Liz Taylor is in… The Driver’s Seat (1974), BFI Blu-ray Out Now!

One should always be kind as long as one can. It might be your last chance…

 

This is indeed a strange film and one that allows Elizabeth Taylor to take us places we never thought we’d go as her mastery of masked torment pulls us in to the mystery of a character it’s hard to imagine anyone else playing. She unsettles throughout as a character never truly revealed and keeps us guessing with every outburst that may or may not be revelatory… her anger at being offered an “easy-care” dress, her outlandishly colourful style – she’s mocked to her face by her landlady but ignores her – her sexuality and relationship to the men: “I can’t stand being touched!”. Who’s afraid of Virginia Woolf? Not her… she doesn’t appear to fear anyone or anything and we have to work out why.

The commentary from film curator Millie De Chirico is fascinating and as she says, this is a film that repays repeated viewing so props to the BFI for releasing it now on Blu-ray for the first time in the UK – it never even had a theatrical run. As De Chirico says Taylor was making really bold choices at this stage of her career – not just in a trashy “psycho-biddie” direction – but, because as a child star and product of the Hollywood system, loosing that pressure at this stage of her life – financially independent and just 42 - makes films like this feel like her reclaiming her freedom and image.

 

Liz poses with The Walter Syndrome

She and Richard Burton, were both to be in Italy, he filming The Voyage with Sophia Loren, but they split up, after ten years’ marriage, just before filming and this may, or may not have impacted her playing; she was so much the actor that it’s impossible to tell. They remarried in 1975 but we clearly have to view Taylor’s decisions on their own merits – she made her first film at 12 and her first marriage at 18, she was all about choices.

 

Based on a novella by Muriel Spark, who considered it one of her best works, the film was directed by Giuseppe Patroni Griffi who adopted Spark’s non-linear narrative, the story flashing forward and back as the impact of Taylor’s character Lise on others is shown in startling fashion. It’s a very effective device, earnest reality trying to identify her person and the reasons for why she will choose to do what she does… not that we know until the very end. It’s a mystery but one told in jumbled fashion, all the better to shock us.

 

Lise starts off selecting just the right dress for a trip she is taking to the South of Italy, her interactions with others are out of joint and she looks round the airport with suspicion at the men especially just as the screen freezes and CCT images are shown with a policeman’s voice instructing others to check through newly issued visas and passports, the beginning of the non-linear narrative.

Flash forward, the police at work

“Usually, the cover is more promising than the inside…”

 

At the airport an elder woman asks her advice on the best sadomasochistic book to choose, she takes this in her stride, bemoaning the lack of content to match the covers but telling her to take potluck. She chooses The Walter Syndrome by Richard Neely, a then popular slice of pulp fiction, about a psychotic killer of women and brandishes it throughout the film.

 

On the plane stranger interactions occur, a young man sat next to her, Pierre (Maxence Mailfort), who changes seats in a panic, whilst on her other side there’s the laughing presence of a off-the-charts Bill (Ian Bannen) who introduces himself with a demonic laugh talking about his macrobiotic laugh… he’s quite direct about his need for daily intercourse but Lise is not interested in his appetite or diet. Then we switch to the police, a lead detective played by Luigi Squarzina, interrogating the young man about his change of seats and relationship to Lise… What has she done, what will she do?

Landing in Rome – she selects the Villa Borghese Gardens as a meeting place later on - there’s a terrorist incident as the police shoot and chase a suspect, to add strangeness onto strangeness, a pale English aristocrat (played by Andy Warhol… oh yes…) returns Lise’s pulp fiction to her. Andy was in town filming Flesh for Frankenstein and makes the perfect otherworldly cameo.

A greeting from the extraordinary Ian.

 

Lise travels with the over-excitable Bill who fails to seduce her with his self-improvement small talk and drops her off at her hotel, leaving her and us cold. Next, we shift forward and he’s trying his dubious charms on the investigating police after what is going to happen happens… if Lise is having a mental trauma, what are we to make of Bill?

 

There’s a man staying there that I want to avoid and at the same time, I can’t find the one that I have to meet…

 

Lise arrives at her hotel room and there’s one of a number of exchanges with other women in service as she angrily requests a clean glass after finding dirt in the one in her bathroom. She’s exacting and used to giving orders; short and to the point rude every time with those she considers subordinate. She them takes a long time to apply her make -up… she’s feeling her age and relates to older women far more than those with youth from dancing shop assistants to less than un-rigorous room cleaners.

 

There’s now a sequence with Mrs Helen Fiedke (Mona Washbourne) as the two go shopping to the Standa department store as the elder woman talks at some length about her life, her late husband and her nephew who is due to arrive soon… someone Lise increasingly feels may be her type just like the man on the plane, and definitely not Bill. She talks at length about the kind of man she is looking for, something that could be “round the corner, at any time…” it sounds romantic, like destiny…

Liz and Mona Washbourne in the back seat

 

Next there is a violent terrorist attack in the streets and then the narrative shifts to the police interviewing the manly Carlo (Guido Mannari), someone we assume would be many women’s type but who we later see, sexually assaulted Lise. Typical of the abusive males that will have blighted Lise’s life and, most certainly, not the type she is looking for.

 

Lise’s mission cannot be revealed but, whatever her mental state, she wants to control her own destiny. According to De Chirico, it’s “…an audacious repudiation of the misogyny in popular culture, from cinematic serial-killer-thrillers to pulp crime fiction where women serve as passive victims…”  It’s a disturbing experience but she has been driven to extremes by casual abuse.

 

You’re all so suspicious, suspicious, suspicious!

 

The faded fantasies of our lost department stores.

It’s also worth mentioning the sparse piano score from Franco Mannino which perfectly fills the gaps between our understanding and sympathy for Lise. It is a film that piques your curiosity and leads the viewer to the darkest of conclusions. Taylor is on remarkable form and it’s great to see her away from Hollywood making a film so far away from the formulas of even lower-budget studio fare. Giuseppe Patroni Griffi directs with control and the cinematography from three-time Oscar® winner Vittorio Storaro (Apocalypse Now), is superb. A treat in 4k!

 

The extras are, of the high-quality we have come to expect from the BFI.

 

• Restored in 4K by Cineteca di Bologna and Severin Films and presented in High Definition
• Introduction By Kier-La Janisse, author of House of Psychotic Women (2022, 6 mins)
• Audio Commentary with curator and programmer Millie De Chirico (2022)
• A Lack of Absence (2022, 22 mins): writer and literary historian Chandra Mayor on Muriel Spark and The Driver's Seat
• The Driver’s Seat credit sequences (1974, 4 mins)
• Waiting For… (1970, 11 mins): a young woman embarks on a filmmaking project when some mysterious men give her a camera and tell her to capture her everyday reality
• The Telephone (1981, 4 mins): a young woman enacts an imaginative revenge on her boyfriend for being unfaithful in this short film by Chris Petit (Radio On)
• Darling, Do You Love Me? (1968, 4 mins) in a hugely entertaining parody of her media persona, Germaine Greer stars as a terrifyingly amorous woman who pursues a man relentlessly.
• National Theatre of Scotland trailer (2015, 2 mins): The trailer for the National Theatre of Scotland's 2015 stage production of The Driver's Seat

 

As is tradition, with the first pressing only - there’s also a handsome illustrated booklet featuring new writing on the film by the BFI’s Simon McCallum and Canadian artist, writer and filmmaker Bruce LaBruce. Also includes Kier-La Janisse’s writing on The Driver’s Seat, previously published in her acclaimed book, House of Psychotic Women.

 

You can order the blur-ray direct from BFI and it’s out today!

Andy, Lupa, Romulus, Remus and Elizabeth

Mother courage… Stella Dallas (1925)/Lady Windermere’s Fan (1925), Cinema Ritrovato XXXVII, 2023 (Part 3)

Mssrs Horne and Brock take the applause in the Piazza Maggiore

Il Cinema Ritrovato is an experience that leaves you emotionally disrupted, it’s not just all that time spent in darkened cinemas, the relentless watching, pattern recognition, interpretation but also the human connections on screen and off… it leaves you open, and delightfully vulnerable to the enhanced flavours on screen and, in the case of silent film, the invention of the accompanists. Here we had two outstanding new scores that, coupled with the sense of occasion, location and performance produced moments of engagement modern studios would barely comprehend.

The best silent scores don’t pummel you into submission with dozens of drums, decibels and Dolby, they embrace the visuals in sympathy with the narrative and the actors, they duet with the directors and audience to connect our sympathy and imagination, interpret our response and subtly guide it too; a multi-verse of meaning, one that opens up a portal removing you from reality… irresistible forces, for un-resisting volunteers for a kind of magic.

This is no job for anything less than the most experienced of compositional pilots though and in the Piazza Maggiore and then the Teatro Auditorium Manzoni, first Stephen Horne and then Timothy Brock, who conducted the Orchestra del Teatro Comunale di Bologna, provided scores that enhanced two of the very finest Hollywood performances and silent films. Consider them as restorers, replicating the high impact of these films’ first screenings, Time Lords able to whisk us back to the feelings our grandparents felt. We are all companions now.

Helen Morgan in Applause

There was also an emerging theme across the programme this year – Rouben Mamoulian’s early talkie Applause (1929) featuring another selfless matriarch with Helen Morgan’s Kitty Darling - and one that was at the heart-breaking centre of both these films; the sacrifice of mothers willing to lose everything so that their daughters might succeed. If you think that sounds corny, take a break from the 21^st Century and think back to the women who made a difference in your own family; Jenny, Jessie, Lil, Mabel… they all changed the course and there were entire generations watching just these films.

Stella Dallas (1925)

Directed by Henry King and adapted by Frances Marion from Olive Higgins Prouty's novel, Stella Dallas of course walks that fine line between melodrama and drama. It features characters bound by the constraints of their time and it perhaps a backwards view of social mores even for 1925 but, the story was driven by grief as much as anything else. Prouty wrote the novel soon after the death of her three-year old daughter in 1923 and I’m sure for Prouty this was a case of if only; a tribute to the one lost and the lengths she would have gone to if only she could have.

Any decent into pulpy drama is completely offset by the fiercest performance from Belle Bennett who’s own 16-year-old son had also died either just before she got the part or soon after: whatever the motivations her Stella rings very true and every time I see watch it becomes greater with Stephen’s score so sympathetic and emotionally intelligent.

Belle Bennett

Stella herself, is something of a misfit, a woman of ambition to escape her small-town working-class routes who becomes involved with a rich businessman’s son, Stephen Dallas (Ronald Colman) who has fled from his father’s suicide and disgrace only to start rising again after they marry. New York calls Stephen to business success but Stella doesn’t want to leave the town she knows so well and nor does she want to disrupt the upbringing of their daughter Laurel (Lois Moran, 16-years old and playing both girl and woman in one of the odder practices of the time).

The gap between mother and father grows and Stella spends time with an earthy good-time fella name of Ed Munn (Jean Hersholt who is so very good at playing bad) and needless to say this doesn’t sit well with Stephen who misses the companionship of more refined women such as his former sweetheart Helen Morrison (Alice Joyce) who is now widowed with three boys of her own.

You can see the direction of travel but the humiliations have only just begun as Laurel’s teacher spies Stella having fun with Ed and expels her from school leaving her devastated when the rest of the class fail to turn up for her 10th birthday party. The story moves on a few years and as Laurel comes of age, she forms an attachment with a young rich boy called Richard Grosvenor (Douglas Fairbanks, Jr 15 at the time!) but is ashamed of her mother with her crude ways, working class manners and dress sense.

Stella overhears some of the rich set mocking her and begins to think she can only be holding her daughter back. By this stage she and Stephen have run aground and knowing of his attachment to Helen, Stella asks her competitor directly for help… what follows shows her strength of character and amidst the tragedy she shows her class in sacrifice something only another mother truly understands during the film’s iconic closing sequence.

Faced with such intense emotional extremes, Stephen Horne’s score is perfectly composed and he knows just how to under-score Belle’s expressive restraint and combines with the actress to leave the audience smiling through tears of recognition. Ben Palmer helped to orchestrate and Timothy Brock superbly martialled the sixty-piece orchestra under the stars. There’ll be a Blu-ray release at some point and hopefully further performances of one of the great modern scores of this silent renaissance.

 

Lady Windermere’s Fan (1928)

Irene Rich and May Mcavoy

As the cricketing Ashes started back in the UK, rain unexpectedly stopped play in Bologna and the screening of Ernst Lubitsch’s take on Oscar Wilde’s play was shifted to the splendid Teatro Auditorium Manzoni; a purpose-built modern auditorium with splendid acoustics, all the better to experience the power of Timothy Brock’s new score as conducted by him and played by the mighty Orchestra del Teatro Comunale di Bologna.

Given the sophisticated wordplay of Oscar Wilde, he seems an unlikely candidate for silent film but here Ernst Lubitsch takes on Oscar using the wit and sophistication of his direction. Sure, there are some excellent performances but Ernst’s inch-perfect positioning, cross-cutting and way with purely visual messaging ensures that this take on a wordy, comedy of manners works bursts into sensational silence on screen.

The director hardly needs to use title cards as the mood is established, explained and maintained throughout in what is one of the neatest of film: so balanced and perfectly timed, shot and performed… That “touch” is fully in evidence now – the delicate use of key signifiers to lift the tale above predictability and to convey small explosions of meaning in unexpected ways. Take that fan, for example, it’s everywhere: a symbol of marital love, a potential assault weapon, distraction under duress and incriminating evidence. It’s just a fan but Lubitsch uses it to pivot the whole story. That fan is also the undeniably fine hands of Irene Rich and you have another symbol of motherly sacrifice, unbreakable choices that have to be made and confirmation that true love does indeed conquer all.

All begins with Lady Windermere (May McAvoy) facing the troublesome decisions of where to seat her dinner guests at her impending birthday party: where to put the dashing and entertaining Lord Darlington (Ronald Colman on the wrong side again…), right next to her ladyship… at the head of the table perhaps? The Lord arrives to bring handsome substance to her reverie and, whilst she presumes he’s come to see her husband he has her more in mind which, frankly, is caddish behaviour. Meanwhile Lord Windermere (Bert Lytell) is discovering something just as disturbing as a Mrs. Edith Erlynne (Irene Rich) has written to him claiming to be his wife’s mother who was lost to disgrace a long time ago with her daughter having grown up believing her dead and a great moral example. Hold onto your hats, it’s going to be a bumpy ride…

Mrs. Erlynne’s elegant blackmail is expressed through sight of a cheque and the Lord having to add a one to the five hundred he’s started writing following one smiling glance… His wife must never know of her mother’s disgrace and so she begins to lead an “extravagant” life with Windermere’s support, “…not accepted by society but the subject of its gossip…”

There’s a terrific scene at the races when “society” spies in fascination at the intriguing interloper: spy glasses from both men and women including The Duchess of Berwick (Carrie Daumery) leader of the pack. We see multiple points of view until Mrs E. sits down just in front of a group including Lady Windermere her husband, admirer and the gossips. Examining the back of her head with her binoculars the Duchess is delighted to see that Mrs E is going slightly grey and then, seeing her jewels, ponders where her money comes from. All wonderfully bitchy in Oscar Wilde’s immortal way.

Lord Lorton in pursuit

Sat with them is one of London’s most eligible Lord Augustus Lorton (Edward Martindel) who spies this fine filly and is intrigued. As the lady leaves he follows with the director showing their pursuit in longshot, small figures against a backdrop of advertisement-plastered walls: the view on screen narrowing as Lord closes in on Lady… Lorton goes to visit and Lubitsch uses the manner of his entrances to illustrate the developing relationship: at first formal, waiting to be shown through by the maid and then advancing from front door to drawing room with barely a pause: his familiarity only halted by Edith’s last minute swerve: he’s keen.

Meanwhile Darlington can’t help himself and casts aspersions about Lord Windermere’s relationship with Edith. Lady W can scare believe it but sure enough she discovers chequebook evidence of multiple payments to this strange woman… Rumbled, Windermere refuses to reveal all and asks his wife to take his word. Things come to a head though as Windermere asks to re-introduce Edith to society at his wife’s birthday party but she threatens to use the lovely fan he has bought her to assault the interloper… Having invited Edith, Windermere’s un-invitation isn’t seen in time before she arrives to potential humiliation. Cue Lord Lorton who arrives to sweep her into the room – her daughter, the two men chasing her affections and so many idle tongues gathered all in one room…

Lady Windemere hedging her bets

The film is Lubitsch in the raw; it’s very pared down with the focus on character and movement. The sets are elegant and but, as with the racecourse, recede far behind the foregrounded players all of whom are sophisticated and in the cases of the main leads, sensitive. Wilde and Lubitsch is a marriage made in Hollywood though: two men of subtle wit and piercing insights into polite society constrained by manners and rules almost designed to prevent happiness. Any triumph of love is almost accidental and always against the odds: perhaps these folk aren’t much different from those who watch them in the dark?

Timothy Brock’s score, powerful in the auditorium, every section clear and characterful, matched the wit of director and source material and breezes along delightfully in tune with Irene Rich’s powerhouse performance. We overdosed on sheer style and verve, the applause long and repeated almost congratulating ourselves for being there as much as the dozens of players on stage. What a night and what a week!! Brava Bologna, Bellissima!!

Up in the gods waiting for the show to begin... and what a show!

 

 

For whom the bell tolls… Black Narcissus (1947), Cinema Ritrovato XXXVII, 2023 Part 2

If, watching one of the greatest British films, on a fresh 35mm copy (created in 2020 from an interpositive printed from the original three-strip negatives...) and on the biggest screen possible with thousands of others in Bologna’s Piazza Maggiore is not peak Cinema Ritrovato then I don’t know what is… In fairness this is a festival with many summits yet how many of those are introduced by leading Archers-ologist and “friend of the band” Ian Christie and, especially, one of cinema’s finest editors and, for ten years, Mrs Michael Powell, Thelma Schoonmaker.

 

If Ivan was Man of the Week in Silence then surely our Man of the Week in talkies, and some silents, has definitely been Michael Powell as we’ve been treated to restorations of some of his so-called Quota Quickies which in an excellent primer for the series, Christie and Schoonmaker explained were often budgeted on one pound sterling per foot in an attempt to protect British film when the American talkies were just out-competing the domestic industry. An act of parliament resulted which insisted that British films be shown before any imported headliner. They were of varying quality but, as Alexander Korda’s Reservation for Ladies (1932 and recently screened on stunning nitrate stock at the BFI) showed, an able director could do a lot with the right talent available.

 

Powell, who learned his trade in the South of France working in any capacity he could to aid Rex Ingram, first produced a series of silent comedy travelogues in which he played the odd butterfly collector who also did all his own stunts. They’re charming and a vital piece in the projected Powell history I had never seen, slapstick but doing the main job of making the locations look interesting.

Riviera Revels, Michael Powell as Cisero Simp in the snow 

The “quickies” followed and these were definitely a mixed bag each one of which shows the director making the most of cast, crew and budget as well as his tightly regimented small ensembles. First up,  Hotel Splendide (1932) is a fun piece with that well-drilled troupe making the most of classic but predictable misunderstandings; pretty much a farce with extra beats for cross-dressing and criminality. I was less impressed with His Lordship (1932) about an impoverished nobleman who prefers plumbing to the ‘ouse of Lords, it’s still worth watching though for some cheery songs that occasionally rise above mere British “pluck” (code: giving your all on a limited budget).

 

Something Always Happens (1935) was my favourite not least for the easy-going assurance of Ian Hunter whose character Peter always believes his salvation is only just a flash of luck and sales genius away… the stakes rise suddenly when he “adopts” a waif and stray (excellent performance from young John Singer as Billy and then meets an attractive young women, Cynthia (Nancy O’Neil) who encourages him to pitch his revolutionary ideas about forecourt trading to the market leader and notorious corporate killer, Benjamin Hatch (Peter Gawthorne) who is, unbeknownst to Peter, Hatch’s daughter.

 

Nancy O’Neil and youngJohn Singer with Ian Hunter

Peter heads off to the competition and really brings it on the Hatch crew who, at some point are going to have to recognise the man’s business genius as well as the fact that he’s won the heart of hard-hearted Hatch’s daughter.  Powell was pleased, writing in his autobiography, A Life in Movies: “A very good comedy… We played it all out for laughs and great speed, excellent dialogue. It was about a chap who never pays for anything.”

The Red Ensign (1934) was another more successful project helped considerably by the lead actor, Leslie Banks as shipping magnate David Barr. It’s a bit of a propaganda film calling for workers to support the ideas of new leaders as the country fought to revive its merchant navy – those who fly the Red Ensign – in the face of competition from across the globe. Barr has a revolutionary new idea to improve loads and capacity but he needs to persuade his stuffy old directors to invest and his loyal workers to skip the odd payment, it’s flag-waving fantasy but still effective drama. I wonder what happened…

 

Judy Gunn is not impressed with Louis Hayward

The Love Test (1935) was promising with Judy Gunn’s Mary Lee being the leading scientist of a group dedicated to the discovery of flame-proof celluloid. When the time comes and her boss has to resign for his health, Dr Mary is the obvious choice to run the team but, not so, comes the response from all but one of the old school chauvinists who will now be working under her. Rather disappointingly they decide the thing to do is to get one of the team, John Gregg (Louis Hayward) to romance her and put her off the project through his manly wiles… He doesn’t want to do it but former school bullied like Thomson (Dave Hutcheson), clearly have no interest in science just one-upmanship.

 

It's a rather depressing premise and one that threatens to run away with the film in then end… thank Heavens for a classy, brassy secretary Minnie (Googie Withers in her first part?), who outshines most of the dinosaurs. 1935, and industrial competition at a height and these men only want to mess around to bring their female boss down? I don’t think so.

 

On a lighter note, the Phantom Light (1935) is a perfectly serviceable adventure featuring some lovely location work in Snowdonia as well as the classic situation of an isolated lighthouse in a storm with a killer on board. Ian Hunter is in board as is the ace Gordon Harker, so you know it’s going to be well acted. Then there’s Liverpool’s Binnie Hale to prove that high heels are the correct response to any crisis and Donald Calthrop to provide much needed gravitas.

Close to the edge... Eric Berry and Belle Chrystall

By 1937, Powell had achieved enough to be given a larger project, The Edge of the World, to be filmed on the remote island of Foula with a cast including Finlay Currie and the great John Laurie which examined the recent depopulation of the island of St Kilda in the 1920s as the economy dwindled, young folk opted for the mainland and the critical communal mass broke down.

 

Here Powell is the anti-Flaherty – the two we not on good terms as per Ian Christie - with the Englishman preferring to use actual actors for his acting and presenting a way of life in more pointed and honest ways. EOTW is about as political as Powell gets as he highlights the failure of government to support the islanders as they drown their dogs and cut their losses in the saddest of circumstances. I wonder what happened to the folk of St Kilda, Rachel Johnson, the last of the native St Kildans, died in April 2016 at the age of 93, having been evacuated at the age of eight… what stories did she and other tell of their traumatic changes?

 

It’s a beautiful film to watch with highly-skilled cinematography, consistency of tone and vision, "Edge" is infused throughout with Powell's trademark mysticism. It clearly features many of the signature elements that would underpin his wonderful career. Made over many difficult months in the remote and inhospitable environment of the island of Foula, having been refused permission to film on the deserted St Kilda, the making of the film was an epic adventure in itself. ("200,000 feet on Foula" was Powell's original title for his book on the making of the film and references the immense amount of footage shot.)

 

Apart from Currie and Laurie there are smart turns from Eric Berry as the gifted engineer Robbie Manson who wants to use his skills in the wider world; Belle Chrystall, as his sister Ruth (possibly the only woman with plucked eyebrows in the whole of the western isles...) who is being romanced by Niall MacGinnis’ Andrew Gray. The three are the future of the island and that’s on or off depending on the outcome of a treacherous cliff race and the immovable object of Laurie versus Currie’s gentler but no less resolute pragmatism.

Findlay and John

It's a film to relish on the big screen as is Black Narcissus which looks simply remarkable for a film of its vintage and which was filmed largely in studio and in England… across every element this is near perfection from Powell and Pressburger, Jack Cardiff and Alfred Junge with W. Percy Day's eye-boggling matte painting. The colours are stunning, the images sparkle, and Deborah Kerr, Kathleen Byron, David Farrah and company are all magical. The film manages to convey an eerie sense of place, huge scale and yet all crowded in by the distance all around and the endless wind pushing through everything, a restless force that crushes all but the hardiest of souls.

 

There’ll be more time to examine all of these things in more detail for the BFI’s Autumn Powell Festival but this selection, and the stunning centrepiece, really whetted the appetite not just for a broader appreciation of Powell and Pressburger’s work, but also the director’s separate projects. It’s going to be a fascinating programme and likely one which will make us see the Archers and their most frequent collaborators in a different light: the best of British Cinema operating at a high level less than a decade after we almost lost the industry for ever. Thank goodness the Government of the day intervened and that we still had the talent to make the most of the opportunity offered.

 

See them all at the BFI in October, meanwhile thanks to the Cinema Ritrovato for showing the international appeal of Britain’s greatest film makers.

 

*I missed just one film in the strand, Her Last Affair (1936), something to save for London especially as it features another show-steeling turn from Googie Withers not to mention John Laurie.

W. Percy Day's craft and 

Cerebrismo! Russian Divas at Cinema Ritrovato XXXVII, 2023

Lyda Borelli and Diana Karenne were officially “cerebrali” divas, which meant that they were women with brains, but not in the sense of intellectual power… these actresses had such an inner life of their own, such as sense of spirituality, that they were superior not only to the average woman, but to the average man…**

So, there I was, slumped in the cosy seats of the Sala Mastroianni at the Cinema Lumière on Day Three of this festival of film festivals and waiting for the next screening to begin I tried to work out the order of what I’d seen from kick off on Saturday and, reader, I couldn’t. Those of you familiar with my on-going struggle to remember the name of films, the one with thingy in it, you know… may not be surprised but then I suspect I’m not alone. This festival moves fast, it collides with itself, over-runs and, sometimes the film snaps… but the first rule of Il Cinema Ritrovato and Bologna in general is to go with the flow, slow down, don’t look at your emails (I did and regretted it), relax and float down screen… it’s a cinematic multiverse of madness and delight.

I’d definitely seen Spellbound (1945) screened on the opening night in the Piazza Maggiore and so, in addition to now being an expert in pseudo psychoanalysis Hitchcock style, I am also relishing the chemical reaction between Ingrid Bergman and Gregory Peck even though most of what he does is dazed and confused whereas Our Ingrid lets the thoughts of all possibilities simply flash across her perfect brow as she uses science and intuition to solve her man. This film’s psychological hypothesis has, of course, not been peer-reviewed, but you’d have to be mad not to love it just a little.

Man of the week in silents has been unquestionably Ivan Mozzhukhin who not only featured in the epic serial, La maison du mystère (1923) he also blew the roof off the Cine Lumiere with Le brasier ardent (1923).

The stunning wedding sequence in La maison du mystère

Unlike many earlier serials, La maison du mystère (The House of Mystery), isn’t really episodic and plays like the chapters in the book, by Jules Mary, it was based on. It’s effectively one long narrative often picking up directly after the events of the previous episode. As such it holds your attention and you never feel there’s any padding or artificial rounding off to make the stories fit within the format: the filmmakers respected their audience and only now can we see their full intent by watching each element back-to-back – there was no box-set gorging in 1923; at least here the next episodes

 

For a French production this is, of course very Russian with Alexandre Volkoff directing and Ivan Mozzhukhin (as Ivan Mosjoukine) acting and co-scripting with Volkoff. The two maintain a superb continuity throughout and keep a tight rein on the narrative which could so easily sprawl. The tone is playful and inventive with each episode featuring a flick of the director’s wrist: a wedding shown entirely in silhouette, an overhead shot of a group of police officers suddenly emerging and circling around a wanted man and a breathless chase across a broken wooden bridge with four men holding hands to hold it together – a sequence that lasts for half an episode and could easily have come from a much later era.

Ivan Mozzhukhin

Ivan Mozzhukhin wrote, directed and starred in The Burning Crucible (Le brasier ardent) and proves that, actually, pretty much everyone likes a show off. He is such a commander of the screen with huge expressive eyes conveying a unique feline masculinity and here he has full rein to externalise the quicksilver musings that flash across his face in every performance I’ve seen.

 

The film has elements of contemporary dada and surrealism; it surprises us now and - even though it stretches out a little long (who’s going to tell Mozza to cut one of his own scenes?) – it still engages. The performances of the three leads are all part of the reason for this and it is not just Ivan that excels with his actress wife Nathalie Lissenko, proving his match in more ways than one as Elle and her older cinematic husband, Le mari (Nicolas Koline). The couple’s weekends must have been an exhausting. round of high-energy socialising and “performance” all that Russian wit and bravado: larger in every way than life!

Diana Karenne

Anyway, enough about men, there’s a restored Russan Diva in town and her name is Diana Karenne, who was also a screenwriter, producer and director and who later appeared with Ivan Mozzhukhin in the ultimate swashbuckling romance-with-poems, The Loves of Casanova (1927). Before all that she was a high-level diva to almost rank with Francesca, Pina and Lyda. Diana, or Dina, was originally from Poland when it was part of the Russian empire, moved to Italy pre-war and had multiple names and a story confused by the usual industry PR and the need to work across Europe, from Italy to Germany and then France by the late 20’s.

Her diva status had been based on a single surviving film until the discovery over the last couple of years of three of her early films in the Gosfil’mofond in Russia all of which were screened: The Two Sisters’ Tragedy (1914, Russia), Passione Tsigana (1916, Italy) and Smarrita! (1921, Italy).

Directed by Ernesto Maria Pasquali, Passione Tsigana was the big one, a love triangle involving a gypsy girl torn between the noble Baron Freiman (Giovanni Cimara) and the villainous Aleko, (Nello Carotenuto). It was among the most successful films of the year and still being screened in 1920; it established her as a star in her adopted country and showcases her screen presence and nuanced naturalistic style, more Bertini than Borrelli but with grace too.

Passione Tsigana 

My favourite was the fourth film Miss Dorothy (1920), the only one previously thought to survive until the Russian discoveries. Here our heroine disguises herself in rather smart spectacles which only emphasise her strong features, in order to find out what happened to the baby she had with the son of the cruel matriarch who runs the family. She maintains an aloofness but can’t help but be drawn to his younger brother… I may have, literally, lost the plot here as she encouraged her re-discovered daughter to marry the brother of the man she once loved but who (I think) was not the father. Not the first women to put daughter before herself in the Ritrovato, and not the last.

Taken together these films allowed a full audit of Diana’s Diva credentials:

• Intensity... Diana stares into the mid-distance, ignores useless paramours and doesn’t care a jot what we think.
• Her eyes see right through the narrative and the audience… she bores a hole in your mind, catches your secret thoughts and evaporates the fourth wall, not figuratively but in terms of the audience’s sympathy
• Looks, DK has the extreme beauty and also the geometrically near impossible angularity of Dive Design.
• Diana's character is, of course, willing to kill herself so that the Diva story arc is completed, even when the narrative doesn’t strictly call for it.
• Fashion! Diana wears clothes like an angel wears wings…
• Style, you’ve either got or you haven’t got it; Diana has It! In every respect, you can’t live with her or without her… she just is.
• Cerebrismo!

The programme was part of a programme highlighting the work of Russian Dive in Italian film put together by Mariann Lewinsky and Tamara Shvediuk, who had helped discover previously “lost” films in the Russian film archive. Their research also uncovered the fact that Diana was not killed by an allied air raid in 1940 but lived until she passed away in Lausanne on 18th October 1968 (as proven by her death certificate).

Berta Nelson in Vittoria o morte!

There were also two gorgeous films from Berta Nelson, Vittoria o morte! and Fiamma simbolica (preserved in the Desmet Collection at the EYE Filmmuseum), who was originally from Odessa and who debuted in Italy as an opera singer. She’s certainly a woman of many talents as displayed in these two of her seven surviving films… and holds the screen focus almost as well as Diana but or differing reasons. In Eugenio Perego’s Fiamma simbolica (1917, Italy) she played a wife out to avenge the murder of her husband little realising that he was not quite the man she expected, her ability to pursue the innocent lines and then exhibit the destruction of his reputation and belief is something to see, again, as with Diana K, there’s something beyond the drama in their playing, maybe founded in the theatrical tradition of Chekov and Russian playacting in general, something less operatic and purely expressive than true Italian dive.

As Vittorio Martinelli has pointed out*"Nelson belonged to that very small elite of film actresses whose success on the screen was a mere reflection of their triumph on stage…" and her dual appeal is exhibited again in Vittoria o morte! (1913), as, playing a kind of forerunner of the female antihero in Filibus, she jumps from aeroplane into the sea to recover stolen documents from a spy, thereby saving the day and the reputation of her love and country.

These films are fascinating in general for the elevated parts they provided for women especially up to the change in Italian culture of the twenties, and their complex relationship with female and male audiences is worthy is further reading… see below**

Has he got it yet? Il Grido.

On the fourth day I watched Antonioni’s Il Grido (1957) not just to complete my big screen viewing of his major works, and just below, but also to see how well Italian males were coping with female intelligence forty years after Karenne and Nelson. As usual, Michelangelo gives a mixed report on that score: what do his films tell of the Cerebrismo of Alida Valli and Betsy Blair, then later Monica Vitti, Jeanne Moreau and Vanessa Redgrave?

I’ll be back with more thoughts in this year’s festival including ruminations on the Festival’s three – four? - great films featuring maternal sacrifice and details of the Michael Powell strand as Black Narcissus hits the huge screen in the Piazza Maggiore.

 

*In Cabiria e il suo tempo, Paolo Bertetto and Gianni Rondolino (eds.), Museo Nazionale del Cinema/Il Castoro, Turin-Milan 1998

** I always recommend Angela Dalle Vacche’s book Diva: Defiance and Passion in Early Italian Cinema (University of Texas Press) for further reading and, as above, she is a delight to quote!

So much to see... the eyes have it in Le brasier ardent