Iron man… Maciste All’ Inferno (IT 1926), with Teho Teardo and Zerorchestra, Le Giornate 40th Edition Streaming Day Eight

And, as always, the masses sided with the strongest…

 

This was essentially a cross-over event in the Dante Extended Universe, L’Inferno II plus Maciste XXVI equalling a completely decadent vision of Hell and an Earth of fairy tale pleasantry. It was a return to the glories of ground-breaking Italian film making with a soul-devouring Lucifer drawn directly from Francesco Bertolini, Adolfo Padovan and Giuseppe De Liguoro’s masterpiece, a feature film diligently drawn from Dante Alighieri’s The Divine Comedy. Three years later and Giovanni Pastrone’s sensational Cabiria introduced the character of Maciste, a mighty slave who rescues the Roman girl of the title. The character was played by Bartolomeo Pagano who returns here for his 26^th performance as the likeable lunk who combines power and morality as the Italian superuomo.

 

I could quote the works of Professor SE Finer on the enduring nature of political cultures but it’s not an over-stretch to say that the Italians had always favoured strong individual leaders and, indeed, this film accepts as much with the quote at the top. Il Duce was indeed a fan and wikiparently adopted several trademark Maciste poses as part of his fascist fantasy. He was prime minister when Maciste All’ Inferno was made so perhaps that puts a more intense spin on that line… Mussolini was five feet sex inches whereas Pagano was fully six feet and Lord knows what his chest measurement was.

Maciste assailed by hundreds of extras!

Anyway… this is such a wild ride with amazing special effects from the legendary Segundo de Chomón along with direction to die for – literally – from Guido Brignone, along with set and costume direction from Giulio Lombardozzi. This looks like Hell and it’s ugly, fierce and outrageously sexy. Hellzappopin’ alright with Pluto (Umberto Guarracino) ruling over all he surveys with the definite exception of his second wife Proserpina (Elena Sangro… statuesque ain’t the word!) and daughter, the barely clothed Luciferina (Lucia Zanussi).

 

No wonder it left such an impression on Federico Fellini who remembered it as the first film he ever saw – aged five or six? – even down to the details of Proserpina’s capture of Maciste. If Albert Camus is right and a man’s work is nothing but a trek to rediscover those great images in whose presence his heart first opened then, ladies and gents, I give you Satyricon and many more…

Pluto... Umberto Guarracino

Back in the Underworld, no one’s finding much satisfaction and after Maciste despatches a troop of demons back from whence they came, Pluto despatches his best guy Barbariccia (Franz Sala, who is having the time of his life!) to Earth with a group of others all wearing evil cloaks, hats and leers. Their mission, should they choose to accept it, is to gather as many good souls as possible including that of Maciste.

 

After his many adventures, Maciste has settled in a rural idyl, tending his garden, smoking fine tobacco and drinking barrels of fine wine. He looks after his lovely neighbour Graziella (Pauline Polaire) and all is peace until the arrival of Barbariccia and the boys… After a direct confrontation doesn’t work, Macist’s brawn versus Barbariccia’s brain and magical cheats, the latter looks to find the former’s weaknesses. He targets Graziella who, though far too holy for a direct attack, is vulnerable when helping Giorgio (Domenico Serra) a young man thrown from his horse by a demon storm. The two youngsters fall in love and soon a baby arrives only for Giorgio to hop off back to the city and his bachelor freedoms, this distracts Maciste enough for Barbariccia, having stolen the baby, to trap him and transport the big man straight to Hell.

 

Franz Sala giving his all

Now the fun really begins… as Maciste fights off hoards of demons, Brignone depicts his raunchier version of Dante’s inferno and Pluto’s women try to trap Maciste into kissing them for, if any earthman kisses a she-demon he is turned into a demon and condemned to remain in the fiery pits. Well… upon the basis of the images shared here, how long do you think Maciste is going to last?

 

But damnation is not the end and there’s battles a plenty as all Hell breaks lose as Barbariccia storms Pluto’s palace.

 

This hugely enjoyable romp was perfectly accompanied by Pordenone-born composer Teho Teardo who’s electronica was accompanied by local favourites the Zerorchestra along with Accademia Musicale Naonis and cellist Riccardo Pes. For this tale of many contexts, the cello represented Dante’s “voice” whilst the booming brass of the Accademia Naonis was that of Maciste. I think this was the performance that kicked off the pre-Festival event in Teatro Zancanaro, Sacile judging from the applause at the end and, as with everything streamed, I’d have loved to have been there in person to see it!

Elena Sangro

 

Before all this we had maestro John Sweeney accompanying three Vitagraph shorts that told stories of Japan at a time when the West was fascinated in the still emerging country. Thoroughly entertaining the three shorts said as much about the country that made them as their subject: Love of Chrysanthemum (1910), Ito, the Beggar Boy (1910) and Hako’s Sacrifice (1910).

 

So, another year over and done and a brilliant “bundle” of digital and live screening… here’s to 2022 and a 41^st Edition viewed in person! 

Fellini particularly remembered Lucia Zanussi's belly button - fact!

OK, how Dante was this film?

Almost nine circles...

Feeling in Limbo

The wind-buffeted second circle... 

Nude heretics (probably) level six...

The Malebolge, eighth circle for fraudsters...

Old Nick exactly as he appears in  L'Inferno (1911) below...

For 'tis no enterprise to take in jest,

To sketch the bottom of all the universe…

The piano teacher… Moral (DE 1928), with Donald Sosin, Le Giornate 40th Edition Streaming, Day Seven

Imagine it: a prince under the skirt of a shameless woman! It makes a mockery of the strict morals of our royal house!

The rediscovery of Ellen Richter has been one of the big themes of this year’s Giornate live in Pordenone and I’ve been waiting all week to meet her digitally… I was not disappointed. As the festival’s artistic director, Jay Weissberg, said in his online introduction, Richter has been overlooked as she didn’t make any films with the major directors of Weimar film, with her husband Willi Wolff directing her from 1918 onwards, and this has left this once major star somewhat in the shadows. Well, she’s not there anymore and this film shows off her radiance to full effect.

She’s one of those performers who naturally draws the eye and apart from having charisma to burn she has a richly centred persona with a smile that radiates glee as powerfully as sardonic rage. You don’t mess with Ellen but, if you do, she’ll have you back and relish her casually cool revenge with glee not to destroy but to educate; here it’s not just piano she teaches, it’s self-respect. Then we have the fashions… Ellen wears clothes in ways you cannot, gold lame pantaloons that only a true diva could carry off especially one with such a refined south German sense of humour. The fashions are spectacular but so is she and knowing that enables even the truly improbable garb to hang naturally and unselfconsciously.

Beyonce was on the Southbank at the London Film Festival this week, she and Ellen would have got on like a palace on fire… the flames holding back, unable to compete with the heat.

Making an entrance!

We will not tolerate this Berlin filth here in Emilsburg!

Anyway… here Ellen plays stage performer Therese Hochstetter known as Ninon d’Hauteville who causes a stir when her troop come to play in the provincial town of Emilsburg. We find her on a train, standing room only apart from the first-class section where she catches the eye of the town’s MP Beermann (Jakob Tiedtke), who lets her sit with him, calls himself “Meier” (“Smith”) before trying to further their intimacy before she turns the tables on him by sending another passenger into the darkened compartment.

 

Therese walks past the deflated hypocrite at the station little knowing that his daughter Effie (Hilde Jennings) is the one who designed the poster for her show, an image her father decries at that evening’s meeting of the male, pale and stale Moral Society. The men of the MS meet in the Blue Lion hotel to debate all the things that are debasing local society and there’s no end of irritations including a guide to marriage which is essentially a cookbook. If Beermann epitomises their hypocrisy Professor Otto Wasner (Ralph Arthur Roberts) exemplifies the priggish element, if he’s not having fun nobody else should.

 

Men. Yesterday.

The group believe they act in the name of the monarchy’s strict moral code but we switch to Prince Emile XXVII (Julius Falkenstein) looking at the advert and reminiscing about his youth in Berlin studying the trombone and watching the dancing girls at the Metropoltheatre; what a dandy fellow I was in my youth, and my son is such a milksop! He decides to find a music teacher for his son (Harry Halm) amongst the ladies of the ballet…

 

Meanwhile, back at the Blue Lion, the MS decide to disrupt the disgraceful show during the prince segment and the clash of cultures is set.

 

The film gives great cabaret with precious original footage of the Haller Review Where and When featuring Marcella Rahna, June and John Roper, Thelma de Lorez and the Lawrence Tiller Girls. There’s a riot on stage with hundreds of legs choreographed to perfection performing routines that would make Mr Berkley drool with envy, the visceral thrills of live entertainment produced by a cast with muscle memories drilled by thousands of hours practice all delivering in seconds of smiling precision.

Tiller Girls

Follow that Ellen/Therese and she’s about to in the sketch, The Prince and the Courtesan, atop a large stage prop bustle through which another dancer appears cross-dressed as a prince, before the Moral Society’s protest kicks off, the old men blowing their own trumpets, penny whistles and making a racket to drown out the act and force the curtains closed. It’s a comedy but this feels uneasy… then as now there were plenty of people wanting to censor expression.

Therese is confronted by Beermann and Professor Wasner after the show is forced to stop and spots her would be abuser from the train. Then she gets an offer she can’t refuse from the Prince as Von Schmettau, the royal chamberlain (Ferdinand von Alten) asks her to teach the young prince piano… the Moral Society will not get rid of her that easily.

 

The prince is bowled over by his new teacher as she slinks towards the piano in a backless dress and their hands keep clashing on the keyboard even as his leg brushes against hers on the pedals. He’s learning about a lot more than crotchets and semi-breves and is more than semi-quavered in her presence as the original Piano-Cam reveals (you don’t get this at the Kennington Bioscope!).

 

Harry Halm and Ellen Richter

The young man is not alone in seeking instruction from Therese and soon all of the Moral Society are signed up for lessons, all using assumed names. She decides to secretly film her new students and their non-musical advances and isn’t disappointed as the dirty old fellas try it on every time. She even manages to capture the priggish Prof off guard and trousers down… There’s a lovely cameo from the actress playing her maid who looks with increasing alarm at every Muller, Meier and Mayer.

 

It’s a film in which those looks are core to the meaning with Richter’s own expressiveness a delight throughout, her husband knowing exactly how to catch her humour and flashing glances to side and ceiling, exasperated by the male ego and the moral guardian’s ability to divorce libido from appearance. Only if we all learn to play music as she does will we be free to dance… seems to be the message and the arrival of the police starts the narrative on course for a hilarious clearing of the air all round in the final segment.

 

Ellen Richter

Richter had a rich theatrical background and had played in Ludwig Thoma’s original play as far back as 1909 as an ensemble player at the Stadttheater (Municipal Theatre) in Brno. Wolff and prolific writer Bobby E. Lüthge’s screenplay retains only the basic plot and characters, watering down the more explicit elements and leaving a lot to those suggestive looks from Ellen. It’s the most enjoyable of moral tales and despite her character’s elaborate revenge you get the feeling the actress could be endlessly forgiving if people were more honest, considerate and just didn’t scrimp of the floral tributes!

Donald Sosin accompanied on fine form with some support from the broader family for the protest scene. His was an upbeat and wholly sympathetic score that recognised Richter’s zestful appeal. An old star is reborn and whilst two thirds of her films are lost, I want to see more – there just aren’t enough gold lame trouser pantaloons in films these days.

Bonus theatrical scenes!! 

John about to catch June Roper

Fab title cards too!

An education... The Public Prosecutor and the Teacher (1948)/Phil for Short (1919), Le Giornate 40th Edition Streaming, Day Five and Six

Evelyn Greeley has some questions...

If people chose to see wrong and evil in aesthetic beauty then there’s something wrong with them!

 

Catching up on the last two days of online Giornate, there’s a common thread of judge not let you too be judged or at least read the book not just the cover. Whether it’s Korea in 1945 or the USA in 1919, people are all too willing to think the worst of others based on appearances and it’s only those who look deeper who make themselves and others happier.

 

Day Five: The Public Prosecutor and the Teacher (1948)

After liberation from Japanese colonial control in August1945, filmmakers in Korea still made silent films with a shortage of equipment meaning that half the films of this period were effectively silent or, in the case of The Public Prosecutor and the Teacher (1948), interpreted by a byeonsa – a more improvisational version of the Japanese benshi, here Sin Chul described by Jay Weissberg, artistic director of Giornate del Cinema Muto, as the last of the great practitioners working up to the 1980s.

Lee Yeong-ae also wants to know the answers

The story feels a little similar to other Korean films I’ve seen from this time but is none-the-less still affecting and well constructed. It’s not a classic but it is not only representative of the cinema of the newly liberated country but also shows the performance ability of the actors. The MVP here is Lee Yeong-ae who plays the titular teacher, Choi Yang-chun, and rightly gets the most screentime. As the school is kind hearted and morally brave, offering help to one of her poor students, Min Jang-son who lives in poverty with his ailing grandmother.

As well as feeding the young man and encouraging his studies, she takes an interest in his home life, helping to keep his greedy landlord at bay as well as feeding his gran. No doubt without her assistance he would be lost and when she suddenly has to leave the school he is distraught until she gives him a savings book and the money to carry on his studies. She leaves without knowing that his grandmother has just died but she has given him a lifeline…

The teacher and the murderer

A decade later she lives with her husband in another part of Seoul and bumps into Su-dong, an acquaintance of Min who is a baker. He tells her that, last he knew, Min had continued his studies and had qualified as a lawyer but that he hadn’t seen him for years. Then Choi meets a young girl who is crying as she has lost her father and once again she looks after the child.

Then a murderer escapes prison and finds his way to Choi’s house when  her husband is away, again she calms herself and tries to help him on the promise he gives himself up after seeing his daughter – the same girl she found in the streets.

After the man is arrested the locals gossip and somehow manage to blame Choi and he returning husband feels shamed and threatens her with a knife only to trip and kill himself. She’s charged with murder and, finally, reunites with Min (Kim Dong-min) this time in his role as a prosecutor….

Kim Dong-min

Such melodramas were very popular in Korea and developed very stylistically to suit local tastes – as everywhere. The story arc is satisfying and Lee Yeong-ae is excellent as the kind of teacher we all need and there’s a constant focus on schoolyards full of the next generation. Education and second chances would be vital over the coming years.

Day Six: Phil for Short (1919) with José Marìa Serralde Ruiz

Oh, my husband’s all right – but he’s not vital.

Talking of education… there’s teachers, schools and disagreeable neighbours in this thoroughly daft but enjoyable film which, despite being censored for being too nice according to Nasty Women curators Maggie Hennefeld and Laura Horak, also managed to offend Variety who’s reviewer condemned it as a “a sissy play, too nice for our boys; we want them to be manly,” after a local screening attended by a Boy Scout troop in Wilmette, Illinois. What would our Robert Baden-Powell have said? I do hope he saw the film.

Evelyn Greeley and Hugh Thompson

Directed by Oscar Apfel it features a scenario from Clara Beranger – another American woman silent film writer - and Forrest Halsey and is a delightful comedy about old fashioned responses to the ancient ideas of Greek freedoms of movement, thought and free will (gosh). The moral majority base their highground on the old days but they’re completely at a loss in explaining away the really old ways…

But as Maggie and Laura say, it’s not boys but girls who dress up as boys who disrupt the sexual norms in this film, this chiefly being Damophilia Illington – call me Phil for short* – played by the wonderfully energetic Evelyn Greeley.

* Wouldn’t you rather be called Phil than Damn?

Phil’s so-called after a poem by the much misunderstood Sappho (yes, she was…) who as Hennefeld and Horak point out was oft sourced for silent films as part of a general attraction  to Greek literature with the precise hidden depths that the Old Fogey’s object to here. As with “Greek Deployments” by the likes of DeMille, there’s an excuse for under-the-counter meaning and shorter frocks justified in the name of higher art.

This film plays with so many angles and Greeley is wonderfully peppy, hardly pausing for breath justifying her love of Greek movement and expression or deciding on cross-dressing as her own “twin” to escape from her overbearing – would be husband – her late father’s doctor and a man old enough to be her censor.

She meets a classics teacher “woman-hater” John Alden (Hugh Thompson) who is just female phobic, as a boy and then cross-dresses again as his twin Phil… to assist him in connecting with his female students and in the hope of connecting more intimately with him…

It’s not as frankly sexual as say Ossi Oswalda in Lubitsch’s I Don’t Want to be a Man (1918) but it is a surprisingly forward American film and very entertaining too. I’d loved to have been in the audience for a screening in the bible belt circa 1920 0r even 2020…

As with Ossi, Greeley is in control throughout, or at least driving her own agenda in a world full of closed and confused male minds. That’s not “naughty”, it’s liberating!!

They don't stand a chance!!

Prince or poet? Fool’s Paradise (US 1921), with Neil Brand, Le Giornate 40th Edition Streaming, Day Four

 

Well… it starts off in the dusty saloons and shacks of the oil boomtown of El Paso, Texas on the Mexican border, and ends up in the huge eastern temples of Siam with a pit of crocodiles and scantily clad native girls dancing in their dozens as a Prince fights with a formerly blind, former-US army poet, for the hand of a French prima ballerina. Oh, there’s also a dog, Chum, played by one called Pal.

So far so DeMille, we lap it all up and it makes its own sense as the true central character, Poll Patchouli, as played by an outrageously good Dorothy Dalton, anchors all of the extremes with grounded emotions whether she’s heartbroken with the men who hide their love with fear and anger, yearning after opportunities so narrowly missed, sacrificing everything to do right by the man she wrongs or simply burning down the house of her former husband because he just can’t see – even though he now can, thanks to her - how much she loves him.

These two hours of narrative fireworks were accompanied by the controlled flamboyance of Mr Neil Brand who I suspect was wearing a silk cape recording this, matching the twists and torture, the unexpected reptiles and inconsistently gallant monarchs with inventions that were fully embedded in the internal logic of DeMille’s film. Neil and Dorothy knew the job and they got us across the line… this is one that really does require a post-screening discussion into the night at the Bar Posta opposite the Teatro Verdi in Pordenone but, instead, I’ll share my thoughts with you, dear reader, from the Keyboard of Dell in the village of Great Chishill.

Conrad Nagel

This was another in the Giornate’s series of American Women Screenwriters with this story having been co-composed by Beulah Marie Dix and Sada Cowan “suggested” loosely by Leonard Merrick’s quiet short story The Laurels and the Lady which is set in South Africa and has a reptile content of nil. As Leslie Midkiff DeBauche’s programme notes point out, the two women took off on a wild flight but one that was fully controlled by their knowledge of cinematic form, that they make all of this work and in such a satisfying way tonally and morally says as much about their skill as that of DeMille.

So, let’s go to El Paso where ex-serviceman Arthur Phelps (sad-eyed Conrad Nagel) tries to forget the War by remembering his brief meeting with ballerina Rosa Duchene (Mildred Harris), treasuring the handkerchief she gave him and collecting her memorabilia as well as writing what one publisher described as “unoriginal” poetry inspired by her. Many had lost so much in the conflict but Arthur’s sense of perspective rivals his fragile eyesight as his chief injury. Oh, and his broken heart for the ballerina one that he tries to mend with these poems and pictures.

He sees a poster and discovers she is coming to dance in El Paso, surely his dreams will now come true…

Theodore Kosloff and Dorothy Dalton

We switch to a crowded bar full of hostesses and drunken men and run by tough but fair John Rodriguez (Theodore Kosloff) who I thought was an interesting character, one who is genuinely motivated and not just a black hatted counterpoint. The real drama is generated by Arthur’s relationship to women, firstly Rosa but, more importantly Poll who at the start of the film is working at Rodriguez’s place and is the subject of his affections.

Poll may be a showgirl but she has her own code and chases a middle-aged customer out of the saloon when he brings a younger girl in with him. She helps the youngster out of the window and then follows, teasing Rodriguez by sticking her tongue out at his masculine frustration. He sends his men after her and she ends up taking refuge at Arthur’s place where he chivalrously sleeps on the bench out front with his dog, Chum (played by Pal…)

Poll takes a shine to the poet and is convinced he needs the love of a good women rather than posters and models of unreachable stage stars, but Arthur refuses to drop his dream. Frustrated, Poll plays a trick on him by giving him an exploding cigar from the store… it’s only meant to puncture his arty dreams but it has a disastrous impact on his sight and, by the time he’s finally watching Rosa dance again his sight is disappearing.

John admires his tiny dancer...

One thing leads to another and, Poll decides to make up for her unintended cruelty by pretending to be Rosa, returned to her soldier boy and willing to give up the dance. It’s so loaded with melodramatic intensity it’s in danger of collapsing into hysterics and yet Dalton’s down-to-earth believability caries it off without mawkishness or over sentimentality. This great deceit is an emblem of the lies we tell all the time… and as ever the truth will out.

Poll spots an advert for a revolutionary new surgical procedure that could enable Arthur to see again, she decides to take the risk that her deception will be recognised for the loving gesture that it is but no, even with his eyes wide open Arthur’s heart of closed and, at the same time he’s also informed that oil has been discovered on his land and he’s now a millionaire. Why not? Sure, we’ve all had days like those…

Siam, California

Arthur does the daft thing, divorces Poll, and heads of to find his Rosa who by this stage is in Siam and researching temple dancing techniques for her next ballet. She’s also attracting the attention of Prince Talat-Noi (John Davidson), much to the disgust of his chief wife (Julia Faye), although we don’t know how the lower-raking ones feel. There are some amazing sets here not to mention gorgeous costumery designed by Clare West, Mitchell Leisen and Natacha Rambova – married to Valentino and also a collaborator with Nazimova.

Rosa is fickle and also quite cruel and gets the Prince and Arthur to retrieve her glove from a crocodile pit… could it be that her only love is that she gets from the admiration of her audience? Anyway, reptiles vs men, men vs men… this can only end one way or will it. Poll and El Paso show a different solution and it is, of course, based on love.

Conrad Nagel and Dorothy Dalton

Magically manic, this is the DeMille and shows how complete his method was by 1921 with echoes of his Swanson vehicles in terms of the mix of epic and exotic. A real crowd-pleaser and whilst I wish I’d been in a crowd to see it I enjoyed it all the same.

Catch it today if you can, it’s available until 8pm UK time.

Modern love… An Old Fashioned Boy (1920) with Philip Carli, Le Giornate 40th Edition Streaming, Day Three

Great marital unhappiness believed to be due to apartment hotels and dogs…

 

This film only survives as a 16mm print at UCLA and was screened as part of the American women screen writers’ series having been penned by Agnes Christine Johnson who enjoyed a long career and collaborated with King Vidor on the fabulous Show People (1928) as well as writing for Pickford and many more.

 

Directed by Jerome Storm it stars Charles Ray at the relatively short-lived peak of his popularity, looking ten years younger and still the All-American Boy earning some $11,000 a week (approximately $142,000 today) according to his obituary in The Evening Independent of 20^th November 1943. He made a fortune and then lost it as a would-be film producer but from this film it’s clear his face was not the only contributing factor.

 

An Old Fashioned Boy is very much a new-fashioned film, being a light-hearted examination of gender expectations with mass appeal at the time. There was a shift in living choices and there was concern that women would be distracted from their traditional roles by too much being provided for them in so-called apartment hotels where food and laundry could be outsourced from the home. Not quite sure how dogs came to be a threat to the American family – personally I’d have put the finger on cats! – but there you go; many things today make less sense.

Charles Ray and Ethel Shannon

Johnson’s scenario involves two couples, or rather one potential couple and one married pair complete with a trio of “angels” of which more later… Ray is David Warrington who is the titular romantic who dreams of putting his Betty (Ethel Shannon) on a pedestal complete with stairs to enable her to run down to the kitchen every few hours as well as the washroom. He’s so convinced they’re the perfect couple that he even builds a new house for Betty before he has proposed. Some might say that’s presumptive and, well, we’ll see…

 

David’s friends the Smiths are married and not enjoying anything like his vision of contentment. Herbert (Wade Boteler) is cynical and perpetually grumpy complaining about loaning their living room out for David to court Betty. His wife Sybil (Grace Morse) is long-suffering and takes the slings and arrows of outrageous Herbert as well as providing for him and those aforementioned angels: Violet, Herbie and a baby played by Virginia Brown who is very good at crying and reaching out her arms.

 

Three kids and a baby!

David is successful in his proposal and takes Betty to see a house his “friend” has built for his fiancée. Betty likes the house but, oh dear, wouldn’t want to live there so wedded is she to the freedoms of apartments. And, when she hears that David built the house for her before even asking for her hand, takes against his rather odd behaviour and storms out.

 

Betty is pretty flighty as she’s soon seeing her former beau, Fast-Car-Ferdie, or at least Ferdie who owns a sports car, and forgetting all about Drippy Dave. Meanwhile Sybil has had enough and decides to go home to mother. Quite understandably she can’t take her three children… so… she decides to leave them with David telling him on no account to tell her potentially former husband, Herbert, where they are.

 

Now, this all sounds fine and the actions of a reasonable and balanced parent under stress but in reality, Sybil has left her kids in danger with David’s solution to childcare being to muck about and fill the three of them with home-made taffy. They eat so much they get sick and so David calls Betty’s father, Doctor Graves (Alfred Allen) who he then persuades to ask his daughter to come and help. Betty’s trained as a nurse and so puts the kids to bed like a pro before making to leave forcing David to get her father to put the house in quarantine and to make up a new medical condition, Black Measles.

 

Betty can’t leave now and nor can Ferdie when he arrives to take her home… there follows much high-spirited daftness as Betty’s emotional response to her would-be husband ranges from impatience, extreme anger and borderline psychotic.

 

All of this covers an interesting “debate” on the role of women and men even as it allows Ray to show his superb comic timing and winning range of expressions. One of my favourite moments comes as Herbert accuses David of having an affair with Sybil at which point, she decks him with an absolute haymaker of a right hook leaving him unconscious. Proof that these films were sophisticated and attuned to the sensibilities of their audience.

 

The daft premise and entire story arc play on audiences’ preconceptions and they were no less aware of the “joke” than we are now. There was much praise in the contemporary press according to film historian April Miller in the Giornate notes with Louis Reeves Harrison in Moving Picture World (13 November 1920) singling Johnson out for with creating a “flawless structure” for “this bright story”.

 

Miller also quote the author as saying “women have too much creative energy to spend it merely on housekeeping. You get neurasthenic if you have only one line…” even asserting she was “a much better tempered wife and mother” when working, “… so used to writing with the babies crying”. Very much the “new-fangled” woman Betty wanted to be!

Philip Carli played along with characteristic flare and deep understanding of "the argument", that American sense of humour is not to be under-estimated!

 

More in store streaming from Pordenone, details on the web.

 

Bruce Fairbanks? The Man from Kangaroo (AU 1920), with Mauro Colombis, Le Giornate 40th Edition Streaming, Day Two

Rex “Snowy” Baker doesn’t know who you are but he has a particular set of skills that mean he will find you and he will win you over. His rugged features hide a winning smile and his athleticism counterbalances perfectly with his character’s piety especially as, despite the frock, he’s just a normal bloke. Fortunes are made on such combinations and you can see why he had a run of successful films in Australia with this being the third of five.

In the UK and USA this film was known as The Better Man and Snowy is exactly that whether he’s intervening in stopping two kids fighting and then showing them how to fight properly or diving into fast-moving water to save another. Not all superheroes wear capes, some have dog collars and Snowy plays John Harland, a former world-class athlete who now hides his physicality under the robes of priesthood. Baker excelled a sport, ALL sport… which is probably why he “only” got a silver at the ‘08 London Olympics (in boxing natch). He won New South Wales titles at swimming as well as boxing championships while still a teenager, and also excelled at rugby (two test series for Australia vs GB) and… horsemanship, water polo, running, rowing and cricket!  Strewth, all this reminds me of my regular humiliations playing sport with the Maxwell Boys from Adelaide… but another time!

Ah, but why was Mr White nicknamed "Snowy" I hear you ask?

There’s one spectacular stunt when he’s chasing a man whose just robbed a grand from a businessman, he’s up on a bridge looking down and jumps down onto a carriage and then again onto a horse and cart before hitting the ground running and bringing his man to ground. Truly this is the Aussie Fairbanks, call him "Bruce" if you will. He’s also a precursor of Johnny Weissmuller with a lengthy sequence showing him make a variety of outstanding dives into a billabong, surely the most gratuitous use of such a location since Jenny Agutter went for a dip in Walkabout, albeit in a different way.

Muriel Hammond (American actress Agnes Vernon) would disagree though as she looks on admiringly and ties his clothes up so he takes longer to get changed from his wet swimming cosy. Muriel is the ward of one nasty piece of work called Martin Giles (Charles Villiers) who has embezzled her father’s money and wants to marry her on the grounds that a wife can’t testify against her husband. He gets Harland reassigned from Kangaroo so he can have his evil way un-opposed but the Lord moves in mysterious ways fella and you’re about to find out…

Agnes Vernon and Rex "Snowy" White

There’s a lot packed in this film and as the action moves on from quiet Kangaroo, John gets involved in saving a businessman, Mr Greythorn, from a mugging and, through him, gets the chance to spread the Holy word in Kalmaroo, a town without a chapel. The local lads, led by proper wrong ‘un Black Jack Braggan (Wilfred Lucas) who just happens to be the foreman on Muriel’s family farm, where he helps the wicked Giles strip the assets and cattle.

From here on it’s all a bit Hells Hinges with immovable forces about to collide with irresistible objects as John must deal with Black Jack and Muriel’s impression that he ran out on her. It’s an action-packed finale with excellent stunts and lots of horses; you can’t ask for more! It’s a tremendously likable film, well directed by Wilfred Lucas, with some top-notch intertitles from Syd Nicholls – very witty and covering a lot of complex narrative with deft phrasing.

Accompanist Mauro Colombis had some wonderful fun with this film with spritely lines illustrating the daring do, the suspense and the thrills of the great outback. As they say in Aus, “go you good thing!”

An example of Syd Nichol's excellent work!

Before our trip Down Under, there were five short films from the Cineteca del Friuli mostly Italian and all showing the diversity of subject matter pre-war. Accompaniment was provided by Maud Nelissen who played with impressively assured variety for, as briefs go, there’s few more eclectic challenges for improvisation.

The first three films came from the Ambrosio Studios in Turin and in the second, Cenerentola/ A Modern Cinderella (IT 1913), we see behind the scenes as the Cinders in question, Silvietta, played by Fernanda Negri-Pouget, who was in the 1913 epic The Last Days of Pompeii amongst other things, is taken to the studios for an audition. It’s always fascinating to see behind the camera at a silent studio and whilst the film overall is incomplete, this is precious footage. Silvietta gets the role and a star is born with all the usual ramifications…

Fernanda Negri-Pouget - white dress, black hair - on stage at Ambrosio

The first film Le Bolle di Sapone/ Soap Bubbles (IT 1911), features the studio’s youngest star, Maria Bay – born in 1905 – as a wicked little boy intent on kicking walking sticks from old ladies and generally being disgraceful. He eventually learns his lesson after stealing a pipe blowing soap bubbles and seeing visions of the consequences of his actions. There’s remarkable technical control here with each bubble followed down in close up before the vision of the boy’s tormented victim appears inside the soap, spiralling to her doom unless he can change and his evil intentions, just like his dreams, can fade and die…

The camera tracks a blown bubble than another image is superimposed...

Years before Coke Ennyday (a deranged Douglas Fairbanks) faced his mystery of the leaping fish, the French, in the form of writer/director Roméo Bosetti, were taking a comic look at chasing the dragon in Bigorno Fume L’Opium (FR 1914). Filmed near Nice it shows the reaction of a petit bourgeois family to presents from their friend Augusto the Explorer on his return from the East. René Lantini (Bigorno) goes as over the top as he has visions of ancient worlds and trashes the living room. Then, as now kids, just say no.

As Gods to wanton Spiders are we Flies to the Boys is broadly what we’re addressing with the clever animation La Mosca a il Ragno/ The Spider and the Fly (IT 1913). A young boy pulls the wings off the titular insect and it is left to fend for itself, six legs vs eight, as the house spider moves in. No spoilers but flies are amazingly resourceful and quite string for their size. I can only refer the unknown director and writer, Émile Vardannes, to the message of the previous film.

René Lantini listens to early Pink Floyd, probably...

Lastly there was a fun two-reeler, Il Giglio Nero/The Black Lilly (IT 1913) no doubt inspired by the French crime serials such as Fantômas and Zigomar – detective fiction in general, the Marvel superheroes of their day and beyond as the Sherlock Holmes Extended Universe attests. The director is unknown but we do know the two leading players Augusto Mastripietri as the gang leader, alias Mr. Forti, and Attilio D’Anversa as Detective Sereni his implacable foe.

All the classic cars are played, fast cars, pretty damsels in distress, secret liars, hidden passageways, relentless thievery and, well, lost more “wicked boys” who, in this case, will take more than soap to burst their bubble!

Le Giornate 40 is coming fast and furious, these two are still viewable for a few more hours… time for Day Three – all details here on their website.

Gang culture in The Black Lilly...