Cerebrismo! Russian Divas at Cinema Ritrovato XXXVII, 2023

Lyda Borelli and Diana Karenne were officially “cerebrali” divas, which meant that they were women with brains, but not in the sense of intellectual power… these actresses had such an inner life of their own, such as sense of spirituality, that they were superior not only to the average woman, but to the average man…**

So, there I was, slumped in the cosy seats of the Sala Mastroianni at the Cinema Lumière on Day Three of this festival of film festivals and waiting for the next screening to begin I tried to work out the order of what I’d seen from kick off on Saturday and, reader, I couldn’t. Those of you familiar with my on-going struggle to remember the name of films, the one with thingy in it, you know… may not be surprised but then I suspect I’m not alone. This festival moves fast, it collides with itself, over-runs and, sometimes the film snaps… but the first rule of Il Cinema Ritrovato and Bologna in general is to go with the flow, slow down, don’t look at your emails (I did and regretted it), relax and float down screen… it’s a cinematic multiverse of madness and delight.

I’d definitely seen Spellbound (1945) screened on the opening night in the Piazza Maggiore and so, in addition to now being an expert in pseudo psychoanalysis Hitchcock style, I am also relishing the chemical reaction between Ingrid Bergman and Gregory Peck even though most of what he does is dazed and confused whereas Our Ingrid lets the thoughts of all possibilities simply flash across her perfect brow as she uses science and intuition to solve her man. This film’s psychological hypothesis has, of course, not been peer-reviewed, but you’d have to be mad not to love it just a little.

Man of the week in silents has been unquestionably Ivan Mozzhukhin who not only featured in the epic serial, La maison du mystère (1923) he also blew the roof off the Cine Lumiere with Le brasier ardent (1923).

The stunning wedding sequence in La maison du mystère

Unlike many earlier serials, La maison du mystère (The House of Mystery), isn’t really episodic and plays like the chapters in the book, by Jules Mary, it was based on. It’s effectively one long narrative often picking up directly after the events of the previous episode. As such it holds your attention and you never feel there’s any padding or artificial rounding off to make the stories fit within the format: the filmmakers respected their audience and only now can we see their full intent by watching each element back-to-back – there was no box-set gorging in 1923; at least here the next episodes

 

For a French production this is, of course very Russian with Alexandre Volkoff directing and Ivan Mozzhukhin (as Ivan Mosjoukine) acting and co-scripting with Volkoff. The two maintain a superb continuity throughout and keep a tight rein on the narrative which could so easily sprawl. The tone is playful and inventive with each episode featuring a flick of the director’s wrist: a wedding shown entirely in silhouette, an overhead shot of a group of police officers suddenly emerging and circling around a wanted man and a breathless chase across a broken wooden bridge with four men holding hands to hold it together – a sequence that lasts for half an episode and could easily have come from a much later era.

Ivan Mozzhukhin

Ivan Mozzhukhin wrote, directed and starred in The Burning Crucible (Le brasier ardent) and proves that, actually, pretty much everyone likes a show off. He is such a commander of the screen with huge expressive eyes conveying a unique feline masculinity and here he has full rein to externalise the quicksilver musings that flash across his face in every performance I’ve seen.

 

The film has elements of contemporary dada and surrealism; it surprises us now and - even though it stretches out a little long (who’s going to tell Mozza to cut one of his own scenes?) – it still engages. The performances of the three leads are all part of the reason for this and it is not just Ivan that excels with his actress wife Nathalie Lissenko, proving his match in more ways than one as Elle and her older cinematic husband, Le mari (Nicolas Koline). The couple’s weekends must have been an exhausting. round of high-energy socialising and “performance” all that Russian wit and bravado: larger in every way than life!

Diana Karenne

Anyway, enough about men, there’s a restored Russan Diva in town and her name is Diana Karenne, who was also a screenwriter, producer and director and who later appeared with Ivan Mozzhukhin in the ultimate swashbuckling romance-with-poems, The Loves of Casanova (1927). Before all that she was a high-level diva to almost rank with Francesca, Pina and Lyda. Diana, or Dina, was originally from Poland when it was part of the Russian empire, moved to Italy pre-war and had multiple names and a story confused by the usual industry PR and the need to work across Europe, from Italy to Germany and then France by the late 20’s.

Her diva status had been based on a single surviving film until the discovery over the last couple of years of three of her early films in the Gosfil’mofond in Russia all of which were screened: The Two Sisters’ Tragedy (1914, Russia), Passione Tsigana (1916, Italy) and Smarrita! (1921, Italy).

Directed by Ernesto Maria Pasquali, Passione Tsigana was the big one, a love triangle involving a gypsy girl torn between the noble Baron Freiman (Giovanni Cimara) and the villainous Aleko, (Nello Carotenuto). It was among the most successful films of the year and still being screened in 1920; it established her as a star in her adopted country and showcases her screen presence and nuanced naturalistic style, more Bertini than Borrelli but with grace too.

Passione Tsigana 

My favourite was the fourth film Miss Dorothy (1920), the only one previously thought to survive until the Russian discoveries. Here our heroine disguises herself in rather smart spectacles which only emphasise her strong features, in order to find out what happened to the baby she had with the son of the cruel matriarch who runs the family. She maintains an aloofness but can’t help but be drawn to his younger brother… I may have, literally, lost the plot here as she encouraged her re-discovered daughter to marry the brother of the man she once loved but who (I think) was not the father. Not the first women to put daughter before herself in the Ritrovato, and not the last.

Taken together these films allowed a full audit of Diana’s Diva credentials:

• Intensity... Diana stares into the mid-distance, ignores useless paramours and doesn’t care a jot what we think.
• Her eyes see right through the narrative and the audience… she bores a hole in your mind, catches your secret thoughts and evaporates the fourth wall, not figuratively but in terms of the audience’s sympathy
• Looks, DK has the extreme beauty and also the geometrically near impossible angularity of Dive Design.
• Diana's character is, of course, willing to kill herself so that the Diva story arc is completed, even when the narrative doesn’t strictly call for it.
• Fashion! Diana wears clothes like an angel wears wings…
• Style, you’ve either got or you haven’t got it; Diana has It! In every respect, you can’t live with her or without her… she just is.
• Cerebrismo!

The programme was part of a programme highlighting the work of Russian Dive in Italian film put together by Mariann Lewinsky and Tamara Shvediuk, who had helped discover previously “lost” films in the Russian film archive. Their research also uncovered the fact that Diana was not killed by an allied air raid in 1940 but lived until she passed away in Lausanne on 18th October 1968 (as proven by her death certificate).

Berta Nelson in Vittoria o morte!

There were also two gorgeous films from Berta Nelson, Vittoria o morte! and Fiamma simbolica (preserved in the Desmet Collection at the EYE Filmmuseum), who was originally from Odessa and who debuted in Italy as an opera singer. She’s certainly a woman of many talents as displayed in these two of her seven surviving films… and holds the screen focus almost as well as Diana but or differing reasons. In Eugenio Perego’s Fiamma simbolica (1917, Italy) she played a wife out to avenge the murder of her husband little realising that he was not quite the man she expected, her ability to pursue the innocent lines and then exhibit the destruction of his reputation and belief is something to see, again, as with Diana K, there’s something beyond the drama in their playing, maybe founded in the theatrical tradition of Chekov and Russian playacting in general, something less operatic and purely expressive than true Italian dive.

As Vittorio Martinelli has pointed out*"Nelson belonged to that very small elite of film actresses whose success on the screen was a mere reflection of their triumph on stage…" and her dual appeal is exhibited again in Vittoria o morte! (1913), as, playing a kind of forerunner of the female antihero in Filibus, she jumps from aeroplane into the sea to recover stolen documents from a spy, thereby saving the day and the reputation of her love and country.

These films are fascinating in general for the elevated parts they provided for women especially up to the change in Italian culture of the twenties, and their complex relationship with female and male audiences is worthy is further reading… see below**

Has he got it yet? Il Grido.

On the fourth day I watched Antonioni’s Il Grido (1957) not just to complete my big screen viewing of his major works, and just below, but also to see how well Italian males were coping with female intelligence forty years after Karenne and Nelson. As usual, Michelangelo gives a mixed report on that score: what do his films tell of the Cerebrismo of Alida Valli and Betsy Blair, then later Monica Vitti, Jeanne Moreau and Vanessa Redgrave?

I’ll be back with more thoughts in this year’s festival including ruminations on the Festival’s three – four? - great films featuring maternal sacrifice and details of the Michael Powell strand as Black Narcissus hits the huge screen in the Piazza Maggiore.

 

*In Cabiria e il suo tempo, Paolo Bertetto and Gianni Rondolino (eds.), Museo Nazionale del Cinema/Il Castoro, Turin-Milan 1998

** I always recommend Angela Dalle Vacche’s book Diva: Defiance and Passion in Early Italian Cinema (University of Texas Press) for further reading and, as above, she is a delight to quote!

So much to see... the eyes have it in Le brasier ardent

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...

The spy who came on to the cool… The Adjutant of the Czar (1929), with Meg Morley, BFI

Febrile crowd, chants of "Ivan, Ivan!!" echoing across the Thames, tourists looking nervously on as the enhanced police presence struggled to maintain order… it could only mean that Russia’s premier silent actor was playing at the Southbank. Yes indeed, as far as the fan-girls and boys were concerned, there are no faults in this Czar and a packed NFT 2 attested to the actor’s appeal following on from the London Film Festival Screening of Casanova last autumn when a middle-aged male blogger fainted.

Calming down a little, there is no doubt that Ivan Mozzhukhin always delivers and his extraordinary screen presence is not just that of a White Russian Valentino, he’s his own mix of undeniable masculinity and feline expression. Technically he’s more aligned with modern sensibilities than most silent Hollywood males and he’s just fascinating to watch: diffident, remote, sometimes insecure, passionate and valorous… as unpredictable as almost anyone else.

See, feline...

This was also the BFI debut of the Bioscope’s own Meg Morley, who is so stylistically flexible herself being an improvisational jazz player by trade as well as a nuanced film accompanist. There’s so much character in Meg’s playing, I was really interested to hear her Mozzhukhin-Mix and she did not disappoint with improvisations that sounded so context-contemporary, with fulsome phrasing that tracked emotion and narrative with classical lines and evocations of screwball-to-come: Carole Lombard could well have been in the room and she was having a jaunty conversation with Maurice Ravel and Paul Whiteman.*

The Adjutant of the Czar (Der Adjutant des Zaren) was a German production directed by Ivan’s fellow exile Vladimir Strizhevsky. It is, of course, quite different from the films of their former countrymen, although we did have some quick-fire montage towards the end.

Carmen Boni and Ivan Mozzhukhin

Bryony Dixon introduced and explained that this was one of Ivan’s rarer films, the only copy being in Denmark where the DFI had produced this restoration. Like all of Ivan’s pictures it is worth watching and whilst it’s no classic it is none-the-less the kind of good quality watch that, if anything, gives modern watchers more of the flavour of late period silent than the truly great moments from say, Dreyer, Pabst and Vidor.

The programme notes included a “review” from British trade mag, The Bioscope, which made the extraordinary claim that our hero was “wooden” and showed “little emotional power”. Yeah, right. Ivan Mozzhukhin is a talent of World-historic cultural importance whilst The Bioscope is no longer published.

Full English?

The story begins with Strangers on a Train and ends a bit like The Spy Who Came in From the Cold (only not quite as cold…). Ivan plays Prince Boris Kurbski who is the titular Adjutant and is returning by train to St Petersburg on the back of a cancelled engagement. In the dining car, he encounters a young Italian woman Helena di Armore (Carmen Boni) who is struggling to communicate her order, he translates for her and is quickly demonstrating just why his fiancée felt he wasn’t a keeper, with appreciative glances and an agenda...

At the border Helena’s papers are stolen by a shift-looking bloke in a scruffy beard and trench coat (Alexander Granach), passport-less there’s no way she can press on to her important engagement in St Petersburg but Boris hatches a plan: he can pass her off as his wife and smuggle her through.

Carmen Boni

The plan succeeds and there’s a Hitchcockian tension in their compartment as she gets changed and he watches her shadow and stares at her sleeping (honestly, if it was anyone else, I’d be worried). Back home, Boris’ friends and colleagues are delighted with his new wife and there’s no easy way out of close proximity for attractive man and attractive woman… One thing leads to a dozen others and before you know it they’re getting wed for real with two more – huge - twists to come.

Boris returns to duty but is instructed to return home and look after his bride only to find her off out… he follows her to the darker end of town and is astonished to overhear the real reason for her mission to Russia, their meeting and subsequent marriage.

Revolutionaries

There’s superb cinematography from Nikolai Toporkoff at this moment as a close up on Boris’ anguished face is followed by a zoom through wooden door to a room with dozens of conspiratorial faces half lit as they peer over our old friend the scruffy-bearded bag-snatcher. he is busy de-briefing Helena – who is a spy, sent to get close to the Russian court and off-load an explosive device at the first target-rich social event.

But she is begging her comrades to be relieved of duty as she has, genuinely, fallen for the man she was meant to entrap and wants no more of their plot. But, no one gets to walk away from the, whatever-group-they’re-supposed-to-be, and Helena is trapped. There’s worse to come though as now Boris knows and whilst he’s also in love with his wife, this is a tough one…

On the run

This all works so well as Strizhevsky takes the time to really establish his characters, from the two leads who are both superb to warm supporting types such as the Prince's manservant (Daniel Dolski) and his Generals Koloboff (George Seroff) and Trunoff (Fritz Alberti). Even the authority figure of Baron Korff (Eugen Burg) who begins to suspect Boris and Helena’s relationship is shown to be decently professional as well as slightly scary.

The chemistry between Mozzhukhin and Carmen Boni is terrific and you really believe in their situation just as you root for their eventual happiness. It’s light, romantic and with enough genuine jeopardy to keep you anxious.

And Meg was with them all the way, on the train, through slapstick and sedition to a thrilling chase involving horse-drawn carriages. A thoroughly entertaining debut and top quality support for arguably the greatest silent smoulderer. #MegAndMozz

* Ravel was fascinated with jazz and met Gershin, Paul Whiteman and Bix Beiderbecke on a trip to New York in 1928. Find out more here...

Powderpuff picaresque… The Loves of Casanova (1927), with Stephen Horne, BFI, London Film Festival 2017

The BFI’s Bryony Dixon describes The Loves of Casanova as “… an exercise in ebullience…”, whilst Lenny Borger called it a “"Europudding" – albeit with plenty of flavour… and it’s hard to disagree. You could watch this film as a kind of biopic either of the life of Giacomo Casanova or of Ivan Mozzhukhin, possibly both… but either way there’s no absence of charisma.

The film was shot partially in Venice and it was good to revisit the location so soon after I recently returned there, albeit 90 years before… (it hasn’t changed much, but then I doubt it ever does, a little lower perhaps?). Entirely because sumptuous locations just are not enough, Casanova also features a veritable “kitchen sink” delivery of mise-en-scène throughout and not least for the climactic scenes with stunning Pathecolour during Venice carnival.

The camera is right amongst the action too, hand-held in Gance style, pulling the viewer into this glorious world of masked balls, illicit liaisons and romance… with a guy who can’t say no. There’s Casanova sword-fighting a dozen men, a colourized river-rescue, massed pursuit by gondola and horse and sleigh pursuit in the snow with everyone but the lead – audience and supporting players – in shock as our hero keeps his cool home and away…

Ivan Mozzhukhin: ridicule is nothing to be scared of

Bryony said the film was an attempt to out-Hollywood, Hollywood and it certainly has a good go. A tinsel-titled Casanova is followed by exploding fireworks and then dreams of dancers in Venice as our hero is revealed in his luxurious quarters. He is woken by his two, attractive blonde “assistants” just in time for the first bailiff of the day to attempt to arrest him.

The men find a famous dancer, La Corticelli (a shockingly topless Rina De Liguoro) in Casanova’s bedroom and the host then performs “magic”, persuading Menucci to accept his book of spells in exchange for the debt. Then we meet little Djimi (Raymond Bouamerane) who is the servant of Baroness Stanhope (Olga Day), he asks a man on the street where Casanova lives and all the windows in the street are opened by women who know the answer. The mood is playful, Russian whimsy filtered through French style as young Djimi plays tag with Casanova’s two assistants and then is chased by Baron Stanhope (Dimitri Dimitriev) as he tries to deliver a message from C to B… she reads the letter and then throws the torn pieces out of the window only for her husband to catch both them and their meaning.

A bit blue: Rina De Liguoro and friends

Next to a grand banquet in which Corticelli is host and we also meet a lieutenant of the Russian Imperial Guard, Gregori Orloff (Paul Guidé) who has plans of his own… slipping round the back to watch the women dance naked as Casanova and the rest stare at the shadows their bodies cast on a screen… It is SO saucy and, when our hero picks up his favourite dancer – Corticelli of course – she is clearly naked (of course). Ooh, la, la!! Or, as they say in Liverpool, ooh, la, la, la…

But the Lieutenant is also interested and duels with Casanova but the dancer decides that they should be friends…  And that’s only the first half an hour!

Chased out of Venice on jumped up charges of sorcery, Casanova heads North and, in Austria, encounters Duc de Bayreuth (Albert Decoeur) and his party which includes a pretty-faced boy, Bellino… Casanova intervenes to stop a group of drunks abusing an old fiddle player showing that he’s a much Robin Hood as Don Juan and Bellino seems strangely impressed.

About a boy? Jenny and Ivan

During the night Casanova hears odd noises and Volkoff shows our hero imagining hazy images to go with the sounds as he leans, in sharp focus, against the door. There’s something afoot and the great lover once more springs to the rescue to find that Bellino is not at all a boy and that the Duc is trying to have his evil way with her… Thérèse (Jenny Jugo).

A dramatic rescue is cut short as sheer weight of men and horses overcomes Casanova… will he ever find her again? Here again there are some great shots from Volkoff and his team of cinematographers, Fédote Bourgasoff, Léonce-Henri Burel and Nikolai Toporkoff. With a camera pointing up as men on horseback race overhead you are reminded of the director’s work on Gance’s Napoleon.

He and Djimi are rescued by a passing stage coach containing M. Dupont who is en route to the court of Catherine II with the latest in lingerie and dresses… Casanova takes his stock and his passport – needs must and he has another court to conquer as Ivan and Alex make a dream return home.

Suzanne Bianchetti and Catherine's great, big train...

In St Petersburg we find Dr Mabuse himself, Rudolf Klein-Rogge, highly impressive as a fractious Tsar Peter III and Suzanne Bianchetti as a serene Catherine II… The queen takes rather well to her new friend and his fashions and as Orloff spots his old mucker, the two remember their pledge to remain friends just in time… and, soon, there are more important matters afoot. The Tsar is going too far, and regime change is in the air, he humiliates Catherine once too often and Casanova comes to her aid as the Empress’ forces re-align the gender balance at the top of government.

Catherine, who is pretty great, arranges a ball to celebrate and it’s here that Casanova spots Maria, Duchess de Mari (Diana Karenne) … He just can’t help himself “selecting” and it’s always “at first sight” as well… He’s a gentleman but he is more lion than human if you want to get zoological.

Rudolf Klein-Rogge and Paul Guidé

At the ball Empress Catherine has perhaps the longest train in movie history… the ensuing dance is a cauldron of human emotion with the director showing the faces of the main players, Casanova looking at Maria, Catherine, put out, gazing on with jealous concern, the Duke of Mari uneasy as his wife is romanced and Orloff concerned, as always, for his queen… The camera follows the movement around the huge ballroom and it’s another glorious set piece.

There’s more to come after Casanova and Maria escape from Russia and her husband and it’s back to Venice for a colourised denouement and more tough choices for our hero on the romance-front: it’s unrelenting and could easily carry on for Casanova in an endless loop of over-lapping love stories.

Diana Karenne and Ivan Mozzhukhin

Casanova is a dream of escape from responsibility and not just a tale of amorous addiction. Casanova always easily evades the officials and gallops off to love again …he always has a way out just as he'll always - nearly - get captured by his heart.

Stephen Horne had a ball with this, creating over two hours of musical variety in a four-hander with Ivan’s rhythmic mime. The plot and pacing may occasionally wander but Stephen held theme and tone driving the narrative onwards in characterful interplay with the lead’s darting eyes and feline grace.

As Bryony Dixon said, she could have picked any number of Ivan’s French films of this period – a golden streak for Mozzhukhin and Alexandre Volkoff, but this one is the most lavish and light-hearted and clearly all concerned were deadly serious about the project. It made us laugh and long for an era of powderpuff decadence.