star
05:50and also played professional football.
05:52Fascinating character.
05:53Do read Perkins' book.
05:55When Columbia Pictures started Harry Cohn, of course,
05:58they were a low-budget studio.
06:01They really weren't making, they weren't putting money, much money into things.
06:04But then with The Blood Ship, Harry Cohn wanted to go big.
06:09Hobart Bosworth had bought the vehicle, as I said, in 1922, I mentioned that,
06:14and he tried to get it produced.
06:15He tried to get it produced.
06:16He had his own production company.
06:17That didn't last long.
06:18Clearly, he was looking around for who was going to take it.
06:21Harry Cohn agreed.
06:22He put more money in it than he had to any other vehicle that they had done.
06:27He rented a ship from Cecil B. DeMille, a wonderful masted ship.
06:31The film really paid off.
06:33Not only in terms of box office success, but in terms of the reputation of the studio.
06:39So suddenly, Columbia was beginning to play, shall we say, with the big boys,
06:44which was a great advancement for that time.
06:46We're deeply grateful to Sony Pictures Classics, who has been doing such an extraordinary job
06:52in restoring many of the Columbia Pictures.
06:54Our thanks particularly to Rita Belda, who allowed us to be streaming the film today
07:01and also screening it at the festival.
07:04On top of all of that, we have the wonderful Donald Sozin performing on piano.
07:10So this, I think, is very much a screening that you will, I know, will enjoy and appreciate.
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