It’s just struck me that not only was this edition number 40 of the Ritrovato but that was the number in centigrade the temperature hit from time to time. Four dozen or so films to see out of 500 on offer in just eight days, crossing the city, finding the shadows in long medieval streets and I’m an old white guy from Merseyside wearing socks and old band t-shirts? No problem. After locking my flight bags in my room on the day of my departure – all perfectly normal, no sign of heat exhaustion or “sauteed Brit-brain” there – I’m now sat on the tarmac dredging the cranial swamp for the best silent treats of the week.
Matinee Idols Death Match
OK, this wasn’t what they called the strand, that was
Women’s Male Stars who were developed to meet the largely female audiences of
the growing matinee by the increasingly commercialised studios. In practice this
was a competition to decide which of the following was going to be crowned the
Male Matinee Idol of the Festival or, to be fair, who was going to come second
as Rodolfo “Rudy” Valentino was nailed on in the rather interesting playboy to
cabin boy coming of age film Moran of the Lady Letty (1922).
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| Rudy can't fail. Just ask Dorothy, his friend. |
In a lesson to Capital from the Proletariat, Rudy’s character
learns purpose in hard work and also finds love with Comrade Moran (Dorothy
Dalton) who turns out, to be the very womanly Letty Sternerson. All this after
he’s fellow sailors called him Lilly of the Fields… projection methinks! Love
and Merchant Seamen is a big topic but mark this one for future reference. It’s
a rollicking good adventure!
The ill-fated Wallace Reid has drawn the short straw in terms
of his surviving work and his career was also tragically cut short after a
studio accident left him addicted to Morphine. But he’s a charming performer
and you can see enough in this restoration of Sick Abed (1921) although
his is in the rather unheroic position of having to feign sickness in order to
avoid a financially troublesome trip into work. He’s a charmer but there are
better examples of his full appeal although his chemistry with Bebe Daniels is
spot on.
Now for the Irish contender and Male and Female
(1919) with Thomas “Tommy” Meighan as the Admirable Crighton who steps up to
save the aristocratic by useless family who employs him after a shipwreck. He
wins the heart of Gloria Swanson even though their hearts are approximately a
foot apart, but class tells after they are rescued and the butler heads off for
a new life in the country of opportunity south of Canada…
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| Torrence takes the competition far too seriously. |
Contender No. 4 please… Tol-able David (1921) and its
young Richard Barthelmess fighting to defend his family against a bunch of
murderous men who are occupying his neighbour’s house. This is quite the best
of the four films and as directed by Henry King is a deserved part of the
canon. Barthelmess has to act young but this is a right of violent passage with
all too believable and nasty stakes. When I say nasty, I mean the extraordinary
Ernest Torrence who shows his dark side which such glee: one of the definitive
bad men of this era who could also flirt with Clara Bow in Mantrap or do comedy
till the cows came home….
Enrico Guazzoni’s World
No Ritrovato is complete without two things:
Divas
Films of antiquity and the ancient world
On the latter point we were spoiled with a new restoration
of Enrico Guazzoni’s Quo Vadis? (1913) which take the tableau style as
far as it could go with multiple depth of field slowly revealing the full
effect of a well designed and choreographed set piece whether in a palatial
room or at the Circus Maximus. There are crowds of thousands and the effect is
to offer a deep and stylised window into the Italy of emperors and Christian
revolt. I’m sure it will all work out… but this is a major film in the history
of long-form cinema. What’s that Mr Griffith? Oh, your thing… that’s not
due for a couple of years yet. The Hell it is.
Over ten years later an attempt was made to revive the Italian
Golden Age with The Last Days of Pompei (1926) – an adaptation of the
English novel by Lord Bulwer-Lytton, as had been the two competing versions of
1913. As UCL’s Maria Wyke points out this attempt to recreate the recent
cinematic as well as antiquarian past “…
tries to reject the detached tourist gaze on the city of 19th century
imaginings for an impassioned, participatory vision of ancestral suffering.”
Cecil B deMille could only watch and admire.
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| Pina Menichelli beguiles in Alla Deriva |
We also had three films featuring one of the three main Diva
of the cinematic golden age with Pina Menichelli in three of the seven she was
directed by Guazzoni, including La Casa di Nessuno (1915), Una Tragedia
al Cinematorafo (1915) and Alla Deriva (1913) which, as Giovanni
Lasi writes in the programme, revolves around the presence and intense
performance of the actress “… with her ability to hypnotise the viewer with
magnetic and unsettling gazes…”. Consider me cross-eyed.
1906 given voice
I missed a couple of Japanese films with Benshi
accompaniment but was treated to the Italian version for the 1906 compilation
strands which was a delight, especially late night in the Piazzetta Pier Paolo
Pasolini. Here Gabriel Gabriel Thibaudeau played piano with Alice Zecchinelli
on drums and Julie Linquette providing what could be described as vocalise combining sound effects, dialogue and
narration. This was especially funny for Aux bains de mer (1906) as she
provided commentary from a middle-aged couple watching events on the beach and
then in the hand-coloured tour de force that is Aladin ou la lampe marveilleuse
(1906) from the genius Albert Capellani.
It was one of the most joyous sections of the week and peak
Ritrovato under those stars as our laughs drowned out the incessant cicadas.
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| Aladin and there's also a lamp... |
The Child of Paris/ L'enfant de Paris (1913) with Gabriel Thibaudeau & Fabiana Sommariva
Proving that it was not just the Italians but also the
French who were leading the cinematic World Cup in the early 1910s, Léonce Perret’s
film positively barrels along even though it is based on an unpromising premise
of a young girl seemingly orphaned by the death of both parents in quick
succession and then kidnapped by a criminal gang for reasons that they only
make up on the fly… It is tense and content rich with a high level of cinematic
technic from the director and his cameraman, Georges Specht. It’s two hours
long and whilst there are some padded sequences overall you are gripped by the
search and the chase from Paris to Nice.
There is so much pleasing technique in the film from
backlighting, low-angled shots, close-ups and surprising camera movements which
allied to the location shooting and a plot involving chases across France,
trails gone cold then warmed again, persistence and steadfast heroism sees good
win out. After all the shibboleths drummed into audiences about film
development, you keep on finding innovations “out of time”… we see more every
year with these restorations.
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| Depth of field, lighting, framing... such a complex shot. |
Finish Films and Cleaning Women…
If it was Wednesday it had to be Finnish film day with two
excellent titles from Finnish actor and
filmmaker Teuvo Puro; the first Meren kasvojen edessä (Before the Face of
the Sea) (1926), accompanied by the mighty Stephen Horne and the second Noidan
kirot (Curses of the Witch) (1927) projected in the Piazza Maggiore and
accompanied by Helsinki’s finest Cleaning Women.
Silent film is as much about travelling in space as well as
time and I shall be saying more about both films in the coming days but just to
say that the three cleaning robots (CW01, CW03 and CW04) that form the band
know how to support the narrative of the film screening above them and how,
despite their unusual dress senses, to focus musical energy in dramatic
sympathy.
Suomi tuntee elokuvan!
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| Sisterly solidarity in Noidan kirot |
Vögel sind seltsam, aber die Liebe ist blind: Asta and Connie Restored
Cheating here but two German films for one with Conrad Veidt
first up in a comedy, Liebe Macht Blind (1925) accompanied by Herr Neil
Brand with the usual informed wit and wealth of reference. Connie is a
psychiatrist Dr Lamare in love with his patient, the very married Diane (Lil
Dagover). Her husband Viktor is having an affair with a woman played by one of
Britain’s finest silent actors, the sublime Lillian Hall-Davis who is as
eye-catching as always. It’s Veidt’s mad professor who takes the comedy
biscuits though even after Emil Jannings pops up to spoof his role in The
Last Laugh.
The film was considered lost until a pristine nitrate copy
was discovered in Chile and another piece of Connie’s range was preserved in
all its quirkiness.
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| Asta messes about on the river. |
Less manic but equally important was the restored version of
Urban Gad’s Der Fremde Vogel/The Strange Bird (1911) accompanied by James
Shelby. The film was one of the first pictures he made with fellow Dane Asta
Nielsen in their initial German contract. It’s a tale of an outing on the
waterways of the Spree Forest, near Berlin during which Asta’s character forms
a romantic attachment with a boatsman (Carl Clewing). The restoration has added
some four minutes to the screen time and has added the tints missing for so
long from. Shot almost entirely on location – to great acclaim – it’s presents
Nielsen’s naturalistic emoting and physicality in ways that we revolutionary
for the time. Europe’s first silent superstar was beginning to shine…
What Price Glory? (1926) with Gabriel Thibaudeau
The Ritrovato Road is long with many a wind and turn and,
sometimes Pilgrims, we’re a bit less than match fit depending on a mix of
self-care and the demon drink that my wide’s forebears signed the pledge
against (no such thing in Liverpool I have to say…). So it was that my first
attempt as watching this quite fabulous restoration failed after a missed the
first skirmish with the Hunn lost to Morpheus sweet charms… I dreamt a parallel
film that soon took off on its own narrative…
Back for a second try with a strict agreement between myself
and Mr M Fuller of Bristol, to wake each other should an old war wound cause us
to lose consciousness, we both saw the entirely of Raoul Walsh’s spectacular
and, whilst there is perhaps too much larking about and attempts at mutually
assured destruction from leading men “Big” Victor McLaglen and Edmund Lowe as
they fight over who’s best and, mostly, who gets the hand of Delores del Rio,
it’s undoubtedly a major film.
The combat scenes are extraordinary especially with the
colourisation of the explosions so well done it’s hard to work out how they
were done – double exposure possibly but there’s no overlap of the images. But
the war scenes are so well handled and their intensity explains just why the
boys’ squabbling are so necessary – they both recognise the reality of the war
and their chances of survival… what else is there to do but enjoy yourselves whilst
you still can.
Josephine Baker
Someone had mentioned that it was only when you see Ms Baker
on film that you realise what a complete package she was: acting, looks,
timing, range and humour all quite remarkable but it when Josie dances that my
ears popped and musicians Meg Morley on piano with Alice Zecchinelli on drums,
set the Jazz tempo to “11” as we saw probably the most energetic and
distinctive Charleston I’ve ever witnessed (no one’s doing this on Strictly
Come Dancing that’s for sure…).
Baker had longer-stronger legs than most mortals and greater
strength than most of the stage-trained actor-dancers around her with the
result that she was able to move faster and harder to create the most
bewildering spectacle that drew from jazz dancing as well as throwing in some
moves that I’ve not seen from other dancers of this era.
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| Josephine Baker |
If it was just this and only this she did then she would
still be a legend but her charm and ease with story-telling, her quickness of
thought and expression also marks her as a fine dancer. In Siren of the Tropics
she somehow manages to rise above the racist subtext - the idea that she
doesn't belong in the Paris of her rich white love interest (and his rich white
girlfriend) and that she should go “home”. She wants none of that and decides
to take her chance in the new world of America.
There’s the obvious irony that she had to leave the US to
finally be accepted as a leading lady on screen. As in these French films she
was also a sensation in the clubs and revolutionised dance.
What I like best is her impish grin and dimples, she is having the time of her life and it is liberating.
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| Best festival freeby, evah!! |
Sunrise (1927) – Piazza Maggiore
What more can I say about Sunrise? Looking back a week after
this stunning World Premier moments stay with me and I can’t wait to watch it
again… Albert Camus famously suggested that all art was a search for those
first few things that really moved us and there’s something in that with silent
film but also in the native experience of this film and Timothy Brock’s music.
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| Edna, Charlie and a friend |
A Dog’s Life (1918)/Shoulder Arms (1918) – Piazza Maggiore
The version audiences have watched for decades was
reconstructed from back-up camera angles and second-choice takes, assembled
from degraded C and D negatives after the original A negative deteriorated
beyond use.
Dave Kerr, Moma
Dave Kerr of the Museum of the Moving Image asked how many
of us had seen these two films and after a considerable number of hands went up
in the throng he said maybe not… Seems like the former workhouse boy from
Kennington was not just a creative genius but an organised one who kept copies
of all of his films based on what he considered to be the best takes.
Grade A were used to create copies for the American market
and Grade B – almost but not quite as good – were mostly used to cut films for
the European and wider markets. So, all of these years, we haven’t seen the
very best takes in regional releases nor any others. The restoration team went
in search of the material featured in the best canister and, using elements
from across the world, from C and D as well as B, came up with about 95% of
Grade A material within which to re-construct these films in the way that they
were first seen 108 years ago.
Whether it was the suggestion, the occasion, the heat or
Timothy Brock’s world-class re-construction of Chaplin’s later scores for these
films but Mr Kerr’s point was well made and, with every impish thought
shadowing across Charlie’s face, every quicksilver improvisational spark or
perfectly executed punchline, it felt like we were indeed watching a more
beautiful version of what we already loved. And you know, that can’t be bad.
Hi co-conspirators were also at the best with Edna Purviance
revealing and equivalent level of imp to her partner and the two firing off each
other with knowing smiles on their faces. Maybe this was something quickly
learned from Mabel Normand but Charlie and Edna glance to camera both to make
sure we not only know what their thinking but also how much fun they’re having.
This happens even in the middle of Shoulder Arms with it’s
faithful representations of life on the font line taken to extremes – the boys
sleep underwater in their flooded trench - but as a mark of respect to the
millions fighting over there. It’s a mark of Chaplin’s ability and status that
he managed to make this film – it’s a matter of how important and loved he was
by those who were fighting or who had family fighting that they queued in their
millions to see the funny side.
Tonight, the aforementioned Mr Brock conducted the all’
Orchestra Senzaspine in a reworking of earlier reorchestrated Chaplain music to
fit the new material. It was again another powerful performance in the piazza
and one enjoyed by thousands, in the seats, the bars and on the stage.
Charlie’s made something that will last forever and he’s made Edna and his
other friends immortal.
In an era of fake prizes, THIS is exactly worth having!
See you next year Bologna! Keep it cool.
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