Quirks, strangeness and charm… Le Giornate del Cinema Muto 42, Day Seven

And so, to penultimate day and, as the minstrel sang, “I’m still standing…” or rather sitting, a lot, in the dark, watching. Today there was charm Sonia Delaunay’s innovative shaping and it was approaching midnight when Mae Murray moved to a convent, taught children, had her ankles runover by truck and, oh my, was inspired to take up her bee-stung lips and walk! If there was such a thing as a typical day at Le Giornate, this wouldn’t have been it, at all.

 

So, let’s start at the very ending as that’s a very good place to start as dozens of cinemutophiles (TM P. Hutchinson of Worthing) staggered out of the Verdi trying to process what we’d just seen with Circe, the Enchantress (1924) which progressed from a saucy mythical entree, Circe/Cecilie Brunner (Murray) turning men into pigs (I know, right?), through nightclub low-jinks with her gaggle of male admirers, to the aforementioned redemption sequence. It was undoubtedly great fun and considering it was a lost film for so long, a miracle of mythical proportions that it exists at all especially as it shows us so much of why Mae was a true star.

 

While she is more than capable of inhabiting the role of an enchantress ancient and modern, we also get a chance to see her dance as well as pout and she can dance having, as Artemis Willis puts it in the catalogue notes, pioneered the path from Ziegfeld Girl to Hollywood star. There’s one number influenced by modern ballet – say Denishawn or even Isadora Duncan – then a dance with a jazz ensemble. This is American cabaret and there’s even a moment when Cecilie jumps into a water feature in the club and her men follow her. There’s one gay character, not even coded and there’s William Haines too who always has a twinkle!

 

Interesting that this festival has feature both Billy and his friend Eleanor Boardman who won the "New Faces of 1922" contest and travelled to Hollywood together. He’s good as Cecilie’s most passionately lost paramour surrounded by harder hearts in the group all still unable to resist their lady’s allure. It’s only when surgeon Peter Van Martyn (James Kirkwood, Sr.) arrives on the scene that things change as he’s got the moral strength to stand apart and Cecilie finds that very attractive.

 

The film has some ten minutes missing but the sense remains even if the final turn-around is a jolt. It matters not as Murray the Enchantress is in full bloom. Willis quotes Florence Lawrence writing in the Los Angeles Examiner, “The story…gives the piquant star a vivid and chameleon-like characterization. She is alternately the spoiled and petted darling of a circle of rich adorers, and the wistful woman, beseeching attention from the one worthwhile man in the whole of her acquaintance.”

 

Accompaniment was from a spirited trio comprising Günter Buchwald (piano and violin), Aaron van Oudenallen (sax and woodwind) plus Frank Bockius who I believe is a percussionist and without whom no GCM 42 day is complete!

 

Peter C. Leska, Mady Christians and Diana Karenne

Eine Frau Von Format (1928) proved to be the most delightful of any of the Ruritanian stream, with a superb performance from Mady Christians which caused my hardened heart to melt with a pitch perfect performance of wit and intelligence, timing and a smile that charms as it disarms. Christians enjoyed a long and successful career including as Priscilla Queen of the Deserters in The Runaway Princess (1929) and many more. She’s got such presence and whilst obviously not a stunner in the manner of Russian diva, Diana Karenne, she draws the eye with expressiveness and energy.

 

She plays Dschilly Zileh Bey the ambassador from Türkisien who has been sent to negotiate the acquisition of an island from Princess Petra of Silistria (Karenne, who it was good to see again after the rediscoveries of her work screened at this year’s Cinema Ritrovato Bologna). In this she must compete with the ambassador from neighbouring Illyria, Count Géza von Tököly (Peter C. Leska) and we’re into classic romcom territory from the get-go. The Count tries to woo Princess Petra and moves her reception forward a day so that he can be alone with the Princess, but Dschilly responds by reversing that and leaving him to think on his feet as guests arrive in their dozens to rain on his private parade. This is only the beginning of a light-hearted competition that demonstrates its operatic origins as it makes light of the diplomatic love triangle, if that’s what it is?

 

In their catalogue essay, Amy Sargeant and Jay Weissberg quote a positive review from La Dépêche (02.08.1930) “It’s a lively, graceful work, with all the colour of Viennese operetta and in a thoroughly modern vein. It takes place in the midst of enchanting locales, on a marvellous island that bears a strong resemblance to those of Lake Maggiore, and the perfume of the Borromean Islands wafts ceaselessly in the luminous air.”

 

Meg Morley provided her own musical travelogue with accompaniment that was as airily in touch with the film’s tone as well as location in time and space. There were some sumptuous recurring motifs and the playing generated the same good humour as Mady on screen, in terms of all-round engagement a festival highlight!

Hope Hampton

Now, you’ve either got or you haven’t got style and for sure Sonia Delaunay’s stands out a mile. Here we had a collection of short films showing her design as well as her influence in the case of Ballet Mécanique (1924), that classic of cubist/Dada cinema from Fernand Léger, a member of the Delaunay circle, along with Dudley Murphy. Then there was striking haute couture in two-colour Kodachrome which highlighted model and actress Hope Hampton’s shock of red hair as much as the designs from Vionnett, Poiret et al. Hampton was in The Gold Diggers (1923), James Cruze’s Hollywood (1923), The Truth About Women (1924) and fair few others into the talkies.

 

Others shorts from Germaine Dulac and Marcel Duchamp were shown along with L’ÉLÉLÉGANCE (1926) directed by Sonia Delaunay and Robert Delaunay and The Delaunay Keller-Dorian Colour Test (1928). All of which made my chance meeting with some friends in Venice and our visit to the Peggy Guggenheim Collection make artistic sense of the last eight days. Cinema was part of the artistic innovation of the early part of the last century and there was a boldness and dynamism which still strikes as “new” and challenging in 2023.

 

Masterclass student Andrea Goretti provided artful accompaniment! Welcome on board.

 

Now for the quickfire round:

 

The slapstick special today included Modern Love (1929) which gave a rare chance to hear Charley Chase talk, the film was an early sound film with a mix of sound and music with title cards before we get to dialogue. Charley was in his usual mess as his dress designing wife (Kathryn Crawford) has had to keep their relationship secret and then gets an offer of work in Paris with a new customer, François Renault played by the super Jean Hersholt. It’s a fine mess but you know our hero will win through and it’ll be a lot of fun in the process. It must be said that this hybrid format was not that popular at the time and the recording quality of the voices was not hi-fidelity, age or original process/both.

 

The Oath of the Sword (1914) a story of a Japanese family whose son goes to study in the USA and who pledges an oath with his beloved to return on his return. Time passes, as does he with flying colours but all this Americanisation is as nothing when he returns to find she has married a US airman… cue the sword and that oath…

 

Harlem Sketches (1935) directed by Leslie Bain was a slice of cinéma verité showing the black community of Harlem in New York City. The title cards talked of their “miserable existence” and there is much poverty in evidence as well as defiance and humour. The film was banned in some American states, including Ohio, whose censorship commission turned down the print: “Reason for Rejection: Showing Negroes of Harlem banded together in groups carrying banners displaying Communistic ideas. Advocates equal social rights for Negroes.”

 

That future the artists in Europe could see wasn’t coming anytime soon to certain communities, was it?

 

Mady makes her point.

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

Powderpuff picaresque… The Loves of Casanova (1927), with Stephen Horne, BFI, London Film Festival 2017

The BFI’s Bryony Dixon describes The Loves of Casanova as “… an exercise in ebullience…”, whilst Lenny Borger called it a “"Europudding" – albeit with plenty of flavour… and it’s hard to disagree. You could watch this film as a kind of biopic either of the life of Giacomo Casanova or of Ivan Mozzhukhin, possibly both… but either way there’s no absence of charisma.

The film was shot partially in Venice and it was good to revisit the location so soon after I recently returned there, albeit 90 years before… (it hasn’t changed much, but then I doubt it ever does, a little lower perhaps?). Entirely because sumptuous locations just are not enough, Casanova also features a veritable “kitchen sink” delivery of mise-en-scène throughout and not least for the climactic scenes with stunning Pathecolour during Venice carnival.

The camera is right amongst the action too, hand-held in Gance style, pulling the viewer into this glorious world of masked balls, illicit liaisons and romance… with a guy who can’t say no. There’s Casanova sword-fighting a dozen men, a colourized river-rescue, massed pursuit by gondola and horse and sleigh pursuit in the snow with everyone but the lead – audience and supporting players – in shock as our hero keeps his cool home and away…

Ivan Mozzhukhin: ridicule is nothing to be scared of

Bryony said the film was an attempt to out-Hollywood, Hollywood and it certainly has a good go. A tinsel-titled Casanova is followed by exploding fireworks and then dreams of dancers in Venice as our hero is revealed in his luxurious quarters. He is woken by his two, attractive blonde “assistants” just in time for the first bailiff of the day to attempt to arrest him.

The men find a famous dancer, La Corticelli (a shockingly topless Rina De Liguoro) in Casanova’s bedroom and the host then performs “magic”, persuading Menucci to accept his book of spells in exchange for the debt. Then we meet little Djimi (Raymond Bouamerane) who is the servant of Baroness Stanhope (Olga Day), he asks a man on the street where Casanova lives and all the windows in the street are opened by women who know the answer. The mood is playful, Russian whimsy filtered through French style as young Djimi plays tag with Casanova’s two assistants and then is chased by Baron Stanhope (Dimitri Dimitriev) as he tries to deliver a message from C to B… she reads the letter and then throws the torn pieces out of the window only for her husband to catch both them and their meaning.

A bit blue: Rina De Liguoro and friends

Next to a grand banquet in which Corticelli is host and we also meet a lieutenant of the Russian Imperial Guard, Gregori Orloff (Paul Guidé) who has plans of his own… slipping round the back to watch the women dance naked as Casanova and the rest stare at the shadows their bodies cast on a screen… It is SO saucy and, when our hero picks up his favourite dancer – Corticelli of course – she is clearly naked (of course). Ooh, la, la!! Or, as they say in Liverpool, ooh, la, la, la…

But the Lieutenant is also interested and duels with Casanova but the dancer decides that they should be friends…  And that’s only the first half an hour!

Chased out of Venice on jumped up charges of sorcery, Casanova heads North and, in Austria, encounters Duc de Bayreuth (Albert Decoeur) and his party which includes a pretty-faced boy, Bellino… Casanova intervenes to stop a group of drunks abusing an old fiddle player showing that he’s a much Robin Hood as Don Juan and Bellino seems strangely impressed.

About a boy? Jenny and Ivan

During the night Casanova hears odd noises and Volkoff shows our hero imagining hazy images to go with the sounds as he leans, in sharp focus, against the door. There’s something afoot and the great lover once more springs to the rescue to find that Bellino is not at all a boy and that the Duc is trying to have his evil way with her… Thérèse (Jenny Jugo).

A dramatic rescue is cut short as sheer weight of men and horses overcomes Casanova… will he ever find her again? Here again there are some great shots from Volkoff and his team of cinematographers, Fédote Bourgasoff, Léonce-Henri Burel and Nikolai Toporkoff. With a camera pointing up as men on horseback race overhead you are reminded of the director’s work on Gance’s Napoleon.

He and Djimi are rescued by a passing stage coach containing M. Dupont who is en route to the court of Catherine II with the latest in lingerie and dresses… Casanova takes his stock and his passport – needs must and he has another court to conquer as Ivan and Alex make a dream return home.

Suzanne Bianchetti and Catherine's great, big train...

In St Petersburg we find Dr Mabuse himself, Rudolf Klein-Rogge, highly impressive as a fractious Tsar Peter III and Suzanne Bianchetti as a serene Catherine II… The queen takes rather well to her new friend and his fashions and as Orloff spots his old mucker, the two remember their pledge to remain friends just in time… and, soon, there are more important matters afoot. The Tsar is going too far, and regime change is in the air, he humiliates Catherine once too often and Casanova comes to her aid as the Empress’ forces re-align the gender balance at the top of government.

Catherine, who is pretty great, arranges a ball to celebrate and it’s here that Casanova spots Maria, Duchess de Mari (Diana Karenne) … He just can’t help himself “selecting” and it’s always “at first sight” as well… He’s a gentleman but he is more lion than human if you want to get zoological.

Rudolf Klein-Rogge and Paul Guidé

At the ball Empress Catherine has perhaps the longest train in movie history… the ensuing dance is a cauldron of human emotion with the director showing the faces of the main players, Casanova looking at Maria, Catherine, put out, gazing on with jealous concern, the Duke of Mari uneasy as his wife is romanced and Orloff concerned, as always, for his queen… The camera follows the movement around the huge ballroom and it’s another glorious set piece.

There’s more to come after Casanova and Maria escape from Russia and her husband and it’s back to Venice for a colourised denouement and more tough choices for our hero on the romance-front: it’s unrelenting and could easily carry on for Casanova in an endless loop of over-lapping love stories.

Diana Karenne and Ivan Mozzhukhin

Casanova is a dream of escape from responsibility and not just a tale of amorous addiction. Casanova always easily evades the officials and gallops off to love again …he always has a way out just as he'll always - nearly - get captured by his heart.

Stephen Horne had a ball with this, creating over two hours of musical variety in a four-hander with Ivan’s rhythmic mime. The plot and pacing may occasionally wander but Stephen held theme and tone driving the narrative onwards in characterful interplay with the lead’s darting eyes and feline grace.

As Bryony Dixon said, she could have picked any number of Ivan’s French films of this period – a golden streak for Mozzhukhin and Alexandre Volkoff, but this one is the most lavish and light-hearted and clearly all concerned were deadly serious about the project. It made us laugh and long for an era of powderpuff decadence.