Live Life Smiling… Le Giornate del Cinema Muto 2026, Day Eight

Swedish smiles highlight the last day.

 

I’ve been coming to Le Giornate del Cinema Muto for just under a decade so I’m relatively new round here but even so I’ve seen a lot of silent film – it’s just a social habit… I can control it. I’m not an addict or if I am I’m a functioning one… Anyway, there are always surprises every year and who would have thought that three lost films and another showing a Swedish family taking the mickey out of our opening gala night’s hero, Douglas Fairbanks, would be one of the highlights of the last day and, indeed, the whole week.

 

The session was in celebration of actress/director Pauline Brunius who we had already seen playing the Field Marshall’s femme fatale wife who runs off with Gosta Ekman in her husband John W Brunius’ comedy Gyurkovicsarna (SE 1920). Sadly very few examples of her directing work survive by the SFI’s Magnus Rosborn was not going to let that get in his way and proceeded to describe the films with productions stills and whatever snippets that remain and, through his wit and fabulous comic timing, he was able to give us a real feel for these film’s style and comedy.

 

He talked us through DE LÄCKRA SKALDJUREN (SE 1920), OMBYTTA ROLLER (SE 1920), HERR VINNERS STENÅLDERSDRÖM (SE 1924) and then showed us the whole of Lev Livet Leende (SE 1921) on wonderful 35mm from the SFI archive. Brunius had begun in the Royal Swedish Ballet in 1891 but moved into theatre and from there into film. Interestingly, as with say Gerda Lundequist (who made just two films, Gosta Berling Saga being one) she preferred the stage to the studio and, unlike her fellow ballerina, Jenny Hassleqvist, she never rose to prima roles and sustained a parallel career in dance and film.

 

Lev Livet Leende (SE 1921) is a loving send up of Douglas Fairbank’s cheerfulness and positivity. He had published an autobiography, Making Life Worth While, in 1918 and the family take his motto to the ultimate conclusion and there are some impressive impressions of the Fairbanks fizzog!

 

Stephen Horne provided accompaniment for the fragments on the first two, the seven minutes of the second and the whole of the last and provided his own coherent backdrop to these tales of the Vinner family series that ran from 1920-24. Seven were made but only one survives complete with fragments of the three above.

 

George O'Briem: thank God the two halves fit together!!

The Big Western Finish: The Iron Horse (US 1924; 132 min)

 

Time to address the huge George O’Brien in the room and John Ford’s lyrical, folkloric tale of the building of the trans-continental railway in the USA. We watched the Photoplay restoration from 1984 and with John Lanchbery’s score performed by the Orchestra da Camera di Pordenone conducted by Ben Palmer. This was a powerful performance from a full orchestra but I couldn’t shake the feeling that the score – being just 60 years after the film and 42 away from now – was somehow stuck in the middle.

 

Every time an Irish, Chinese of Native American made an appearance there was a little musical reference to their cultural origin followed by a snatch of the American Anthem, Yankee Doodle Dandy and The Yellow Rose of Texas. Now, this could well have been intended to highlight the many immigrants and natives who helped forge this great nation but, in these days when cultural origins are not seen as a good in of themselves, it raised a few hackles for me.

 

You can’t imagine the undertrained and scruffy ranks of ICE agents cheering this film? And, in terms of the blood count, a lot of native Americans were despatched in the name of progress here… not to mention the impact in flora and fauna. America’s God-given right to conquest is viewed a little differently now and The Right can’t really complain given the bloody history Westerns have never shied away from presenting.

 

As for the film… it’s complicated just like its director John Ford, a Republican who apparently briefly appeared as a Klan member in Birth of a Nation? Well, Ford’s baddy here is actually a white man who incites the Cheyenne whilst the Pawnee are working with the white men and there are many films which came after this one which dealt a less even hand to the Native Americans although I’m not saying it's twenty first century politically correct. That's an un-historical approach and therefore daft: everything in context.

 

Chief John Big Tree is un-credited as the Cheyenne Chief but Ford paints his tribe as heroic in their own way… mislead by white greed. As the above still shows, there was respect and he avoids Griffiths’ simplistic view and need to demonise.

 

That’s not to say that The Iron Horse isn't entirely objective... there’s some sugar in there as, not for the first time or the last, Hollywood improves History, although some would say merely by celebrating US history you are painting to rosy a picture of a century of ethnic cleansing and injustice across the board. But, within that context, it does pay tribute to the millions of ordinary people who fought to make a better land.

 

At the start we see a man called Brandon (James Gordon) who has a dream to build a railroad across the USA, his friend Thomas Marsh (Will Walling) is not convinced and thinks it’s all moonshine. Brandon’s son Davy and Marsh’s daughter Miriam play games based on surveying - the acorn has not fallen far from the tree. Brandon and his son set off as Miriam cries and their other friend, Abraham Lincoln (Charles Edward Bull) tells Marsh that one day men like him will be building Brandon’s dream…

 

Cut forward many years and Abraham has become president – just like we all knew he would, he had something about him... In spite of the Civil War raging, he approves the construction of a single railway and, as predicted, Marsh is one of the men working to make this happen as the Union Pacific Railway Company builds westward and the Central Pacific heads east…

 

It’s dangerous work with the constant threat of Native American raids during one of which a pony express rider comes bolting out of the dust followed by dozens of Indians, he heads towards a locomotive carrying Marsh’s team and somehow managers to scramble on board. It turns out to be Davy, who’s grown up (as strapping George O'Brien) and fighting for his father’s dream. He and Miriam (now Madge Bellamy) have instant sparks a-flying but for some reason she’s engaged to Peter Jesson (Cyril Chadwick) who apart from being old enough to be her dad looks absolutely like a wrong ‘un.

 

If the first half of the film sets up the “history” – perhaps almost too forensically – the sense is all about the human elements as betrayals start to happen and Davy is almost killed by those who would keep the railway longer and through their lands. It’s a civil engineering thriller as well as a how America was made to be epic and can still be read on a number of levels including the real human cost.

 

Looking at the actual history of the Transcontinental project the impact was severe in terms of the workers and the indigenous population. This was an exercise in expanding the white man’s economic opportunities by and large…

 

"We must act with vindictive earnestness against the Sioux, even to their extermination, men, women, children." General Sherman

 

The Native Americans are shown as battling the construction in the film, with the aid of some traitorous white men… but the fact remains that many hundreds lost their lives and tribes lost territory with previous agreements being as nothing to the need to forge ahead with rail.

 

According to Chinese American Historian, Ellen Lee, writing for the BBC and elsewhere.

 

-          Some 20,000 Chinese workers were involved with the Central Pacific Railroad (CPRR) failing to hire enough white workers

-          around 1,200 of whom died of avalanches, explosions, and other accidents

-          After the construction was completed in 1869, “…every effort was made to eradicate any and all people of Chinese descent from the United States via local and state laws, mob attacks and lynchings.”

 

Even for Ford’s beloved Irish there was a cost with some 3,000 Irish labourers working on the Union Pacific portion of the Transcontinental Railroad Between1865 and 1869. Hundreds died from explosions, landslides, accidents, and disease during construction.

 

So, Ford may have shown the immigrants co-operation on the project but as usual the reality was more mixed.

 

The film’s climax shows the completion of both sets of tracks culminating in a re-enactment of the driving of the golden spike at Promontory Summit on May 10, 1869. Replicas of the two locos involved, the Union Pacific No. 119 and Jupiter are used, even though they are claimed to be the originals (which were scrapped in 1910).

 

A country “united” by rail… and surely will Miriam and Davy will suit. But today this film leaves the taste of iron fillings in your mouth.

 

Talking of history… The Spies Who Came in From the Dull

 

Marshall Neilan’s Diplomacy (US 1920) is all about a piece of paper and is the most plodding of confections. The entire action seems to involve people on either side of the pre-war divide, trying to prevent a crucial peace agreement from being delivered to the allies. Now, you might think that there’s more than one copy of such an important document and that with so many of the recipients in the film, that is shouldn’t be too hard to deliver this news but no… there are devious counter agents of no fixed allegiance who want to make mischief.

 

Too many times .this boils down to a forensic examination of very little  - people hide in rooms and papers are stolen before being revealed and then one of the super spies is revealed by a bluff that an envelope contained a confession from the key conspirator that his accomplice slowly tears open – and I mean very slowly – before revealing the full story.

 

I work in marketing and publishing and even I know this is not really spying (I’ve seen all the John Le Carre’s) and this seems a) far to slow to work and b) a paper trail with far too many points of failure.  

 

Accompaniment cam from Masterclass student Lulu Chen who did a fabulous job with what was in front of her. I look forward to seeing and hearing more of her in the future!

 

Phantom Tram Ride of the Day Award: Tram Ride Through Rochdale (GB (1905)

 

Sagar Mitchell and James Kenyon’s 4'59" of 35mm magic remains a powerful document of the times. It has been snowing in Rochdale, as it so often does, and its denizens are walking gingerly across the road. It adds an extra element to the scenes of normally sure-footed Lancastrians as well as a fairy-tale dusting to one of the most deprived areas of the towns of near the Pennines.

 

Philip Carli accompanied and I’ll go t’ th’ foot o’ our stairs, he was wearing a fine period suit and silk cravat!

 

Italia Almirante Manzini and Andrea Habay

Is there a Diva in the House? La grande passione (1922)

 

“This adaptation of  Alessandro Varaldo’s novel… is excellent. The subject itself was illogical in some respects … [yet Mario] Almirante has lent it poetry and beauty, striving for as much humanity as possible to make the  narrative appear more real..” 

Carlo Sircana, La Rivista Cinematografica (25.03.1924).

 

Italia Almirante Manzini was most certainly available and gave one of her most forceful performances of the week and in another of her major successes. Directed by Mario Almirante this one was a complex tug of love involving Italia’s character Maria, her much older husband Carli (Joaquin Carrasco) and their two children, her ex-lover and general bad sort Cesare (Joaquin Carrasco) along with a new man who sees her in trouble and wants to help André (Andrea Habay) … Oh, Italia what have you gotten yourself into now?!

 

It's a very well-paced film as the full entanglements of Maria’s life are only gradually revealed and all this only really after she catches the attention of the well-intentioned stranger, Andre, who sees her in an emotional turmoil and wants to help. Soon enough he gets in deeper and when her heartless lover returns to the picture, a duel is called and Maria faces losing one or both. Ultimately hers will be the choice that breaks the fewest hearts…

 

A new performance by Italia Almirante Manzini is always a brilliant new assertion of the art of Italian cinema; but perhaps never as in this film has the great actress been able to conquer the public…”

“Arro” in La Rivista Cinematografica (10-25.05.1924),

 

Gabriel Thibaudeau accompanied with some marvellous flourishes and a real feel for the dramatic love on screen. One of the best of Manzini’s films this week!

 

 

Encore plus de problèmes à la scierie: La Glace à trois faces (FR 1927)

 

Three women were in love with a man.

But was he in love with any one of them?

Fitting to end this week on a riddle or at least a film by Jean Epstein who always required his audience to complete the story either emotionally or intellectually. In this case the tale of one man and three women… and the director makes it absolutely unclear that we won’t know the exact nature of the relationships between the four people. So. We need to watch carefully.

 

An adaptation of the eponymous short story by Paul Morand, also referred to as Three-Sided Mirror, this features a young adventurer (René Ferté) and his relationships with three women:

 

1.       a beautiful Englishwoman, Pearl (Olga Day)

2.       a Russian artist, Athalia (Suzy Pierson_ and

3.       a charming factory worker, Lucie (Jeanne Helbling)

 

The relationships are shown in order with the director’s usual oblique style and we experience the good, the unsure and the diffident as life moves on for the young man with no cares in the world. Whatever happens… it just goes to show. It just goes to show…

 

John Sweeney accompanied and he was well aware of Jean’s wayward ways.

 

And that's it for another year of the ITY Daily Pordenone Blog! Thank you for reading! Apologies for the vast amount of words... but it is always thought provoking and inspiring.

Thank you too for The Queen of All This, Pamela Hutchinson over at Silent London - excellent work there as is usual and she remains the gold standard!! 

See you all in 2027 at Le Giornate del Cinema Muto #46!

 

 

Sadie’s hard rain… Le Giornate del Cinema Muto 2026, Day Seven

This was always going to be Gloria Swanson’s day with a stunning presentation of one of her landmark and most-influential films but that doesn’t mean there wasn’t a lot of action of this fine festive Friday.

 

The day started with more evidence, as it were needed, that Italia Almirante Manzini is the most under-rated diva in Italian silent film with a story as operatic as they come and daft in the stylish way only Italy can get away with. La Statua di Carne (1921). Giornate cover girl Manzini plays two roles a chaste florist Maria and a worldly, outgoing singer called Neomi Keller which is nearly weird as, they are doppelgangers and I’ve just started reading a book on this very subject by Naomi Klein*, who has so often been confused with the lunatic conspiracy theorist and bad historian, Naomi Woolf.

 

Traditionally doppelgangers spell trouble and in this story, they are in the mind of Maria’s grieving lover, Count Paul Santarosa (Lido Manetti) much as the Kim Novaks are on Jimmy Stewart’s in Vertigo: are we seeing what Paul sees or is there more to this than it might appear? Based on Teobaldo Ciconi’s 1862 play, inspired by his passion for actress Celestina De Martini Peracchi, it had been adapted before and some critics found it dated in 1921 although there seems to have been general praise for the production and Manzini’s dual performance. Vate La Pesca in La Rivista Cinematografica (Dec ’21) thought she acted “… too proudly for the characters to appear at their fullest…” and yet his colleague in the same publication, Aurelia Spada raved about her “carnal sexuality” and rich, “masterful metamorphoses”.

 

India Almirante Manzini

There’s good support from Alfonso Cassini as Paul’s good-hearted best pal Marquis Chatonnet as well as Bianca Renieri as Martha who is Maria’s BFF and marries the Marquis. They all meet when Maria and her friends find the two nobles the worst for wear and assume that their down and outs in need of some hot food. The lads like being liked for just who they are and play along although their secret is eventually out much to Martha’s delight as she immediately asks Chatonnet to marry her and he agrees!

 

The wit of the first half drops away as Maria’s congenital frailty leads to her death and Paul’s falling into the deepest well of mourning. Until he is dragged along to the theatre to meet Neomi and is struck by her remarkable similarity to the woman he mourns. For a while he worships this living statue memorialising his love but observed and observer are bound to have feelings outside of the moribund…

 

The costumes are outstanding, and the drama is rich with Daan van den Hurk providing mesmerising accompaniment.

 

 

Phantom Tram Ride of the Day: Bird’s Eye View of George Street, Sydney, NSW (AU 1906) just wins out over Oscar Lahousen de Vevremont’s elegant Eine Fahrt Mit Der Straßenbahn Durch Klagenfurt (AT 1926). There’s more risk involved in providing a bird’s eye view especially in the middle of Sydney in a country known for its dangerous fauna.

 

Weimar Uncensored: Genuine (DE 1920)

I’ve had a 43-minute incomplete copy of this as an extra on Eureka’s Caligari Blu-ray but this was an 83 minute reconstruction based on the French version which had some significant changes from the original German one – the Third French Republic still censored films. Directed by Robert Wiene it has the look of his other film, and both meet Lotte Eisner’s strict criteria for Expressionist films:

 

·       Focus on Inner Emotions rather than external reality

·       Visual Distortions: exaggerated sets and lighting create a surreal atmosphere

·       Hyper-Expressive Performances – oh my yes!

 

Genuine was to be another “Stilfilm” aimed at making the same success as The Cabinet of Dr Caligari with the same creative team and with some new, perhaps too many, ideas. Fern Andra is the titular character in her first staring role and whilst she creates an intriguing and disturbing possible witch, temptress/trapped object of desire, she’s not as well formed a character as Cesare in Caligari.

 

She is bought at a slave market and dressed in outlandish clothing in a locked room where she toys with the men brought to see her by the mysterious Lord Melo (Ernst Gronau). Is it an experiment or a ritual or is it even real? The French censors found the original version too much and insisted on a framing sequence in which Percy Melo (Harald Paulsen) who has painted the image of a high priestess named Genuine, then falls asleep and dreams the whole thing.

 

Be that as it may, once released Genuine continued to manipulate men’s baser feelings and the poor confused things seem to have had trouble assimilating the narrative… A film ripe for re-evaluation.

 

“Every evening at the Marmor-Haus, tempers clash rather vigorously – some boo, others even applaud, all in dispute over the merit or demerit of a work that in my eyes is nothing more than an interesting poisonous plant.” 

Fritz Olimsky, Berliner Börsenzeitung (05.08.1920)

  

Mauro Colombis on piano and Elizabeth-Jane Baldry on harp brought the magic and the mystery, genuinely atmospheric. Not a dream.

 

Sitcom: Mr. & Mrs. Sidney Drew. Programme 2

 

Anyone who doesn’t just love this comedy couple by now needs to see their doctor as there is so much warmth in their relationship as Sid improvises making second wife Lucille laugh out of character but she’s not the only one as the entire cast seems to be having a ball. By Might of His Right (1915) has Sid see off his annoying Harvard educated brother-in-law by faking boxing skills whilst His Wife Knew All About it (1916) sees him dating their new cook to help enliven her social life: his friends see and jump to all the wrong conclusions egged on by Lucille!

 

It's the comedy of relationships – not just the central one – and Sid’s gags are top notch. Sadly, there are very few of these films in existence partly because he died in 1919 aged only 55. He had the gift alright, and I hope more people now get to see it!

 

Philip Carli was absolutely the man for this job and accompanied as if he was sat in the same room as the Drews! He was, of course, dressed for the occasion!

Countess Marguerita de Cippico on the left and right...

 

Make war no more: I’d seen Peace on the Western Front (GB 1930) at this year’s British Silent Film Symposium and was delighted to see it again. It’s a mix of recreated live dialogue from the IWM’s Toby Haggith and Clare Watson along with Stephen Horne’s beautiful accompaniment, and two sound discs (out of four) one of which was recently uncovered by dogged silent film researcher and writer Brent Reid. It’s a haunting film that has Moore Marriot’s old soldier explaining what the Great War was like to his grandson as the youngster has been playing with his toy soldiers.

 

It features footage from the front as it was in 1930, still very dangerous even if oddly quiet, as well as scenes of the reconstructed towns and cities of the various battles. As a slice of post-war life, it is incredibly poignant and as a lesson in history it is deadly serious as some modern politicians seem to view war in ways that would have been very familiar to Edwardian monarch states… the gap between politicians and humanity is growing.

 

A lighter look at the war was provided by Léonce Perret’s Lest We Forget (US 1918) which was released in January 1918 with the aim of reminding the US just how close they are to France – two great democracies who became republics at around the same time. The film starred and was produced by British actor Rita Jolivet also known as the Countess Marguerita de Cippico. She is great in the film as an all-action heroine would dances repeatedly with death, has luck and most importantly agency easily besting her male foes and, in the end, dramatically despatching the main baddy. Compared with her, the male lead playing her sweetheart Harry, Hamilton Revelle was made more for comedy.

 

This may have been about US /French goodwill, but Rita smuggled in a feminist main character!

 

Neil Brand did his patriotic duty with music of steadfast composition and firm resolve even as the Lusitania sank with Rita onboard…

 

A Tale of the Filial Devotion of Goro Masamune (1915)

 

The Art of the Benshi:

 

Time for silent film to get a bit shouty and we were back with the benshi for a cartoon about a snake that had broken in half Chongire Hebi (1930) and mysterious sea gods in Umi No Kyuden (1930). The main feature was A Tale of the Filial Devotion of Goro Masamune (1915) which is astonishingly old for a Japanese silent and this is evident in the limited technique involved in a very wordy story about weddings and quests featuring an all-male cast. For completists only as the record reviewers sometimes say about early releases from famous groups but this was history on screen and on stage too.

 

Benshi: Kataoka Ichirō, Ōmori Kumiko, Yamauchi Nanako

Accompaniment: Katada Kisayo (percussion), Kiyomoto Nobuakira (shamisen)

 

 

Some more German Pola: Das Martyrium (1920), is the precious last 20-odd minutes of Paul Ludwig Stein’s film featuring a lot of Negri action after she discovers that her late husband had left her inheritance only if she lives and sleeps in the room where he died, all painted grey and with bare lighting illuminating his portraits on each wall… a gothic nightmare and she plays it well.

 

 

Gloria Swanson and Raoul Walsh 

The Future is Now: Sadie Thompson (US 1928)

 

This cracking upgraded restoration* seems to sit outside of time and space and I kept on thinking that this just couldn’t have been a 1928 film: it felt like a pre-code as it eventually became with Joan Crawford and Rain. The battle between Lionel Barrymore’s born-again Christian Alfred Davidson and Sadie (Swanson) the former sex worker looking for redemption and a new start, is an epic one that brings in questions about criminality, religion and the nature of faith. Davidson – hard as he tries is only offering a get-out and it’s loaded with caveats that are ultimately self-serving. He bullies Sadie into “converting” even though it’s against her best interests to return to San Francisco to pay her penance in jail. He’s physically and intellectually dominating her no matter how strong she thinks she is.

 

The standard line of the time would have meant Sadie taking her medicine and ignoring her chances with Sergeant Timothy O'Hara (Raoul Walsh – who also directs) in the promised land of Australia but the film doesn’t take the easy way out. What our instincts are screaming out about Davidson the longer this Christian cat and satanic mouse game is played, turn out to be true and it’s to the film’s credit that it takes its audience right to the wire and knows we’ll work out the subtext.

 

As Pamela Hutchinson writes in her recent book on The Curse of Queen Kelly, Swanson had to fight to make this film with some studios traying to prevent her, but she was right, and it was one of her biggest successes. At just 28 she’d made a film that pointed to the future and it’s just a shame that Queen Kelly didn’t allow her to move even further… but you can find out all about that in the book and watch the reconstructed film.

 

Gloria Swanson has great hair in this film and sets the style in all ways for the coming decade – and all because she wanted to!

 

The accompaniment from Meg Morley was also as fierce and nuanced as Swanson with so much texture and depth. There are long sections of the performers engaged in intense but wordless debate and to be able to ride alongside with the same force of invention is quite something for a 98-minute film! Go, you good thing!

 

Simply one of the best things we’ve heard and seen all week!

 

.

Gloria Swanson and Lionel Barrymore

*The current copy of Sadie Thompson is a 4K upgrade of the restoration originally produced by Dennis Doros for Kino Lorber in 1987, and it is from this film that the image for the Giornate 2026 poster is taken.

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!

Action men… Le Giornate del Cinema Muto 2026, Day One

 

Doug has never leaped so high… He's perpetual youth, a three-ringed circus, the personification of all juvenile heroes, all rolled into one…

W. Ward Marsh, Cleveland Plain Dealer 19^th October 1925

After a couple of days in Venice I spent my final night in a secure Air BnB near Venice Mestre Station. I say secure because it had a lock for the entry gate – a six-feet plus metal fence – then three locks between the outside and a room with a TV streaming late 70s Charlie’s Angels dubbed in Italian. When you leave, just drop the keys on the desk, said the guy and so I did, assuming there was a button on the fearsome metal gate to open it. There wasn’t and so, taking my life, cabin bag and laptop in hand, I scaled the fence and dropped myself quite stylishly onto the ground on the other side – it was a little further than I expected (this is not a Stunt Blog). It’s not easy bouncing around and climbing to escape a trap. But, as I was reminded several hours later in the Teatro Verdi, Douglas Fairbanks made it look easier than pretty much anyone ever on film. He loved it.

Day One and for sure, not Don Juan but, yes, Don Q – Son of Zorro - and a Fairbanks’ blockbuster I’ve never seen complete with a huge new score from Slovenska kinoteka given voice by the gathered might of the RTV Slovenia Symphony Orchestra as conducted by Andrej Goričar. If these films are familiar, it’s probably because of the influence Fairbanks had on popular culture and in particular, comics and the kind of books on sale alongside them. It’s all of a piece with Batman – still 13 years in the future – Flash Gordon, Doc Savage – Man of Bronze, along with earlier creations like Tarzan and John Carter of Mars from the, actually swashbuckling, Edgar Rice Burroughs. Superman was designed by Siegel and Shuster to look like Fairbanks* whilst the creator of the Marvelverse, Stan Lee both admired and imitated Fairbanks.

What all these characters have in common – including Stan - is a super-sense of positivity as well as strength, righteousness and charm and these were of course, everything that Doug brought to the screen both by instinct and design. He was the epitome of masculine purpose and verve at a time when such things were clearly defined and viewed as a good… whereas I am currently reading Jon Ronson’s The Castle: Adventures in a World of Unravelling Men and we need a hero.

Mary Astor and Douglas Fairbanks

101 years on, Doug was once again our man as Don Cesar de Vega, the son of Zorro also played by Doug plus a dusty grey wig, and a little padding round his middle. Doug is really trim in this film and that’s evidenced by high-waisted trousers that make him look more lithe than stocky or maybe he’d just worked too hard on the leaping around. There are incessant stunts that remind you of Robin Hood, Bagdad or Zorro, but that’s the deal with Doug – 42 at the time. He’s sent from Cali to Spain as his father before him and meets The Queen (Stella De Lanti) and visiting Archduke (Warner Oland) as he saves a crowd from an escaped bull. He makes enemies with nasty Don Sebastian (Donald Crisp) as well as the scheming Don Fabrique Borusta played by Jean Hersholt who always injects an element of pathos in his villains as if they’re being made bad by unfortunate nature.

What about the love interest I hear you say, well that’s Mary Astor (just 19…) as the delightful Dolores de Muro who becomes the source of conflict between Don Cesar and Sebastian. The film gathers pace, its relentless and you know why and where it’s going. Long story short, Cesar has to fake his own death to become the masked vigilante in thigh-high leather boots and a cape. Using his trusty whip he leaves a “Q” mark on foes just like his daddy left a “Z”… Yeah, right, whatever we all applauded when the goodies emerged and it was as the comic writer Alan Moore once said “a revenge fantasy for the impotent…” only much more in on the joke than that sounds!

The Danish Film Institute have done incredible work in restoring what has for so long only been available in 16mm and what we saw tonight was the film and good-hearted masculinity restored to former glories. The gathered throng in the Verdi were uplifted, inspired and set fair for a week of vibrant entertainment and reminders from the past of eternal virtues and the sheer power of good intentions.

Money madness

Before all this we kicked off with some David Wark with the latest restorations from The Biograph Project. These films are all from eight to twelve minutes long, but Griffith always squeezes a full story in there and ones that reflect the concerns of his audience in ways that reveal much. Money Mad (US 1908) features The Root of All Evil as it lures various thieves and beggars into a fight to the finish whilst The Christmas Burglars (US 1908) was altogether more wholesome as some pawn broker and his criminal colleagues take pity in a woman and her young daughter bringing them a seasonal surprise even if they did use chloroform to make sure they slept through Santa’s visit. Mr Jones at the Ball (US 1908) showed the perils of lying to yourself and your tailor about your waist measurement as the titular gent rips his kecks** at a fancy ball.

There was a sweet moral balance to One Touch of Nature (US 1909) and its portrayal of childhood mortality that should remind everyone that those Good Old Days weren't actually that good. It's Griffith on the soppy side but it worked then and it works now. Far more unsettling, from a modern perspective was the black face and the racial joke of The Valet's Wife (US 1908) but that's what was and there was context.

Philip Carli accompanied in comfortable slacks.

 

Italy Admiral Manzini and this film in one screen grab...

The Mask and the Face (IT 1919) was very much a film of two halves featuring this year’s Diva, Italy Admiral Manzini in a story directed by Augusto Genina. Now, I’m very much a believer in the three great diva: Bertini, Menichelli and Borelli but I have to say that Manzini runs them close without quite having the grit of the first, the impact of the second or the ethereality of the third. But we shall see this week, and she was off to a very strong start.

The story was adapted by Luciano Doria from a 1916 play by Luigi Chiarelli which had been part of the “grotesque theatre” style of the time according to Andrea Meneghelli in the 2019 Il Cinema Ritrovato Festival Catalogue. There’s little of this left in the film which spends the first half establishing various couples among the rich elite around Lake Como. Manzini plays Savina who is married to the possessive and aggressive Paolo (Vittorio Rossi Pianelli). For some reason she decides that their friend Luciano (Ettore Piergiovanni) is the kind of man she needs to have an affair with even though he is engaged to Marta. (Note to self: pitch for a reality TV series, The Real Housewives of Como aka Como Shore…)

Maybe buried under this is a critique of the listless bourgeoisie but it doesn’t carry much force until Paolo, discovering that his wife is having an affair decides that she is dead to him and exiles her from his life and property. He doesn’t want to know who her lover is but, in his rush, to punish his wife, pretends he has murdered her. Now before you point out the obvious flaws in this plan, don’t worry because Luciano is going to represent him in court and, he does it so well that gets his client off if only at the expense of trashing his former lover’s reputation.

Como Shore...

Savina finds out and is, to put it mildly, pretty disappointed but then an actual body is found in the lake – a woman so badly disfigured that they “recognise her immediately…” Savine is definitely dead but she’s not really and you can really tell where this is going except you can’t and that’s exactly what makes the last part of this film so much fun!

Mauro Colombis seemed to take it all in his stride, but this was the sleeper hit of the day!

We also saw the first part of a mostly lost film Ironies of Life (IT 1917), directed by Mario Roncoroni and featuring Manzini falling in love with Gian Paolo Rosmino. What we saw looked very good and was of the standard you’d expect of Italian cinema of this period.

 

I missed the series of short films in the Lazio programme but heard good things about Rails into the Olympus of Elegance (IT 1920?). Another time…

Sorry mate the Plaça Reial's the other way...

Before Doug, we took a ride on a tram through Barcelona in 1909, and it was the most visceral thing I’d seen all day. This is part of the Giornate’s Origins/Early Cinema – Phantom Tram Rides and Barcelona en Tranvía (ES 1909) took us from the Atarazanas/Drassanes area - then the city’s waterfront fortifications - to Bonanova, in the upper part of Barcelona. As the tram travels through the Passeig de Gràcia, it heads higher into the suburbs, streets that look familiar, but I wonder how many were changed by the Civil War and modernisation.

The filmmakers, Ramón de Baños Martínez, Ricardo de Baños Martínez had announced the filming, and this brought the locals out in their thousands and the real joy of this film is in seeing people walking, running, cycling and generally larking about in front of the moving image. It was as Giornate Director, Jay Weissberg said, a pure example of cinema and one that was poignant and very human on the big screen.

Stephen Horne accompanied and, as you would expect, he caught the mood, he savoured the joy.

 

A lot of cigarettes were smoked in today's films...

*From the brilliant Silentology website.

 

**Look it up in The Oxford English-Scouse Dictionary.