Live Life Smiling… Le Giornate del Cinema Muto 2026, Day Eight

Swedish smiles highlight the last day.

 

I’ve been coming to Le Giornate del Cinema Muto for just under a decade so I’m relatively new round here but even so I’ve seen a lot of silent film – it’s just a social habit… I can control it. I’m not an addict or if I am I’m a functioning one… Anyway, there are always surprises every year and who would have thought that three lost films and another showing a Swedish family taking the mickey out of our opening gala night’s hero, Douglas Fairbanks, would be one of the highlights of the last day and, indeed, the whole week.

 

The session was in celebration of actress/director Pauline Brunius who we had already seen playing the Field Marshall’s femme fatale wife who runs off with Gosta Ekman in her husband John W Brunius’ comedy Gyurkovicsarna (SE 1920). Sadly very few examples of her directing work survive by the SFI’s Magnus Rosborn was not going to let that get in his way and proceeded to describe the films with productions stills and whatever snippets that remain and, through his wit and fabulous comic timing, he was able to give us a real feel for these film’s style and comedy.

 

He talked us through DE LÄCKRA SKALDJUREN (SE 1920), OMBYTTA ROLLER (SE 1920), HERR VINNERS STENÅLDERSDRÖM (SE 1924) and then showed us the whole of Lev Livet Leende (SE 1921) on wonderful 35mm from the SFI archive. Brunius had begun in the Royal Swedish Ballet in 1891 but moved into theatre and from there into film. Interestingly, as with say Gerda Lundequist (who made just two films, Gosta Berling Saga being one) she preferred the stage to the studio and, unlike her fellow ballerina, Jenny Hassleqvist, she never rose to prima roles and sustained a parallel career in dance and film.

 

Lev Livet Leende (SE 1921) is a loving send up of Douglas Fairbank’s cheerfulness and positivity. He had published an autobiography, Making Life Worth While, in 1918 and the family take his motto to the ultimate conclusion and there are some impressive impressions of the Fairbanks fizzog!

 

Stephen Horne provided accompaniment for the fragments on the first two, the seven minutes of the second and the whole of the last and provided his own coherent backdrop to these tales of the Vinner family series that ran from 1920-24. Seven were made but only one survives complete with fragments of the three above.

 

George O'Briem: thank God the two halves fit together!!

The Big Western Finish: The Iron Horse (US 1924; 132 min)

 

Time to address the huge George O’Brien in the room and John Ford’s lyrical, folkloric tale of the building of the trans-continental railway in the USA. We watched the Photoplay restoration from 1984 and with John Lanchbery’s score performed by the Orchestra da Camera di Pordenone conducted by Ben Palmer. This was a powerful performance from a full orchestra but I couldn’t shake the feeling that the score – being just 60 years after the film and 42 away from now – was somehow stuck in the middle.

 

Every time an Irish, Chinese of Native American made an appearance there was a little musical reference to their cultural origin followed by a snatch of the American Anthem, Yankee Doodle Dandy and The Yellow Rose of Texas. Now, this could well have been intended to highlight the many immigrants and natives who helped forge this great nation but, in these days when cultural origins are not seen as a good in of themselves, it raised a few hackles for me.

 

You can’t imagine the undertrained and scruffy ranks of ICE agents cheering this film? And, in terms of the blood count, a lot of native Americans were despatched in the name of progress here… not to mention the impact in flora and fauna. America’s God-given right to conquest is viewed a little differently now and The Right can’t really complain given the bloody history Westerns have never shied away from presenting.

 

As for the film… it’s complicated just like its director John Ford, a Republican who apparently briefly appeared as a Klan member in Birth of a Nation? Well, Ford’s baddy here is actually a white man who incites the Cheyenne whilst the Pawnee are working with the white men and there are many films which came after this one which dealt a less even hand to the Native Americans although I’m not saying it's twenty first century politically correct. That's an un-historical approach and therefore daft: everything in context.

 

Chief John Big Tree is un-credited as the Cheyenne Chief but Ford paints his tribe as heroic in their own way… mislead by white greed. As the above still shows, there was respect and he avoids Griffiths’ simplistic view and need to demonise.

 

That’s not to say that The Iron Horse isn't entirely objective... there’s some sugar in there as, not for the first time or the last, Hollywood improves History, although some would say merely by celebrating US history you are painting to rosy a picture of a century of ethnic cleansing and injustice across the board. But, within that context, it does pay tribute to the millions of ordinary people who fought to make a better land.

 

At the start we see a man called Brandon (James Gordon) who has a dream to build a railroad across the USA, his friend Thomas Marsh (Will Walling) is not convinced and thinks it’s all moonshine. Brandon’s son Davy and Marsh’s daughter Miriam play games based on surveying - the acorn has not fallen far from the tree. Brandon and his son set off as Miriam cries and their other friend, Abraham Lincoln (Charles Edward Bull) tells Marsh that one day men like him will be building Brandon’s dream…

 

Cut forward many years and Abraham has become president – just like we all knew he would, he had something about him... In spite of the Civil War raging, he approves the construction of a single railway and, as predicted, Marsh is one of the men working to make this happen as the Union Pacific Railway Company builds westward and the Central Pacific heads east…

 

It’s dangerous work with the constant threat of Native American raids during one of which a pony express rider comes bolting out of the dust followed by dozens of Indians, he heads towards a locomotive carrying Marsh’s team and somehow managers to scramble on board. It turns out to be Davy, who’s grown up (as strapping George O'Brien) and fighting for his father’s dream. He and Miriam (now Madge Bellamy) have instant sparks a-flying but for some reason she’s engaged to Peter Jesson (Cyril Chadwick) who apart from being old enough to be her dad looks absolutely like a wrong ‘un.

 

If the first half of the film sets up the “history” – perhaps almost too forensically – the sense is all about the human elements as betrayals start to happen and Davy is almost killed by those who would keep the railway longer and through their lands. It’s a civil engineering thriller as well as a how America was made to be epic and can still be read on a number of levels including the real human cost.

 

Looking at the actual history of the Transcontinental project the impact was severe in terms of the workers and the indigenous population. This was an exercise in expanding the white man’s economic opportunities by and large…

 

"We must act with vindictive earnestness against the Sioux, even to their extermination, men, women, children." General Sherman

 

The Native Americans are shown as battling the construction in the film, with the aid of some traitorous white men… but the fact remains that many hundreds lost their lives and tribes lost territory with previous agreements being as nothing to the need to forge ahead with rail.

 

According to Chinese American Historian, Ellen Lee, writing for the BBC and elsewhere.

 

-          Some 20,000 Chinese workers were involved with the Central Pacific Railroad (CPRR) failing to hire enough white workers

-          around 1,200 of whom died of avalanches, explosions, and other accidents

-          After the construction was completed in 1869, “…every effort was made to eradicate any and all people of Chinese descent from the United States via local and state laws, mob attacks and lynchings.”

 

Even for Ford’s beloved Irish there was a cost with some 3,000 Irish labourers working on the Union Pacific portion of the Transcontinental Railroad Between1865 and 1869. Hundreds died from explosions, landslides, accidents, and disease during construction.

 

So, Ford may have shown the immigrants co-operation on the project but as usual the reality was more mixed.

 

The film’s climax shows the completion of both sets of tracks culminating in a re-enactment of the driving of the golden spike at Promontory Summit on May 10, 1869. Replicas of the two locos involved, the Union Pacific No. 119 and Jupiter are used, even though they are claimed to be the originals (which were scrapped in 1910).

 

A country “united” by rail… and surely will Miriam and Davy will suit. But today this film leaves the taste of iron fillings in your mouth.

 

Talking of history… The Spies Who Came in From the Dull

 

Marshall Neilan’s Diplomacy (US 1920) is all about a piece of paper and is the most plodding of confections. The entire action seems to involve people on either side of the pre-war divide, trying to prevent a crucial peace agreement from being delivered to the allies. Now, you might think that there’s more than one copy of such an important document and that with so many of the recipients in the film, that is shouldn’t be too hard to deliver this news but no… there are devious counter agents of no fixed allegiance who want to make mischief.

 

Too many times .this boils down to a forensic examination of very little  - people hide in rooms and papers are stolen before being revealed and then one of the super spies is revealed by a bluff that an envelope contained a confession from the key conspirator that his accomplice slowly tears open – and I mean very slowly – before revealing the full story.

 

I work in marketing and publishing and even I know this is not really spying (I’ve seen all the John Le Carre’s) and this seems a) far to slow to work and b) a paper trail with far too many points of failure.  

 

Accompaniment cam from Masterclass student Lulu Chen who did a fabulous job with what was in front of her. I look forward to seeing and hearing more of her in the future!

 

Phantom Tram Ride of the Day Award: Tram Ride Through Rochdale (GB (1905)

 

Sagar Mitchell and James Kenyon’s 4'59" of 35mm magic remains a powerful document of the times. It has been snowing in Rochdale, as it so often does, and its denizens are walking gingerly across the road. It adds an extra element to the scenes of normally sure-footed Lancastrians as well as a fairy-tale dusting to one of the most deprived areas of the towns of near the Pennines.

 

Philip Carli accompanied and I’ll go t’ th’ foot o’ our stairs, he was wearing a fine period suit and silk cravat!

 

Italia Almirante Manzini and Andrea Habay

Is there a Diva in the House? La grande passione (1922)

 

“This adaptation of  Alessandro Varaldo’s novel… is excellent. The subject itself was illogical in some respects … [yet Mario] Almirante has lent it poetry and beauty, striving for as much humanity as possible to make the  narrative appear more real..” 

Carlo Sircana, La Rivista Cinematografica (25.03.1924).

 

Italia Almirante Manzini was most certainly available and gave one of her most forceful performances of the week and in another of her major successes. Directed by Mario Almirante this one was a complex tug of love involving Italia’s character Maria, her much older husband Carli (Joaquin Carrasco) and their two children, her ex-lover and general bad sort Cesare (Joaquin Carrasco) along with a new man who sees her in trouble and wants to help André (Andrea Habay) … Oh, Italia what have you gotten yourself into now?!

 

It's a very well-paced film as the full entanglements of Maria’s life are only gradually revealed and all this only really after she catches the attention of the well-intentioned stranger, Andre, who sees her in an emotional turmoil and wants to help. Soon enough he gets in deeper and when her heartless lover returns to the picture, a duel is called and Maria faces losing one or both. Ultimately hers will be the choice that breaks the fewest hearts…

 

A new performance by Italia Almirante Manzini is always a brilliant new assertion of the art of Italian cinema; but perhaps never as in this film has the great actress been able to conquer the public…”

“Arro” in La Rivista Cinematografica (10-25.05.1924),

 

Gabriel Thibaudeau accompanied with some marvellous flourishes and a real feel for the dramatic love on screen. One of the best of Manzini’s films this week!

 

 

Encore plus de problèmes à la scierie: La Glace à trois faces (FR 1927)

 

Three women were in love with a man.

But was he in love with any one of them?

Fitting to end this week on a riddle or at least a film by Jean Epstein who always required his audience to complete the story either emotionally or intellectually. In this case the tale of one man and three women… and the director makes it absolutely unclear that we won’t know the exact nature of the relationships between the four people. So. We need to watch carefully.

 

An adaptation of the eponymous short story by Paul Morand, also referred to as Three-Sided Mirror, this features a young adventurer (René Ferté) and his relationships with three women:

 

1.       a beautiful Englishwoman, Pearl (Olga Day)

2.       a Russian artist, Athalia (Suzy Pierson_ and

3.       a charming factory worker, Lucie (Jeanne Helbling)

 

The relationships are shown in order with the director’s usual oblique style and we experience the good, the unsure and the diffident as life moves on for the young man with no cares in the world. Whatever happens… it just goes to show. It just goes to show…

 

John Sweeney accompanied and he was well aware of Jean’s wayward ways.

 

And that's it for another year of the ITY Daily Pordenone Blog! Thank you for reading! Apologies for the vast amount of words... but it is always thought provoking and inspiring.

Thank you too for The Queen of All This, Pamela Hutchinson over at Silent London - excellent work there as is usual and she remains the gold standard!! 

See you all in 2027 at Le Giornate del Cinema Muto #46!

 

 

A symphony of two humans… Sunrise (1927), SFFP Restoration Premier, Il Cinema Ritrovato #40

Sometimes you come into these events after a hectic period working and preparing, doing the things you won’t be doing for eight days of potential self-indulgence. Sometimes you get frazzled by the early morning starts and “flight discipline”, maybe you don’t like Ryan Air or, just maybe you get snagged for 90 minutes of passport control? But, as Uncle George said, Here Comes the Sun and, indeed, here came a Sunrise unlike any I’d ever seen before.

My history with FW Murnau’s film starts with home media – Eureka I think – but I didn’t see it on screen as I was waiting for live accompaniment and, as it’s part sound in common versions, which didn’t happen until Elizabeth Jane Baldrey played magical harp accompaniment in the Early Music Centre in York. It was perfect. A decade later and those excellent folk at the San Francisco Film Preserve – who are on some kind of incredible run at the moment – have restored the film from various sources* and it not only looks different, it is different featuring more sunrise than previous versions.

It was unveiled on the first night of the 40^th edition of Bologna’s Il Cinema Ritrovato and it was one of those times when even the beauty of the Piazza Maggiore faded into the background as you lost yourself in the magic of Murnau with this fable of human frailty and love, featuring extraordinary performances from Janet Gaynor and George O’Brien. George dwarfs Janet and Murnau uses this to his advantage getting the most from O’Brien’s impressive physicality – all awkward angles and shadowy purpose, with surprising tenderness to counterpoint the vein popping rage and passion you’d expect.

George. Images from San Francisco Film Preserve

Even with that wig – and it’s an important prop – Gaynor delicate emotional radiance is indeed Oscar worthy and without her the brutality of her husband’s betrayal and callous connivance would not be so hard felt by audiences over the last century – it is a timeless crime and reflects the guilt we all carry at some point (not drowning but ditching…). Part of the play is also that the audience shares in the husband’s desire to experience something new in the city, perhaps these two were a marriage made in a small town with little choice? Maybe they are holding each other back or, just maybe, they’re the perfect partnership poisoned by soulless desire – sexual and societal: the tram to nowhere?

But it was also Timothy Brock and his 80-piece orchestra – maybe more I stopped counting – who really blew the roof off (I know it’s an open square but you know…) with a truly powerful score that had so much quality of emotional phrasing, thematic shifts and unexpected tonality – rich dense power chords illustrating the looming dangers, the heart wrenching strings of passion and despair, a piano seemingly under assault at certain points and all of the smart stylistic references you could want.

This was richly satisfying music, and the Orchestra del Teatro Comunale ill Bologna were having a time of it – lost in their own music - all dressed in formal wear on a day when the city left many of us broiled and sautéed… and yet it was entwined with the narrative, waxing with the richest of silent cinematic emotionalism and wanning with ferocity, murderous intent and extreme peril. A drunken pig was chased though a dance hall by incongruous violins and Margaret Livingstone’s was the amplified vamp, her allure, never more clearly on show, swirling above the conflicted output of an orchestra under instructions to pull us in but show us no way out.

It felt like watching the film for the first time – it really did – and there’s no higher tribute to this combination of the restoration and the score, but what more could you ask, to see and feel this film again as something new and unpredictable. Lost in music, enjoying the silence. A perfect Bologna evening and a reported audience of seven thousand - live cinema in the hottest week of the year!

It was a day for women falling into water – is this a separate strand?** – as we had both festival poster girl Barbara Stanwyck and Gloria Swanson (the IT Girl of 2026 for many reasons: Queen Kelly!!)

The first was in frank Capra's Ladies of Leisure (1930) which features a powerhouse performance from Ritrovato poster girl Barbara Stanwyck who plays Kay Arnold who is living the life of [insert period code words for sex worker] when tiring of one yacht-based gentlemen’s event, rows to freedom only to meet an artist Jerry Strong (Ralph Graves) who gives her a lift. He resolves to paint her, for no other reason than to show the “Hope” he feels in her.

Initially it’s all about the work, and long hours of him asking her to gaze upwards at imagined stars – it’s only a ceiling she replies – but gradually she falls for his creative approach and, inevitably, her very presence is more than enough to upset the elevated circles in which he moves, his prudish parents and his trophy wife. There’s splendid support from Marie Provost as Kay’s best buddy and leisure lady but the jokes about her weight are hard to watch.

Tom and Gloria back in time

For Gloria it was not just her character, Mary, but everyone in the ship who crash into a lonely tropical island…after her pappa Lord Loam (Theodore Roberts) takes his family and servants on a cruise. Male and Female is an adaptation of JM Barrie’s stage play, The Admirable Crichton from 1902 and you suspect that the themes of class and entitlement examined by the play’s dislocation of the “natural order” were played down as DeMille went for his now familiar targets. This is exemplified by the re-titling – “now, why didn’t I think of that…” Barrie commented at the time.

Yacht-wrecked with no service operations to provide for them the clueless aristos have to rely on good old Irish ingenuity as head butler William Crichton (Thomas Meighan) emerges as the handiest man and the natural leader. His position in this new society draws the attention of Mary and the two share a bizarre fantasy of themselves in a mythical Byzantian dream in which Swanson famously got ready for her claws-up with an actual lion.

In both films, class plays a part, and love is not enough to bridge the gap… or so it seems. JM Barrie’s tale leaves things open by the admirable Crighton has certainly moved on to find himself in a country once called the United States of America.

All this on Day One… more to come as we plod the streets in search of fresh fruit, hot drinks and new celluloid excess… In The City!

 

 

* Restored in 4K in 2026 by San Francisco Film Preserve at BFI National Archive, Cinémathèque royale de Belgique, Cineric, Haghefilm and L’Immagine Ritrovata laboratories, from 35mm elements provided by BFI National Archive and MoMA – The Museum of Modern Art. Funding provided by Sunrise Foundation for Education and the Arts and San Francisco Film Preserve Preservation Partners

This version runs 94 minutes matching the original runtime of the 1927 Fox Movietone theatrical release but upping the quality in ways that demand rewatching!

 

**There were indeed many more films across the week featuring scenes of women falling in water with surely a missed opportunity not to include Asta Nielsen’s Hamlet although the actress takes a splash in the restored er fremde Vogel (1911) directed by Urban Gad.

 

 

All around the World… Le Giornate del Cinema Muto 43, Day One

 

After the rain-sodden beauty of Venice, the ancient charms of the altogether dryer Treviso waterways I finally arrived in Pordenone to find it filled with friends from countries too numerous to mention. On days like this, “Pords” is indeed the centre of the silent cinematic world and as we renewed acquaintances we were also to be treated to a world-wide series of screenings, all united, also, by their silence. Now, as much as ever, we can only appreciate any opportunity to bring people, places and creative expression together. One medium, one mind… sympatico!

 

Early Cinema – The Biograph Project with Donald Sosin

 

We begin with everyone’s favourite early film director based on opinion polls from 1952. We’re less tolerant of David Wark Griffith’s beliefs and convictions these days but there’s no doubting his part in the history of film even if that is endlessly contested in terms of politics and technique: you can’t divide those two things as easily as might be hoped. Still, the people he worked with, the things he did do to popularise films, we are probably more certain of these in his early period than after 1915…

 

Film Preservation Society is currently working to preserve and restore all Biograph films directed by D. W. Griffith between 1908 and 1913 – around 460! and here were the results of their work from the Griffith get-go. We had three shorts from 1908 each around twelve minutes and each displaying the prevailing views of some folk at the time and how. Children were stolen by “gypsies” in Griffith’s debut The Adventures of Dollie and also by native Americans in his fifth film (the third surviving?) The Redman and the Child although the child is then rescued by another.

 

Griffith’s second film was Fight for Freedom (1908) and this involves a Mexican murderer called Pedro and his attempts to evade capture after a card game turns violent… These are the very beginnings for Griffith, Victorian melodramas told with technical flair aided by the brilliant cameraman Billy Bitzer. There’s more to come every morning and it’s an education for those of us who have only seen his features screened.

 

Dollie gets hidden in a barrel by naughty people

Sicilia Landscapes with Stephen Horne

 

Travel broadens the mind… that’s why I’m here! This year’s Festival is focusing on Sicily which is a place I really must visit having fallen short previously, how it looks now compared to Arturo Ambrosio’s Sicilia Illustrata (1907) would be fascinating to see. This was a dreamy way to cover the subject with films from 1907 to 1929 often covering the same locations showing the island’s rich antiquity and pushing Palermo high up my bucket list – it has to be warmer than Venice right?

 

Stephen Horne accompanied with lyrical wafts from piano and flute across this most un-Italianate environment and helped us share in the wonder of a past revealed. My grandparents were alive when these films were made, how different their lives in North Western England… almost like a different continent, and a different century.

 

Ivan Koval-Samborsky and Ada Vojtsik

The Forty-First (1926), Mauro Colombis, DCP

 

Yakov Protazanov directed before and after the Russian Revolution and I’ve watched quite a number of his films from the Departure of a Grand Old Man (1912) – about Leo Tolstoy - The Queen of Spades (1916), Father Sergius (1918) to, of course, Aelita (1924) and it’s interesting to see him address the Russian Civil War in this film. The war lasted from just after the October revolution to October 1922 and involved the new Bolshevik government’s Red Army fighting anti-revolutionary White Russians, supported by the US, UK and twelve other countries, as well as a third set of separatist forces from Poland, Lithuania, Ukraine and others. One of the most complex conflicts of the century estimates of the causalities range from seven to twelve million with millions more displaced.

The story here is set in Central Asia with a Red Army troop being pursued under the most hostile of conditions by a detachment of whites… it’s essentially a story of love versus duty with the Red Army sniper Maryutka (Ada Vojtsik) only slightly wounding her intended 41^st kill, a White lieutenant aristocrat Govorukha-Otrok played by the dashing Ivan Koval-Samborsky. He’s taken capture and the Reds have to decide how to extract the information he is holding, he’s sent off to their headquarters but ends up abandoned on an island with just Maryutka as their feelings ebb and flow.

 

It's a stark film which feels politically vague – certainly four years after the war ended – and very focused on the two main characters, often in close up or, in one memorable shot, sitting side by side stripped to the waist as their clothes dry on the fire. Filmed in the Karakum Desert in Turkmenistan and the Apsheron peninsular of Azerbaijan, it has stunning locations and as Peter Bagrov says in his catalogue essay, it may be the only soviet-era film of the silent period to portray the civil war as tragedy rather than victory. And so it goes.

Zítari

Latin American shorts with José María Serralde Ruiz

We travelled again with some glorious fragments including nitrate preserved fireworks in a collection of fragments from Salvador Toscano including the celebrations in 1910 of Mexican independence and the revolutionary leader Emiliano Zapata, alive and gruesomely dead. Sergei Eisenstein’s El Desastre en Oaxaca showed the deadly results of a Mexican earthquake in 1931 and then we had a wordless mystery called Abismos (1931) with Salvador Pruneda prefiguring David Lynch in terms of narrative strangeness.

 

Miguel Contreras Torres, Zítari (The Temple of the Thousand Serpents) (1931) concluded the section with a mix of silent and sound examinations of the unknowable history of Mayans, Aztecs and Toltec ruins. I was reminded of the early works of Erik von Daniken who suggested that these alien artefacts were actually constructed by extra-terrestrials but nothing is more mysterious than the earthly mysteries of these cultures.

 

Dinty (1920) with John Sweeney

This was nominally a vehicle for the remarkable young performer Wesley Barry it is also notable for providing one of Colleen Moore’s biggest breaks. Moore’s extraordinary energy comes through as she plays a young “colleen” (how many times?) who leaves Ireland for America where her new husband is making a new life. She’s striking and vibrant in these scenes but when fate takes a nasty twist and she falls ill with tuberculosis, she offers up one of the most believable performances in her sick bed. There’s a stillness to her expression, hardly the energy or will to even smile at her son and there’s no flicker of hope in her drained eyes. That’s acting and that’s range; and there’d be far more to come.

 

At the time 13-year-old Wesley was the star and he’s also very good, displaying a winning youthful pluck that would lead to a string of “our gang” type successes throughout the twenties. He was one of the leading freckled performers of the age, Marshall Neilan being one of the first to deploy them to full effect in Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm – no grease paint and no credit in Mary Pickford’s film, but it got him noticed! Barry grew up and directed films with his most notable effort was The Creation of the Humanoids (1962), apparently Andy Warhol’s favourite film, depicting a future society in which robots are persecuted by the fanatical humans of The Order of Flesh and Blood. I think we know who they are now, don’t we?

 

Anna May Wong, Walter Chung and Aaron Mitchell

Anna May Wong was only two years older than Barry, yet she gets to play Half Moon, not the public house in Putney, but the wife of Wong Tai (an improbable Noah Beery) an opium smuggler and head of a Tong gang. “Different times” yet still uncomfortable to watch. I do however, like Dinty’s multi-ethnic band of younger brothers and paperboys with African American Aaron Mitchell as Alexander Horatius Jones and the Chinese American Walter Chung as Sui Lung. They still have racist epithets mind. Times have changed.

 

John Sweeney, still fresh after playing last night in London – do silent accompanists have warm-up gigs before touring? – and provided thunderous accompaniment to match this film’s shifts in tone.

  

Opening Event 3 Bad Men (1926), Timothy Brock, the Orchestra da Camera di Pordenone

 

Thus we came to the biggest of finishes with a restored 3 Bad Men and a chance for those George O’Brien fans who saw his – very physical - performance in the screening of The Iron Horse at the Kennington Bioscope to appreciate his style all over again. For me this made for a nice connection with Ford having watched The Searchers in 70mm on the big screen in Piazza Maggiore this summer in Bologna – what an extraordinary filmmaker he was and how well did he capture the beauty and brutality of the old West?

 

This is a true Ford epic, produced over a 15-month period out in the desert near Victorville, California and around Jackson Hole, Wyoming. It must have been like a military operation and it was tough with three of the leading actresses hospitalised with paratyphoid fever. Horses and stuntmen may well have been injured in the making of this film especially the huge reconstruction of an actual gold rush as hundreds of horses and waggons race across the desert mirroring the Cherokee Strip land rush of 1893 in King Baggot’s Tumbleweeds (1925) starring William S. Hart and screened here a few years back.

 

I was also reminded of Hell’s Hinges as the bad guys torched a church and the townsfolk burned their bar. It’s a genuinely thrilling film and all of the Western tropes are here connecting to The Searchers and way beyond. The three bad men are "Bull" Stanley (Tom Santschi), "Spade" Allen (Frank Campeau) and Mike Costigan (J. Farrell MacDonald) who are long in the tooth outsiders and gunmen, they begin to change their perspective when they meet a young woman Lee Carlton (Olive Borden looking very modern I have to say) who’s father has just been killed by the gang of local really bad Sheriff Layne Hunter (Lou Tellegen who has electric blue eyes that still shine through the screen).

 

Hearts of gold?

Lee’s love interest is a beefy cowboy Dan O'Malley (smiley George O'Brien who, thankfully keeps his top on) but the real focus is on the three unwise men and their voyage to redemption. Surprisingly the film failed to be a hit at the time with audiences growing tired of epic westerns. What we see now looks like a template but it’s the perfection of existing styles and tropes done as well as they have ever been done though. It stands the test of time.

 

Playing no small part in this was Timothy Brock who conducted the Orchestra da Camera di Pordenone in playing his own new score and it swept us up and back to 1926 and then the 1870s… You can never tire of the new connections and excitement in forging a new musical alliance with these stories and filmmakers and the ghost of John Ford, cast and crew could be heard cheering high up in the rafters along with the rest of us! I was especially thrilled by the powerful brass sections and hints of western musical conventions, all brought through so subtly and coherently in ways that had me moist of eye and on the edge of my seat for the closing section. A magnificent 27 players, or there abouts!

 

I also surprised myself by thoroughly enjoying Babby Peggy rounding up bootleggers as Peg O’ The Mounted (1924), she’s an expressive marvel and more than cheeky if you’re a criminal. Daan van den Hurk rode side-saddle-piano in delight.

 

Everything under the Sun was in tune and the Sun was eclipsed by the Moon... More prog references tomorrow. Probably.

 

Olive winks at George

I also liked Dukken (FR?, 1909-1913)) an amusing short about a young girl trying to avoid doing her chores by outsourcing them to a friend... smart! 

Good Day… Sunrise (1927), with Elizabeth-Jane Baldrey, National Centre for Early Music, York, Yorkshire Silent Festival

I have waited so long to see this film screened and with live accompaniment. Normally the film is shown with its score from the early talkie period - Sunrise being one of the first feature films with a synchronized musical and sound effects soundtrack - but as it is one of the toppermost films of the silent canon, I just had to see it done proper… and I couldn’t have chosen a lovelier venue or a better accompanist.

Elizabeth-Jane Baldrey gets more sonic variation from her harp than you’d expect; not only does she use the frame for percussion (fingers tapping to create the skin-crawling sound of scampering rats for Nosferatu…), she hits groups of strings with her palm to generate atonal power chords, picks off the harmonic sweet spots with alacrity – hard enough on a six-string – and genuinely creates a singular cinematic language from bliss to bedlam. She can even vary the tension on the strings using the foot pedal to create a kind of metallic sound: I have seen the future of accompaniment and it could be 47 string grunge!!

Margaret Livingston

She was on super form with Sunrise, and as with most of us, Janet Gaynor’s toupee aside, feels it is deservedly in high regard. She mixed improvisations with some lovely pre-scoring – honestly, if you don’t feel the fear when big George looms over tiny Janet in the boot, or, darn it, cry a tear, when the two finally re-connect, then you’re probably in the phantom zone. But Baldry doesn’t over-play the positive emotion in the film and the surprise, if you haven’t seen harp accompaniment before, is just how dark it can go.

Murnau’s film is a fable and as such has various elements of traditional Teutonic fairy stories, Grimm though they be. Yes, George O’Brien’s Man falls all too readily under the spell of the Woman form the City (Margaret Livingstone) but she has put a spell on him; a female version of Nosferatu whose silken stockings and knock-out undergarments, make him incapable of reason.

He agrees to kill his sweet wife because he is under the control of this jazz-age succubus, his assignations are even in the swamps, hardly the kind of place to charm a regular flapper: there is demonic power at play and Janet Gaynor’s Wife knows just by the dark shadow cast by her huge husband that all sense of himself has left.

George O'Brien towers over Janet Gaynor

After he pulls back, he repeatedly says “don’t be frightened of me” … a mantra with little persuasion given his actions and it’s only when the couple are thrown together by the alien world of the city that they begin to discover each other again. They go to a hair salon where George gets a shave and Janet hold on to her wig for dear life. When glamourous Jane Winton (a small but key role) arrives to offer the strapping lad a manicure – way to “un-sex” him now – he looks down in horror and declines and it’s another sign that he’s coming to his senses.

The two head to a nightclub after George rescues and escaped piglet (long story) and the band plays a peasant tune allowing the tow to show the townies what real dancing is: it’s a romantic display between two lovers and the jaded jazzers step back in respect. Oddly, one man keeps on replacing the shoulder straps of a slinky lady next to him, almost as if the couple’s dance has raised the bar of morality…

The couple walk through Murnau’s carefully choreographed streets as traffic passes them by and they even end up in an imagined field of blossoms. They are making their own reality.

The City sleeps as they walk

 When they get their photographs taken, it is not in a formal pose but in a clinch the photographer is delighted to capture. He seen enough posturing and recognises unconditional expression when he sees it.

All the other drama is there to enable this sunrise of a new devotion and naturally Murnau creates a universe of unreal perspectives – part set/part camera angles – architecture from a Europe left behind and a city of dreams and impossible structure – models in the foreground and at the back to create impossible depths and the impression of an endless city in constant flow. Amongst this emerge two humans in song, once more in perfect accord despite his mad moments of doubt.

It's interesting to compare with Murnau’s later City Girl which also features a young couple under pressure only they are very much in the real world of economics and more everyday wrong-doings. Sunrise has maybe more in common with the same director’s Faust?

George passes the Jane Winton test...

Technically it is a, frequently astonishing, film with those forced perspectives – gauze was used in the windows of some city scenes in order to reveal the extraordinary elaboration beyond. The two cinematographers, Charles Rosher and Karl Struss, maximise the anxious angularities and there are countless dolly shots as they cut through scenes placing the viewer deep within the heart of the interior stories of lives defined by locations: from the secret meeting with the seductress in the swamps to city streets melting away to reveal those blossoms.

In truth there's so much to discuss about the film, even weighed down by the expectations of its enduring reputation, this is a film with very high levels of content from all parties. I even watched it again just to grab these few images... result hundreds of screen shots that are all mini-marvels in their own right.

The peasant dance is completely free of city formalities - just pure passion

The storm at the end is pathetic fallacy in excelsis completing the lover’s journey with the final test of fate and faith. Elizabeth-Jane’s harp flowed alongside the conflagration and in contrapuntal opposition to thunder-cracks and flash. In her hands the harp is so flexible, fragile and fierce; the perfect instrument for Murnau’s timeless fantasy.

While George and Janet perform so well we shouldn’t overlook the playing of Margaret Livingston who gets her clutches into the country boy but is surely driven by something more than malice; Murnau always had a soft spot for his vampires.

The National Centre for Early Music is situated adjacent to the 11th century St Margaret's Church,  which today was illuminated by the almost unnatural sunlight of a York spring day; sun streaming through the churchyard trees across hundreds of bluebells still in full bloom. A splendid place and one serving York Minster Ale… the scene was well set.

Sunrise is available on Blu-ray and DVD combo from Eureka, but I’d gladly swap all of that for this experience of FWM and E-JB in the EMC at YSFF18.

Full details of the excellent programme for this year is available on the Festival's website. 

No, er, not the hair... it's erm, a very special cut...