All around the world… Le Giornate del Cinema Muto, Pordenone Day Six

Day six and we’ve reached peak Pordenone with a united nations of silents taking us from Denmark to Japan via Russia, Germany and of course the wild west of America. Many of these films are about human relationships and, as Lisa Stansfield once remarked, "Been around the world and I, I, I, I can't find my baby..." maybe today would be provide some clues?

Events started strangely as strange can be with the unique comedy stylings of Pat and Patachon oddball Danes with numerous names but who started out as Carl Schenstrøm (1881–1942) and Harald Madsen (1890–1949). They specialised in being a) tall and daft and b) short and dafter with simplistically unsettling stories based primarily on these attributes.

There were a variety of shorts followed by the feature, Filmens Helte [The Film Heroes] (DK 1928) which as someone remarked, was more impressive for its quality around the two stars as much as for their proto-Benny Hill humour. In fairness there’s lots of amusing gags but there’s also a lot of the boys staring at a Josephine Baker-alike wearing maximum scanty and improbably impressing the ever-present leggy girls. They end up staring as cowboys in a supposedly serious western and as the director tries to drown his sorrows in the bar at the premier, the after show buzz reveals that it has worked spectacularly well as a comedy… were you watching Mel Brooks??

Neil Brand saw them coming and accompanied with the required straight face maximising their uncanny comedic delights.

The Tall and the Short of it.

Talking of serious westerns, Wild Bill Hart was back for more edgy Bad-Guy-to-Good-Guy-with-the-help-of-a-good-woman action and you have to say it’s a winning formula and he made the most of it. Of today’s two films, A Knight of the Trails (1915) and The Silent Man (1917) the latter was the most impressive featuring Hart as Silent Budd Marr, a hardworking, God-fearin’ prospector, “a helping sort of hombre.” He is robbed of his stake by “Handsome Jack” Pressley (Robert McKim) and turns to the dark side by holding up the stage and taking not only his rightful gold but also Pressley’s wife Betty Bryce (Vola Vale – it’s almost as if the were optimising for search terms even before Google was invented).

But Pressley is a bigamist who plans to get Betty to work as a “hostess” in his bar just like his other wife (gasp!) who he used to get to Silent Budd. There’s church burnin’, horse chasin’ and gun fightin’ as the Silent turns to Noise and Budd get’s his due with the help of “Grubstake” Higgins, “Preachin’ Bill” Hardy and “Sure is Purdy” Betty’s younger brother “Determined” David. It’s a family affair, with nicknames.

William and Vola share a joke.

Joseph A. Golden’s serial The Great Gamble (US 1919) has been given a grand restoration and so I won’t give it The Great Grumble but, at this stage of the Festival, I wasn’t able to give it the attention the 320 minute, 15-episode, 31-reel cliff-hanger deserves. I gave it a go but the story of a baddie trying to steal an author’s inheritance by substituting a look-alike for his daughter… was a longshot attention-wise… serials tend to develop momentum so I’ll dip into this reconstructed “Russian version” later...

Sorry, but which sister are you? The Great Crumble (1919)

It was time for a White Russian, quite a few of them in fact with Yakov Protazanov’s Father Sergius (1918) starring the masterful Ivan Mozzhukhin as Leo Tolstoy’s troublesome priest – a film that is post-revolutionary in addressing religious concerns in a way unthinkable before February ’18; you weren’t even allowed to show the interiors of church on film before then. There’s also a portrayal of Nicholas II that wouldn’t have passed; sexually predatory and definitely for himself and not the people.

Tolstoy was critical of the Russian Orthodox Church and was excommunicated for his pains and his story as shown in this film has the main character struggling to reconcile his passions with his conscience. We see Father Sergius progress from the angry young Prince Kasatsky to an elderly priest, all the way fighting an obsessional libido that sees him pursue the strikingly out of his league Countess Korotkova (Olga Kondorova) as a young man before placing himself in a monastery. Yet the older he gets and the longer his beard grows he still struggles to be free of carnality, even after chopping a finger off to keep his mind on higher things.

Mozzhukhin plays with his usual intensity and clearly relished the chance to show his range but the film’s a bit slow in parts after the spectacular opening segments, but that may well be down to my own pacing after 50+ hours of film!

Gabriel Thibaudeau accompanied in style contributing to at least one person on my row shedding a tear of two for the old priest.

Ivan's Prince bothers Olga Kondorova's Countess

We needed some action, some fighting and shouting and we got it with Chushingura (JP c.1910-1917) a remarkable early Japanese film that was accompanied by the energetic benshi, Ichiro Kataoka along with a trio playing piano, percussion and traditional instruments: Ayumi Kamiya, Yasumi Miyazawa, Masayoshi Tanaka.

Directed by Makino Shozo, “the father of Japanese film”, and actor Onoe Matsunosuke (presumably the God Father or Uncle?) the film is the longest of some 60 Chushingura films over this period including the first from 1910. These films were based on an actual event from 1701 in which two noble families clashed at Edo Castle with Asano Naganori (Asano Takuminokami), the lord of Ako Castle in western Japan, attacked Kira Yoshihisa (Kira Kozukenosuke). Asano’s clan paid a heavy price for contravening the laws of the Tokugawa Shogunate, forbidding violence in the Castle, had to commit hara-kiri, and the clan was terminated leaving 47 warriors to become ronin; samurai without a master.

OK, obviously not *all* 47 are in this picture but it's a representation of their comradeship.

The 47 proceed to attempt revenge on Kira with tragic results often repeated in Japanese stories and film.

It was the most distinct film of the week and the benshi adds another dimension alien to western silent film with a spoken word accompaniment offering adding new narrative details. It’s an onslaught and I swear between watching the screen, the subtitles and the performance on stage, I could almost understand what Ayumi Kamiya was saying.

There were also some very interesting Weimar Shorts with a feature on mouse breeding (yes) and a party political for the centrist Social Democrats that could only make one think of back home in Britain...