Organiser-in-chief, Johnny Best said that having opened
the festival with Novello in excelsis with The
Lodger, he wanted to programme this earlier film by way of comparison. It’s
certainly not as polished as the Hitchcock film but it is always good to see
British film from the early twenties: there’s just not enough of it about.
Luckily The Man
Without Desire is on the BFI Player BUT without this place – the Abbeydale is pure cinema in its decayed glory, propped
up entirely by stubborn passion – and this remarkable accompanist it won’t be
the same. Live cinema equals film plus place, music and audience and Sheffield
has done silent film proud.
 |
| Ivor plays... Steve Howe had one of these (probably more) |
Mr Horne brought the bells and whistles if not the
kitchen sink and performed the seeming impossible flute, accordion and piano solo-three-piece
we’ve come to expect and yet never fail to be impressed by. He also brought
some of his finest romantic themes along and lifted what is an occasionally
lumpy film to the emotional heights the producers intended.
Ivor’s not the finished Novello but he still makes for a
remarkable leading man especially one with a dark secret that’s two hundred
years’ old. He’s also aided by the strikingly lovely Nina Vanna as the woman he
loves across those centuries: she carries off Regency and Jazz-age equally well
and is as eye-catching as her leading man.
The story is an unlikely one but if you take a purely
metaphysical view, entirely plausible… (yeah).
 |
| Modern men |
We begin in 1923 as a strange post-dated solicitor’s
letter is opened and read out to a group of specially requested men: they all
settle back for a long read…
The document takes us back to Venice just after 1800 and one
Count Vittorio Dandolo (Novello) who is persistently serenading a beautiful
woman who stands at her window paying power-puff penance for marrying a real count.
She is Leonora (Nina Vanna) and her suffering is caused by Count Almoro (Sergio
Mari) off galivanting with premier-league courtesan Foscolina (Dorothy Warren).
Finally she allows Vittorio to climb up to her balcony
and reveals the reason she cannot smile for him: she has a son and cannot break
from her horrible husband. But Vittorio cannot leave it and neither can Almoro
who begin to circle around each other.
 |
| Nina Vanna and Ivor |
Before what will be, will be, Vittorio meets a very
unusual and gregarious, scientist named Mawdesley (Christopher Walker) who is
experimenting with, Indian mysticism and suspended animation as you do. The two
become firm friends well in time for the big blow up…
Stories have been circulating about Count Almoro and he
has the writer’s hands broken in punishment… revenge is planned as Almoro’s
maid Luigia (Jane Dryden) drops poison into his drink whilst attempting to
deliver a love letter from Vittorio to Leonora… The treachery is uncovered and
Almoro forces his wife to drink the wine in order to prove her innocence. This
she does, as she is, but pays the price just in time to kiss farewell to her
lover who then makes short work of the murderous Almoro.
 |
| Y'see, it's all quite simple really... |
Pursued by the law and in total despair, Vittorio has no
way out except, that is, being sent to sleep for two hundred years by Mawdesley
to escape, both grief and retribution.
Back in 1923 the solicitors despatch a doctor, Roger
(also Christopher Walker) to establish the likelihood of these event and do
indeed succeed in waking Vittorio. They leave him to fully “wake up” which even
I with no medical training, can see is risky… so it proves as the confused
Count makes his way to the Almoro family home unaware of the time of day, let
alone the year.
He encounters a woman every bit as lovely as Leonora, her
descendent Genevia – also Nina V – and her cousin, every bit as obnoxious as
his forebear, Gordi (Sergio too).
 |
| Meet the decendants |
There are some nice touches as Vittorio discovers this
strange new world of telephones and motorised transport and, as he sampled a
rolled-up cigarette on a motor boat in the lagoon, Stephen threw in a few bars
familiar to those who used to smoke Hamlet cigars, which got one of the biggest
laughs of the day.
But the good humour cannot last. Mawdesley warned that
there could be a price to pay for this escape to eternity… and well, you’ll just have to see it on the BFIPlayer!
 |
| The shock of the new. |
It’s an enjoyable film for all its quirks and
occasionally over-deliberate pacing. It’s location shoot doesn’t get overplayed
but then they probably weren’t there for that long and who needs Venice when
you have Ivor and Nina?
The Yorkshire Silent Film Festival continues until the
end of May, full details on their site.
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