Tears are not enough… Le Giornate del Cinema Muto Day Four

Ruan Lingyu abides...

OK, new rules, we’re halfway through and it’s time to make this blog snappier. Today:

·         Cried – twice

·         Laughed – numerous times

·         Rolled eyes at improbable plot twist and/or directorial time wasting/needless passing of the narrative ball across the midfield and back to the defence and back again… four times

·         Shouted “C’mon John!!” embarrassingly loud to encourage Mr Sweeney on stage for an encore – once!

People, it’s been a roller coaster day… maybe I need more sleep/less coffee?!

Why cry though? Well for that you have to blame simply one of the finest actors of the 1930s, Ruan Lingyu who acts her socks off and breaks our hearts in the overlong but for long periods quite brilliant Love and Duty (CN 1931). She was only just 21 at the time of the film’s making and succeeds in convincing us that she’s a schoolgirl, a young woman, a woman prematurely aged by the concerns of her life and then her own daughter. Not once do the multitude of close-ups betray a single wobble in her expression she is absolutely as good as she will be in The Goddess and other films about the “new women” in China at this time.

This film is her last of the old style in terms of its morality and attitude to women, she plays a woman who is unfaithful in marriage but her husband has already crossed that bridge and yet prospers while she suffers. Stylistically the film is advanced with some intriguing compositions by director Bu Wancang including some choice tracking shops as her character Yang Nei Fang walks to school and is followed by Li Tsu Yi (played by Jin Yan). This really emphasises the moments in which they fall in love at first sight… but their fate is not true to this fairy tale beginning.

A new dawn about to fade.

Her traditionalist parents promise her in marriage to a rich writer Huang Ta Jen whom she doesn’t love… the years pass and they have two children and are sporadically unhappy. Another chance encounter as the returning Li Tsu Yi saves one from drowning in the park and their love is soon rekindled, just as Huang is seeing his mistress. I believe it was Sade who suggested that love is stronger than pride and it’s certainly stringer than the family ties in this film as the two lovers run away leaving Business Huang with the children. It’s the first heart break.

Things do not go well for the starstruck couple and even after they have a child of their own, a daughter, Li struggles to find work and soon succumbs to illness, that first dry cough is a sure sign that he’s a goner before the next reel is run. Yang has various visions of her options standing by her lover’s grave and after seeing all of them end in humiliation vows to bring up their daughter in his honour and give her the chance she never got.

Ah, if only things were that simple and there was an invisible guiding hand – perhaps Mr William H Hays’? – to get us to the happy ending we all long for but this film isn’t taking the easy way out and nor is it in a rush… But, by the time the endings are all tied up cynical old publishing marketing directors where not alone in sniffing back tears in the Teatro Verdi!

Of course, for this I can also blame John Sweeney whose Stakhanovite efforts in constructing a powerful, emotional musical narrative for the 150 minutes of this film were outstanding and he richly deserved the ovation and the bow we called for. It’s one thing to stand there casually crying but quite another to play a part in perfectly amplifying the key moments in the tragedy and the love on screen. To do it all in such an embedded way is magic of the highest order!

Quickfire round up to 300 words. GO!

More stars than there are in West Lynne certainly...

In the morning we’d returned to East Lynne (US 1925) with new twists and turns, a better-looking cast, and less faith in the plays or novel to the point at which we didn’t get an electoral contents and not even get a dead Young Willy. This is heresy and several of the audience were visibly shaken but it is otherwise perfectly serviceable Hollywood fare and there are some good performances form those good-looking people including Marjorie (“see-saw”) Daw, Alma Rubens and

No complaints at all about the wonderful accompaniment from Stephen Horne on piano (and various) plus Elizabeth-Jane Baldry on harp, the two work so well together and elevated this film to thoroughly enjoyable!

 

Mabel & Tillie and the CCEU, with Meg Morley

Miss Normand appeared on screen with her saucer eyed beauty and it was as if the whole auditorium lifted. Her energy is simply unmatched and it was there right from the start in Betty Becomes a Maid (US 1911) and Mabel at the Wheel (US 1914) two perfect comedies that knock the pomp out of the whole process and connect directly to our inner nuisance and devilment. I found myself wishing for a Mabel bio-pic featuring either Aimee Lou Wood, Margaret Qualley or both: whose with me? Let’s make this happen!

We also met another recuring character in the Extended Charlie-verse, Tillie, as played by the magnificent Marie Dressler – see, women are just funnier, just ask Mack and Charlie, or just look at Ford Sterling.

Mabel on the left... see what I mean about Aimee?

More fabulous music in the evening session, this time for the Ukrainian children’s film The Adventures of a Penny (UkrSSR, 1929) directed by Axel Lundin. An entertaining new score composed by Olga Podgaiskaya performed by her with a mixed string and woodwind ensemble playing along with this lighter tale from the second year of Stalin’s First Five Year Plan. The kids are great and Lundin directs then exceptionally well, it's a real child's eye view of an adult world that continually lets them down. The solution is solidarity, community and working for each other no matter what the bourgoise commentator from Merseyside says on here.

But sadly, Stalin's fisrt plan lasted seven years and killed millions of Ukrainians in the name of industrialisation and “dekulakization” (forcing the “richer” farmers to surrender to collectivisation and a redistribution of labour and grain to the cities).

It never ends does it?

Penny lane...