The Kennington Bioscope is a regular cinema event featuring live accompaniment to silent films that takes place at the Cinema Museum.

Walking Back (1928) (16mm archive print)

`1928 – and how!’ This early intertitle sums up Walking Back as an archetypal `jazz age’ movie of impetuous youth, adapted by Monte M. Katterjohn from George Kibbe Turner’s story A Ride in the Country, which had been serialised in Liberty magazine the previous year. Produced by Bertram Millhauser for Cecil B. DeMille and directed by Rupert Julian (with DeMille as uncredited co-director), Walking Back stars Richard Walling, Sue Carol, Robert Edeson and Jane Keckley. The film mixes drama, comedy and automotive mayhem, notably a bumping-car duel between `Smoke’ (Walling) and his rival, plus a climactic chase through city streets with the viewer getting a harrowing driver’s-eye view of the action. Variety believed the film captured the era’s `jazz mad world’ and saw it as an attempt to promote rising star Sue Carol as a new `It Girl’ to rival Clara Bow.

The California Mail (1929) (16mm archive print)

World premiere of a rediscovered lost film. Directed by Albert S. Rogell and written by Marion Jackson and Leslie Mason, this little-seen western is set during the darkest hour of the American Civil War. The Union, desperately in need of gold, sends an agent to clean out the bandit gangs that have been stopping the vital California gold shipments. The agent is played by Ken Maynard, formerly a trick rider with Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show and, later, with the Ringling Brothers’ circus. A champion rodeo rider famous for performing his own stunts, Maynard (not forgetting his horse, Tarzan) made his film debut in The Man Who Won (1923). He went on to become one of the superstars of westerns and, after the coming of sound, Hollywood’s first singing cowboy. Also in the cast of The California Mail are Dorothy Dwan, Lafe McKee, Paul Hurst, C.E. Anderson and Fred Burns.

Both 16mm prints are from the Christopher Bird Collection.

Live piano accompaniment. Ashley Valentine will be playing for Walking Back and Cyrus Gabrysch will be playing for The California Mail.

Silent film with intertitles which may be suitable for the deaf and hard of hearing.

Tickets & Pricing

£8. Seats are limited, so please arrive early or request an invitation using the email kenbioscope@gmail.com.