Marie jewel recovered and Lon finds his charm… Le Giornate del Cinema Muto 2026, Day Four

There’s an incredible story behind the finding of Seven Sinners (1925), which was long considered a lost film until May 2015 when film hunter Joel Archer located it in Queensland, Australia in the hands of a film projectionist Ron West who had been given it by a cinema-owning family based in Melbourne and kept it along with other treasures – on nitrate 35mm – in his farm shed. The seven reels were 80% salvageable and after restoration by the Academy Film Archive gaps have been filled and whilst there are some compromised areas it is a wonder, in parts looking as fresh as the carnation in Clive Brook’s buttonhole.

 

As Michel Facey writes in the catalogue entry, this was from a period when the film’s star, Marie Prevost was Warners’ “Queen of the Screen”, described in their ad for this film as “a feminine character of alluring charm… an actress whose spontaneous art mirrors every human emotion…” And Marie does not disappoint in this smart crime caper with a heart of gold and delightful performances all round. It has a script as precise as a safe-breakers touch and a cast who never miss: it’s a real Spritz of a film!

Marie Prevost and Clive Brook

 

Marie is Molly Brian who breaks into a rich house with her partner in crime, “Handsome Joe” Hagney (John Patrick), they’re surprised by what appears to be a resident in a dressing gown and firing a pistol. Joe escapes but the man, who turns out to be Jerry Winters (Cool Clive Brook), also turns out to be a crook intent on robbing the jewels from the same safe, one that Molly opens with alacrity much to his delight. They’ll go halves only they won’t go anywhere because in walks an elder couple, Pious Joe McDowell (Claude Gillingwater) and wife Aimie (Mathilde Brundage) who say that they’re minding the house for the owners only they’re not, they’re in the same profession as the other three.

 

Those of you good with figures will have worked out we have five sinners although though not all of that number knows the truth and, with two more sinners to add plus an actual policeman, I’ll leave the narrative summary there.

 

Accompaniment was provided by John Sweeney in full flight. Delighting in every twist and turn from a cast who like many from this period, you can almost hear talking. This is a must watch when you get the chance.

 

Joel is at Le Giornate and got a round of applause when his part in the recovery came up on screen. Imagine if we all still thought that this film didn’t exist? “Go, you good thing!” is, I believe, the saying in Brisbane!

 

Sheffield 1902, then, as now, a city divided by football...

Tram Ride of the Day: The award has to go to the elegantly entitled Tram Ride Through the City of Sheffield as recorded by Sagar Mitchell and James Kenyon in 1902 when, as I’m sure you all know, Sheffield United FC finished tenth in the First Division just behind their rivals Sheffield Wednesday. So, any extra glum fizzogs on view must have been Blades fans.

 

Sheffield still has the trams but they’re not as much fun and neither are Wednesday or t’ Blades… but they’ll be back. In 1902 Steel City was very much a hub of industrial activity and trams revolutionised peoples access to work.

 

BREAKING: The TRotD Award has now been shared with the extraordinary A Trip Down Market Street Before the Fire (US 1906), directed by Miles Brothers just before the San Francisco Earthquake on 18^th April which destroyed many of the buildings we see with the exception of the ferry terminal according to Dr Lawrence Napper of Kings College London. There’s more detail to be found on these events and the activities of the film makers in the programme and online.

 

Tom Santschi and Edward Hearn

Saddle up and ride! Also, “don’t let your babies grow up to be cowboys… Part 675”

 

No trams out west only trains but all we saw were horses in the two short westerns in the Rediscoveries strand.

 

Robert N. Bradbury’s Beyond the Trail (US 1921) was a punchy tale of two brothers one good Clem (Tom Santschi) and the other, Bud, wayward (Edward Hearn). It’s amazing how much of the generic tropes of westerns are not only already in place but expressed in this half hour film but it’s no doubt all true up to a point. Clem takes the rap for his brother killing a man during a robbery and in exile comes across a lone woman (Patricia Palmer) and her baby who had been deserted by the father… Bud! Cue a return to the hometown and final showdown.

  

Marshall Neilan’s The Country That God Forgot (US 1916) had some excellent cinematography and the look of classic westerns to follow with one especially impactful shot of Mary Charleson silhouetted against the endless prairie beyond the doorframe of their homestead. We once again have Tom Santchi as the hero, this time a miner called Steve who finally strikes it rich only for his wife to desert him for another man called Craig (which is not very Rough and Rowdy as a name is it?). Steve’s a determined man though and sets off to put things right…

  

Asta und Connie genießen nach Feierabend ein Getränk im Posta...

Oh, show me the way to the next whiskey bar award:

 

Weimar Uncensored should have been entitled TOTALLY uncensored as it’s hard to know whether Conrad Veidt was just carrying on from the long nights before when filming Der Reigen (1920) or just very much in character. There are so many lounges lacking their lizards with this man at this stage but perhaps even he felt the pressure or keeping pace with Die Asta so much his senior at this point.

 

Seeing Nielsen acting on a screen this size is always a treat because you can see her face working the emotions with expression that is beyond thought. It’s a rare gift to be able to convey so much with so little deliberate effort – think Isabelle Huppert of Stephan Audran (I’ve overdosed on Claude Chabrol this autumn – thanks BFI!) – but here we see it in one of the very first screen actors and the first European star.

 

Directed by Richard Oswald and adapted from the 1897 play, La Ronde by Arthur Schnitzler, the film shows Nielsen’s character Elena and her various relationships with men who either lack moral courage or morals in the case of Veidt’s vampiric Peter Karvan. She marries Albert Peters (Eduard von Winterstein) for status and security, preferring his brother Fritz (Theodor Loos), but happy enough to look after her step-daughter until Karvan re-emerges to blackmail her.

 

It's episodic and overwrought but whilst it might try your patience in some parts you’re rewarded by Asta in particular as well as the faint smell of absinth every time Connie walks onto screen and smooths his reptilian gaze across the screen.

 

Gabriel Thibaudeau accompanied the cabaret in style proving that there’s no good in sitting alone in your room, and we saw Willi Schaeffers dance too in the nightclub scenes!

 

Female Madness Programme Two was a more coherent session than the first consisting of dramas not documentaries all of which included portrayals of female hysteria and the ways it was perceived by the industry and audience in these early stages. Mario Caserini’s Amleto (IT 1908) drew on Shakespeare’s conception of Ophelia (and Hamlet’s) madness and it did make you wonder how far the view of women’s hysterics had advanced over three hundred years?

 

There was also Albert Capellani’s Pauvre Mere! (FR 1906) and Léonce Perret’s L'Angélus de la Victoire (FR 1916) which centred on a young couple from different classes being prevented from marriage by their fathers. The war begins and in the end they wonder what all the fuss was about… apart from Fabienne Fabrèges who gives a disturbing depiction of the young Jacqueline driven mad by news of her love’s demise on the front. And still we fight.

 

Fabienne Fabrèges 

Riccardo Tolentino’s Le memorie di una istitutrice (IT 1917) has Valentina Frascaroli as Jane Eyre in what must now be considered the definitive version even though it’s only 33'47 long… It’s like a speed read and a lot of fun!

 

Meg Morley and Elisabeth-Jane Baldry accompanied with a wonderful mix of piano, harp and vocals with E-J’s song for the forlorn Jacqueline after she learns of her lovers fate in the war. Haunting.

 

 

And for desert: Tell It to the Marines (1926) accompanied by Neil Brand and Frank Boclkius

 

This has long been one of my favourites not just for Lon Chaney being given the chance to act against type and using just his own face but also because it includes those two Goldwyn “New Faces” selectees of 1922 and lifelong buddies in spite of everything: Eleanor Boardman and William Haines. Three of the very best Hollywood people.

 

Directed by George W Hill, Tell it to the Marines is very well drilled with, quick changes in pace and excellent cinematography: silent Hollywood at its peak. There is some superb hand-held camerawork during the fight on the island not to mention stirring shots of the navy at sea – huge battleships rolling with the waves. Indomitable and not far away from being used in earnest.

Lon Chaney and Eleanor Bordman

 

It’s a meaty role for William Haines as he gets to play the shallow raw recruit who’s only in it for himself. He falls for Eleanor Boardman’s nurse mainly as she’s the prettiest thing in sight and it’s only later that he learns how much he really means it. An excellent performer, it’s no surprise he was so popular: he has an easy way and always seems to throw in the odd realistic gesture like…picking his nose! Boardman does her usual top-notch job with not a lot to play with. It’s good to see her as always on the big screen and on such a fantastic print - she is as ethereal as ever and it’s noteworthy that her best scenes are with Chaney – she rises to his level.

 

Without doubt it is Chaney’s film with his Postlethwaite complexion, iron jaw and smiling eyes. I’ve heard that he gained such expressiveness as the son of deaf and mute parents. This may have been the case but he’s also emotionally intelligent and able to submerge himself completely in character. So much so that his actions and gradual shift in concerns continue to surprise you throughout the film… he only reveals the decent heart when he wants us to see it.

 

Married to the navy, loyal to all his charges, selfless to a flaw… Chaney’s portrayal struck so true with the marines themselves that he became the first actor to be awarded an honorary membership in the Corps.

 

Neil Brand and Frank Bockius’s accompaniment was disciplined, powerful and playful all at the same time, as if they had absorbed the characters of Chaney and Haines and the spirit of a film which, when you've stripped all the flags away, is about love, sacrifice and togetherness. Neil had the music Frank had the rhythm, who could ask for anything more?

 

Outlaws and Jesters... Le Giornate del Cinema Muto 2026, Day Three

Landscape is image in Seastrom…

Robert Herring, Film Image: Seastrom, Close Up (Volume IV, Issue I, January 1929)

Director/actor Victor Sjöström used the coastline to stunning effect in Terje Vigan, but here he moves inland and upwards. Brilliantly photographed by Julius Jaenzon, The Outlaw and His Wife allowed Sjöström to play out his story against the rugged north Swedish countryside with his characters existing on the land and being shaped by it.

Jóhann Sigurjónsson’s 1911 play was set in Iceland but the War having rendered it impossible to use the original location, Sjöström used the barren edges of Lapland as a stand-in: Åre and Abisko in northern Sweden. Sjöström had previously directed the play in which has also played Eyvind and knew the role inside out as well as the way he was going to truly externalise it…

Writing in Close Up, primarily about The Wind, Richard Herring examined Sjöström’s environmental storytelling and the role it played in the Swedish cinematic style he helped to create realism in performance as well as place and celebrating a way of living that had often passed its time.

Their only law was their love…

Edith Erastoff

Eyvind arrives in a small town encountering a wool poacher Arnes (John Ekman) just about getting away with his haul hidden under lichen (makes great soup boiled in milk, apparently: how sparse was their existence). Arnes directs him to the farm of a well-off widow called Halla (Edith Erastoff – who was married to Sjöström from 1922 to her death in 1945) who would be able to offer him work. Calling himself Kari he soon begins to make his mark, his strength and intelligence marking him out as a superior worker.

He begins to get closer with Halla much to the annoyance of the local bailiff, Björn Bergstéinsson (Nils Ahrén) who has already been rejected by her in no uncertain terms. Someone recognises Kari as the outlaw Eyvind – wanted for stealing a sheep to feed his starving family and whilst he denies it to the Bailiff – easily besting him in a short fight – he confesses all later that night offering the hand himself in. But Halla is having none of it, she’s found her man and is sure of his character and they agree to head to the mountains and live outside society.

Will society leave them to it and most importantly will their love survive?

This is an unusual story and in Sjöström’s way is told powerfully and in ways that draw on the audience’s full engagement. As usual the camerawork from Julius Jaenzon’s is superb, highlighting the actors against the raw beauty of the landscape, atop vertiginous cliff faces or staring out across glaciated valleys: life in all its harsh simplicity away from the mean constraints of a society that placed the value of livestock higher than its citizens.

It's above all the rawest, purest of love stories and we had those two masters of musical drama, Neil Brand and Günter A. Buchwald on piano and violin and combining to fill the epic spaces of the rugged mountains on screen and the void between the two lovers and our watching hearts. This will be hard to beat the Swedes were creating cinema with a sense of vitality and reality that most others could not match. It wasn’t just Victor skinny-dipping in a raging mountain river but the places he and his troupe were willing to go in service to the story.

 

Manzini abides...

L’Arzigogolo (IT 1924), with Baldry, Bockius and Horne (BBH)

 

Never have we seen Italia Almirante so perfectly at her best; an exquisite figure of an intelligent woman, her plastic beauty - which her sumptuous clothes keep soft - makes the complex, enigmatic figure of Violante more lively and suggestive.

Luciana Grimaldi in La rivista cinematografica of November 30, 1923

 

The Italians, of course, had their own “Golden Age” and their own highly expressive cinematic language but by 1924 the cocktail party take would have their films in decline and the age of the diva, well and truly over. Well, let’s see what Italia Almirante Manzini has to say about that shall we?

Turns out rather a lot in what can only be described as a highly distinctive film that plays with form and expectation as a Violante, a princess on a schedule to accept a suitor but who just doesn’t want second or, definitely, third best, she wants to marry for love. Directed by Mario Almirante and based on Sem Benelli's "burlesque poem" it features spectacular costumes designed by Caramba as well as stunning Renaissance sets that wouldn’t have looked out of place in Fairbank’s Robin Hood.

Her suitors are an angry entitled knight (Alberto Collo), a strange man (Oreste Bilancia) with some kind of magical link to cats and rats… and a jester more philosophical than funny (Annibale Betrone). Violante wrongfoots them, as the narrative refuses to go the way you’d expect. As one Italian speaker pointed out, the translation doesn’t really do the original text justice as there is so much smuggled meaning in the script taken from Benelli.

It held me rapt in ways only the Sjostrom had managed today and I would urge you to seek it out. In terms of that “golden age”, this was Manzini’s final film as she headed back to the theatre and she is the perfect diva in this film, playing the role of the enigmatic princess with real depth and sheer power: it’s always better to burn out rather than fade away and here she shines brightly.

 

If the film was off the scale so was the musical accompaniment from Stephen Horne, Frank Bockius, Elizabeth-Jane Baldry using piano, percussion and harp in ways these instruments cannot have been designed to do, attacking the narrative and mood with a fast-moving attack that constantly rotated the leading lines and shots on target in much the same way as Liverpool FC’s Mane, Firminho and Salah in their prime.

The trio also played for Med Sporvogn Gennem Aarhu’ Gader (DK 1905) which provided a wonderful tram’s eye view of the city as well as other trams. I’m loving these rail-based films and feel we need even more!

Just look at it!!!!

A film from Italy’s golden age, the stencilled and hand-coloured Stellina, La Pescatrice di Venezia (1912) was an eye-popping pleasure with the selective colouring making the characters jump out of the screen on this restoration and La Serenissima looking bellissimo as she always does. It concerned the relationship between a poor fisherman’s daughter and a rich count who was keen on this fresh conquest only to find that pride can’t be bought. A dynamic and twisted tale!

Also screening at the Teatro Verdi on this fine Monday:

 

A sequence of comic shorts featuring Mr. & Mrs. Sidney Drew with whom I was unfamiliar, and which were most chucklesome. I was especially impressed with Ethel Lee who plays the fearsome Aunty in Auntie’s Portraits (1915) and the domineering mother-in-law in the fab Fox Trot Finesse (1915) – dancing clearly not healthy if used to excess. Philip Carli accompanied in style!

 

The first of the Spanish Cinema programme featured a variety of documentary shorts of which those from the 1890s from the Lumière brothers were the most interesting: 131 years on and we still look at humanity projected from film they captured. The score composed by Brais González was excellent and performed by the Caspervek Ensemble - Brais González (pianoforte), Laura Lorenzo (flauto), Virginia Lis (clarinetto), Óscar Presa (trombone), Ángel Saavedra Arozamena (chitarra spagnola).

 

In the rediscoveries I was already familiar with the smart comedy of A Victim of Circumstances (US 1913) as it is part of Christopher Bird’s collection and has been screened at the Kennington Bioscope to much glee as a young man forbidden from marrying a rich man’s daughter because he was temporarily taken to the police station, finds the tables turned as the old man get’s arrested for stealing a wallet. Instant Kharma.

This was rather more rewarding than Marshall Neilan’s rather repetitive and formless The Billionaire (US 1914) which wore out its welcome well before the 45-minute mark… not all Keystone films were golden.

Gabriel Thibaudeau nevertheless gave it his best shot on piano accompaniment.

To Germany and a clip from an unidentified “Antisemitic Film” which was horrifically cliched as you might expect with an older man bossing a younger woman around with exaggerated “Jewish” mannerisms. The context is unknown, but this kind of representation was loaded then as now, and I have to say that Meg Morley accompanied with the perfect tone and improvised composition.

Her work on the next film, Haddas Rache (DE 1919) was also exceptionally rich in driving themes and melodies – a “conversational” jazz-inflected style all of her own that served this tumultuous film well. Directed by Jaap Speyer, it featured some well-known Weimar faces including Reinhold Schünzel being a rat as usual and starred Mia Pankau as the woman scorned.

 

Ivy Close staying very still...

Lastly, I loved the films in the first part of the Greco-Roman Antiquities programme. There were a couple of Louis Feuillade (probably) films of which The Legend of Midas (FR 1909) was my favourite as he gets given asses’ ears after displeasing the Gods and then has to try and hide it.

The British film Pygmalion and Galatea directed by Elwin Neame in 1912 was good value and featured Ivy Close looking as young as I’ve ever seen her as Pygmalion’s sculpture that was “more beautiful than any woman” in the eyes of its famously woman-hating creator. He asks the Gods to make her real and generally gets what he deserves. I’m sure Ivy would soon bring him in line.

Mauro Colombis provided period appropriate accompaniment to the swords and sandals and there was zero controversy over the casting and the translations… It was a different time for mythical history in the movies!

 

 

 

Pola, Asta and Colleen... Le Giornate del Cinema Muto 2026, Day Two

Pola Negri – Asta from Poland

Buffalo Bill…

She is a star in our homeland

Buffalo Bill…

 

Warsaw cabaret song circa 1917

Before Germany, before Hollywood, her fellow Poles were already comparing Pola Negri with the Danish superstar Asta Nielsen and you can see just why in Bestia aka The Polish Dancer (1917) in which she does an even raunchier version of the Apache Dance featured by Asta in her breakout success, Afgrunden (1910). Bestia is the oldest surviving Pola Negri film but it’s also the only survivor of her Polish films made from 1914 to 1917 when she moved to Berlin to appear in a German revival of Max Reinhardt's theatre production of Sumurun – having already been in a successful Polish run of this play in 1913. In Berlin she met Ernst Lubitsch, and the rest is history but even in Warsaw, we can already see the actor/dancer’s star power and her ability to emote as if everyone is looking and she just doesn’t care.

Pola plays Pola Basznikow, a young woman who enjoys the party life much to the annoyance of her father who paces around in a fury as Pola dances and drinks with friends. After a blazing row with her father, Pola decides to leave and enlists the help of her friend Dymitr help. The couple stay at an hotel run by his untrustworthy friends and, sensing they’ll be looking for her to pay her way, she “borrows” Dymitr’s money and heads off on her own to Warsaw leaving the young man with vengeance filling in his heart and an empty wallet. He swears revenge.

The Polish dancers

In the big city she is soon spotted and makes her way on stage becoming involved with rich married men with too much money and not enough restraint. She’s living la Vida Loco but what goes up must come down in the language of most film of this time.

Pola is also showing her increasing screen impact and deathly side-eye in the recently rediscovered Die Marchesa D’Armiani (DE 1920) directed by Alfred Halm. Only the first half of the film survives but it’s enough to show her on top form as Assunta, the titular Marchesa who torments and seduces Lothar von Raff (Fritz Schulz) the son of the police chief who ruined her mother’s life as part of a plan to get revenge. This sins of the parents are passed onto these helpless offspring and whatever cruelty Assunta can devise we know there’s worse to come… at least we do if we read Jay Weissberg’s essay in the Catalogue!

John Sweeney accompanied with melding music and mood in ways that seem almost unconscious but are very deliberate. Talent and unending practice moves his hands along with Pola’s eyes, dance and darkening heart…

 

You might think that the arrival of Pola, Nazimova and Garbo from the decadent old countries might have signalled the end of The Griffith Girls and a certain type of childlike women whose stories were usually about love and not sex. You might think that… but never right off the Irish! Colleen Moore – who had an Irish Granny (like most of us) was the evening star featuring in Her Wild Oat (1927) screening as part of the Marshall Neilan strand.

Moore had been one of Griffith stars and whilst she lacked the looks of some, the acting skills of others (maybe?), she was overloaded with charm and pure pep! It is not possible to watch Colleen Moore and not fall in love with her characters: she has depth and human frailty that wins you over every time and yet she’s never mawkish or phoney. This is a magical skill and one that enables even run of the mill narratives to succeed.

Here she plays Mary Lou Smith, a regular working girl who runs a low-margin street stall selling coffee and eats to help the city keep on moving. It was her second film with Neilan after the under-rated Dinty (1920) and despite the appearance of a low budget, he ups the comedy and let’s her do the rest as the appearance on night of Philip Latour a handsome young man with overalls and no money (Larry Kent) offers her the hope of love and maybe more if she only knew? 

There’s good support form Gwen Lee as her sassy, steadfast friend Daisy and Hallam Cooley as her journalist pal Tommy who almost gets her into too much of a “story”. It’s slight but snappy and there’s one of the best scenes of dialogue between two dogs at the end: these people knew exactly what they were doing – a hit!!

Today’s stunning rail journeys continued with New Brooklyn to New York via Brooklyn Bridge, no. 1 (1899!!) directed by James H. White (probably) and which showed the innards of this magnificent construct, opened in opened on May 24, 1883, and traversed by me on foot in 1987… There’s something about the optimism of travel especially when it celebrates engineering accomplishments. We need more of these films!

The evening finished off with a couple of comedy shorts written and directed by Neilan and proved how repetitive and coarse the genre could be no matter the undoubted skills involved. The Reformation of Ham (1914) featured and extended scrap between Ham and Shorty two ornery shipmates whilst Love, Oil & Grease (1914) actually had a plot but again featured an extended battle between Ham and his other buddy, Bud which was largely irrelevant to the fraternal battle between two siblings to out compete each other’s car company.

Donald Sosin played throughout the evening and deserves some kind of medal!

And engineering marvel that is still in use...

Earlier in the day there was more stunning phantom train riding with Schwebebahn (DE 1902) showing the Single-Rail Hanging Railway, System of Eugen Langen, named after its inventor, Eugen Langen which is in Wuppertal, in western Germany and is the oldest electric elevated railway with hanging cars in the world. As it is it looks like the most made-up AI steam punk but no, it’s real and it’s a marvel’

Next a Phantom Film in the form of a couple of short fragments of FW Murnau’s otherwise lost film Satanas (DE 1920) which looked very louche and decadent with Fritz Kortner being “cuddled” by Sadjah Gezza in three takes? and Conrad Veidt at his most protean in a silver wig that would become fashionable for 50 more years. We need more, of course we do!

Paul Rehkopf is Teufel!

Talk of The Devil, you wait ages for a Weimar film in which he features and then, like trains and trams, two arrive at almost the same time. So it was that we experienced Die Teufelskirche (DE 1919?) a fever dream of satanic visitation set in a rural community (literally so for the man in Seat Funf in the front row of the 2^nd balcony…). Adapted by Adolf Paul from his 1906 play  of the same name, the story had focused on transgressive themes of free love, sexual expression and the hypocrisy of bourgeoise morality, the film still has trace elements of this daring agenda.

The Devil enters a small village disguised as a tinker aiming to make himself useful. He meets a farmer's wife, Frau Ane (Agnes Straub looking very much the part), and playing on her longing for a child strikes a deal with her in exchange for her wish for motherhood to come true. As part of this unholy bargain she must pass his message onto the community and this, naturally involves her seducing the priest (Hans Mierendorff) who builds a new church dedicated to the fallen one after his church is devoured by flames. Ane's cottage is also consumed much to her husband's despair... this Tinker is only using their misery to undermine their fragile order. Think of him like modern social media, or Fox News...

Directed by Hans Mierendorff it may or may not be all a dream but, as always, The Devil is in the details. The Devil also has all the best tunes and Günter Buchwald, on piano and fiddle _ the Devil’s favourite strings! and Frank Bockius on percussion had a great time with this: think Hellzapoppin without so much swing!

There was also time to marvel once again at the imagination and craftsmanship of Dave Fleischer’s animations with three films featuring Koko the Clown and his pal  - Koko’s Catch (1928). Koko’s Klock (1927) and Koko’s Tattoo (1928) – it’s a cat which is, of course a bad idea when everything drawn comes to life and moves!

The accompaniment was really something special with the Orchestra della Scuola di Musica Città di Cordenons and Ensemble Armonia combining to give a modern child’s musical view of these eternally interesting ‘toons. Good job all round kids and grown-ups of all ages!

Agnes Straub breaks several deadly sins in mere moments

The most affecting parts of the schedule came from “Female Madness” part of a strand curated by Pordenone’s Collegium alumni and which achieved the difficult task of addressing this subject in an historical way and using works of documentary and fiction to show how the subject was treated. Feminism and Foucault come to minds in terms of how these prime sources provide a measure of our compassion and understanding then and now.

The medical films of Vincenzo Neri (1908-28) as well as La Pitié-Salpêtrière University hospital footage showed people with various muscular ticks and stims – one can only guess at the cause and yet the filmmakers hoped to use the film as an aid to diagnosis. My daughter works in advancing Assistive Technology and this is an early form of a much larger visual discipline now. There was a character screen test for actor Eve Fracis from Alberto Cavalcanti and Jacques de Baroncelli which bridged the gap between the medical and the performative. The audience were unsure and not relaxed enough to clap in the usual way.

Madcap Asta

It was remarkable programming as we moved in to Germaine Dulac’s ÂMES DE FOUS (FR 1918), Louis Feuillade’s LE VIOLON (FR 1908), Max Mack’s ZWEIMAL GELEBT (DE 1912) and then Edmund Edel’s DAS VERSUCHSKANINCHEN (DE 1917) for which the words “zany” or “madcap” may have been invented. The Guinea Pig (Das Versuchskaninchen) finds Asta Neilsen, who was 32, playing a teenager called Jesta who is low on attention span and high on energy constantly frustrating her father (Alfred Kuehne) and coming between him and his fiancée. Amazingly, Jesta has a love of her own, played by Fred Immler who seems normal enough but clearly likes her sense of humour.

Tiring of been worn down by his daughter’s constant comedy, Dad decides to send her off to a strict school but, due to various mishaps, she ends up at a lunatic asylum where the doctor quickly diagnoses insanity and proceeds to try and treat her using the modern of methods including electric shock treatment and a padded cell. It’s largely not funny anymore but still interesting to see Asta playing in a weird kind of Mary Pickford role and one that is uncomfortable in an age when we are still coming to terms with mental disabilities.

Sometimes the visuals speak so loudly it’s hard to do anything other than watch and Daan van den Hurk’s piano accompaniment was spot on.

The programmers say in the notes: “… we hope these film present a thought-provoking set of representations that demystify how silent cinema shaped, and was shaped by, ideas about women and madness that emerged at the intersection of reality and fiction.”

Seif Abdo, Daniel Lawrence Aufmann, Ellen Cleary, Hugo Ljungback and Matteo Masi

 

I missed THE SECOND SINO-JAPANESE WAR IN TOY FILMS  DCP, 102'23" with Günter Buchwald on piano accompaniment!

 

Asta is so meta in Bestia... her room full of her posters!

Action men… Le Giornate del Cinema Muto 2026, Day One

 

Doug has never leaped so high… He's perpetual youth, a three-ringed circus, the personification of all juvenile heroes, all rolled into one…

W. Ward Marsh, Cleveland Plain Dealer 19^th October 1925

After a couple of days in Venice I spent my final night in a secure Air BnB near Venice Mestre Station. I say secure because it had a lock for the entry gate – a six-feet plus metal fence – then three locks between the outside and a room with a TV streaming late 70s Charlie’s Angels dubbed in Italian. When you leave, just drop the keys on the desk, said the guy and so I did, assuming there was a button on the fearsome metal gate to open it. There wasn’t and so, taking my life, cabin bag and laptop in hand, I scaled the fence and dropped myself quite stylishly onto the ground on the other side – it was a little further than I expected (this is not a Stunt Blog). It’s not easy bouncing around and climbing to escape a trap. But, as I was reminded several hours later in the Teatro Verdi, Douglas Fairbanks made it look easier than pretty much anyone ever on film. He loved it.

Day One and for sure, not Don Juan but, yes, Don Q – Son of Zorro - and a Fairbanks’ blockbuster I’ve never seen complete with a huge new score from Slovenska kinoteka given voice by the gathered might of the RTV Slovenia Symphony Orchestra as conducted by Andrej Goričar. If these films are familiar, it’s probably because of the influence Fairbanks had on popular culture and in particular, comics and the kind of books on sale alongside them. It’s all of a piece with Batman – still 13 years in the future – Flash Gordon, Doc Savage – Man of Bronze, along with earlier creations like Tarzan and John Carter of Mars from the, actually swashbuckling, Edgar Rice Burroughs. Superman was designed by Siegel and Shuster to look like Fairbanks* whilst the creator of the Marvelverse, Stan Lee both admired and imitated Fairbanks.

What all these characters have in common – including Stan - is a super-sense of positivity as well as strength, righteousness and charm and these were of course, everything that Doug brought to the screen both by instinct and design. He was the epitome of masculine purpose and verve at a time when such things were clearly defined and viewed as a good… whereas I am currently reading Jon Ronson’s The Castle: Adventures in a World of Unravelling Men and we need a hero.

Mary Astor and Douglas Fairbanks

101 years on, Doug was once again our man as Don Cesar de Vega, the son of Zorro also played by Doug plus a dusty grey wig, and a little padding round his middle. Doug is really trim in this film and that’s evidenced by high-waisted trousers that make him look more lithe than stocky or maybe he’d just worked too hard on the leaping around. There are incessant stunts that remind you of Robin Hood, Bagdad or Zorro, but that’s the deal with Doug – 42 at the time. He’s sent from Cali to Spain as his father before him and meets The Queen (Stella De Lanti) and visiting Archduke (Warner Oland) as he saves a crowd from an escaped bull. He makes enemies with nasty Don Sebastian (Donald Crisp) as well as the scheming Don Fabrique Borusta played by Jean Hersholt who always injects an element of pathos in his villains as if they’re being made bad by unfortunate nature.

What about the love interest I hear you say, well that’s Mary Astor (just 19…) as the delightful Dolores de Muro who becomes the source of conflict between Don Cesar and Sebastian. The film gathers pace, its relentless and you know why and where it’s going. Long story short, Cesar has to fake his own death to become the masked vigilante in thigh-high leather boots and a cape. Using his trusty whip he leaves a “Q” mark on foes just like his daddy left a “Z”… Yeah, right, whatever we all applauded when the goodies emerged and it was as the comic writer Alan Moore once said “a revenge fantasy for the impotent…” only much more in on the joke than that sounds!

The Danish Film Institute have done incredible work in restoring what has for so long only been available in 16mm and what we saw tonight was the film and good-hearted masculinity restored to former glories. The gathered throng in the Verdi were uplifted, inspired and set fair for a week of vibrant entertainment and reminders from the past of eternal virtues and the sheer power of good intentions.

Money madness

Before all this we kicked off with some David Wark with the latest restorations from The Biograph Project. These films are all from eight to twelve minutes long, but Griffith always squeezes a full story in there and ones that reflect the concerns of his audience in ways that reveal much. Money Mad (US 1908) features The Root of All Evil as it lures various thieves and beggars into a fight to the finish whilst The Christmas Burglars (US 1908) was altogether more wholesome as some pawn broker and his criminal colleagues take pity in a woman and her young daughter bringing them a seasonal surprise even if they did use chloroform to make sure they slept through Santa’s visit. Mr Jones at the Ball (US 1908) showed the perils of lying to yourself and your tailor about your waist measurement as the titular gent rips his kecks** at a fancy ball.

There was a sweet moral balance to One Touch of Nature (US 1909) and its portrayal of childhood mortality that should remind everyone that those Good Old Days weren't actually that good. It's Griffith on the soppy side but it worked then and it works now. Far more unsettling, from a modern perspective was the black face and the racial joke of The Valet's Wife (US 1908) but that's what was and there was context.

Philip Carli accompanied in comfortable slacks.

 

Italy Admiral Manzini and this film in one screen grab...

The Mask and the Face (IT 1919) was very much a film of two halves featuring this year’s Diva, Italy Admiral Manzini in a story directed by Augusto Genina. Now, I’m very much a believer in the three great diva: Bertini, Menichelli and Borelli but I have to say that Manzini runs them close without quite having the grit of the first, the impact of the second or the ethereality of the third. But we shall see this week, and she was off to a very strong start.

The story was adapted by Luciano Doria from a 1916 play by Luigi Chiarelli which had been part of the “grotesque theatre” style of the time according to Andrea Meneghelli in the 2019 Il Cinema Ritrovato Festival Catalogue. There’s little of this left in the film which spends the first half establishing various couples among the rich elite around Lake Como. Manzini plays Savina who is married to the possessive and aggressive Paolo (Vittorio Rossi Pianelli). For some reason she decides that their friend Luciano (Ettore Piergiovanni) is the kind of man she needs to have an affair with even though he is engaged to Marta. (Note to self: pitch for a reality TV series, The Real Housewives of Como aka Como Shore…)

Maybe buried under this is a critique of the listless bourgeoisie but it doesn’t carry much force until Paolo, discovering that his wife is having an affair decides that she is dead to him and exiles her from his life and property. He doesn’t want to know who her lover is but, in his rush, to punish his wife, pretends he has murdered her. Now before you point out the obvious flaws in this plan, don’t worry because Luciano is going to represent him in court and, he does it so well that gets his client off if only at the expense of trashing his former lover’s reputation.

Como Shore...

Savina finds out and is, to put it mildly, pretty disappointed but then an actual body is found in the lake – a woman so badly disfigured that they “recognise her immediately…” Savine is definitely dead but she’s not really and you can really tell where this is going except you can’t and that’s exactly what makes the last part of this film so much fun!

Mauro Colombis seemed to take it all in his stride, but this was the sleeper hit of the day!

We also saw the first part of a mostly lost film Ironies of Life (IT 1917), directed by Mario Roncoroni and featuring Manzini falling in love with Gian Paolo Rosmino. What we saw looked very good and was of the standard you’d expect of Italian cinema of this period.

 

I missed the series of short films in the Lazio programme but heard good things about Rails into the Olympus of Elegance (IT 1920?). Another time…

Sorry mate the Plaça Reial's the other way...

Before Doug, we took a ride on a tram through Barcelona in 1909, and it was the most visceral thing I’d seen all day. This is part of the Giornate’s Origins/Early Cinema – Phantom Tram Rides and Barcelona en Tranvía (ES 1909) took us from the Atarazanas/Drassanes area - then the city’s waterfront fortifications - to Bonanova, in the upper part of Barcelona. As the tram travels through the Passeig de Gràcia, it heads higher into the suburbs, streets that look familiar, but I wonder how many were changed by the Civil War and modernisation.

The filmmakers, Ramón de Baños Martínez, Ricardo de Baños Martínez had announced the filming, and this brought the locals out in their thousands and the real joy of this film is in seeing people walking, running, cycling and generally larking about in front of the moving image. It was as Giornate Director, Jay Weissberg said, a pure example of cinema and one that was poignant and very human on the big screen.

Stephen Horne accompanied and, as you would expect, he caught the mood, he savoured the joy.

 

A lot of cigarettes were smoked in today's films...

*From the brilliant Silentology website.

 

**Look it up in The Oxford English-Scouse Dictionary.

 

 

 

Unfinished empathy? Queen Kelly (1929), BFI with Neil Brand and Pamela Hutchinson

 

A work of barbaric splendour…

LA Times

 

Culture doesn’t exist in a vacuum and I don’t just mean Ed Sheeran here. There was a bleak strand of early twentieth century art that contended not just with unprecedented global tragedy but also the loss of faith in Gods and governments: godlessness is next to heartlessness and so it goes. As ever you could escape to fantasy but there were some pointing straight into the heart of darkness even as they did so. This was not so much Victorian gothic as post-war-punk with stories showing that the sun will, in all probability, not come out tomorrow as things brewed in what proved to be merely the long halftime between wars to end all wars.

 

As Pamela Hutchinson suggested in her excellent introduction, Queen Kelly was possibly part of one of these strands, the theatre of the cruelty, certainly in style if not deliberate intent. Erich von Stroheim was developing his cinema whilst, at the same time as in Europe, Antonin Artaud was evolving his Manifeste du théâtre de la cruauté. Here Artaud detailed the aims of evoking a visceral reaction from his audience by means of presenting a wordless humiliation for his characters. Empathy would be our weakness as we engage with the basest levels of humanity through the look of degradation. Or, to put it another way, be repulsed by Tully Marshall’s gurning face as the revolting Jan Vryheid, as he licks his lips in anticipation of marrying Gloria Swanson’s help-less Patricia “Kitty” Kelly with whom we couldn’t sympathise more.

 

After a failed romance with a very handsome prince, Kitty is called to Poto-Poto, an area of a town in Tanzania, to visit her dying aunt. Now, such contact, normally signals an unexpected windfall, but this is not Hollywood as we know it, it’s Von’s version and Kitty’s aunt has summoned her with the strangest notion that she should marry her nightmarish protector and Tully surely never worked so hard to be so thoroughly unlovely. Kitty has not just loved and lost, she has been physically abused and driven to the point of attempted suicide. Now, after hope is offered, it is not just pulled away but replaced with a Tully worse than death. Cruel and absurd.

 

How did Kitty end up so far away from the good grace with which she started the film and her promising love match…? Queen Kelly is a confounding film in every respect and so much so that it is not surprising that it was never properly finished let alone released: it was too much for its star and its producer not to mention the looming approbation of the all to easily offended Will H. Hays. Had he had to pass the film after the introduction of the 1934 code he couldn’t as he surely would have fainted in the first few minutes of screentime for an over-exposed Seena Owen as mad Queen Regina V.

 

 

The full story of this film is well beyond the terms of reference established by the “editorial board” of this blog – partially-informed hot-takes won’t cut it and it is also such a complex and un-historied part of cinema history that you’d need a whole book and a mass of library time to do it justice. Luckily esteemed film writer, historian and programmer Pamela Hutchinson has provided just that and it is a page-turning joy with eye-popping revelations that connect three most interesting characters in ways that haven’t been done before. On the Writers on Film podcast, Pamela says that there’s a Netflix biopic of Joe Kennedy due which start in the early thirties. Well, they really ought to revisit the script as this book would itself make a great film. Hollywood has never been that great about filming itself but maybe it’s been short on real stories? Here’s one!

 

 

Pamela was on hand to introduce the film and to explain how her painstaking research was similar to that informing the team from Milestone, Dennis Doros and Amy Heller: Swanson’s extensive archive including von Stroheim’s original script as well as a surprising amount of materials retained (given their general business practice of the time) by Joe Kennedy. A 4k restoration has been produced and was premiered last year in Venice, some parts are still missing – not everything was filmed for a start – and so there are new intertitles and gaps filled by recycling footage and stills which gives the flavour of the full film which now runs at an hour and three quarters. The Great Footage Fetishist (a marvellous pun from Von Stroheim’s nemesis, Irving Thalberg) would have had it at three times that length but you can’t always get what you want Erich… as you well knew by this point. And yet, still you tried…

Gloria Swanson and Walter Byron at the peak of Kiity and the Prince's romance

 

Reviewing the films of Erich or “Von” as he was abbreviated by close friends and enemies, you encounter the rich irony of a man who claimed to be of Austrian noble/military background (opinions vary) and yet who wanted to capture reality on screen like no other. Watching Greed, you feel the lunatic urge to acquire money tipped over the edge until it dooms the main characters in that classic ending. Blind Husbands (1919) in which he starred showed again the unlimited cruelty of humanity whilst Merry-go-Round, a film he was unable to complete due to Thalberg sacking him, still carries his mark as all manner of cruel horrors are inflicted on poor Mary Philbin’s character.

 

That Swanson chose Von for this project showed she wanted his skills if not his budgetary control. She had just had a hit with the then almost unfilmable Sadie Thompson – a story of prostitution which other studios tried to stop for tactical reason* but which allowed her to play a more mature role. It was a success and it’s hard to believe she was still just 28, somewhere between Sadie Sink and Sydney Sweeney in today’s money but a star in ways that have no contemporary equivalent.

 

Kitty is a nun as the film opens, an innocent but playful novice in the mid-European country of Kronberg which is of no fixed period as per the conventions of the time. It is ruled over by the mad Queen Regina V – is there any other kind? – who seethes with clothes-less rage in her boudoir with only her pet do for coverage. She may be the boss but she cannot quite control her intended consort, Prince Wolfram (handsome Leicester-born Walter Byron) who spends his time acting like a bachelor rather than a fiancé.

 

Seena Owen: nothing says "mad Queen" so much as a cat in the bath...

He does at least take his military duties seriously and out leading his troop across the country roads he encounters Kitty who catches his eye when her bloomers fall down. I’m no expert but I wasn’t sure that nuns ever wore bloomers but in Kronberg apparently they do and the results lead to Wolfram putting them in his saddle bag – the sure way to any girl’s heart. It’s a funny sequence and shows how Von was adept at the sweet as well as the sour: military progress halted by the stirrings of the heart. We know he’s setting us up for a fall but the higher fly the hearts of the Prince and his increasingly lapsing nun, the harder they will fall.

 

So, it proves as, after finally finding her clothes, Regina V starts making arrangements, moving the date of her marriage forwards and otherwise closing down Wolfram’s room to manoeuvre. Everything comes to a head with the most sadistic twist as she chases Kitty away with her whip, spittle flying from her face of fury as she shows no mercy. The movements of the film are slow but symphonically structured so that when such twists occur the audience is dragged down with them.

 

Most of the existing film is set in Kronberg and there is proportionately less in Africa partly because Swanson, having realised that her character’s taking over management of her aunt’s “hotel” actually meant brothel and this was so well presented as such by Von that she called him a madman and asked Joe Kennedy to fire him. On budget alone this was justified as with only less than half the film completed – it was supposed to run to five hours – Von was already overbudget for the whole thing.

Here's Tully!!

The new Milestone Film’s “reimagining” improves on their previous efforts with the inclusion of some new materials and new title cards based on Von’s scripts. We see enough of Poto-Poto to really feel Kitty’s fall to the ultimate depths in no small part due to Tully Marshall’s exuberant evil. It is at this point that we’re almost without hope, we are in the Cruelty sweet spot exactly as Von intended and that is the biggest compliment you can pay to the work of Milestones’ Doros and Heller. They also bring out the full flavour of what is an extraordinary and powerful performance from Swanson and the role she fought so hard to see preserved in some way. It’s here Gloria.

 

Neil Brand, so steeped in the musical language of Hollywood composition, was the perfect accompaniment to the grand statement in its need for an emotional anchor as well as expression. How do you add flavour to the intensity on show, how do you not over-play when the going gets Tully and when The Faces are so loud and expressive? Neil knows and this was a masterclass of composed improvisation and quicksilver composition supporting and glorying in Swanson!

 

I want to watch it all over again.

 

*The Curse of Queen Kelly, Pamela Hutchinson Sticking Place Books (2026)

 

You can order the book direct from the publishers here where you’ll also find more information and wonderful reviews, it is sincerely one of the best books on film of recent years.

 

Von directed some very relaxed performances too!

NB These screen grabs are from the new trailer for the restoration which give some idea of how good the results now look!