“The Queen of Screen” … Le Giornate del Cinema Muto 2026, Day Six

Vera Kholodnaya was ‘The Queen of Screen’ that most people haven’t seen. She was a sensation in pre-Revolutionary Russia making over 50 films of which, sadly, only some five remain extant. She has a unique screen presence being both enigmatic and – objectively - remarkably beautiful as well as being a fine naturalistic actor. Her expressive face – huge eyes shining through generous amounts of dark eyeshadow – is matched by a dancer’s poise (she had classical ballet training at the Bolshoi Theatre no less) and an expressive physicality. At one point in this film, she almost shivers with disgust – a violent shake of her shoulders – whilst at other times she is more understated than you’d expect: carrying a lot within even though in torment… she’s the story in this story.

 

This is the first of Yevgeni Bauer’s films I have seen on the big screen and the 35mm print was warm without being perfect but for an actor for whom we only have 10% of her output, that’s more than good enough. Bauer’s style is always a delight, his mise-en-scene is rich in detail and feels solidly part of the world. His characters move across these spaces in carefully choreographed movements – like figures on a chess board – and whilst the scenes are mostly tableaux there is a fair amount of camera mobility with one memorable pull-in on a dolly for a wedding banquet which is then pulled back. He was also a pioneer of montage. This was Tsarist Russia during the Great War, but it was far from isolated from European culture – indeed, the language of the royal court had been French and not Russian.

 

Vera Kholodnaya on a typical Yevgeni Bauer set

Based on the novel by French writer, Georges Ohnet, A Life for a Life (1916) is the story set firmly in the Russian upper-class set. Mrs Khromova (Olga Rakhmanova) is a wealthy industrialist who runs her factory very effectively – a strong female character and one you might not find in some other cultures at this time? She has a birth-daughter, Musya (Lydia Koreneva) and another she has adopted, Nata (Kholodnaya). Both girls are of marrying age and, whilst Nata has attracted the attention of the wealthy merchant Zhurov, (Ivane Perestiani) she does not love him. Into their lives comes the wastrel Prince Vladimir Bartinsky (Vitold Polonsky) who has no money and plenty of debts. He woos Musya as she is the only daughter who will inherit from their mother, yet, he has lost his heart to Nata who has no money nor, being adopted, the rights to any.

 

A bargain is struck between the two men and Zhurov offers to help the prince marry Musya in return for having a free run at Nata… thus do both men abuse the trust of the family. Zhurov makes the prince’s case to Madame Khromova but she is only finally swayed by the affection her daughter shows for this dubious character. Musya hardly knows what she’s getting into, and her mother warily takes the chance… which, as we already know will be a big mistake.

 

This is a not unfamiliar set up but the resolution, after so much bad behaviour from the Poncey Prince led to a ripple of applause and the odd whoop! A film that is of particular value for its period, its director and its star.

 

Accompaniment came from Daan van den Hurk who did all three proud.

Phantom Tram Ride of the Day: Promenading Rothesay (GB 1906-1909) was a lovely slide through the surprisingly beguiling Rothesay, packed with Glaswegian trippers no doubt unconvinced of the weather prospects on the nearby Isle of Arran. I’m sure you all know but the 13th-century Rothesay Castle is unique in Scotland for its circular plan. All the better for keeping the English out!

 

We also experienced A Ride on the Peak Tramway, Hong Kong (GB 1900) which had more gradient but less gravitas. Still, second place is no disgrace for what was a regular part of my sister’s old commute when she worked for HSBC.

 

Mary Pickford and Thomas Meighan

Now THIS is a Marshall Neilan film I can do business with:

 

It was time for an unseen-by-me Mary Pickford and as with her Doug, she’s a shot in the arm for any jaded festival-goer on Day Six of reading, watching and blogging. If only I had a tenth of her energy in M’Liss (US 1918) still it was the perfect caffeinated treat for the early session.

 

Mary plays feisty underdog with quirky gimmick weapon (a sling and NO, this is not being written with AI…) Melissa 'M'liss' Smith, who lives in the mining town of Red Gulch in the High Sierra with her old man, John Benson "Bummer" Smith (Theodore Roberts) who spends his time bumming favours, drink and food after losing his fortune – a fool for gold. His estranged brother, who doesn’t have a nickname, does have a fortune and when he dies it’s headed out West but not if various interested parties have anything to do about it.

 

You can, of course, tell which way this one is going but if I add the words: Thomas Meighan plays school-teacher Charles Gray, to the mix, you can be sure that there’s going to be some Irish going down. I loved this one. Uncompromising fun the Mary way! YES. Oh and Tully Marshall’s in it as is Monte Blue as “Mexican Joe” (yeah, right!).

 

John Sweeney, cocked his ten-gallon hat to one side and road most excellent side-saddle on this from start to finish. A wild and western ride!

 

Irie Takako and Tokihiko Okada,

The Art of the Benshi: The Water Magician (JP 1933)

 

Kenji Mizoguchi’s film felt like a good book or a high-quality streaming series on Apple TV… there’s a deliberate and detailed logic driving every character and their actions with a narrative that also didn’t cheat. It fell as “full” and as rich as Bauer’s stage tableaux.

 

Irie Takako plays Tomo, a "mizugei" (water artist) touring with a circus troupe in Kanazawa. She meets a coach driver, Kinya (Tokihiko Okada) and encourages him to overtake the rickshaw that has just outpaced his one-horse power and whilst they win the race, he breaks his axle. This is the start of a love affair between the two that sees them battle to make a living during tough times for the Japanese economy. She funds his law studies but is eventually forced into making compromises that lead to tragedy…

 

I like the way that no compromises are made – as so often in Hollywood and the performances are top notch all round. A very mature film from the centre of silent film excellence at this stage in film history.

 

Our Benshi was Ōmori Kumiko who put in some shift over 120 minutes and dozens of characters and she was accompanied by the Matsumura Makia (piano), Katada Kisayo (percussion), Kiyomoto Nobuakira (shamisen). We could get used to this! But overall a fab discovery for me!

 

Brutus (Amleto Novelli) joins the assasination of Julius Ceasar...

Early Cinema: Greco-Roman Antiquities - Prog. 2

 

More swords and sandals with a collection of early Italian short films that would later be parts of feature films and starring some of the same actors. Most notably we find Amleto Novelli in Enrico Guazzonis Bruto (1911), and we know they will work together again as will the actor and Enrique Santos in whose Santa Cecilia (1911) he is also found. There was also Fernanda Negri Pouget – Ophelia in yesterday’s Hamlet – and future star of The Last Days of Pompeii (1913).

 

It's been a feature of the week that we’ve been seeing the pools of actors in Sweden, Italy and Germany who were often in films together. All part of growing familiarity but also a reflection of the relatively small groups involved in film at this stage.

 

Donald Sosin accompanied in classic style although not wearing a toga.

 

Firenze: Love isn't, apparently, all you need...

Weimar Uncensored: Pest in Florenz (1919)

 

As Michael Cowan and Anton Kaes point out in their catalogue essay, scriptwriter, 29-year-old Fritz Lang had seen so much death and destruction in the army and beyond that it’s no wonder it was an influence on his films throughout his career and especially in his early work. This is a large-scale big budget film in which as they continue “allegorical archetypes” do battle: Death, a seductive courtesan, tyrannical religious leaders and a would-be saviour/hermit. There’s very little of the personal relationships needed to really hold the attention and to power engagement. This might well explain why Lubitsch’s Madame Dubarry – released the same year and featuring Pola Negri wiped the floor with it at the box office.

 

Never-the-less this is some statement and one that I would happily watch again just not late night on the Thursday of Le Giornate! There are excellent performances from Marga von Kierska as the courtesan who leads a sexual revolution and then Theodor Becker as Medardus, a hermit who is almost the solution as he battles faith, reality, human nature and ultimately Plague, as personified by Julietta Brandt walking through the crowds like some 21^st Century sci-fi alien playing the violin. It’s clearly an important work in many ways sand is well directed by Otto Rippert.

 

Günter Buchwald (piano and fiddle) and Frank Bockius (percussion) played their socks off and I loved the almost heavy metal tone of the introductory section but once again both men proved that the Devil doesn’t necessarily have all the best tunes, Pordenone’s accompanists do!

 

Masking… Le Giornate del Cinema Muto 2026, Day Five

Teinosuke Kinugasa’s A Page of Madness or Kurutta Ippeji stands apart from American and European sensibilities even as it borrows elements and then re-interprets them in the most technically proficient way. It’s powerfully disturbing and addresses the human condition in timeless ways, placing demands on the audience few films ever do with an unconventional narrative structure plus the absence of intertitles…

 

Kinugasa later said that “… story was less important than technical experimentation: tracking shots, close-ups, rapid montage, flashbacks, dissolves, irises, etc. In this film I used almost every avant-garde technique.” It’s a puzzle to unravel and the meaning creeps up on you prompting wrong-footed self-reflection in an age when we know so much more about the difference between our inner selves and the aspects we present to the world: we know all about “masking” and in the film actual masks are put on everyone’s face to hide their true feelings.

  

Not for nothing did Kinugasa chose The Last Laugh as his favourite film and here it’s the magnificent performance from Masuo Inoue which holds the film and encapsulates the meaning… his face is its own mask with naturalistic reactions to the disorientation all around. He anchors the story and provides us with an identifiable “main character” but is he a reliable witness to what is apparently on screen. Is his character someone we can base our interpretations on?

 

Masuo Inoue

In terms of meaning, having previously seen the 2007 restoration with only musical accompaniment, it’s less specific than what we saw today. Firstly, this is a new restoration that is slightly longer than previous versions and which looks amazing for a film once considered lost. There was also the added dialogue provided by tirelessly expressive benshi, Ichiro Kataoka, alongside music from Matsumura Makia (piano), Katada Kisayo (percussioni), Kiyomoto Nobuakira (shamisen) which was very well worked adding more layers of counter-point to the experience.

 

This is not a new thing as in a 1977 interview, Kinugasa confirmed that a benshi was used on the original run with Aaron Gerow writing that legendary benshi Musei Tokugawa narrated the film at the Musashinokan theater in Tokyo*. There is a specific meaning if not a script and a story isn’t a purely “surreal” or impressionistic tale although from memory it’s interesting how much of the story I recognised from watching at the Barbican in 2013!

 

Just to confuse things, there’s also a suggestion from scholar Alexander Jacoby*, that the director re-edited the film on its rediscovery to remove more traditional narrative sections and to conform more precisely with contemporary avant-garde perceptions…

 

Whatever the truth, it doesn’t matter because what we saw tonight was stunning silent cinema an Le Giornate at its considerable best. A tough tale but as my neighbour said, it was exhilarating!!

 

*Both from A Page of Madness: Cinema and Modernity in 1920s Japan ((2008), Centre for Japanese Studies, University of Michigan.

 

Weimar Uncensored: Blondes Gift (1919)

 

Hubert Moest’s Blonde Poison tried its best to be some kind of pre-code Weimar saucepot and yet despite the best efforts of Blondie Loni (the fizzy Hedda Vernon) it didn’t quite work out due to her lack of chemistry with the hapless Ernst Deutsch as Rolf Roem, her lovelorn first boyfriend who was somehow enthralled by her he was willing to blow his entire inheritance on making her happy when clearly she had an appetite for darker pleasures with the cruel and monocled Georg (Paul Hartmann).

 

Good cameos from Reinhold Schünzel as her nasty dad Adolf as well as Eduard von Winterstein as her Chauffeur who only drove in 4^th gear… and fun accompaniment from Mauro Colombis!

 

Phantom Tram Ride of the Day Award: Today we were travelling mindfully along the street SPÅRVAGNSINVIGNINGEN I KARLSKRONA (SE 1910). Fun facts about Karlskrona! It is known as Sweden's only baroque city and also has the country’s largest naval base – so, hello sailors!

 

Gösta Ekman and Pauline Brunius

Swedish Comedy: GYURKOVICSARNA (SE 1920)

 

Now here was a film I could certainly do business with as those two ugly mugs/Not Lars Hansons, Gösta Ekman and Nils Asther played twins the eldest in a large family who were starting life as adults. Nils is Bandi (snigger…) who takes over as the master of the house whilst the slightly younger Geza (Gösta) sets off to join the army after having to be forced to show how smart he is in the school exams.

 

He makes for an interesting comparator with William Haines as the uncouth raw recruit in yesterday’s Tell it Too the Marines, being just about likeable even as he messes up time after time. The difference could well be in the script as Geza romances the Colonel’s daughter Jutka (Violet Molitor) and then elopes with the Field Marshall’s wife, Baroness Hetvics-Janky played by Pauline Brunius, who was married to director John W. Brunius.

 

It's a bit of froth but its amusing and well made and, of course the two boys were major exports to Hollywood a few years down the line. Pauline Brunius is also worth watching which is good as there’s more to come!

 

Stephen Horne accompanied and added zest to the comedy cake mix.

 

Another Marshall Neilan film: The Girl at Home (1917)

 

This was a very professional lesson-in-life film with Jack Pickford’s Jimmie Dexter leaving his Mom (Olga Grey) and sweetheart, Jean (Vivian Martin – a girl with curls just like Jack’s big/little sis) to go to college and better himself. He doesn’t realise that – following a family financial set back, it’s Jean who is funding his studies.

 

The little twit gets sidetracked by a glamorous older woman cabaret artist, Diana (the very glam Olga Grey – actually 21 at the time, a year younger than Jack) and there’s a to-do when she forges a cheque to buy an expensive stole. It was a cautionary tale with a surprisingly bitter side to it…

 

Neil Brand kept the varsity rag on track.

 

Czech Avant-Garde is all about brand building!

 

The second part of this programme was a real treat with a high standard of film making even when most of the films were adverts employing avant-garde techniques rather than purely art. A tale as old as time… There were films encouraging citizens to invest their money in banks and not hide it under their beds as well as one extolling the value of Czech tractors. Best of all was a film showing how typewriters are made and using stop motion animation to illustrate the complexities of the common or garden Remington which Zbrojovka Brno made in Czechoslovakia under license from Remington-Rand.

 

Prague, City of 100 Spires (1928) showed up the city to fine effect although I only counted 46 spires… but that’s being churlish. Prague in the glow of lights (1928) also made the city look gorgeous and the beer is so fine.

 

Accompaniment was provided by the jazzed, inventive hands of Masterful Meg Morley on piano and the free-hitting Prince of Percussion, Frank Bockius. They were so in tune and instinctively giving each other space as they improvised as you’d expect from two such accomplished jazz players. They took two solo spots which enabled Meg to play the strings with a book as she progressed her melodic lines using the keys and then Frank took scoring syncopation to new heights by striking out what was effectively an extended drum solo mixed with an unseen array of percussive objects.

 

As Jack Kerouac might have said, Frank was “... kicking his drums down the cellar and rolling the beat upstairs…” They were something else and the applause was long!

A Typewriter.

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 Michelle 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!