Joan in a state of grace… Le Giornate del Cinema Muto, Pordenone Day Seven

“If I am not, may God put me there; and if I am, may God so keep me.”

It was the age of the epic, films as battleships of desire armed to the teeth with huge sets, passionate stars and grand themes of endless truth and beauty. Cecil B DeMille followed DW Griffith’s Intolerance with the eleven reels of Joan the Woman in late 1916 and hoped to ride on the wave of enthusiasm for novelistic features.

This was a world premiere of the 2019 restoration and Joan doesn’t disappoint in terms of itself: it is dynamic, rangy and forceful and probably hasn’t looked this good in 103 years with the battles, pageantry and operatic drama all so crisp and with the colourised flames at the inevitable ending looking stunning. It’s not particularly historical of course but this was DeMille and not Dreyer and Joan was also propaganda for an America yet to enter the Great War.

The film has a framing sequence that has Joan (Geraldine Farrar) appear before a British soldier (Wallace Reid) who has to decide whether to volunteer for a suicide mission; now, says the ghostly Joan, it is time for you to right the wrongs you did to me/my country… This does seems a bit harsh, holding a grudge for 685 years and then having a pop at a random Englishman only, he isn’t, as Mr Reid is playing a descendant of Eric Trent who was famously the lover of Joan a character made up for the film to show that Joan was all woman (yes, exactly like Lisa Stansfield).

"Gerry" Farrar

Fact Check: The Maid of Orléans was just 19 when she was murdered by the English and here Our Gerry (actual nickname) was 34. But, enough of my history snark, I was genuinely very impressed by Farrar in this film not just for her command and expression but also because she really did get stuck into a very physical role, horse riding and battling with the boys.

This is how Hollywood has always "done" history and there’s an entertainment to be constructed which needs meet certain objectives to play to the millions eager for more drama and scale. Joan therefore has an – unrequited – love story with an English nobleman, Eric Trent (also Wallace Reid natch) who raids her village only to be stopped in his tracks by her beauty and conviction. She saves him, he saves her, she saves him, he tries to save her… it may be a set-piece romantic arc inserted for pragmatic appeal but it does humanise Joan’s character away from the saintly battles and warrior religion that might not have been enough to insure box office glory: this is Joan as A Woman after all.

There’s a cast of thousands with some of my favourite character actors including Hobart Bosworth as the noble General La Hire, Tully Marshall as L’Oiseleur a manic monk and Raymond Hatton as the weak Charles VII…

It’s a visual feast and purely entertaining if you switch off the history and was accompanied with power and panache by Philip Carli: music to storm English battlements to!

“She’s... the greatest find of the year! Beautiful, wonderful emotional quality – bound for stardom.”

Years later Joan the Dancer enjoyed a breakout performance in Edmund Goulding’s Sally, Irene and Mary (1925) tonight’s big film with another fresh restoration. Crawford plays Irene one of a trio of women trying to find work and happiness on Broadway one of the most successful themes of the times. The ethereal Constance Bennett is Sally, an elegant dancer who lives in a sumptuous upper east-side apartment kept by rich Marcus Morton (Henry Kolker aged 51) or possibly her family who are in oil… “just like sardines!” quips her pal.

Mary (Sally O’Neil) is an Irish gal on her first big stage break much to the concern of her beau, plumber Jimmy Duggan (William Haines – hurrah!) although her mam (Aggie Herrin) and Jimmy’s (Kate Price) are delighted – those two are great together and there’s lots of celtic banter! O’Neil is very sparky and I’m surprised she didn’t have a bigger career but, as with Bennet and especially Crawford, you needed to be so tough to thrive, a point the film’s glib conclusion makes as well“Broadway broke them but it won’t break me…”

The film starts in some style as the three make their way to the Dainties Theatre for the show with a lovely sequence where Irene stops to admire a black boy’s street dance, although she does drop her bag smashing her mirror… what can that mean? Then we see them in action on stage and Joan Crawford is magnificent, the ultimate flapper, arms thrown over her head as she cuts the sharpest of Charlestons centre stage: all of Lucille Fay LeSueur thousands of hours practice in full view and that’s before we’ve seen much of her uncanny responsiveness on camera.

This promise is not maintained by the rest of the film even though the three leads are all so good; there’s just not enough story to really make this a great film especially in Joan’s case. Iren is pursued by two men but we don’t get enough back story and motivation just lots of party lounging, looks and a mad dash in one of their cars for a spite marriage.

Idiot casts Constance aside.

Sally is tormented by her sugar daddy’s fading interest, although it’s impossible to understand why… as he tries to pick up the new girl, Irene who, being a street-smart Irish girl, you would expect would have seen him a mile off. But, no… Irene can’t resist flirting with Marcus thereby alienating both Jimmy and her new pal Sally… which feels contrived. Maybe there are elements missing but overall the film, for all its stars and style, doesn’t carry you away as far as it could.

The score was from Donald Sosin with an ensemble providing drums, double bass and guitar (will try and find their names!) who added style and were outstanding on the dance and party sequences: had there been room in a packed Teatro Verdi we might well have danced too.

Margery Wilson and William S Hart

William S Hart’s The Return of Draw Egan (1916) also had a new score, from Ari Fisher and performed by musicians from the Conservatorio di Musica Giuseppe Tartini, Triest, conducted by Petar Matosevic. It was thoroughly enjoyable and the film ticked all the Hart boxes:

1.  Rolling a cigarette one handed, lighting a match with the other hand, inhaling and looking well hard

2. Bad-guy-to-good guy as Egan gets a new start as a sheriff

3. Past coming back to haunt him

4. Saved by the love of a good woman/girl played by Margery Wilson (aged 19)

5. Louis Glaum playing a rabble-rousing saloon girl

All good fun and, I think the tenth Hart film of the week for me!

All this aside there was a fun sequence of mostly British shorts accompanied by Stephen Horne including a rather sad visit of Jackie Coogan to the Stoll Studios – he looked so young and tired – and the very witty What’s Wrong with the Cinema (1925) from Adrian Brunel (probably).

John Sweeney also accompanied more rediscovered shorts from the Desmet Collection including a probable Lois Webber film Twins (1911) Lupino Lane and his brother Wallace in Hello Sailor (1927) and the mesmeric dancing of Parisian Revue Attractions No. 1 (1926).

We could have danced all night but we drank instead. Thirsty work all this watchin'...