A day at the opera… Le Giornate del Cinema Muto 43, Day Two

I think we may have just hit peak Pordenone and it’s only Sunday. There are moments of submersion in the best of silent film with live accompaniment and these happened repeatedly through the day whether it was Lyda Borelli’s sublime movements in hand-coloured Rapsodia Satanica with piano and harp accompaniment, a disturbing and impactful unknown film (for me) from Uzbekistan about the plight of women in polygamous marriages or Lilian Gish wasting away in operatic style with accompaniment featuring elements of La Bohème itself. As if this wasn’t enough, we saw Paris menaced by a group of runaway pumpkins… and, thankfully after Lilian, a group of boarding school women making merry at Coney Island in 1905. Variety is the spice of le Giornate!

 

Rapsodia Satanica (IT 1917), with Stephen Horne, Elizabeth-Jane Baldry

If Bertini is the thought, the determined intellect of classic Italian Diva films then Lyda Borelli is the beating heart, the style, grace and soul. Less naturalistic than her “sister” she was the one with the classic theatrical training (Bertini being more purely “of the movies” although she did theatre too) and was remarkably expressive whilst creating a natural intimacy that compels the viewer still.

 

For me Borelli’s status as Primus Inter Divas are perfectly exemplified by this odd and spectacularly colourful take on the Faustian pact… A skilled melange of contemporary dance, art and literature, based on a contemporary poem by Fausto Maria Martin and directed by Nino Oxilia in 1915 but not released until the year of his death in the trenches of 1917.It looks divine and the hand colourization gives it an uncanny charm that seemed to fill the entire auditorium of the Teatro Verdi, touching its audience.

  

Lyda plays Alba d’ Oltrevita, an elderly society lady, who has little life left and spends her days remembering her former beauty. She wishes far too hard and from out of a painting pops the malevolent form of Mephisto (zestfully realized by Ugo Bazzini) who offers to return her youth on the condition that she destroys a small statuette of Cupid which will mean that she will be restored but never again be able to feel love… We see her looking at her reflection in a pond, surrounded by a veil of white silk that floats around her upper body born aloft by her movement: this is youth and beauty in motion and repose. She meets two brothers Tristano (Andrea Habay) and Sergio (John Cini) and proceeds to enchant them both in playgrounds, parks and parties.

The film is split into three parts with the first a prologue setting up the rejuvenation, the second the tug of love with the brothers and the third a dance of regret, desolation, hope and mortality. Borelli dominates this sequence even more than the others and there is no end of colourful moments as she wrestles with her turmoil.

 

Satanic Rhapsody is “operatic” and I doubt any other actress in Britain or Hollywood could carry it off in quite the way La Borelli does in her way. Angela Dalle Vacche – in the excellent Diva – Defiance and Passion in Early Italian Cinema – points out the similarities between Borelli’s rapturous dance and American performer Loie Fuller but then Borelli was not only well-educated but also keen to express as much of her influences as possible. This is the richest of cinema. Art in moving expression with interpretation still sublimely elusive, just as the actress as she dances enfolded in those iconic fabrics.

 

Stephen Horne’s piano, flute and accordion were accompanied by Elizabeth Jane Baldry’s harp and their unique understanding enabled them to accompany with the beauty and emotional subtlety the film deserves. Tonally they are a two-person orchestra but they also know how to create the most magical and uncanny worlds of their own. Transported we were and the streets carried a weird vibration for hours afterwards…

 

 

La Bohème (1926) with Donald Sosin

 

 “When Lillian Gish now appears, you know she is due for a beating. . . A Society for the Prevention of Screen Cruelty to Lillian Gish should be organized." 

Herbert Howe, Picture Play Magazine

 

Did someone say opera? For an entirely different approach on capturing the music and emotion on screen I give you Lillian Gish who made something of an art form out of physical deprivation in her roles with Director King Vidor fearful that he might lose his lead as well her character. To prepare for the tragic ending of this story (c’mon it’s from the opera by Puccini, what do you expect?) she visited sanitaria to study tuberculosis patients in order to learn how to breath with minimal movement of the rib cage. Then she starved herself of food and water for the three days before she shot the ending…

 

It is genuinely shocking to watch her frail last moments as she hauls herself across Paris to meet her lover for the last time. It could be horribly melodramatic but she transcends this with conviction and incredible physical bravery. Why was she doing this? Maybe she felt the need to make a statement as in some quarters her characterisations were staring to be seen as old hat. You might fault her style but never her courage and commitment. Gish also picked the best rising talent she could to make this film after seeing early cuts of King Vidor’s magnificent The Big Parade. Vidor directed with his stars John Gilbert and Renée Adorée plus the likeable Karl Dane also involved.

 

The story is set in 1830 and shows the lives and loves of a group of bohemians living in the service of their art in a tumbledown house in the Latin Quarter. Gilbert plays the would-be playwright, Rodolphe, who, to pay the rent writes stories about cats and dogs for a pet-fancier’s journal. His roommates are also struggling artists, musicians and writer Colline (Edward Everett Horton – yay!!). Their landlord constantly chases them for rent but they just about make ends meet and their diet is enlivened by the occasional windfalls of Marcel’s girlfriend Musette (Adorée) who lives downstairs in rather more salubrious circumstances… the source of her income is more than hinted at.

 

The film does allow Gish to act as a happy woman in love... and with Mr Gilbert too!

Alongside the bohemian’s room is that of a lonely lace maker and embroiderer, Mimi (Gish) who has only her pet bird for company. It’s almost too pitiful but not in the hands of Gish who, even in her early thirties could carry off “innocent battler”, she’s believable in this extended operatic universe. The landlord wants her out and she is saved by the scheming Vicomte Paul (Roy D’Arcy, relishing the in the villainy) who has more than her fabric in mind… He starts to commission work from her just so he can stay close and work out a way of having his evil way…

 

Mimi meets Rodolphe and the two fall in love. Mimi encourages the writer to work on his first play and starts to sacrifice herself for him especially after he loses his work at the journal and she has to work nights to get the money to make him think he’s still employed… Nothing must come in the way of his work but, obviously things will, pride, jealousy, the Vicomte… nothing can compete with Mimi’s love though.

 

All of this was given exceptional musical force by Donald Sosin’s accompaniment which quoted extensively from Puccini (I think?) and was one of the most potent and powerful piano accompaniments I’ve seen in this theatre. He met the film with operatic force pulling the sentiment into the Verdi in ways that made me truly engage with a film that had left me slightly cold on home DVD. Brava!!

 

 

Ra Messerer, The Second Wife

The Second Wife (1927) with Gunter Buchwald and Frank Bockius

 

To Uzbekistan and this extraordinary film from Mikhail Devonov based on a story by Lolakhon Saifullina, a polish woman who married an Uzbek man and converted to Islam. It’s a reflection of the enormity of the old USSR and the challenged Moscow faced in co-ordinating so many diverse cultures into one modernising state. Saifullina worked for the Sharq Yulduzi studio writing scripts sensitive to the issues of Uzbeki women her along with former legal consultant Valentina Sobberey. The result is a tale in which women and children are exploited by old male custom and dominance.

 

Director Devonov does not lapse into bucolic orientalism and focuses on the story and the depiction of prevalent practices of early marriage and polygamy. Here a merchant Tadzhibai (Grigol Chechelashvili)’s first wife Khadycha (Maria Griniova) cannot have children and so he has a second wife, Adoliat (Ra Messerer) who can.  A child duly arrives and Khadycha tries to destroy her competitor. She is far from alone in malevolence as his brother Sadiqbai (Mikhail Doronin), steals money whilst his older brother is away and also preys on young boys being seen to go through some form of marriage ceremony later in the story, as things escalate elsewhere.

 

At the same time there are two representatives of Russian youth enjoying heartier endeavous, enjoying the benefits of education and financial independence – emancipated by communism as their sisters (and brothers) suffer medieval indignities. It’s propagandist but still shows the harshness of unresolved “tradition” and male power. The tragedy continues in many parts of the World.

 

 

Gunter Buchwald and Frank Bockius accompanied with their telepathic combinations of perfectly pitched themes and punctuations, musically at home in any part of the world as it was or will be.

 

Also on my silent film dance card for today was Anna May Wong in a minor role in Driven from Home (1927) with John Sweeney on accompaniment and Virginia Lee Corbin as a young woman who wanted to marry for love not money as she frustrated her father. The family’s “sinister housekeeper” engineered a deep rift that saw everyone estranged and, as mother slowly faded away we wondered if anything would heal the rift. Anna May helped!

 

 

I watched the great Clara Kimbell Young in Trilby (1915) accompanied by Philip Carli and directed by the even greater Maurice Tourneur. Trilby was an adaptation of 1894 George du Maurie’s 1894 novel which features the mystical abilities of Svengali (Wilton Lackaye) to hypnotise his subject, Trilby O'Ferral (CKY) into being a great opera singer. I’d seen John Barrymore doing the same thing to Marian Marsh in the 1931 talkie and so this silent version struck me as rather slow (and more sober), but still fun.

 

After the opera we were also treated to some rare and magnificent shorts in Feminist Fragments 1. No Work and All Play including some Bubbles! (1904) and the street humour of Departure from the “La Sin Bombo” Cigarette Factory something along the lines of Aladdin and the Forty Thieves only in modern Argentina. A couple of short fantasies about housework preceded our badly-behaved boarding schoolgirls who, really, just wanted to have fun. And, they did! Accompanist Mauro Colombis made sure of it.

 

 

Ah yes, La course aux potirons (1908)!!

Gently down the live stream… 12 from 21, Silent Film in the Modern Age

So, here it is... and what another resilient year it’s been for cinema. I saw a lot more films in theatres this year and stand in admiration all those involved in making this possible, so thank you for the projecting, programming, popcorn and perseverance. Thank you for showing me to my seat, introducing and politely requesting that we all wear masks… every little really does help. But this year’s list is dominated once again by digitally streamed films albeit from live events with Bonn, Bologna, Pordenone and others re-emerging and offering the choice to be there in person or the opportunity to watch from home. the way forward as many are still vulnerable whilst the pandemic lasts whilst those who could attend did so with appetite renewed.

So without further ado and in no particular order here's twelve highlights from the year behind us.

 

When Igor met Mary

1. A Kiss from Mary Pickford (1927), with John Sweeney, 10th Hippodrome Silent Film Festival

I’m hoping that 2022 allows me to attend Scotland’s premier silent film festival… OK, one of Europe’s premier festivals! This delicious soviet comedy typifies the focus on programming a mix of well-know and more obscure but historically significant films and is a film I’ve wanted to see for some time.

In 1926 Mary Pickford and Douglas Fairbanks came to Moscow as part of a grand European tour and seeing how rapturously they were greeted, how fetishized they were as something beyond ordinary humanity, Sergei Komarov devised a means of using this to both shine a comic light on the nature of this ultra-fame. He had no special access to the stars, just a collection of newsreels and one crucial sequence in which Mary agreed to perform a short skit with Igor Ilyinsky at the end of which she kisses him on the cheek; the moment which makes this film transcend its sources, from meta to better.

John Sweeney provided accompaniment and delighted in every comedic twist and turn in this joyful film that is as much a celebration of the Muscovite sense of humour as its cinema. As John said in his introduction, this is exactly the kind of film you fall for… one that is largely unseen but one that is further evidence of the strength of Russian comedy and cinematic ideas during the Twenties.

 

2. Siren of the Tropics (1927), Günter A. Buchwald and Frank Bockius, Slapstick Festival 2021

My first missed Slapstick Festival for a few years but the programme was as strong as you’d expect especially this opportunity to see the great Josephine Baker in her first feature. At the time, Hollywood was certainly not ready to go as far as French directors Mario Nalpas and Henri Étiévant do by placing Baker as the main focus in La sirène des tropiques and by giving her a story largely free of the cliqued tramlines of other multi-ethnic stories. Baker is perhaps treated as more overtly sexual than most white actors at this time – she’s topless twice -  is portrayed as both innocent and with a childlike wildness; she attracts (white) male lust as well as love and protectiveness, revels in powerfully expressive jazz dancing – seriously, that core and the way she co-ordinates massive extensions without any apparent strain -  and yet her character remains in awe of western spirituality. So many questions… but it’s still a shock to see someone as naturalistic as her placed, largely, at the centre of a story from this period and one in which race is not really mentioned.

Live musical accompaniment was provided by Guenter A. Buchwald on piano and Frank Bockius on percussion, who, in addition to deploying an almost telepathic musical synchronicity, smartly avoided the cliches of cultural referencing. This being one of the great jazz babies, they gave us a rip-roaring, hi-tempo jazzed score that not only kept pace but lifted the film to the vibrational level of its all-powered star. When Baker eventually struts her considerable stuff towards the end of the film you felt that this is the moment the players had been pacing themselves for.

 

Marthe Fabris... L’Arlésienne

3. L’Arlésienne (1922), Il Cinema Ritrovato, Günter Buchwald and L’Octuor de France

 

A film with a fantastic sense of place, shot on location in the gorgeous city of Arles and the surrounding countryside of the Camargue, it’s almost entirely shot outdoors, featuring the images of locale and rural practice you’d expect from André Antoine, the director of L'hirondelle et la mésange (1920) and La Terre (1921).

 

This 4k restoration is a thing of beauty completed in 2020 by Fondation Jérôme Seydoux-Pathé and La Cinémathèque française from two unique diacetate prints preserved at the latter and it benefited mightily from musical accompaniment based on orchestral arrangements by Gabriel Diot from the score edited by Pathé in 1922. Günter Buchwald rearranged the score, which features compositions from Bizet (who incidentally wrote an opera based on this story), Gillet, Rachmaninov and others. He also added his own Impressions d’ Arles and conducted L’Octuor de France to create a perfectly synchronised emotional narrative that not only pull at present day heartstrings but also recreates the sound of the contemporary silent experience.

 

Lyda Borelli 

4. Fior di male (1915), Bonn Silent Film Festival with Cellophon

 

I’m not having a best of list without a new-to-me classic Diva film and here was a prime cut of imperial Borelli in all her operatic pomp and with a collection of magisterial emotional displays only matched by her gorgeous and frequently changing wardrobe. Only in Italy miei amici and it took a German film festival to highlight that point.

Accompanying were the Cellophon duo, aka Paul Rittel and Tobias Stutz who both play cello in ways that are emotionally resonant and respectful of the source visuals. They used admirable flavour and restraint with both recognising the need to underplay when confronted by the operatic fireworks on screen using this most mournfully flexible of instruments in musical tribute to perhaps the greatest Italian silent film diva…

Another excellent presentation from this year’s Bonn festival and I have completely run out of reasons not to go there in 2022.

 

Magda Holm

5. The Girl in Tails (1926), Stephen Horne and Elizabeth Jane-Baldry, Bonn Silent Film Festival

I’m to be disgraced simply because I’m a girl. A meek and mild, simple and unassuming girl…

Karin Swanström’s uplifting film, a delicate mixture of comedy and drama that fully lives up to its promise as A Light Summer Film Story especially with truly delicious accompaniment from Horne and Baldry, without whom no remote access Bonn would be complete. It is notable for addressing so many issues that might be considered more modern concerns and it tackles proto feminism in ways which are never black and white, flowing naturally with the story. It’s sophisticated about its subject and uses cross-dressing as a means of creating conflict as well as comedy and makes points about fairness that doesn’t bang the drum so much as rolls it around the ballroom between social conservatism and the heroine’s “fight against injustice”.

Stephen’s multi-instrumentation and Elizabeth-Jane’s harp work so well together as they leave each other so much space and support, sharing the leading lines with the harp being used as percussion and bass as well as the heavenly flourishes you’d expect. There were some exceptionally lovely themes and the improvised was hard to separate from the pre-arranged which says it all. The ideal accompaniment for this delightful film!

 

Leslie Howard and some of my old neighbours

6. Breaking the silence… The Wit and Wisdom of A.A. Milne, BFI, with Bryony Dixon and Neil Brand

This was not my first cinema of the pandemic but it was the first silent screening with live accompaniment since March 2020… and, what a way to break the silence with BFI Curator Bryony Dixon providing expert introduction and Neil Brand accompanying with all the contextual flourish and narrative instinct you would expect.

There were two films written by Alan Alexander Milne for Minerva Films, founded in 1920 by the actor Leslie Howard with his friend and story editor Adrian Brunel. The company’s board of directors included C. Aubrey Smith, Nigel Playfair and A. A. Milne. First up was The Bump (1920) featuring Smith as the famous explorer with a “bump” that enables him to find even the darkest parts of Africa but in London he gets hopelessly lost. Smith was 57 and the film makes great play of his cragginess with a sequence notating the origins of the scars on his face, a shark bite here and a lions’ claw there; he’s explored the world and has the autographs left by every predator he’s met.

The second film featured Leslie Howard in Bookworms (1920) another witty tale of love and adventure this time transporting a knight and fair maiden to Edwardian semi-detached suburbs in what is now West Wimbledon. Turns out the location was just around the corner from where I used to live too.

 

Henry Edwards

7. The parade returns… The Joker (1928), with Stephen Horne, Le Giornate 40th Edition Streaming, Day One

The 40th Edition of Le Giornate del Cinema Muto mixed physical media and digital content with the cinemuto-philes returning to Pordenone for the full programme including live screenings, accompaniment and lashings of Aperol Spritz late into the night… and a lighter schedule available online and worldwide. It was the best of both worlds and the best we can hope for as the cautious C-19 recovery continues.

 

The streaming got off to a rip-roaring start with a big party in Nice, featuring the annual carnival, covered extensively, including one or two hangovers and a reunion of Mander and Horne; not a long-lost music hall pairing but the star of The First Born, accompanied once again by the man who produced one of the most memorable scores for modern restorations at the London Film Festival in 2011. Directed by Danish Georg Jacoby this “Euro pudding” had a charming cast to match its location and story of playboy jewel thievery with The Joker played by the British actor and director, Henry Edwards, in prototypical Bond fashion admittedly more Niven than Craig.

 

Ellen Richter

8. Moral (1928), with Donald Sosin, Le Giornate 40th Edition Streaming, Day Seven

 

The rediscovery of Ellen Richter was one of the big themes of this year’s Giornate live in Pordenone and she did not disappoint digitally either. She’s one of those performers who naturally draws the eye and apart from having charisma to burn she has a richly centred persona with a smile that radiates glee as powerfully as sardonic rage. You don’t mess with Ellen but, if you do, she’ll have you back and relish a cool revenge that aims not to destroy but to educate; it’s not just piano she teaches, it’s self-respect.

Here she plays stage performer Ninon d’Hauteville who causes a stir when her troop come to play in the provincial town of Emilsburg and whilst battling the self-appointed Moral Society, gets the chance to teach the Prince Emile XXVII’s “milksop” of a son piano and much more besides. There’s much comedy and cabaret and the fashions are spectacular but so is Ellen and knowing that enables even the truly improbable garb to hang naturally and unselfconsciously. Donal Sosin accompanied with the appropriate sense of occasion and humour.

 

9. Maciste All’ Inferno (1926), with Teho Teardo and Zerorchestra, Le Giornate 40th Edition Streaming Day Eight

This was Bartolomeo Pagano’s 26th performance as the likeable lunk who combines power and morality as the Italian superuomo first introduced in Cabiria (1913). It was something like a cross-over event in the Dante Extended Universe, a follow-up to L’Inferno (1911) with a soul-devouring Lucifer drawn directly from Bertolini, Padovan and De Liguoro’s masterpiece, a feature film diligently drawn from Dante Alighieri’s The Divine Comedy.

 

It’s a wild ride with amazing special effects from the legendary Segundo de Chomón along with direction to die for – literally – from Guido Brignone, along with set and costume direction from Giulio Lombardozzi. Maciste must fight in Hell and it’s ugly, fierce and outrageously sexy. Hellzappopin’ alright and wonder it left such an impression on Federico Fellini who remembered it as the first film he ever saw – aged five or six? – even down to the details the capture of Maciste by Proserpina (Elena Sangro).

Spirited accompaniment was provided by Pordenone-born composer Teho Teardo who’s electronica was accompanied by local favourites the Zerorchestra along with Accademia Musicale Naonis and cellist Riccardo Pes. For this tale of many contexts, the cello represented Dante’s “voice” whilst the booming brass of the Accademia Naonis was that of Maciste. This was the performance that kicked off the pre-Festival event in Teatro Zancanaro, Sacile and I’d have loved to have been there in person to see it. Next year… next year.

 

Franciszka Themerson

10. Europa (1931/2). BFI London Film Festival 2021, Opening Night

Well, I made it to one festival at least… this was the first night of the BFI London Film Festival and the screening of a film not seen since 1933; a World Premier of its restored version no less, followed by a second screening. Europa was the first film made by Stefan and Franciszka Themerson, two radical minded Polish artists who believed in the political importance of art at a time of confusion.

This was an extraordinary session, not just in terms of the content but also the context given by William Fowler, BFI National Archive Curator, along with renowned Polish film historian and programmer, Jasia Reichardt who first met the Themersons as a child. Europa was based on a poem from Anatol Stern publishing in Reflektor magazine in 1925, attacking the relentless violence of propaganda designed to undermine critical thinking and fuel populist sympathy. Sounds familiar, doesn’t it? An important film and one believed destroyed by the Nazis, Europa has outlasted them and stands as a message to us all.

 

Their house

11. Back home… The House on Trubnaya (1928), with Cyrus Gabrysch, Kennington Bioscope 

This was my first visit to the Cinema Museum since March 2020 and it was a delight to see the Kennington Bioscope back up and running. The KB carried on through the pandemic with KBTV on YouTube and whilst the path to the old place is all still familiar, what a time we’ve had. The old team was back together in the flesh and as star of stage and small screen, KBTV’s MC Michelle Facey introduced and John Sweeney warmed up for the first films… we partied like it was 2019.

Boris Barnet’s The House on Trubnaya is very clever slapstick mixed with social observation and the required political messaging: if all bosses are as venal and self-serving as in the film – even over a decade on from the Revolution – then workers need to join unions to support themselves and others, not to mention their ducks… It never lectures just wends its peculiar way scoring laughs over political points and that’s exactly why it remains so watchable.

Cyrus Gabrysch accompanied in style and relished this return to the silent film “club” he helped found. This was a fitting welcome home to him and everyone else involved in this wonderful collective.

 

Léontine takes flight

12. Anarchy in the UK… Nasty Women: A Comic Tribute, BFI with Meg Morley 

There was a guy, I’m not sure if you remember him, who once referred to his presidential rival as a “nasty woman” long ago in The Time Before. In response film historians Maggie Hennefeld and Laura Horak ran a programme of comedy shorts at the 2017 Le Giornate del Cinema Muto featuring women behaving nastily for comic effect. As there is plenty more where that came from the BFI decided on a re-run with a new-old favourites thrown in.

Thus, we had Florence Turner’s incredibly flexible fizzog in Daisy Doodad’s Dial (1914), Alma Taylor and Chrissie White giving plenty of cheek in Tilly’s Party (1912) and Texas Guinan our riding and out gunning the men in The Night Rider (1920). There was also the enigmatic gallic anarchy of the legendary Léontine, also known as “Titine” in France and Betty” in the United States, about whom almost nothing is known. Three films Léontine s’envole (1911), Léontine enfant terrible (1911) and Léontine garde la maison (1912) showed her daredevil comic flair and it is to be hoped that her story emerges in more detail. What a talent she was.

Meg Morley accompanied with thematic variety and satisfying melodic invention. No two scores were the same and she kept pace with the on-screen anarchy with the acuity of a seasoned jazz player, one used to working as part of an improvisational team, this time with her bandmates on screen.

A splendid afternoon on the Southbank and we drank a toast to the nasty but nice trailblazers who are being remembered anew.

 

So much more to discover in 2022… I hope to see you all then!

 

Expressionism… Fior di male (1915), Bonn Silent Film Festival with Cellophon

 

I don’t just sit here waiting for a new Diva film to be restored you know although sometimes maybe I do… Here was a prime cut of imperial Borelli in all her operatic pomp and with a collection of magisterial emotional displays only matched by her gorgeous and frequently changing wardrobe. Only in Italy miei amici and it took a German film festival to highlight that point. 

 

There's one review on IMDB that dismisses the lasting appeal of such "soapy melodrama" but this implies little awareness of the Diva cinematic concept that flourished in Italy in the 1910s and you would need a heart of stone and, frankly, zero fashion sense, not to appreciate the film. Flower of Evil is mannered, stylised, convoluted and skilfully excessive but it’s also – as with opera – meant to be like that, it’s not an accident or a wilful decision to piss off viewers a century later. 

 

Film historian and Diva specialist, Angela Dalle Vacche*, gives a very informed explanation of Borelli’s style and how she was not only influenced by Eleonora Duse, who she performed with, but also by classical art. The great Italian stage actor had a passion for simplicity and spirituality whereas Borelli took more erotic allusions into her art according to Dalle Vacche who also quotes art historian Robert de la Sizeranne concerning her clear debt to the Pre-Raphaelites especially with “…the desire to intensify the most minute of feelings sometimes... an obsession.”

 

Lyda Borelli and friend

For Borelli, acting was something of “a tightrope walking act between naturalism and expressionism…” and she was keen on using cliché to prick the audience bubble… as evidenced by a sequence at the start of the film where she holds a lion cub in her lap and shoots her most feline expression at the viewer… the actress “engaging in a camp deconstruction of the cliché”. Not a sex kitten but definitely one with claws.

 

So, fundamentally, the story matters less in terms of narrative context than in the provision of opportunities for La Borelli to show us her range of knowing eroticised expression. To this end Fior di male does not disappoint in the slightest.

 

As if to emphasise this relationship between story and actress, Lyda plays a woman called Lyda, a poor young woman who “lives among the lowest social classes”, dancing for the creepy men who pay for their pleasure. Borelli is shown lower screen right, her Lyda drenched in oppressed boredom, only just coming alive for the slinky show, taking a superior delight in the reaction she easily encourages; despising their petty passion.

 

A year later Lyda has given birth to a son but has to give him up not being in a position to care for him. The baby has a distinctive birth mark and, in her heartbreak, she knows there’s just a chance she might find him later in life. Things get worse for Lyda after the club where she dances is raided and she is sent to a correctional facility but, having hit rock bottom, the tough gets going and escapes.

 

Now the story really begins… as Lyda, exhausted from her flight, is found by the kindly Count van Deller who offers her food and rest. Restored she naturally robs him, only thinking twice when he mentions that the trinket comes from his daughter’s room, left untouched since she passed away. Lyda’s flicker of remorse turns into full repentance as she prays for forgiveness and returns the stolen item under cover of the night and there are some stunning shots of her guilty silhouette shot against a low sun on the beach – Domenico Grimaldi’s camerawork is fascinating throughout.

 

One of the great profiles

The Count sees Lyda’s good character and sets her up with a new name, Helena Simons enabling her to flourish as a tailor and then as manager of a fashion house. All the while she searches for her son and whilst he proves elusive other threads in the story begin to weave together, and at pace. The fashion house is funded by a bank run by one Bambi Rogers (Augusto Poggioli) who’s sister Fulvia (Fulvia Perini) is a trustee of the correction house where Lyda was incarcerated. Bambi makes eyes at Helena/Lyda and his sister suspects her of gold-digging before spotting who she really is and threatening to reveal all. But the Count stands by his new ward who, nonetheless, has rebuffed Bambi’s gifts and attention, she is no longer to be “bought”.

 

Nino Oxilia’s story being chock full of connected themes chief among which is parenthood, Lyda’s childless mother, the Count, robbed of his daughter becoming her surrogate father and Helena/Lyda herself adopting young seamstress Cecyl (c) as her daughter. Nothing supplants her desperate search for her son though, the natural bond is too strong and the search obviously will not be never ending…

 

Look at that for composition! Lyda and Cecyl Tryan

Things change when famous violinist Ruggero Davusky (Ruggero Barni) has a car accident near the family home and Helena and Cecyl nurse him back to good health, both falling in love with him without realising the other’s feeling. Once again Lyda must let her child go free and her broken heart is revealed in supple contortions of Borelli’s feature and form; her exquisite pain played out in lingering set pieces beautifully tinted in the EYE’s restoration.

 

The wheel of fate turns again and you just know the finish will be bigger than anything that has gone before. This is the unwritten code of Diva film, it’s what we expect and what gets delivered with skill and grace.

 

This was one of the first features for Carmine Gallone, who would go on to direct Borelli again in the darkly magnificent Malombra (1917) and to make films up until the early sixties. He uses his asset well, framing her in so many delicious set pieces combining lighting, design and the glorious costumery you’d expect from Borelli the clothes thoroughbred.

Lyda and Ruggero Barni

Accompanying were the Cellophon duo, aka Paul Rittel and Tobias Stutz who both play cello in ways that are emotionally resonant and respectful of the source visuals. There’s admirable flavour and restraint with both recognising the need to underplay when confronted by the operatic fireworks on screen. The cello is the most mournfully flexible of instruments and they put nary a foot wrong is musical tribute to perhaps the greatest Italian silent film diva…

 

Another excellent presentation from this year’s Bonn festival and I have completely run out of reasons not to go there in 2022!

 

Vielen Dank für die tolle sendung!

 

* In Diva, Defiance and Passion in Early Italian Cinema by Angela Dalle Vacche (University of Texas Press) – essential reading with super commentary on contemporary acting including Danish diva, Asta Nielsen who, although not a diva per se, has to be the point of excellence against which all other performers are measured.

Divas in Bologna, Il Cinema Ritrovato Festival 2018

When in Rome… this year’s Il Cinema Ritrovato festival included a fair dollop of domestic product with so many films from the early silent period and, of course, including the greats of the “diva period”. There are no doubt intricate socio-cultural reasons behind the predominance of such strong female leads at this time – not forgetting strong men like Mascist or the heroes and villains of classical Rome – but the fact is that no other country seemed to have celebrated women in quite the same way.  The influence of turn-of-the-century “black romanticism”  on Italian arts mixed with more contemporary concerns of a changing society led to women holding an almost unique position within film narratives,

As Angela Dalle Vacche, has said*: "Although widely used in contemporary English, the word diva in 1915 Italy meant something different from what it means today (and elsewhere) …the female stars of that period were characterized by a suffering and maternal aura (mater dolorosa) which the American femme fatales never adopted. Furthermore, in early Italian cinema a diva-film meant a melodrama with Orientalist décor dealing with women’s issues such as aging, abandonment, divorce, adultery, pregnancy, employment and so forth.” 

In other words, as Angela also says: “the diva is not a vamp”.

Pina Menichelli 

La moglie di Claudio (1918) with Antonio Coppola, 35mm

In the first film featuring Le Grandi Tre Dive, Pina Menichelli set the opera-without-sound mode to stun with maximum radiance as she threw her head back, smiled her malevolent smile and laid waste to half a dozen male hearts and minds. Actually, make that, *absolutely* stunning... Pina may be an acquired taste, but do you think she gives a damn what you care? She is superbly twisted in this film which features foreign agents trying to get hold of top secret inventions – a similar plot to the Ritrovato’s Wolves of Kutur serial (Great War pre-occupations).

Pina’s character, Cesarina, is married to inventor Claudio Ruper (Vittorio Rossi Pianelli) who has a super new gun but an unfortunate cash-flow issue… the baddies are intent on stealing his designs and selling them to overseas powers which is strictly against his dream of peace through enabling one-nation benevolence…

Cesarina and "him indoors"...

None of this bothers his wife who is busy seducing his adopted son Antonino (Alberto Nepoti) and Ruper’s ace engineer Moncabré (Gabriel Moreau). Unknown to Cesarina, he has been sent to seduce her (Ha! Good luck for trying pal!) but, of course fails, and she gets the emotional drop on him and, his mind turned to mush, he gifts her the money he was supposed to use to bribe her for the plans…

He gets despatched and the baddies get badder while Cesarina becomes more and more outrageous… it can only end one way… or can it; the final third twists and turns allowing Pina ample chances to display charm and disdain; in some ways she’s the perfect diva and then you think of Bertorelli and Bertini; all three so potent and so different. Here Giovanni Pastrone directs with powerful economy; he knew his lead so well.

Antonio Coppola accompanied with some playfull jazz-inflected dramatics; it must be a joy to accompany Menichelli, that throw of the head always the cue for dramatic disdain as she stares out to admire the quivering men in her way…

Francesca Bertini and Gustavo Serena in L'Avarizia

L’Avarizia (1918) with Daniele Furlati, 35mm

It was Bertini time and the Diva you’d least like to face in a fist-fight, did not disappoint.

Francesca was magnificent in her rage in a film that dealt with the poisonous effects of greed with all the narrative subtlety of Sham 69 (look ‘em up kids!). Watching diva film, listening to classic Italian progressive rock music (don’t @ me) and just being in Bologna you have to leave your critical ego at the door… if you want to. This is expressive film that is driven by powerful, genuine emotion more than subtle plotting. It works on your emotions as much as Sennett works on your sense of humour; you don’t laugh with Bertini you share her angst, passion and fury… it’s an exegesis experience and you’re cleansed by the shared recognition of tragedy and – if you’re both lucky – redemption.

This film was one of a series dealing with the seven deadly sins and, as you’d expect, hit the nail right on the head, repeatedly. Bertini plays, Maria a woman kept in near poverty by her avaricious Aunt who lives in her sick-bed and takes every penny she can earn and hoards it while her niece struggles to look after them both.

Maria has a lover, Luigi (frequent collaborator Gustavo Serena), who is similarly held back by his father (Franco Gennaro), a scribe and draughtsman, who hides his small fortune in the secret panels of his desk and plans for his son to marry someone with better prospects. The youngsters have each other and the sunshine and need for little but are dragged down by the bitter appetites all around them.

Ron’s friend is a wastrel who does nothing but spend his inheritance and hang out with fine young things in expensive restaurants… they laugh at Luigi, “the pleb” who cannot connect with these pointless butterflies. Meanwhile Maria is pursued by a fraudulent count, who possibly in a hang-over from a previous film on lust, wants the one he can’t have and will stop at nothing to persuade Aunty to exchange her girl for cash.

The plotters intertwine as Maria – who can’t read or write as Aunty wouldn’t pay for schooling – inadvertently gives the game away by asking Luigi’s father to write down a love letter to her son. Once he realises who her love is he turns the communication into an anonymous accusation that Viv is betraying him with the Count who is going to fund the opening of her dress salon. The lover’s split in a physically-impressive scene with the actors almost intertwined in an agony of miss-conception… and this is just the start. Ron goes off to Sicily to recover – much snickering from the Italians in the audience – whilst Aunty dies in shock after seeing what misery she has heaped in her girl…

Fortunes rise and fall as Maria does indeed open her salon with her inheritance but it’s not enough and she has to contract with the Count for extra capital. The salon is a smash and we get to see Bertini the clothes horse as she models a series of exquisite gowns… Mean Luigi makes his way in the south and is soon ordering people around in impressive trousers…

Sadness is a warm gun...

But the Count wants payment in kind and he picks on the wrong woman to force his affections… he attacks in the night but reckons without the full force of Maria’s will. This section allows Bertini to power through her paces like a feral cat at bay with huge tresses of obsidian curls flying as she destroys the predator. There’s a price to pay and, as is always the way, there’s simply no guarantee of a happy ending.

The film was directed by Gustavo Serena and produced by Francesca Bertini herself, off all the divas she had most control over what she did. We also saw the closing, most dramatic clip from Tosca in which the actress goes through the agonies of the double-crossing of her lover… Bertini’s range is spectacular but she reins herself in, never wanting to lose the grounding reality.

Lyda Borelli

Carnevalesca (1918), Antonio Coppola, 35mm

Lastly but not least, Lyda Borelli, arguably the most sophisticated of the three grand divas, more graceful and choreographed than her sisters but no less powerful… a stronger theatrical foundation meaning that she is more mannered than Borelli and less wild than Menichelli.

The Leggenda di Santa Barbara (1918) was screened, a short in which the eponymous Babs (Borelli) has to fend off the murderous Vandals who killed her father with a box of explosives. Borelli saves her sisters by unleashing the explosive at just the right time… allegorically and figuratively… Barbara's father is killed during a raid of the Vandals. When Barbara and the other women are threatened, she throws a box with explosives to the attackers, which causes their death.

Carnevalesca (1918) is based around a series of carnivals that illustrate the life of royal cousins in the castle of Malaysia, from innocence at the White Carnival to blossoming love as Luciano falls for his cousin Lyda at the Blue Carnival. But there are other claimants for the throne and cousin Carlo (Livio Pavanelli) makes his move through intrigue and implication, aiming to kill two birds with one selfish stone…

This last, crucial, section: The Black Carnival, was screened again and it is worth repeated viewing as Carlo’s tangled webs of deceit leads Lyda’s character to stab her lover in the mistaken belief that he killed her father. Borelli appears to flex her entire being when she emotes, arching her dancer’s back and drawing her face into a mask of fright and fury… She’s exhaustingly-engaging and optimises the tragedy with forensic, almost paintfully detailed, expression.

It's like free-running – performance parkour – as Borelli, her character fired by a mix of fury and self-loathing, tears across the screen in search of the double justice required to put things right. It’s nip and tuck for subtlety between her and Bertini but boy are they magnificent. I could watch this over and over, as she tests her lover over diner, literally lifting the table lamp to better see his face for signs of treachery, moving agonisingly to the conclusion that he’s guilty and she must be the one to deliver justice.

Once the deeds are done, she tries to hide from her shame, never stopping as she walks off, heart destroyed and chased by guilt into the forest.

Again the accompaniment from Antonio Coppola was subtle and dynamic, exactly what these performances demand.

The Cineteca Bolognia have released Diva! a 4 DVD box set timed with the Festival and it duly arrived at the end of the week and made its way – after payment – into my bag: it contains a lavish booklet and four films , two each from Bertini and Borelli and the only shame is that only one is new to digital media and that Menichelli is not included.

Details on their website.

Strong female leads continued even after the age of the diva had nominally passed and we saw two performers from the twenties who continued the tradition if not the style.

Rosè Angione and her hapless lover, played by Alberto Danza

The films of Elvira Notari were covered by the festival including this curio, E Piccerella (1922) starring Rosè Angione as Margaretella, a Neapolitan woman of fierce hair and huge desire, for freedom and expression. As with Pina’s character above, Margaretella wants for nothing save the exhaustion of her lovers as they foolishly attempt to provide satisfaction at the expense of their sanity and lives. But Angione seems more purely cruel than Menichelli, perhaps more vamp than Diva. Great hair though and a hard-working performer!

Leda Gys

Leda Gys wasn’t strictly speaking a diva but she had a smile to launch a fleet and as local girl Pupatella, she is cast in an American film about Naples in Vedi Napoli e poi muori (1924). It’s a celebration of the city and the actress which features a huge closing sequence showing the actress ub the joyous Feast of Piedigrotta. Accompanist Antonio Coppola was almost to the limits of crescendo at the climax of one of the feel-good hits of the festival!

*In her essay “Lyda Borelli’s Satanic Rhapsody: The Cinema and the Occult"