Yet another Top Ten, 2025 in live silent cinema...

Have you noticed that there are more and more best-of lists this year? Most are aimed at generating engagement either with heated debates on the socials or via ecommerce, but some are just the outpourings of unquiet minds, butterflies who just need to bring some order at this disturbing time of the year between normal service and Christmas’ mourning. This is one of those, it punctuates the space between regular rants about live screenings and hot digital media – or lukewarm in the case of the last post. So, here we go after the year in which I published the THOUSANDTH post on this blog and crossed the one MILLION words mark… I’ll try be brief.

Gösta Berlings saga (1924), BFI with John Sweeney

January was the hottest month as a cool breeze blew in from Sweden as the BFI screened the SFI’s restoration of Mauritz Stiller’s adaptation of Nobel laureate Selma Lagerloff’s novel. I was honoured to introduce the film and to interview Sonja Kristina, the granddaughter of Gerda Lundequist (who played the matriarch of Ekeby), who then attended the event with her children and grandchildren.

The film is long and may have its faults but it is a major work and features Lars Hanson, the young Greta Gustafson and my favourite Silent Film Principal Dancer/Actor, Jenny Hasselqvist. The restoration looked stunning bringing new vibrancy and order to the film and, cometh the three hours cometh the accompanist - John Sweeney topped things off with energy and invention, as ever the perfect player for the long dance!

Dans l’Hellade / In Ancient Greece (1909) from Christopher Bird's collection

Museums of Dreamworlds… Kennington Bioscope Programme of Antiquities

This was a collaboration between the Bioscope, the BFI and the Department of Greek and Latin, at my daughter’s alma mater, University College London as part of Museums of Dreamworlds: Silent Antiquity in the BFI National Archive. Introduced by the BFI’s Bryony Dixon, and presented by Professor Maria Wyke from UCL it was a selection of films from 1901 to 1927 all of which drew their inspiration from the classical world of Greece and Rome – very loosely in some cases!

Most of the films were from the BFI’s archive with one - Dans l’Hellade / In Ancient Greece (1909) from Christopher Bird’s collection on 28mm digitally scanned by the Cinema Museum. The project asks “…how did silent cinema design its Greek and Roman dreamworlds? What did cinema gain from recreating the distant past? What did the past gain from being recreated in moving images?” On the night, we found some answers and some more questions and we also discovered how Helen’s fabulous face and fancy for the tailors of Troy led to the war between Sparta and Troy: even now we know these stories so well we can understand these jokes.

A 1919 Erdmann with colour filters!

 

Early Colour Live!, Birkbeck University with John Sweeney, Christopher Bird and Iain Christie

Another collaboration and a set of early colour films on celluloid from Chris Bird’s collection and hand-cranked by the man himself on his own projector. We saw hand-coloured film that would have required sixteen images hand colouring for every foot of film equating to one second, Pathé’s pioneering stencil colour system, William Friese Greene’s Biocolour and more all revealing the sophistication and relentless innovation of cinema’s first decades.

Such treats do not come around very often and here’s hoping for more from the gang in 2026.

 

Inka Länta

With Reindeer and Sled in Inka Länta’s Winterland (1926), Hippfest at Home, Hippfest #15

 

I wasn’t able to get to Falkirk this year but luckily was able to enjoy the online edition. As online presentations go, Hippfest at Home is perhaps the most successful in capturing the atmosphere and the feeling of actually being there. You have establishing shots of the live introductions shot from the back of the stalls showing the lovely old stage of the oldest cinema in Scotland, the Hippodrome (1912) and then the option of seeing the film and the musicians accompanying. As always, Alison Strauss leads from the front with such relaxed expertise and enthusiasm – this kind of impassioned poise is reflected across the whole team who love the films but also the audience and the combination is what makes this impossible festival work so well.

Pick of the pics was this dramatized documentary about the reindeer herding lives of the Sámi people who co-existed with them in the most precarious of ways in the far north of Sweden, across Scandinavia and even into Russia. The screening encompassed Sámi old and new with the UK premiere of a new score by Sámi-Finnish joiker and electronic musician Hildá Länsman plus sound designer Tuomas Norvio, collaborating with the Norwegian Sámi musician Lávre Johan Eira and Swedish composer, cellist and bass guitarist Svante Henryson. Traditional forms of Sámi song – “joik” - were deployed alongside moder instruments and electronica to create a visceral and sometimes startling score to this restored documentation of this remarkable people.

Hotel booked; I look forward to the 16^th Edition in March!

Betty Balfour

The Sea Urchin (UK 1926), with Colin Sell, 8th Kennington Bioscope Silent Film Weekend

April and it was time for an early breakfast and the finest coffee that Lambeth can provide as we dove into this mini-Giornate del cinema muto in Charlie’s old workhouse home. Highlights came thick and fast and included the World Premiere of the new Nasty Women full programme, Breaking Plates and Smashing the Patriarchy, with Colin Sell, presented by Michelle Facey. There were British films, Boy Woodburn (UK 1922) (35mm) with Cyrus Gabrysch playing, introduced by Lawrence Napper and with Ivy Duke and Guy Newall on screen, along with rare US prints, Clive Brook in The Yellow Lily (US 1928) (35mm) with Ashley Valentine and introduction by Liz Cleary

My favourite was The Sea Urchin (UK 1926) (35mm), with Colin Sell and introduced by Lawrence Napper which included Britain’s Queen of Happiness, Betty Balfour (more of whom is coming in ’26 with a recently rediscovered film… check out the KB website!). It was a proper delight with The Sea Urchin in question being our BB’s Fay Wynchbeck who as the film starts is a disruptive student in a Parisian girls’ boarding school. Her singing and dancing leads the other girls slightly astray and there’s a fabulous shot of their after-hours partying through the keyhole which Alfred H would have been lauded for. Fay has rich relatives but there’s a family feud in her way… I swear Colin Sell laughed at parts as he played along with glee!!

Christopher Bird at the EMG gramophone (picture from Lynne Wake)

Un Chien Andalou (1928), 35mm nitrate, live 78 RPM DJ Chris Bird, BFI

June was a mixed blessing as I couldn’t make it to Cinema Ritrovato but at least I had the BFI’s Film on Film long weekend to provide the look and feel of nitrate and celluloid! This was a wonderful weekend with lots of colourful treats and my chance to stay awake (see original post in October, 2017) for all of Lubitsch’s wonderful The Student Prince of Old Heidelberg (1927), but my favourite live cinematic experience had to be the surreal presentation of Bunel’s masterpiece in NFT1.

"NOTHING, in the film, SYMBOLIZES ANYTHING. The only method of investigation of the symbols would be, perhaps, psychoanalysis." [Luis and Salvador...]

Luis Buñuel’s original score was a “mash up” – as The Kids now say – of Argentinian Tango music with Wagner et al, thereby inventing Classical Lounge Core without knowing it. Chris Bird, who collects shellac as well as celluloid, was tasked with cutting from one to the other by playing contemporary pressings on two 78 rpm turntables, one of which was a top of the range EMG machine from 1932 which produced remarkable clarity and range. It was the hip-hop triumph of the season and exactly the kind of madness the creators wanted!

 

Anna May Wong in The Thief of Bagdad

 The Thief of Bagdad (1924), with Neil Brand, BFI Anna May Wong: The Art of Reinvention

The BFI’s Anna May Wong season was my favourite of the year and included one great day in which I caught up with her in two of the great silent fantasy films which I had been waiting to see on film and on screen. Peter Pan (1924) caught the eye with JM Barrie’s hand-picked pocket rocket betty Bronson and its closeness to the original play as well as accompaniment from Costas Fotopoulos but The Thief of Bagdad (1924) featuring a dazzling Douglas Fairbanks and epic accompaniment from Neil Brand featured more AMW and was on such a scale it have NFT1 buzzing!! I could happily watch both films every day of the week!

Italia Almirante Manzini abides

Zingari (IT 1920), with Günter Buchwald, Elizabeth-Jane Baldry and Frank Bockius, Le Giornate Del Cinema Muto 44

This was the pure diva pomp and circumstance of Italia Almirante Manzini playing the Queen of the Gypsies in Zingari (IT 1920) and it brought the Teatro Verdi to its feet with a combination of on-screen energy and the startling accompaniment from a super group comprised of Baldry, Buchwald and Bockius or BBB for short. The film tells the story of Vielka, daughter of the Gyspy King Jammadar (Alfonso Cassini) who is fierce and unruly, determined to sacrifice everything for the man she loves, Sindel (Amleto Novelli) even though he is from a rival clan and physically puts the old man in his place when challenged, starting the feud that runs the entire narrative.

Vielka is supposed to marry Gudlo (Franz Sala), who’s not a patch on Sindel so no wonder she burns their farmhouse and gets herself exiled. Will there be any happy ending, do operas ever have happy endings? Günter let loose his inner gypsy on violin and the others followed on with one of the most passionate accompaniments of this year’s Giornate!

The German Retreat and Battle of Arras (GB 1917), Laura Rossi, Le Giornate Del Cinema Muto 44

Made when the Great War looked like it might be winnable and has a propagandist purpose beyond earlier films in showing the changed momentum of the conflict to those back home. It is also historically significant for the events it memorialises, the techniques it uses to do this and its intent.. Geoffrey H. Malins was director of photography as he had been for the two Somme films and this film is another great technical achievement and awe-inspiring in the greater context.  It didn’t feel triumphant though, more grimly determined to help complete the job and this was partly down to the excellence of Laura Rossi’s musical choices.

Laura has scored for the other films and was on hand to hear her new composition played in the Teatro Verdi by the Orchestra di Pordenone & Coro del Fruili as conducted by Andrej Goričar. Her score enabled us to really see the film, devoid of any post-facto contextualisation, in ways that were connected to the original intent. She allowed us a bit of both but underscoring the documentation on display to allow our own interpretation – a most historical musical agenda, incredibly effective and created.

 

Lillian Gish

Way Down East (1920), with Stephen Horne, BFI, Too Much: Melodrama on Film

Another film that anyone professing to blog about silent film should surely have seen already but as with the two above, I’ve been waiting to see it “live” on film and with an ace accompanist. I was not disappointed and am persuaded that Lillian Gish probably influenced Griffiths’ development of the story. Working not only with the best actor he also had one of the best cameramen and had clearly been watching the works of Sjostrom and Weber as this story is uncompromising. It’s also a surprise to see the film take the approach it does to Gish’s unmarried mother character and, indeed, to see her fight back against the guilty party: This man – an honoured guest at your table – why don’t you find out what HIS life has been?

This feels more Gish than Griffith but either way it’s a direct hit on the Patriarchy where you least expect it. Anna’s driven by a rage of frustrated indignity at the unfairness of her situation and the fact that through no fault of her own she is denied happiness in the arms of the man she actually loves – played by Richard Barthelmess.

Stephen Horne provided yet another one-man orchestral score off the hoof and covered this film’s vast space and time with constantly evolving mood and melody all played on three or was it four instruments with just the two hands, or so he says!

 

The UK forecast...

Thank you to all who have programmed, played, introduced and archived this year, lets do even more in 2026 as I write my way towards my second million words…

 

 

 

Train keeps a runnin’… Le Giornate del Cinema Muto #44 Day Eight

 

That was the week that was… and it was a Festival of many parts as director Jay Weissberg noted as he introduced the final night’s gala performance and reflected on the creative choices and collective efforts that for this precious week, turn the Teatro Verdi and the surrounding are into the “home” that former director David Robinson always talked about. To the programmers, the marketers, the ticket office, the ushers, projections and even sommeliers and baristas of Pordenone, this is a triumph of organisation but: “we make the table and you the audience are the family” that eats , talks and watches together.

 

Jay had their hospitality in mind because of course tonight’s finale was a projection of Buster Keaton’s master work with a score composed by Andrej Goričar who conducted the Orchestra of the Imaginary, Lubiana in performing it. So many of Buster’s films are a comedy comfort blanket for this audience and there couldn’t have been many who hadn’t seen this film more than a few times. But context is everything with “live cinema” and the film rose to the occasion as the gathering once again found Keaton’s tale funny as it was reanimated by our collective appreciation and the new, exceptionally live music. Some times I think that silent film musicians are there to mostly remind us of the “life” that went into these images – we are all attuned with song lines of the film makers as their new collaborators connect with these ancient meanings.

 

A "Train", not sure they'll catch on?

Don’t get me wrong, a kick in the head from Buster Keaton’s dad Joe who plays the locomotive engine driver, is still funny in any language and at any time. This was a bit of a speciality from Keaton Senior in preference to using his fists and the skill remains impressive. There enough timeless slapstick in Our Hospitality but also a playful surrealism, especially during that first half our as Buster and co take the old Rocket steam loco out west – a train so feeble that Keaton’s dog can easily follow it all the way, and they have to move the tracks to avoid donkeys and other road hazards.

 

The whole rickety journey is one of Buster’s finest and the fact that the entire crew and passengers take it as normal is what makes it work. Out of nowhere, a man throws stones from a mountain side and the driver throws logs back which are quickly gathered and taken to start a fire elsewhere. The United States of Daft… how we miss them.

 

But this comedy is a black one and starts off with the Canfield and McKay family feud as two of the men from each family extend the senseless violence by killing each other. John Canfield’s wife decides to take their son Willie (played by Keaton’s baby – this is a family affair) to New York in an effort to remove him from the front line. This is New York allegedly based on a 1820’s map showing Broadway as a dirt track intersecting with an equally dusty 4^th Avenue… CBGBs wasn’t yet open nor the Met but Bleeker Bob’s record store in the Village probably was…

 

Willie grows up to be Buster and is delighted to learn that he has inherited his father’s estate down south and imagining a fine Georgian mansion, sets off on the new-fangled train. Sitting next to him is a pretty young woman Virginia (Natalie Talmadge aka Mrs B. Keaton) who become gradually impressed as they endure their unusual journey. When they finally arrive, she runs off to see her brothers who are, of course Cranfields. Willie gives the game away saying he’s here for the McKay estate – more of a collapsing barn than a shed… Virginia invites him to dinner and the boys start planning Willie’s leaving do only for the famous southern hospitality to get in the way… up to a point.

 

If the second half doesn’t quite match the first for laughs, we have the love story to hopefully bring peace to this forever war… Bit of a theme this week.

 

Before the main feature there were some precious Chaplin moments. Jay Weissberg has been playing excerpts from his recent interview with former Festival Director David Robinson and they give an insight into Chaplin’s life and works: it’s a wonderful way of bringing David back into the Giornate but also, here’s a man who met Charlie and Oona, who also met Stand and Olly… he’s steeped in the personalities and it is lovely to see him on screen.

 

Following this there were more Chaplin Family Home Movies which have also been a feature of the week. The first features an older Charlie and an older Syd juggling with the younger brother still more poised and co-ordinated and funnier too. Then there’s Charlie and Oona in Venice, the city unchanged as my short break there proved last week. Charlie looks well and is clearly enjoying his later years!

 

Another star of the Festival has been Max Fleischer and the mixed media films featuring Ko-ko the Clown directed by brother Dave. How much did Disney learn from these boys and their endless imagination and dynamism. Fleischer went on to make the ground-breaking Superman cartoon serials of the late 1930s and has a higher level of technique than Disney.

 

Meg Morley accompanied the above session and again I really enjoy her period appropriate melodies and the jazzy fluidity of her playing on the Rolls Royce Fazioli piano. She hits the keys with just that extra bit if style and her ideas always support the action so well.

 

Earlier in the day there was a lot of “Early Cinema” with 18 (?!) short films from Stockholm mostly from 1897. These were followed by two colour-stencilled French films about Japan, La Geisha (1910) and LA RIVIÈRE KATSURA AU JAPON (1914) and other shorts accompanied by masterclass student Ludovico Bellucci. Great though the established musicians are for this Festival it is good to see the future players coming through.

 

My Boy (US 1921), with Neil Brand

 

More from the Chaplin Connection and more recollections from David Robinson, of Charlie meeting Jackie Coogan at a dinner in the early 1960s. Coogan had a difficult reputation at this point and the family was unsure how the meeting would go but Charlie simply looked at the man and smiled “young man” and all was well.

 

By this point Jackie was Uncle Fester in the successful Addams Family – and yesterday was appropriately enough the 100^th birthday of John Astin, the original and best Gomez Addams – but what do you do when you’ve had your career start aged ten in something line The Kid? Well, follow it up with a similar film, this one called My Boy (US 1921), directed by Victor Heerman and featuring accompaniment by Our Kid, Neil Brand. It's sentimentl adn soppy with some good gags and the lad in question is very good, a natural actor at this age who can hit the deeper notes.

 

L’ Ombra (IT 1923) with José Marìa Serralde Ruiz

 

Another in the revelatory Italia Almirante Manzini strand and one of the best, in fact by consensus, probably the best newly discovered film of this last day. I’ve been undecided about Manzini’s position in the top tier of Divadom but there’s no denying her physicality and expressiveness, she dominates every scene and has an imperious way with her.

 

This was a really meaty role as she plays Berta, the wife of a painter Geraldo (Alberto Collo) who is suddenly struck down and paralysed and rendered paraplegic. She rises to the occasion but cannot engage in an active life anymore and, naturally, this is frustrating for her new husband. He starts living a double life starting an affair with a family friend and younger woman Elena Previle (Liliama Ardea) who has recently left her husband. Time passes and a child appears but the once paralysed Berta starts to regain her functions, surprising everyone with a full recovery, not least Geraldo. What follows is a master class in tightly scripted retribution as Berta regains control of her life with purpose and sheer willpower. Almirante Manzini commands the screen and the other characters and dispenses her own judgement on the iniquitous position her character has been left in.

 

Now, that’s what I call Diva!

 

And, this is what I call the finest film festival in the World. See you next year.

The fault in our Tsar… Le Giornate del Cinema Muto 44, Day Seven

If Hammer made Soviet historical dramas with a propagandist edge in the silent era it would probably be exactly like The Wings of a Serf (1926) which is, in so many ways, years ahead of its time in terms of blood, gore, S&M, sci-fi, gruesome behaviours and even a touch of what would be termed deviant sexuality. Kim Newman, give Mark Gatiss a call, there’s a classic mondo bizarro movie waiting to be remade….

 

Writing these blogs is the treading of a fine line between instant reactions and hot takes as well as properly understanding the works we have just seen, and clearly there’s a lot more to this particular soviet film than is clear on first viewing and Maya Garcia’s note in the catalogue are very good at providing context. This is also a film made in the more laissez fair years between Lenin and Stalin and the latter’s conservative clamp down of the early thirties onwards. Here homosexuality had been decriminalised and it is indeed witnessed in The Wings of a Serf  in the relationship between the Tsar (Leonid Leonidov) and his favourite Fadke Basamanov (Nikolai Prozorovsky). But here it is being used to emphasis the Tsar’s unacceptable qualities and that can only be the case if you think what they are doing is wrong?

 

Or, as a writer in Kino-Front in 1927 put it, “in a Soviet historical picture, the important thing is class struggle, not the personality and pathology of the Tsar…”Eisenstein would agree and was clearly making notes. Equally you have to wonder at how the flying inventions of serf Nykishka (Ivan Klyukvin) fit in with the depiction of this “terrible” and not “awe-inspiring” Ivan? He prevents the young inventor from being killed by giving him the chance to develop his machine and offering freedom if it works, but then declares it the work of the Devil and orders his execution.

 

So it’s also Ivan the Inconsistent as well as Sadistic… but he’s not alone and the cruelty of the film’s opening section is provided by boyar Kurlyatev who, having called Nykishka to fix his clock, tortures him for his science secrets while seducing his lover Fima (Sofya Garrel) by luring her to his chambers. Now it’s Ivan the Intolerant as he sees a way of dealing with his Kurlyatev problem and sends his private army (Oprichniks) to destroy his enemy's estate and bring his serfs to his court at Alexandrovskaya Sloboda. Here the serfing mechanic once again proves useful by fixing a flax-breaking wheel and gains further reprieve…

 

But the film’s break-neck madness is that no one is trusted and no one is safe from the wrath of Ivan the Unpredictable who will turn on family and friends quicker than Old Joe from Georgia. Meet the Old Boss, same as the New Boss… He can be feeding grapes to Fadke one minute and strangulating his already tortured wife the next as she tries to help the man who, if anyone just stopped and thought clearly for a second, could establish air superiority for the Russians, 300 years before they’d need it!

 

Mauro Colombis provided spirited accompaniment through the many moods of the Tsar and found musical method in spite of the madness on screen.

 

Rediscoveries – Victor Sjöström, with Stephen Horne

 

The film of the day came early… and even this controversial being the first to ever be banned in Sweden. The Gardener (1912) was Sjöström’s second film although he had been working in theatre since the mid 1890s and so was both an experienced performer as well as director. The script was from Mauritz Stiller, his friend and mentor who also makes and uncredited appearance as a reveller when the heroine is on a boat.

 

The film was banned for as contrary to "good practices" and for “embellishing death” although I’m sure there would have been more freedom to express the contents on stage at this time. The story concerns a farmer/gardener (Sjöström) who disapproves of his son (young Gösta Ekman!) having a relationship with the daughter of one of his workers played by Danish actress Lili Bech. Having chased his son of his true motives are revealed as his rapes her in the green house before sending her and her father away to penury just to save his own skin.

 

There are no easy answers in this film and also no predictable narrative decline into drink and prostitution as often seen in films of the period. The woman keeps going and finds a away through the support of a kindly old general (John Ekman) but after a few years he dies and his children force her out. Returning to her home village she must confront the past and what it has meant for her life.

 

Bech is so naturalistic and unmannered something the stage-trained Scandinavians seem to have managed from the get-go helped, no doubt, by the theatrical qualities of their culture and the existence of great performance managers like Sjöström, The film, once considered lost, is just over half an hour but contains more quality moments – cinematography already from the mighty Julius Jaenzon.

 

There were four tantalising fragments from other early Sjöström films and Stephen Horne brought the epic lyricism to the lakes and mountains of Värmland … or close by!

 

It's only 1912 but already the men who would make the Golden Age of Swedish Cinema are already in place, now, why not start taking some of Selma Lagerlöf’s stories and turn them into films?

 

 

Now for the quick-fire round…

Il Siluramento Dell' Oceania  (IT 1917) with José Marìa Serralde Ruiz

Directed by Augusto Genina this was an thriller about sinking ships, family treasure and evil gangs. It moves at quite a lick and whilst missing some sections holds together entertainingly as the Captain of a sunken liner (Vasco Creti) helps a young Viscontessa (Ileana Leonidoff) recover her lost inheritance. There are castles, mysteries, fiendish crooks, fights and chases... it was FUN!

Kissa Kouprine

La Perle (BE 1929) with Meg Morley

 

More Belgian Avant-Garde and one of the most entertaining and cohesive with Henri d' Ursel’s The Pearl (1929). Written and starring Georges Hugnet as Le Jeune Homme, The Pearl could signify possession or it could mean love… it may even be just a pearl. I don’t think it matters to any forensic degree, you can overlay your own interpretation according to mood: the key thing is that the film draws you in and makes you think. This properly defies any constraining interpretations and, by the rules, your guess is as good as mine. All we know for certain is what happens on screen.

 

A young Lulu (Mary Stutz) waits in her garden for her fiancé and he sets off to buy her a pearl necklace. Here is the films funniest joke as Lulu looks out and we see her man running through woods, rowing across a river then running through town getting distracted by a street game… You expect her to view him directly but he’s far away, initially heroic and then just distracted.

At the jewellery store, a pretty shop assistant (Kissa Kouprine, the only professional actor on show who featured in a number of Marcel L’Herbier’s films) steals pearls and carelessly hides them in her stocking top which is all too visible as she sits chatting on a ledge. The girl has no name and is only referenced in the title sequence as La Voleuse – The Thief. He leaves the shop with his pearls and she follows him, hitching a ride on his bike. The man crashes his bike and the string of pearls is broken… the man searches but there is still a pearl missing. It rolled directly to La Voleuse who walks off with it leaving him fatuously pawing the ground...

 

He goes to an hotel and La Voleuse is everywhere, appearing in a tight-fitting silver-grey cat suit – an updated, sleeker version of Irma Vep - from every corridor, pursuing the man and his pearls. She is not alone and there are other women all wearing the same costume. Are all women looking for “The Pearl” and you can make of that what you will.

 

In the evening we travelled back to that place again for East Lynne with Variations (US 1919) featuring the great Marie Prevost showing up the Keystone Boys yet again!

  

The Man Who Came Back (US 1924) with John Sweeney

 

Festival director, Jay Weissberg gave out a number of trigger warnings starting with the unknown ten-minute soft porn films of a young woman being caught skinny dipping by a man after her dog runs off with her clothes. It felt more like a 70s Brit sex comedy than the usual fare but I’m sure it was artistically justified.

 

There was worse to come in the main feature and not in George O’Brien’s drinking and Dorothy Mackaill’s drug taking but in the ways his character beats hers when he suspects her of falling off the wagon leaving her… “grateful”? “Oh Henry… we’ve won…” she says as she staggers to her feat the beating apparently worth it as some show of love? George too was skinny dipping and – as one cineaste later remarked – not for long enough.

 

O’Brien’s tyle of acting does tend to rely on him swaggering around trying to control his abnormal muscle mass and ripping his shirt off at the slightest opportunity. Here he looked ill-matched with the delicate features and other-worldly hair mass of Mackaill who not only looked like she was in the wrong decade but also acted like it versus Burly O’Brien. The two played Henry “Harry” Potter (fnar!!) and his lover Marcelle who he meets on a journey to prove himself to his father that his wasteful gambling and drinking years are over. Sadly things get far worse before they get better which is pretty brave for a film about addiction at this time.

 

The estimable Ralph Lewis plays his self-made and hard to please, father whilst Emily Fitzroy is disapproving Aunt Isabel with Cyril Chadwick as the man of unknown allegiance Captain Trevelan… Emmett J. Flynn directs well and it is a tense film that deals frankly – too frankly in parts – with difficult subjects. The restoration looks fabulous but the special effect for me is Ms Mackaill who’d I never seen in a film before this one and who acted not just George but everyone else off screen. One to watch, mark my words!

 

John Sweeney was again on top form for this one smoothing out the melodrama and heightening the drama in ways that might be unconscious to him now but are the result of many hundreds of thousands of hours treading this remarkable musical path!

Futility… Le Giornate del Cinema Muto Day Five

 

In the rush to fall over each other’s opinions we forget that there can be no winners in a war of words or of bombs. In the battle to persuade, we hurl our arguments across the internet like ordnance from a 4.5 inch Howitzer and yet, whilst the enemy’s lines may be pockmarked with damage, their response only gains in ferocity with the momentum of the attack. It is quiet something to bring a silence to this discourse and to give us all pause for thought, to defuse the fatuous mechanics of action and reaction but that’s exactly what both the late-night films today did for me. They did so in different and equally powerful ways.

The most effective statements are often the ones that simply let you work out the message yourself… not in an abstract way like the Belgian avant-garde cinema of Tuesday – but in the force of images and or music that show a truth we might never have seen conveyed in a moving image before. If the original aim of the Ukrainian/Soviet propaganda we’ve seen this week, as well as tonight’s British propaganda, was to create a specific response in the audience, the musical context of both scores held us away from that original intent and gave us that pause and somewhere between thought and expression lies the truth. Not surprisingly some of us were a little short on words for a while...

Palestine - A Revised Narrative (LB, 2024)

Cynthia Zaven’s sparse electronica and piano accompaniment for her compilation of Imperial War Museum clips of Palestine during the Great War enabled a presentation of documents devoid of polemic. She turned British propaganda into a neutral statement that simply reminded us that one of the World’s most intractable problems was different before 1917. In the clips we see Gaza, Jaffa, lush farmlands and seafront towns, there’s Nazareth, Bethlehem and a Jerusalem in which Muslims, Jews and Christians intermingle, going about their daily lives – talking together and worshipping their God with his common roots. Clearly not everything is perfect – the Commonwealth forces have just pushed the Turkish forces out of the area, it’s a warzone.

What happened next is of course where the real debate starts and were further reading is essential. The Balfour Declaration and the decisions of a flawed British regime with a romanticised view of The Holy Land played their part but as a historian I must advise caution and cross-referencing: for myself and everyone else, we must investigate not reach for simple conclusions. As a starter, I would heartily recommend three episodes of the Empire podcast with William Dalrymple and Anita Anand which cover the Arab Revolt (Lawrence of Arabia) and the Sykes-Picot agreement to “carve up” the countries of the middle east. All of these were recorded in 2023 before the current war but main essential as History doesn’t change based on what is happening now does it? It helps us understand why what is happening … and silent film is both history as primary sources and secondary interpretations.

The German Retreat and Battle of Arras (GB 1917), Laura Rossi

Made when the Great War looked like it might be winnable and has a propagandist purpose beyond earlier films in showing the changed momentum of the conflict to those back home. It is also historically significant for the events it memorialises, the techniques it uses to do this and its intent.. Geoffrey H. Malins was director of photography as he had been for the two Somme films but even though the first was certainly ground-breaking and a phenomenon, Arras doesn’t carry the sense of excitement ad revelation possibly because the enemy was in retreat and more of a known quantity. It’s still a great technical achievement and awe-inspiring in the greater context but it didn’t feel triumphant, more grimly determined to help complete the job.

Laura Rossi has scored for the other films and was on hand to hear her new composition played in the Teatro Verdi by the Orchestra di Pordenone & Coro del Fruili as conducted by Andrej Goričar. Le Giornate is always the warmest of homes for international collaboration! Rossi’s music acted as with Zaven’s compilation and composition in allowing us to really see the film, devoid of any contextualisation that was connected to the original intent or and deliberate contemporary re-contextualisation. She allowed us a bit of both but underscoring the documentation on display to allow our own interpretation – a most historical musical agenda, incredible effective and created.

Elements of poetry and songs of the period, from all sides, were used as connective themes but also providing contrapuntal lines to neutralise more pointed segments. There was more ground to cover than in the Palestinian film given this was a complete creation of the time, but it enabled us that more conscious consumption of the film than might otherwise have been possible.

A sobering and to the day and brilliant work from all concerned.

Meanwhile, back in the Land of Fiction…

Following on from the top… There’s so much “debate” in the UK right now about “our” “national culture” and surely the fact that Betty Balfour was termed Britain’s Queen of Happiness highlights “our” ability to put fun before fear and jokes at our own expense ahead of others. Anyone who forgets this, is nowhere near as British as they believe themselves to be. Betty doesn’t need a flag, she needs silk clothes, fizzy wine and a good time, but she’s also kind and is an equal opportunities irritator!

Betty featured in Syd Chaplin’s A Little Bit of Fluff (1928) which was presented in gorgeous-looking 35mm and featured a host of GB good ‘uns, including arguably the third-best looking McLaglen, Clifford as Betty’s boxing boyfriend Henry “One Round” Hudson, Nancy Rigg as Syd’s wife and Edmund Breon as his mate John. It’s a hoot with near-Hollywood production values and a remarkably high gag rate. Syd’s very much his own Chaplin but he does have the speed of thought and instincts of his brother as well as that most comedically crucial quality: timing!

Syd loves his wife but less so her Aunt Agatha – the brilliant Annie Esmond - who even after two weeks of wedded “bliss” is pushing him around. As the girls go off to see Agatha’s sister, Syd gets persuaded to go out by John and the wheels start to come off for the entirety of the rest of the film.

It’s fast and furious but remember this even if you forget everything else: a small dog may be used to lick stamps if held at the correct angle and provided with the right incentives> I shall take this lesson forward.

   

Accompaniment was from dog-loving Donald Sosin and cool cat Frank Bockius on the sticks (just don’t throw them for the dogs…)

 

Quick-fire round...

 

Danza Serpentina (US? FR?, 1896-1905?) – who can resist this dance, especially colourised? The images are also being projected on the Teatro Verdi and in one of the squares.

L’Innamorata (IT 1920) with Stephen Horne

Time for some more Italia Almirante Manzini and this starts with a pure visual Diva power play as the man waiting to see her has to await her full preparation and we see her in close-up glimpses, lipstick being finished, hair checked, full-glam eye-shadow… before she is revealed in her full glory.

Sadly, this film doesn’t quite support her in the way that Zingari (1920) did and has a lumpy plot not helped by missing sections but with Stephen Horne to fill the experience with fulsome flourishes and expert under-scoring it was inevitably entertaining!

 

Die Dame mit der Maske (DE 1928) Günter Buchwald, Frank Bockius

When a young socialite has to undertake work as an exotic dancer to convince her father that his books are still being published, she has no option but to wear a mask as she shows far more flesh than she would prefer.

A good cast – including dynamo Dita Parlo – and some fine set pieces are let down by a slightly wayward narrative in which some characters are inactive when really they could save the day with more gumption. Apparently a number of different endings we filmed and you could see anyone of them working… a reflection of the lack of internal logic and depth behind the main characters and their motivation perhaps?

Günter Buchwald and Frank Bockius are on fire this week and their mix of classical, folk and jazz served this Weimar treat very well!

 

Louis, Musidora & Léontine with Meg Morley

Another clutch of excellent Louis Feuillade shorts including L’HOMME AIMANTÉ (Un Monsieur aimanté) (FR 1907), LYSISTRATA OU LA GRÈVE DES BAISERS (FR 1910) and LAGOURDETTE GENTLEMAN CAMBRIOLEUR (FR 1916).

This last was my favourite and featured a reunion of the three key cast members of Les Vampires… Musidora is reading a novelisation of the series and Marcel Lévesque tries to impress her by pretending to be a super thief. It’s daft fun and even Édouard Mathé pops up as a reveller at the club where his former colleague is “committing” his made-up crimes.

Meg Morley joined in the proto-jazzed mayhem. (that would make a good t-shirt slogan surely?)

 

À bientôt!

 

PJ

 

Musi et Mathé!

The march begins… Le Giornate del Cinema Muto Edition 44, Day One

In Pordenone we travel through distance as well as time, moving across countries and continents as much as in style and substance, all of this was so long ago and yet not so far when it is so near and, in the present circumstances, the straight raised arms of smiling school children in shocking salute still brings a collective shudder. We were watching the youngsters in Emilio Gallo’s Colonia Alpina documenting the hillside community he established with his wife in 1923 and which allowed children for poorer backgrounds in the cities to experience the beauty of the mountains of Biella in Piedmont; a tonic for those with breathing issues from the smoggy lowlands and with those casual actions a reminder of everyday life under authoritarianism.

 

We were in Italy too for the gorgeous array of shorts showing the coastal district of Liguria in north-western Italy. It’s a spectacular location with territory crossed by the Alps and Apennines mountain range and there are steep multi-storey fishing villages literally hanging off the rock side. Below are the brave fisherman and in these films from 1901 to 1934 you get a real sense of the topographical diversity of this country. Pordenone is also near the alps but is 211 miles away from Genoa and its an eight-hour train journey – all for only 35 Euros. Maybe next year?

 

Gunter Buckwald enjoyed his time beside the seaside on accompaniment.

Charles Inslee in Call of the Wild (1908)

To New York and three films directed by DW Griffith for American Bioscope as part of the Early Cinema strand, courtesy of The Biograph Project who have taken paper copies of film cells help in the Library of Congress for copyright reasons where there is no original film, and recreated some of Griffiths’ earliest work. Here we can see the bridge between Victorian melodrama and the emerging new media and it is fascinating to see the technical language of film developing along with the art of acting.

 

The Planter’s Wife (1908) was an adaptation of a stage play from the 1880s and featured Arthur V. Johnson and Claire McDowell as the hard-farming Hollands. Mrs H decides that agriculture might not be for her and runs off with the dastardly Tom (Harry Solter) only for her sister, Tomboy Nellie (the great Florence Lawrence) to save the day. Somehow. Romance of a Jewess (1908) also features Flo Law as the titular young woman who follows her heart and falls for a native American man (using modern parlance) with unpredictable consequences. Interesting scenario but maybe these racial types were easier for the director to work with? There’s more in The Call of the Wild (1908) featuring Charles Inslee (in redface?) as a successful college footballer who isn’t allowed to move beyond his native American heritage. This was the racism Griffith would handle.

 

Philip Carli handled accompaniment.

 

After America, then, well then… we all went to Hell or at least as far as Purgatory with our good friend Dante Alighieri… in Il Purgatorio Helios & Ambrosio 1911 then Il Purgatorio (1911). Directed by Giuseppe Berardi and Arturo Busnengo these were Helios Films attempts to compete with Milano Films blockbuster L’Inferno (1911) and it’s remarkable how similar on tone these two shorter films are with the latter feature? Just as Griffith’s sets would include the AB logo to try and protect copyright, so too was it difficult to prevent other’s copying and cashing in on bankable projects. The Helios films were cheaper, shorter and quicker to release – out first and enjoyable especially with inventive accompaniment from Daan van den Hurk and Frank Bockius

 

Signore Alighieri is still awaiting his royalties… damn it!

 

A change of pace and showing as part of the Ukrainian Children’s Film strand with The Three (UkrSSR 1928) featuring accompaniment from Donald Sosin. This film involves three lads from different backgrounds ending up in a Crimean summer camp of sorts with “hilarious/heart-warming results” at a children’s pioneer camp. It’s hard to ignore the context of the early Stalinist regime despite the film’s good nature it was still propaganda made in the first year of the first Five Year Plane which brought so much death and misery to Ukraine.

 

Now it was time for the opening night gala and it began as these things always should with a Boxing Kangaroo this time a live action/animation from the imaginative nib of Dave Fleisher in 1920. This was followed by just under a minute of watching Charlie Chaplin walking in his garden in 19157 and in glorious colour courtesy of the Chaplin Archives – Chaplin Family Home Movies, Mauro Colombis accompanied.

 

Linda Moglia & Angelo Ferrari - Cyrano de Begerac (1925) 

Cyrano de Bergerac (IT 1922-1923), with Ben Palmer and the Orchestra da Camera di Pordenone

 

When Edmond Rostand wrote the original play in 1897 he had little idea that someone would not only film his work but then take three years of painstaking Pathe Stencil post-production to add colour. At almost two-hours long Cyrano stands almost uniquely as an extant colourised feature from this period and is even more remarkable on the big screen and with Ben Palmer conducting the Orchestra da Camera di Pordenone. Sumptuous doesn’t do it justice and with the auditorium filled with these lush orchestrations of Kurt Kuenne’s score further illuminating a film that revels in its own excesses in full expectation that the audience know exactly what’s coming.

 

You all know the story but as with the 1924 Peter Pan I saw last month at the BFI, this follows the play more than most adaptations. Like everyone I’m a sucker for tints and this restoration looked gorgeous on the Verdi screen, but the story draws you in until the very last whilst the acting is so strong especially from Linda Moglia (Roxane) and Pierre Magnier (Le plus gros nez!). The cinematography by Ottavio De Matteis is also stunning and you really have to take your plumed hat off to those colourists: the film was followed by a mass outbreak of carpel tunnel syndrome which was only alleviated by the advent of technicolour… probably!

 

All this and I found a new record store in town… what a start!