Borderline

This little-seen experimental film definitely won't be to everyone's taste, but I was impressed by how modern it looked (apart from the lack of sound, it wouldn't have looked out of place in the late-1950s, early 1960s) and the bohemian atmosphere it created. The film makes very little use of intertitles, and so the story can be a little tricky to follow at times, but it isn't all that complicated and an attentive viewer should be easily able to fill in any gaps along the way.

Paul Robeson stars as the husband of a half-caste woman who has had an affair with a white man in a small village in Switzerland. She has ended the affair, but too late to save the marriage, and her lover – who is also married – is having trouble coming to terms with the split. The racial tolerance subject matter and message is fairly rare for the time, and is handled with a surprising amount of maturity. For the peripheral figures caught up in the fallout from the affair, life eventually continues unchanging, and the entire film is pervaded with an air of melancholia.

Although the story does drag a little at times, and the director's choice of shot is sometimes open to question, the look and feel of the film, and the way it brims with innovative ideas (for its time) make this worth watching.

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.

"With high expectations I went along to the Academy Theatre on Monday to see "Borderline", a silent film produced by Kenneth MacPherson, editor of Close-Up, and starring Paul Robeson with his charming wife Eslanda. At the end I was dumbfounded. Mr MacPherson has apparently attempted to make a film story out of the amazingly suitable screen material provided by what is called "the negro question." No one could deny the possibilities of such a story. But Mr Macpherson buries his intentions in a conglomerate of weird shots and queer situations, worked out around a dissolute set of unsympathetic characters. He thinks too much of close-up and not enough of border-line. The result is a wholly unintelligible scramble of celluloidian eccentricity. The film is not, at the moment, being offered by any renter for public exhibition, though it is certified "A" by the B. B. F. C. I doubt if it will be. It is not for one moment entertaining, and only stimulates one's natural desire to see and hear Paul Robeson in a first-rate "British" talkie, made for the public. In a synopsis we are reminded among other biographical facts, that Kenneth Macpherson "is himself, you might say, border-line among the young cinema directors." Until he can do better than this for the box-office he is unlikely to be allowed over the border-line." (BIOSCOPE, 15 October, 1930)

Film historians say Kenneth Macpherson's movie was fifty years ahead of its time in terms of subject matter. The Scottish filmmaker's only feature film could have never been produced in Hollywood at the time, let alone seen nationwide distribution to theaters, especially in the South. His silent film, October 1930 "Borderline," was a mix of experimental and avant garde elements, with a heavy dose of Sergei Eisenstein-type montage editing.

To film such a bold movie, cinema's first look at black/white love relationships, took financial resources most filmmakers don't have. Macpherson married into money in 1927 when he linked up with a shipping magnate's daughter, Annie Ellerman, an English writer known as Bryher. To say their marriage was not of the traditional kind is putting it mildly. It was more of an artistic alliance between the couple, with Annie favoring women while Kenneth loved both genders. Moving to Territet, Switzerland, soon after their wedding, the pair gathered other artists in the community to form the 'Pool Group.' Its members adopted the French and German experimental forms of art, frowning upon commercial formats for more expressive 'art forms,' centered on feelings rather than plot narratives.

After producing three short movies, Macpherson embarked on his first (and only) feature film. He remarkably was able to secure the acting services of African-American actor Paul Robeson, who was on the London stage at the time, and his wife, Eslanda. "Borderline" sees the pair renting a room upstairs from the owners of the house, a white couple. The two couples separately have affairs with the other, setting off a firestorm in the town after a murder takes place. The film is delivered by way of spare inter titles and relies on the actors' expressions rather than dialogue. Said film critic Richard Deming,"Macpherson's brilliance lies in his ability to photograph small movements as nuanced, meaning-producing gestures." A recent review claimed, "Judged on its own merits, Borderline is a ground-breaking work, dealing as it does with issues of race and sexuality at a time when such subject matter was still largely taboo and had only been previously tackled cinematically through oblique inference." Viewers used to traditional Hollywood movies were dumbfounded by Macpherson's feature film. One London newspaper reviewer recommended the filmmaker "spend a year in a commercial studio" before embarking on another project as complex as his "Borderline." The "Pool Group" leader was so stung by such negative criticism he withdrew the prints from distribution and gave up his ambitions to direct any movies in the immediate future.

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.