And so it ends with a medieval wedding with daft knights and
kings dancing to a rag-time band and Stanley Laurel stepping on his princesses
bridal train to reveal, “The End”. It ends with belly laughs from the family after
eight days of a streamed Limited Edition of Le Giornate and the pledge to
return in person next year. They made the best of what we hoped for and it was an
experience that as festival director Jay Weissberg said, will have introduced new
friends to the experience who will be there for the 40th Anniversary
edition in 2021 even if at this stage, we don’t know where but we do know when.
The final day featured Danish dancing, Hardy romancing and
Laurel prancing; it was pure Pordenone.
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| Rita Sacchetto |
Until today I’d never heard of Rita Sacchetto, the German star
of Ballettens Datter (1913) but now I know that she was at the forefront
of new approaches to modern dance having been inspired by Isadora Duncan and
learned ballet only to take her instruction towards freer expression, mixing
pantomime with dance to create Tanzbilder (“dance pictures”), aimed at “completing”
works of art through movement. She attracted the attention of Loie Fuller, known
for her Serpentine Dance, which was captured on hand-coloured films at the turn
of the century, and toured America with her.
Sacchetto dances in Holger-Madsen’s film and as accompanist John
Sweeney said, it was not ballet and quite unlike anything he’d seen as a dance
specialist. Professor Mary Simonson of Colgate University, filled in the dancer’s
background in the after screening discussion and made me go back and watch
those sequences again.
In a week full of insights into silent film musical
accompaniment John explained the difficulties in playing with dance on screen
as the performance is quite different in tone and pace to the drama that
surrounds it. In this instance, Holger-Madsen’s focus on doorways and general
framing, acted as a natural cue between changes in the narrative. It’s a very
competently directed film as you would expect from the standards of Danish film
at this time.
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| The Count obsesses before he controls... |
Sacchetto plays prima dancer Odette Blant who is being
romanced by Count de Croisset (Svend Aggerholm), who watches her performances
in love-struck awe. But when she agrees to marry him he tells her that the
condition must be that she gives up the stage. A year later Odette’s getting
itchy feet and he chides her for dancing in front of the mirror - Holger-Madsen
(also known at the time as Holger-Hyphen…), is very fond of mirrors and they
give depth to this scene and others.
Odette goes to the Theatre where she used to dance and meets
old friends including Delage, the manager and, when their leading dancer
injures herself, he calls Odette to stand in – obviously they couldn’t afford
an understudy… She agrees and lies about seeing her sick aunt whilst the Count,
happy to enjoy watching other women dancing but not for others to enjoys his
wife… goes to the theatre and the inevitable happens.
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| Love this sequence, it explains so much. |
The Count then compounds his illogical position by accusing
Odette of having an affair with Delage, a duel is arranged and things look like
taking a dark turn, all because of his old school pride.
Ballettens Datter is another fine restoration from the
Danish Film Institute and whilst the plot creaked to jaded modern eyes it’s a
very entertaining window on contemporary mores and the eccentrically wonderful
performance art of Rita Sacchetto.
With joyful synchronised serenades from maestro Neil Brand, Laurel
or Hardy (US 1916-1925) raised the whole issue of fate and predetermination
in slapstick comedy. Living in the era of hot-take history, many folk have
difficulty understanding the nature of events, I mean, what took Stan and Ollie
a decade to find each other? Didn’t they know?! It’s one of cinema’s
great journeys and, whilst it’s always odd to watch one without the other, they
were always a class act and it’s fascinating to view them on their way up when
you’re constantly reminded of Buster Keaton’s comment, “Chaplin wasn’t the
funniest. I wasn’t the funniest. Stan Laurel was the funniest.”
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| Runt and Plump |
The Serenade (1916) was first up and was part of the
period when the duo were “seeing” other comedy partners in this case Billy Ruge
as Runt to Oliver Hardy’s Plump. Now clearly this is sizeism of the worst order but it is bloomin’
daft and very funny and it’s exactly why my Granddad Jim (yes, he was James
Joyce, but the amateur boxer and carpenter variant) loved these men. I always
think of Jim watching Mr Hardy’s work and here he oozes comedic charm as a
tubby tuba player annoying his neighbours and fighting with Ruge’s Runt for the
hand – and other parts – of the Bandleader’s daughter played by Florence
McLoughlin.
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| Sermon on the mount... |
Forward five years and Oliver was
at Vitagraph for The Rent Collector (1921) and this was the first in a six-year
period as part of writer-director Larry Sermon’s company. Sermon was Vitagraph’s
biggest comedy star and here he gives himself the difficult task of becoming a
rent collector in one of the roughest parts of town. Hardy is Hurricane Smith,
a beardy hoodlum not given to polite negotiation having thrown the previous
rent officer out of his window to his braying gang below. It’s the same moves
from Ollie just different intent – he’s a lot more violent - and he cuts a
darker figure than usual as the fearsome Hurricane bopping the opposition at
will, winging them over his head and taking advantage of the charitable women
of the mission. At Vitagraph Babe worked mostly as “chief comedy support”; he
was always a team player and worked very well with Sermon who reputedly taught
him golf!
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| Santa knows Stanley, he knows... |
Over to Stanley and Detained (US 1924) from Selznick
Pictures where he made a dozen films with Joe Rock after leaving Hal Roach. Rock
tried to avoid paying him his due and so, fed up with trying to get blood out
the stone, Stan went back to Roach. In
his notes Rob Stone therefore gives credit to the parsimonious Rock for driving
Laurel back to the place where he’d end up with Hardy. In Detained, Stanley is rudely
interrupted from his task of watering trees in the park by an escaped convict
who swaps clothes leaving him to be arrested by the cops and interred in the
con’s place. In his own way, Stan Laurel was Kafka…
“Shakespeare said it – No woman can make a fool out of a
man. But she can give him a wonderful start.”
 |
| Clyde Cook and Noah Young hedge their bets |
Moonlight and Noses (1925) sees our hero back at
Roach, co-scripting and directing Australian comedian Clyde Cook as well as a
young lass name of Fay Wray. Rob Stone says that Cook influenced Laurel and
vice versa, and here he is in a duo with Noah Young as a couple of bungling
burglars, showcasing a similar slow-paced delivery and relationship to the
camera. James Finlayson’s in it too as Professor Sniff, “goofy half the time
and cuckoo the rest…” and Laurel writes a great newspaper headline, just read
your way down this one…
Cook plays the brains of the outfit but that’s not saying much and, as they break in to Prof. Sniff’s house, he agrees to let them off on the condition that they steal the body of Hemmingway Toots from the graveyard so he can prove his medical point (no wonder some have had enough of experts…) Needless to say, things don’t go to plan but you can sense Stan’s cheek and professionalism behind it all. Also, that Fay Wray, what a cracker, she’ll go onto to bigger things, mark my words!
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| Fay Wray, James Finlayson and Tyler Brooke |
Only half of When Knights Were Cold (1922) survives
but it ain’t half funny, especially Stan’s “horse” which is basically just a stuffed
head on a stick, with two fake legs over an equine girdle. This, along with
such fancies as taking a watering can to trees, and then to a fast-growing vine
in this film, shows, to me at least, Laurel’s very Lancastrian humour, revelling
in the surreal and the plain daft. That said Frank Fouce, who wrote and
directed was born in Hawaii so what do I know? Stan is Lord Helpus who is out
to rescue Princess Elizabeth New Jersey (Catherine Bennett) form the evil
clutches of the Prince of Pluto (Stanhope Wheatcroft) and his numerous guards.
There’s one moment when Lord Helpus and a guard are so bored with their swordplay, they both lean against the wall tapping swords in a perfunctory way before Helpus kicks his adversary out of the window. Throughout Stan looks direct to camera, Mabel Normand style, but with his own particular twinkle; so much comedy to give. People may look for the Laurel persona in these films but he was clearly a flexible performer who if he was looking for his own defined style like Chaplin or Keaton, hadn’t yet found it. It’s chicken and egg or, perhaps, man and papier-mâché horse.
Which is where I came in. See you next year Giornate Family!
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| you can lead a fake horse to water... |
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