Day by Day in Bologna… Il Cinema Ritrovato XXXVIII

Catherine Deneuve is the cover girl from The Umbrellas of Cherbourg

 

OK, after catching up on work and sleep, what was my pick from eight days of relentless cinema, meeting some of the finest cinephiles in the world and an unquantifiable amount of coffee, brioche, ragu and, dear reader I must be honest, Aperol Spritz. In no particular order, these are my personal highlights, from a festival you start off with the best of intentions, 6-7 sessions a day for eight days, what could go wrong? Answer: nothing, the Ritrovato experience you get is the one that you deserve and the one that suits you best!

 10.   Kohlhiesel’s Töchter/Kohlhiesel’s Daughters (1920), with John Sweeney, Il Cinema Modernissimo

 

The funniest thing of the week and a major Lubitsch I had yet to see featuring Emil Jannings acting his age and being charming as part of a couple of chaps trying to woo sisters played by Henny Porter who proves what a superb talent she was, not only with her highly persuasive physicality but also timing. She plays the kind-natured Gretel who wants to marry but, following her father’s instructions, can’t until her elder sister, Liesel (also Henny), weds first. The problem is that Liesel is as bitter as her sibling is sweet and more of a match for either Jannings’ Peter or Gustav von Wangenheim’s Paul by any measure.

It's fast-paced and utterly charming and very much cut from the same cloth as the Ossi Oswalda comedies and those with Pola Negri which the director made before and after. Shot against an alpine background by Theodor Sparkuhl, it was the feel-good hit of the week which I thought I’d missed only to find it re-played on the last day.

John Sweeney’s playing was on another level, i.e., the same at the film’s, and his emphatic flourishes continued to fill the gorgeously restored Modernissimo right till the end of the credits. I trust it won’t be long before we see Lubitsch’s 34^th film (including shorts) screening in London with John playing as a pre-requisite!

Emil Jannings und Henny Porten

9. It’s a family affair… Judex (1915-16), accompanied by many hands, Cinema Mastroianni

On the final Saturday as all the mystery and loose ends were tied up I emerged triumphant from the Mastroianni having watched the whole series and thoroughly enjoyed Louis Feuillade’s sense of drama, his eye for dynamic framing, his direction and team building and his ability to keep the narrative ball rolling even when you think he’s backed himself into a dramatic dead end. That’s 12 episodes and one big Prologue with not a second missed for lack of sleep, breakfast or headache… probably!

It's not quite up there with Les Vampires but it does have the essentiality of Musidora playing Diana Monti aka Marie Verdier, a scheming opportunist who becomes more and more dominant the longer the story unwinds. Judex himself as played by René Cresté, is a goodie version of Fantômas, part Sherlock Holmes, maybe part Eugène-François Vidocq – an actual French criminal turned criminalist - certainly an outlier for The Shadow, Doc Savage and even The Batman. Feuillade had been criticised for glorifying his evil masterminds and so here was one of good intent even if he does kidnap and fake the death of the businessman responsible for his father’s death and many others, Favraux (Louis Leubas) before imprisoning him for life in a remote castle.

Judex has worked a long game, disguised as Favraux’s secretary, to infiltrate his business dealings. His plan is soon complicated when he falls in love with the banker’s daughter, Jacqueline (Yvette Andréyor) who is soon targeted by the evil Monti! There’s great support from Vampires’ alumni Édouard Mathé as brother Roger and Marcel Lévesque as the comedic Cocantin whose swimming-costume clad fiancée Miss Daisy Torp (Lily Deligny) helps save the day. The kids are alright too and Le petit Jean (Olinda Mano) and The Liquorice Kid (Rene Poyen) deserved their own series!

 

Musidora, aka Jeanne Roques

8. Quo Vadis? (1924) with Neil Brand, Eduardo Raon and Frank Bockius, Cinema Mastroianni

This was an attempt to repeat the pre-war success of the Italian epic’s including Enrico Guazzoni’s massive 1912 adaptation of Henryk Sienkiewicz’s 1895 novel, Quo Vadis: A Narrative of the Time of Nero. It was an Italian German co-production followed on with a cast of thousands, gigantic sets (real and constructed) and the combined star power of Lillian Hall-Davis’ nuanced emoting and Emil Jannings’ protean excess. Larger than life and twice as tiring, his Nero offers Lillian’s frail Licia the world and we cower behind her in the darkness as her faith rises up as the only defence against the monstrous ego of the man who is Empire.

It's saucy in a Cecil B DeMille way with snatches of nudity and a-typical sexuality along with elaborate displays of Roman cruelty which peaks in the Colosseum and in a genuinely gripping chariot race that hasn’t been seen in the length or detail for many years until this superb restoration. It’s a thoroughly enjoyable effort that was surprisingly not a success at the time, perhaps too opulent for German audiences and too close to the bone for the newly fascist Italians… I’d love to know more about how it was received in those early days of Il Duce…

 

Neil  Brand accompanied across the two parts on piano assisted by Eduardo Raon on harp for part one and Frank Bockius on drums for the epic finale on drums… the players were perfectly aligned with the momentum of the film with Rome’s dangerous beauty giving way to death and destruction and ultimate martial revenge by the end of a story that had already been told many times.

 

Emil harasses our Lil'!

7. He Who Gets Slapped (1924), with Laura Agnusdei, Simone Cavina, Stefano Pilia and Antonio Raia, Il Cinema Modernissimo

Of films I had already seen multiple times, this, The Wind, The Last Laugh et al, I was most interested in seeing this one having missed it recently at the Kennington Bioscope. In the plush Modernissimo it was accompanied by an ensemble featuring Laura Agnusdei (tenor sax and electronica), Simone Cavina (percussion and electronica), Stefano Pilia (guitar and electronica), Antonio Raia (sax, chalumeau/clarinet and “oggetti” … objects?), whose modern stylings overlayed and enhanced the action on screen in new ways.

That said, this is one of the hardest-hitting Hollywood films of the twenties as you’d expect from the mighty Victor Sjöström, certainly the most successful Swedish director in the US who was able to maintain his approach across this and work with Garbo and Gish. Here he brings out the full flavour of Lon Chaney in a film that breaks your heart which as Ehsan Khoshbakht describes in the catalogue as about the act of “de-clowning… only the vile and ignorant laugh at the clown”. As my friend, the poet Ged Griffith, used to say after a few Jamesons, “Life’s a walking shadow, nah-nah, na-nah-nah…”

Lon Chaney: if you don't have a fear of clowns, perhaps you should re-consider?

 

6. The Searchers (1956), Piazza Maggiore

I only managed two screenings at the big Piazza this year as a result of rain and other distractions but Coppola’s Conversation was not as engaging on the grand screen as John Ford’s masterwork. Rarely has John Wayne been this monumentally frightening, dark eyes staring out across the vastness of the west in search of revenge and the restoration of his culture. There’s some jokey sequences but nothing really dents the full force of this film which continues to evolve in its meaning as the West in general seeks answers to the same issues of invasion, cohabitation and peaceful evolution. This is a film made at a time closer to the tail-end of the Wild West in the 1880s than to now, struggles still just about in living memory for a United States still ill at ease with its diversity.

Screened from 70mm on the biggest screen the film was introduced by Wim Wenders who has made the pilgrimage to Monument Valley, Arizona and wondered at the audacity of filming entirely at this location. It was something to view in a fresh light, immersive and impactful making us feel the filmmakers’ anew with even the plastic seats not distracting from the two hours on mental horseback.

 

The big country

 5. Chemi bebia/My Grandmother (1929), with Cleaning Women, Il Cinema Modernissimo

Due to unseasonal rain, this screening of Chemi bebia (My Grandmother) was moved from the Piazza Maggiore to the Cinema Modernissimo which only served to amplify the intensity of Kote Mikaberidze‘s film and the extraordinary accompaniment of Finland’s Cleaning Women. Now then modern scores for silent films can be controversial but this film is so out of time with its Dadaist energy that an avant-alt-post-rock-post-jazz-experimental-industrial set played by a group consisting of three cleaning robots (CW01, CW03 and CW04) ended up being perfect.

Chemi bebia defies easy summation and that’s from one of the only two people in the stalls who had seen it before but, essentially, it’s a film highlighting the damaging impact of bureaucracy on the revolutionary project with so many self-serving idiots only responding to the appearance of the Universal Worker (or similar). It’s one of the oddest and funniest propaganda films ever made and even more so with the “cleaners” quirky propulsion. Mop and Bowl on home-made instruments!

4. Scuola D'Eroi (1914) Daniele Furlati and Silvia Mandolini, Cinema Mastroianni

Meanwhile, back in the Golden Age of Italian Cinema, we watched an early film from one of the three great Dive, without which no CR is complete for some. This was not yet the imperious Pina Menichelli of her most successful period but she draws the eye in one of her first major roles dominates the screen whenever her character, Rina Larive is in shot even alongside Amleto Novelli and certainly the more established Gianna Terribili Gonzales.

Directed by Enrico Guazzoni – who made the 1912 Quo Vadis as well as other classical classics … Scuola d’eroi is an Napoleonic epic and I mean epic, straggling decades, family lost and found and with the fortunes of war and love all tangled together. Pina plays Rina, sister of Carlo, Amleto, who during a Napoleonic campaign, having been separated from their father as children and raised by a kindly farmer, get caught up years later in another with the emperor playing his part in recognising the courage of the family and saving them from the machinations of bad-faith nobility.

Daniele Furlati provided suitably spirited accompaniment on piano with Silvia Mandolini on violin, flavouring and enhancing during battles scenes and the moments of highest tension. Italian silent film of this era carried its heart on its sleeve and this was a very affecting screening of a fresh restoration from a nitrate positive held by the Cineteca Milano. It is the only tinted copy currently in existence and close to the original running time.

 

Pina Menichelli

3. 1904: Un Anno Magnifico, Stephen Horne and Frank Bockius, Piazetta Pier Paolo Pasolini

There are moments in every festival when you settle down and suddenly feel at the heart of the event, watching the perfect film and listening to just the right accompaniment and this happened on this rain-delayed outdoor event on the Thursday with a selection of shorts from 1904, A Magnificent Year indeed! I decided on the Pasolini’s carbon arc projector rather than watching the restoration of The Wind in the Piazza Maggiore – with orchestra! – and was rewarded with such rare delights!

We started with the breakneck gymnastics of Les Cambrioleurs modernes – often wrongly attributed as from a later year – which featured a stunningly synchronised troupe playing cops and robbers by throwing themselves in and out of a set full of trap doors. Clearly a stage act rehearsed tot the finest degree this was still a marvel to observe in real-time with no trickery. There was plenty of time for that with Georges Méliès' Détresse et Charité - The Christmas Angel and Match de prestidigitation but most of these films just used the new media to show actuality, whether it was the British Fleet being inspected at Spithead or A Miner’s Daily Life from RW Paul.

There was plenty of magic though with Gaston Velle’s silhouetted Burglars at Work showing what the camera can do as well as his deliciously hand coloured Métamorphoses du papillon with unknown dancer changing in front of our very eyes. And then, then we had a song as Frank Bockius performed the missing vocals from Henry Bender in a hand-coloured take of over-fed babies he would have performed at Berlin’s Metropol-Theatre. It was a job well done as indeed was the entire accompaniment from both payers with the memory of Stephen’s flute reverberating high into the clear skies as likely to linger as his partner’s percussion and vocalisation!

2. Re-building Jerusalem… Ingmarsarvet (1925), Andre Desponds and Frank Bockius / Till Österland (1926), Neil Brand, Cinema Mastroianni

 

This list isn’t really in order but the top two are such has been my pre-occupation with Selma Lagerlof and the tsars of these three films, notably the extraordinary ballerina Jenny Hasselqvist. I’ve gone on at length elsewhere but it was such a joy to see Gustaf Molander’s two films based on the author’s Jerusalem and I am so grateful to the Swedish Film Institute for the work they have done in restoring and reconstructing them.

More raving here...

1. Ekeby at last! Gösta Berling’s Saga (1924), Matti Bye, Eduardo Raon and Silvia Mandolini, Cinema Mastroianni

Having waited years to see this film on the big screen, I was also more than eager to see the results of the last five years’ worth of restoration and was in no way disappointed by the clarity and the majesty of this re-ordered and extended version of Mauritz Stiller’s work; perhaps not his best but my favourite anyway. Jenny, Greta Garbo, Lars and, especially Gerda Lundequist all shine as never before and the restoration and broader appreciation of filmmakers and the author Selma Lagerlöf will rightfully benefit.

More detailed appreciation here...

I saw much more though easily missing my 50-film target and apart from the silents enjoyed talkies as diverse as Morocco (1930), En Natt (1931) – Gerda again! - The Lavender Hill Mob (1951), Coeur de Lilas (1932) and Tirez sur le pianiste (1960). There was also a beautiful film of Anna Pavlova (USA-GB/1924-1954) which brought me close to tears with John Sweeney’s accompaniment.

 

As with life it’s best to celebrate what you saw rather than mourn what you missed and so, with hope in my heart, I look forward to revisiting many of the above and catching up, if the programmers so will it, with the rest.

Grazie mille Bologna and Il Cineteca Ritrovato! Ci vediamo nel 2025!

My copy of a 1924 Danish Gosta booklet

 

Gimme shelter... Zuflucht (Refuge) (1928), with Günter A. Buchwald, Bonn Silent Film Festival

So many vanished back then, never to be seen again…

 

This restoration was one of the highlights of the recent Bonn Festival and whilst it’s a relatively simple tale told very well it’s a reflection of its time in terms of polished late silent technique and the central premise of class loyalties disrupted during the Weimar years ten years after the uproar of war and revolution.

 

Whereas so many German films of this period we shot in studio, Refuge features a host of location shots of Berlin as director Carl Froelich exhibits the realist, "New Objectivity" style, a reaction against the expressionism practiced on the silent stage. It also features perhaps the most popular film star of this period, Henny Porten – star of The Ancient Law, Merchant of Venice (1923), and Lubitsch’s Anna Boleyn (1920) - providing an opportunity to see just why she commanded the affections of so many. This was also a co-production of the actress with Froelich; she chose the role and it shows.

 

This was the World premier of the new digitization from Deutsches Filminstitut & Filmmuseum and it looked fantastic even on our screens hundreds of miles away from the festival with the experience being enlivened by accompaniment on piano and violin from the maestro Günter A. Buchwald!

Francis Lederer, he lived long and prospered

We start with passengers unloading from a train repatriating German combatants from the German Revolution of 1918-19 which saw many communist sympathisers flee into exile. These include Martin Falkhagen played by Francis Lederer who was later to feature in Pandora’s Box and live a long life in film and education, stopping work just before he died aged 100! Born in 1899 Lederer lived through until the 21^st Century and also saw action in the Great War for the Austrian-Hungarian Imperial Army. There’s a collection of photographs at his mother’s desk and one includes him in his uniform as she muses over all those lost in the war; a time when the losses were still so keenly felt across Europe.

 

Refuge is all about the War, it’s about loss and injustice and poor people trying to make ends meet in a society with huge inequality. It doesn’t beat the drum in the manner of say Kuhle Wampe but it is presenting a shared experience to an audience fully ware of the circumstances… Martin wants to make ends meet with people he loves and, as we learn, he turns his back on easier options, a man of principle in a country that, sadly, couldn’t always afford them.

 

People didn’t go to the cinema for politics, they went to see actors like Lederer and, especially, Henny Porten, living life as they did and here the film is as political as it needs to be. Germany was broken, what was to be done? Henny and Martin just want to get on with their lives and their love.

Henny Porten's character goes to work

Now, that’s jumping the gun… but yes, Henny meets an exhausted Martin after he has tramped his way to Berlin form the eastern border and slept rough at the allotment. She invites him back to the apartment she shares in a run-down tenement with the Schurich family, father (Max Maximilian), mother (Margarete Kupfer) and flighty daughter Guste (Alice Hechy). Their living space is cluttered and humble, with a bunk also being rented out to a loud-mouthed butcher, Kölling (Carl de Vogt).

 

Later that evening Kölling arrives back drunk gathering himself just enough to insult Martin and Hanne before the younger man falls deeply asleep. He’s still asleep the next day as Mrs Schurich and Hanne go to work in a vegetable stall at the market, the latter having to contend with the butcher’s “banter”… he doesn’t mince his words. Meanwhile Guste is fascinating by this sleeping prince… and flirts with him once he does awaken only for Hanne to rebuff her.

 

Hanne and Martin, well Hanne mostly, fall out with three out of four of the household – only her workmate supports her – and she goes off to another block to stay with her best friend Marie Jankowsky (Lotte Stein) who’s husband is away. Here they enjoy some freedom and begin to fall in love.

 

Mathilde Sussin

Meanwhile, across town, Martin’s background is revealed as his elder brother Otto Falkhagen (Bodo Bronsky) puts an advert in the paper calling for information about his missing brother. If nothing is forthcoming Otto will have him declared dead and therefore no longer able to benefit from the family’s fortune. Naturally mother Else (Mathilde Sussin) holds on to hope but Otto, having fallen out with Martin over the revolution, misses him rather less.

 

Martin gets a job as a manual labourer on the build for the Berlin subway and for a time the two are happy and plan to get married. But we know the lose ends will need to be tied and that a reckoning will need to be had.

 

What I like about this film is the balance of the characters, most of whom have shades of grey even the boorish butcher who shows concern and provides help when needed. The verbal scuffles are exactly as you’d expect from people living in such cramped conditions and, whilst the politics is under played, the crowds of genuine urchins who stare at the rich visitors and their car when Martin’s mother visits one tenement block. These buildings are all too real in comparison to the stage designs of say Murnau’s Last Laugh and the unpaid extras speak for themselves.

 

Simple pleasures for Hanne and Martin

Direct Carl Froelich keeps things at a believable pace whilst his cinematographer, Gustave Preiss works wonders, especially in catching the flight of expression across Porten’s face. She’s no Garbo but she is a great technician and so watchable.

 

The film was a success with Hanns Horkheimer of the Berliner Tageblatt raving: Henny Porten… has grown from a propaganda star to a human actress of such shocking urgency that, as a comparative standard, I would have to name the most sublime names even in spoken theatre…

 

For her alone the film is worth watching but this “small story” is still powerful for the concentrated and commonplace drama it presents. Günter A. Buchwald of course delivers the poignant and perfectly balanced support it needs and it still amazes me how he can do so playing violin and piano both at once!

 

Bravo Günter and danke Bonn again!!

A million miles, for one of your smiles… The Ancient Law (1923), with Meg Morley, Phoenix Cinema, London

This was the UK premier of a new restoration from the Deutsche Kinematek and, possibly, for the film itself: a real coup for the Phoenix and ace programmer Miranda Gower-Qian. Finding a German film sympathetic to the Jewish community in 1923 is not too surprising perhaps – the community was arguably more integrated than in other parts of Europe - but there had long been undercurrents of anti-Semitism even before the Great War and its aftermath. The Weimar arts community was liberal and forward thinking and hadn’t yet been shut down by the dangerous populism filtering through a society deeply in debt and poltically-fragmented.

Directed by EA Dupont – later to direct Variety, then Piccadilly and Moulin Rouge after his escape to Britain – Das alte Gesetz is a highly accomplished film that deals with the push and pull between those who want to integrate and those who want to stay separate.  Assimilation can split families but so can self-exclusion, it is still an every day tragedy and one that gives this pitch-perfect story significant power still. There’s additional resonance from the fact that so many of the cast and crew were Jewish… actors enjoying the freedom to ply their trade denied their more orthodox forebears with far worse to come.

Avrom Morewski and Robert Garrison

This restoration was completed from several non-German copies (as with Pandora’s Box and many others… the original negatives have long since been purged) and first presented at this year’s Berlin Film Festival and today the Phoenix was presenting the premier hours before it was unveiled at the San Francisco Silent Film Festival.

Set in 1860’s Vienna and – apparently the basis for The Jazz Singer – the story focuses on tensions between orthodox society and the ambitions of a Rabbi’s son to become an actor. Rabbi Mayer is superbly played by Avrom Morewski and his son Baruch by Ernst Deutsch - such a feature of later talkies.

Ernst Deutsch 

The family lives in the Ghetto and are happy to stay amongst their own people as they follow a life of religious and traditional diligence. Baruch seems happy to be a part of things but during the festivities of Purim where the young dress up to act the part of religious figures, Baruch can’t resist and plays one of the leading roles much against tradition and to his father’s displeasure.

Baruch wants to be an actor, he wants to leave the Ghetto and is inspired by Ruben Pick (the excellent Robert Garrison) who travels afar and amongst wider Gentile society. Ruben sees the wanderlust and ambition in Baruch as a good thing whereas Rabbi Mayer believes the only way is to stay. There’s a great shot of Pick leaving the Ghetto, a low-angle showing him walking off down a path stretching to the far distance, he walks for some time and then a gust of wind suddenly floats a cloud of dust across the path behind him: the cinematography from Theodor Sparkuhl is crisp and inventive - this is a very good-looking film and the restoration is quite lovely.

Margarete Schlegel - told you...

Baruch is in love with a local girl, Esther (the striking Margarete Schlegel) and promises to return for her once he has made his name and fortune: it will break his mother (Grete Berger), he is determined to leave even after his father locks him in the house. He finds a way and his father’s desperate cries reflect the film’s subtlety – unlike The Jazz Singer perhaps, we have sympathy for all the characters, throughout. Plus, there’s no minstrelling… this film is just more authentic and nuanced. 

Baruch has no money and finds work mucking out the horses and writing programme notes for a travelling band of performers with whom he eventually gets a chance to act. His Shakespeare is not to everyone’s taste – far from it – but it attracts the attention of the Arch Duchess Erzherzogin Elisabeth Theresia (the always watchable, Henny Porten) who takes a shine to more than just his acting talents… She engineers him his big break at the Royal Theatre managed by the fearsome Heinrich Laube (Hermann Valentin) upon whose memoires the story is originally based.

Henny Porten and Ernst Deutsch

Proper cultured, urban types really love his work and Baruch is soon playing Hamlet and Don Giovani…  and it’s during a performance of the latter that Ruben persuades the Rabbi to come and see his son. It’s overwhelming… and the impact so great that the old man enters a decline his broken heart unable to resolve his love with acceptance.

Can there be a meeting between minds old and young, before it’s too late, and will the struggle even end there?

Phoenix-debutante Meg Morley played up a storm on keyboards, presenting flowing accompaniment of impressive warmth and narrative flexibility. This was the first time I’d heard Meg play electronic keyboards and the added bass allowed a jazzier feel more akin to her day job, with music that – for me - channelled Keith Jarrett, Jacques Loussier-baroque and a flavour of Klezmer. Very assured and full of likeable content, her improvisations flew by just like this absorbing and gently stunning film.

The Ancient Law is just being released on Blu-Ray DVD by FlickerAlley and is already on my birthday list.

A trade in meaning… The Merchant of Venice (1923), Barbican with Stephen Horne

There was a debate on the BBC this morning asking Is there more truth in Shakespeare than the Bible? during which it was agreed that it was vital to keep his art “alive” for “modern” audiences with fresh perspectives such as Baz Luhrmann’s Romeo and Juliet.

Now the same can be said for silent film – a seemingly far more “fixed” text but one that can reveal more of itself when accompanied live by a specialist accompanist such as Stephen Horne. Today Stephen was musically re-contextualizing a German film interpreting a Shakespeare play set in Venice and filmed actually in Venice.

The view from the Rialto Bridge...

One of the striking things about Shakespeare is how his very English works have spread beyond their linguistic home to Europe and beyond: it takes a playwright of immense ability to succeed beyond translation – Chekov, Ibsen, Molière all play across Europe but our Will is still in a league of his own. His plays originally drew from European history and culture and so it’s perhaps not too surprising that, for example, a Dane, Asta Nielsen, was so keen on playing Hamlet – history aside, the universality of themes and the sheer precision of Shakespearean narrative made for perfect connection in any language.

What appealed to director/producer/writer Peter Paul Felner about The Merchant of Venice? It’s a play about more than just Jewish money-lending and in the wrecked economics of Weimar Germany, the power of the “bond” to destroy lives would have been an all-too pertinent theme. There are also themes of love thwarted by class divide as well – one character lends money to impress his love who later claims that her love cannot be bought… only earned.

Henny Porten

Then there are religious divides, ones which never go away, a Jewish girl is promised to another of her religion under an arrangement made by their fathers, but she loves a Christian and has to find a way to breach her cultural containment.

It all sounds very modern and Stephen played with passion and impeccable timing to bring out the full flavour of this still potent cocktail of money, love and hate.

The film was re-christened The Jew of Mestri for its release in the US and this was the copy we watched, apparently two reels short of the full German version. The opening titles gave credit for the story to John of Florence (Giovanni Fiorentino) who wrote a similar tale two centuries before Shakespeare. The story doesn’t quite go as the William of Warwickshire later told it but that was undoubtedly the original source material for the film even though, as the introductory text has it, alterations were added to suit modern standards of “good taste”.

Werner Krauss as a Shylock shorn of sanity

Werner Krauss makes for an excellent Shylock/ Jew of Mestri, with a brand of extreme physicality that reminded me of Emil Jannings: almost exhausting to watch but a man worn down to his limits by grief, loss and a need to exact his pound of flesh. In this context, Shylock is clearly beyond his wit’s end and having lost wife and daughter to death and Christianity respectively, has nowhere to go but despair.

The film starts with his daughter Rebecca but really Jessica played by the striking Lia Eibenschütz falling in love with the Christian Lorenzo – one of the local high-powered likely lads but with a heart of gold. Shylock promises her hand to the son his friend Tubal (Albert Steinrück) but, amidst the celebrations no one notices Jessica’s desolation.

Harry Liedtke as Bassanio

Lorenzo is a friend of Bassanio (Harry Liedtke) a playboy of good humour and plenty of bad debt who relies heavily on his wealthy pal, Antonio (Carl Ebert), the merchant of Venice.

Bassanio encounters heiress Portia (Weimar superstar Henny Porten) and is quickly robbed of his wanderlust and a desire to settle down. Antonio offers to help him look wealthy so that he can match Portia’s social station and all is going well until Antonio’s ships start sinking…

Before that, there’s an tragic confrontation between the boys and Shylock’s mother (one of those “new” characters) who has a fatal heart attack after berating Antonio for his interest-free loans (that was Shylock’s concern in the play – he had to lower his rates…)

Carl Ebert is the Merchant!

There’s very bad blood between the men and so when Antonio needs to borrow money until his remaining vessels make it to port to recover his losses, Shylock takes full advantage with an interest-free loan that has one main condition in the event of a default: he must have a pound of flesh…

Only unlikely misfortune can endanger the deal and so it comes to pass as the remainder of Antonio’s fleet goes missing and all is set for the classic court room climax – Antonio will be noble, Shylock will be deranged and, of course, girls will be boys with years of legal training behind them…

No doubt the film would benefit from the exposition of those extra reels but it still works… with good performances all round and even Max Schreck as “Der Doge von Venedig” – you’d hardly know it was the Count at all.

Al fresco sewing

The cinematography of Axel Graatkjaer and Rudolph Maté is high standard and makes the most of the outstanding location: it’s hard to go wrong in Venice and it’s fun location-spotting from the market on the Rialto Bridge (still there if a little to the left) to the Bridge of Sighs, Piazza San Marco and the Doge’s Palace.

I haven’t seen the play since Dustin Hoffman came across to London in 1989 – itself a mix of film star and classic theatre - so I’m not too clear on the pure version but the film showed again how malleable the Merchant is helped enormously by next context of the music.