My first time at Le Giornate del Cinema Muto after years of
promising myself… and finally I’m home or at least hotel. I started the day admiring the sunrise over Piazza San Marco in Venice and finished it watching one of
silent film’s greatest natural wonders. King Vidor’s The Crowd was projected in a packed Teatro Verdi with Carl Davis
conducting his own music as played by the Orchestra San Marco di Pordenone. Saturdays get that much better than these.
The Crowd never
disappoints and to see it on the Verdi’s huge screen brought out the best from
this film of so many flavours. James Murray’s John Sim has never appeared so
desperate: childlike, lazy, living in the moment with a promise for tomorrow,
he is an everyman to whom life happens whilst he’s busy doing – or not doing –
other things. This is perhaps one of Christian Scientist King Vidor’s most overtly
didactic pictures.
Tragedy strikes and there was a collective groan of shock at
the moment that changes the picture’s mood. John falls apart just as he
was in bits when his wife gives birth, or when asked to just buckle down at his
day job. Some may find Sim annoying but he’s in all of us.
He is right to – finally – recognise his reliance on his
wife Mary and, as I’ve said before in a previous raves, Eleanor Boardman gives
the performance of her career as the woman who understands Jimmy Sim enough to
give him the benefit of the doubt. Boardman dresses down, wears little make-up
and otherwise goes the full-Gish in a performance of subtle power. A natural
sophisticate, Boardman’s repeated self-conscious clutching of hands to her
teeth, is a marker of her character’s gauche innocence, an element of her fine
sense of detail in a technically intricate performance which, for me, anchors
the film. She’s the believable one.
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| Believable Boardman |
Mary is also the audience representative in John’s fantasy
world, just like her we see his potential and his natural goodness but there
are moments when we feel like Jane on the beach; cooking and looking after the children
whilst James larks about on his ukulele. It’s funny but we’re not the ones
wiping the sand off the cake and chasing him to do his bit but we are waiting for
him to turn the corner.
But that moment is not inevitable and just as John hits the
jackpot with his catchy phrase the family descent begins.
For its immaculate portrait of married and other life, The Crowd is one of the high points of
cinema as art and Carl Davis’ score pays respect to its source. It is all too
easy for orchestra to overwhelm images and for composition to foreshadow
narrative but we are in safe hands with Mr Davis. This score is a soulful and
richly toned as the film and the booming strings rose up through the core of
the auditorium as our spirits lifted and our hearts sank. Hard to believe it
was only his second silent score.
Completamente simpatici, I believe the locals say!
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| I know it's 1924 but really... |
We also watched: Three Days to Live (1924) in which a
racially stereotyped baddie used badly-drawn tigers to drive American business
men to suicide whilst also manipulating the stock market like a proper Wall
Street wolf. Mauro Colombis accompanied on piano.
Various Euro westerns followed, mostly French and with one
British entry, Edwin J. Collins’ The
Scapegrace (1913) actually being filmed at the Cricks studio the near Wild West
Croydon – which makes sense as Way Out East Croydon looks nothing like the
Yukon.
Then we were in the air with a series of real and pretend aviatrices
culminating in the stylish, interesting but confusing L’Autre Aile (1924), directed by Henri Andréani. John Sweeney
played a blinder on this one with some soaring and swooping of his own, fingers
fleet and feather light.
We were brought down to earth by Roscoe Arbuckle’s flying
bags of flour as all manner of comedy exploded in The Butcher Boy (1917) including a fresh-faced, stone-face
performing a perfect headstand pratfall. At one point the agile Roscoe upends a
bad guy in one deft move planting him dazed on a bed… reader that was me. Donald
Sosin and Romano Todesco made musical sense of this madness: a riot was going
on!
The long day closed and there is so much more to come. Day Two is even better!
Here's how my day began...
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