OK, remind me how this goes again, we leave the country
that has held us prisoner since 2016, sorry 2020, and land in a place where
almost everyone wears face masks and where films of all eras are screened every
day from 9.00 till passed midnight. Some how we’re supposed to sleep, eat and
socialise and to take care of the other routines as the Celsius hits high 30s…
and, somehow, some of us are supposed to write stuff about it? The pleasure and
the pain of this festival is precisely down to their being too much to do… so,
turn off you mind, turn on your out of office, relax and float downstream on the
Reno.
Herewith begins my highlights of the first few whirlwind
days… let’s start with a biggie.
“Sooner or later those romantically inclined American
wives who believe the superficial polish of Old Worldling and his fascinating
ways are the essential qualifications of a husband will be disillusioned. They
are sure to come to the realization that the man for the American Woman – is
the American Man.”
Foolish Wives (1922)
The first million-dollar movie acclaimed the
publicity… and, spectacularly, Erich von Stroheim delivered on the ROI and
Universal had another hit on its hands from the most complex man in most parts
of Hollywood whose productions had the skill of DeMille, the scale of Griffith
and a dark heart the latter could never think or feel. The son of a hatmaker,
the Austrian was all too aware that clothes maketh the man and, for that
matter, how far you need to go to get a hat to get ahead, his incredible drive
seeing his not only create himself anew in the USA but also emerge from the
field of European theatricals to be trusted with audacious projects such as
this one, the controversial Blind Husbands (1919) – screening later this
week here – and his masterwork, Greed (1924) of which I had the pleasure of
seeing the four hour reconstruction screened at the BFI a few years back.
He arrived in 1909 and how he built his reputation in less than a decade is a story for another time but what you can see in this film is the extent of his control, basing it on a “novel” he didn’t write, and using huge reconstructions of Monte Carlo and a cast of thousands, he effectively played a version of his invented self. Instead of a bourgeois Viennese faking German aristocratic airs, he’s a phoney Russian military officer, Count Wladislaw Sergius Karamzin, accompanied by his two cousins, minor white Russian royals who have fled the unfortunate events in their home country.
The three live in a grand villa and frequent the Casino
and all the best places so they can work their various whiles on
unsuspecting rich tourists, the more American the better. This is a slick crime
caper movie from before the days when slick crime capers set in this period
were all the rage. But Erich is making sure we see the seedier side as well, he
and his two “cousins” may smile and be villains too, charming con artists, but
he has a debauched sexuality which is revealed early on when Cesare Ventucci, a
local tradesman/counterfeiter visits with his young daughter Marietta (18-year
old Malvina Polo) who is distastefully described as “half-witted”, clutching
her dolly. Marietta attracts reptilian glances from the Count, who even licks
his lips (not for the last time) and if we were under any misapprehensions about
the true depths of this man’s character von Stroheim makes is crystal clear right
from the off.
It might even be described as “Hitchcockian” in another
country, another decade… but the director is making us complicit in his
character’s agendas from the get-go, and, as we want redemption for all our
lovable rogues, he’s giving us a tricky moral maze to navigate. Also, about
that redemption… this film was made in Hollywood but this is not a “Hollywood director”.
The Count is charming us all if we let him, suspending our own disbelief despite
all of the evidence of all that is put before us, call him Boris by any other name,
or Don. This is just fantasy or is it real life?
Von Stroheim puts so much detail in the films of his I’ve
seen and this was to have been over six hours long and split in two screenings
if he’d had his way. The length was as grandiose as the location, designed by
Richard Day, his debut as art director, and who later won seven Oscars and worked
on Greed, and this presented the studio with all the dull
problems you’d expect and with his presented cut of 31 reels, soon reduced to
14 for its New York premiere and then another four, including the spectacular
extended opening. This restoration produced by MoMA and the San Francisco Silent
Film Festival, contains no previously unseen footage, but does attempt to
recreate the balance and sense of that first theatrical release as well as the
sparkling clarity, via digital processing. Scenes have been returned to their
original order, the 1928 re-release – the basis of most version to date -
intertitles have been replaced with the original texts, adding tinting and
recreating the spectacular colour effects of the climactic fire sequence.
 |
| Erich and Miss DuPont |
The other characters are almost as nuanced as the Count, with Maude George as Her Highness Olga Petchnikoff and Mae Busch as Princess Vera Petchnikoff, ugly sisters on the inside but not without good humour and some compassion; professionals without the Count’s unhealthy singlemindedness and tastes. They distract rich American Andrew J. Hughes (Rudolph Christians who was replaced by Robert Edeson’s back view after dying during production) whilst the Count attempts to seduce his much younger wife, Helen (Miss DuPont aka Patricia Hannon from Kentucky) in front of his very eyes. They first meet on a sunlit hotel veranda and the start of the seduction is so very well signified with not a moment out of place as by almost imperceptible gesture, stolen glances, over newspaper and book, yes Foolish Wives by Erich von Stroheim (100% meta) the two begin to connect and to collude. She is, after all, a bored young wife who is reading about romantic fantasy and quickly interested in the attractions of foreign nobility.
The Count is sexually voracious – a predator in every way
– and we soon learn that he has not only wooed their maid Maruschka (Dale
Fuller, excellent here as in Erich’s Greed and The Wedding March, proper
skilled actor) but made her pregnant. He keeps making her promises we know he won’t
keep and maybe, at the time he means it, maybe… but people pleasing won’t save
him for ever and she will have her revenge at some point.
It’s all but pointless to describe the narrative in too
much detail as its detail on screen is so full of nuance that only by viewing
can you fully appreciate (yes, that is a cop out) but to see it on the giant
screen in the Piazza Maggiore, was special. Which brings me to Timothy Brock’s extraordinary
score and the performance of L’Orcestra del Teatro Comunale di Bologna which he
conducted. His score was technically brilliant in terms of the Russia themes he
borrowed and interwove to support the grandiosity on screen and also the delicious
lines of his own written to map every strange and unusual nuance from von
Stroheim’s screen. It felt complete with the film and completed that magical
connection between the place, the audience and the film that makes live silent
screenings so compelling and which makes this place, almost uniquely, a truly
silent city.
Brava Mr Brock, Bologna and Erich’s cast and crew.
Glad to have you all back where you belong*.
*Get Back screens at the Piazza on Thursday, natch.
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