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!

 

 

Before Gosta... Gunnar Hede's Saga (1923) with Guenter A. Buchwald and Neil Brand, Bonn Silent Film Festival

As many may know I’m always up for a Saga directed by Mauritz Stiller and based on a book by Selma Lagerlöf and, even though this one is still missing about half an hour, it is a thoroughly entertaining romp through snow, love and madness which features the humanity you’d expect from Selma along with the mastery of locations and character you can rely on from Mauritz. It’s a story about reindeers and redemption (the latter, always a Selma theme) and, how fitting that a film featuring two violin players and the healing power of music, should be accompanied by the Silent Film Supergroup of Guenter A. Buchwald on violin and Neil Brand on piano… I really wish I’d been there to witness this gig in the flesh but the streaming screening will have to do for now and how.

 

Whereas Gosta Berling has its grand set piece of Lars Hanson and Greta Gustafson (Garbo) escaping across the frozen lake, this film has an extraordinary sequence in which Gunnar Hede (Einar Hansson) is dragged across snow and ice by an escaping reindeer, his grip and footing lost as, off-balanced, the rope he tied to deer and his waist is threatening to see him dragged to a painful doom. Hansson was originally down to play this role but he does very well in his first film role, bright eyed and passionate, his Gunnar inspired by his grandfather’s love of the violin as well as his epic journey bringing a herd of reindeers from the wilderness of the north for lucrative sale in the south.

 

Your grandfather was a simple peasant, Miss Stava should know better than to put fantasies in your head!

 

The matriarch, Mrs Hede (Pauline Brunius)

This action makes the family’s fortune and the gran house and estate of Munkhyttarian Gunnar sees the portrait of his Grandfather comes alive in his imagination, the same passion for music driving his daring imagination. But not all of the family celebrates this stunning success story with Gunnar’s mother Mrs. Hede (an excellent and very fearsome Pauline Brunius) being especially unimpressed. Her boy will have the best grounding in finance and mining management, so he may run the estate properly.

 

Best laid plans of domineering mothers are sometimes over-turned by happenstance and learning that his Father is extremely ill, Einer returns home as quickly as he can… This narrative runs on luck and chance encounters, as much as any Paul Auster novel and, like the American, and Lagerlöf is always more interested in the reaction than the action. In the period of mourning after his father’s death, it comes to pass that a small group of travelling acrobats comes to Munkhyttarian.

Stina Berg on tightrope, Adolf Olschansky spinning plates and Mary Johnson on violin 

This signals a comedic change of pace as we meet a horse that will only pull its cart when serenaded with the mouthorgan played by a scruffy tight-rope walker (Stina Berg) whilst her husband Blomgren (Adolf Olschansky) a man who has taken dishevelled into an artform – a Jasper Johns instillation dragged through a hedge backwards – holds the reins. With them is a poor waif, Ingrid (Mary Johnson) who they have adopted chiefly for her ability to play the violin as they perform. This couple are classic light-relief but they are quite extraordinary.

Their arrival at Munkhyttarian uplifts the mood and Gunnar watches from his window entranced by the music before moving down to find the player just as fascinating. Spirits are lifted and Irene stays as Gunnar starts to play again before a chance encounter on a train with two fellows who have the same plan as his grandfather’s to move enough Reindeer from North to South to make a new fortune.

 

Einar Hansson and Mary Johnson

Gunnar heads up north to Sápmi (formerly known as Lapland), to enlist the aid of Sámi (formerly known as Laplanders; exteriors were largely shot in the surrounding area, Nacka, and Kallsjön in Jämtland) to wrangle a giant herd of deer and drive South. There are some spectacular shots of scenery and the movement of the reindeer especially as they try to cross a wide river. Stiller’s cameraman was Swedish legend, Julius Jaenzon who worked so memorably with Victor Sjostrom as well, who is so audacious with his shots into the sun, managing stunning contrasts between the low light and the players: dramatically infusing the film’s tone with so many exterior shots.

 

The cattle drive is dynamic and with constant threat as the men must make sure that the lead deer is kept under their control so the rest will follow. The going gets tough though and in checking the safety of a frozen lake one of the men falls through the ice leaving Gunnar desperately trying to hold onto the beast which breaks away dragging him with it for hundreds of metres over the snow and ice. The other man is saved but by the time they find Gunnar half the heard as been lost along with his grip on reality. Face bloodied, he sees every animal as a threat and has lost his reason.

 

No deer were harmed in the making of this film, perhaps.

The night of Gunnar’s Reindeer ride, Ingrid experiences the strangest of dreams in which an old woman on a sledge appears in her bedroom: “I am Lady Sorrow on my way to Munkhyttarian…” she says, revealing a bewildered Gunnar in her carriage… what can it all mean? Dreams represent passions and fears but also reveal our deepest thoughts... and Ingrid's connection to Gunnar runs very deep indeed.

 

Gunnar returns home but is traumatised, childlike, and even though Ingrid does what she can, he busies himself with waking dreams collecting stones from across the estate pretending they are the coins required to save his childhood home. Meanwhile, facing ruin, his mother puts Munkhyttarian up for sale… what and who can save them now?

In the US the film was titled The Blizzard!

 

Lagerlöf was not happy with the liberties Stiller had taken with her story, The Tale of a Manor, she seemed to just about prefer Sjostrom’s approaches but was demanding all the same. That said, what remains of Stiller’s film is an engaging story of individual intensities and the grandeur of the rugged reindeer drive… Thousands of reindeer in a mad stampede – the greatest thrill ever screened! announced William Fox’ US publicity, and they weren’t far off.

 

All is thrillingly accompanied by Neil and Guenter who’s collective experience encompasses not just decades worth of silent film accompaniment but also regular collaborations with other players. What those in Bonn saw and we online heard was a deceptively effortless improvised score, sharing leading lines across instruments with a mutual understanding of the drama on screen. In fantasy Football you can select players from each side to form the best team independent of allegiance, here we had Ronaldo and Messi in fine form and it was a massive win for Fußball-Club Stummfilmtage Bonn!

“Patriotism is not enough…” Dawn (1928), Stephen Horne, Le Giornate del Cinema Muto Day 7

This was one of the most moving films we’ve seen this week and all the more so for two ending beings shown, one from the Belgian digital transfer and the other from the BFI’s 35mm copy. There are differences between the two, not just the warmer tones of the film but also in the way that Nurse Cavell meets her end… the inevitability of violent death by gunshot.

Sybil Thorndike is outstanding as Nurse Edith Cavell and that final walk, her eyes wet with mortal fear, are truly heart-wrenching, bringing tears for the second time this week (the other occasion being the children of Vienna maimed by war). Stephen Horne played an absolute blinder with bass drum punching out Cavell’s final few paces in the first version and the piano taking the lead for the second. The accompaniment has to be as precisely judged as the action on screen and both were in step to devastating effect.

The Belgian version is the uncensored cut of what was a highly-controversial film… there was still plenty of sensitivity about this infamous episode and clearly, as the UK version shows, possible offense had to be limited.

This is not easy though especially when you have an actual member of Cavell’s team, Ada Bodart, playing herself… history as film, film actor as her own history.

"Patriotism is not enough. I must have no hatred or bitterness towards anyone."

After Dawn, a section on those Nasty Women was more than welcome and I especially laughed at the last, She's a Prince (1926) a crazy-cross-dressed, paparazzi-dumping, case of mistaken royal identity starring Billy Franey as the sorority “girl” formerly known as Prince and Alyce Ardell as… the “prince” formerly known as Alice.

The Swedish Challenge strand continues to impress and Thora van Deken (1920) featured a powerhouse performance from Pauline Brunius as the title character. She is fighting to protect her daughter’s inheritance by hiding her former husband’s will and Brunius display of determination in the face of her dubious action and motherly love is so… human. She was wrong but we are on her side… Brunius has the kind of face that can hold a movie on its own twisting conflicted emotions across strong features that fail to hide her darting eyes. This is why Swedish cinema was indeed “challenging” – completely naturalistic performance matched with films that deal in moral questions in a realistic and compelling way.

The restored print was more 2020 than 1920 and a delight to behold. It was a kind of Blue but emotions were melting through…

Maud Nelissen accompanied with pensive piano lines which perfectly matched this absorbing play of conscience and forbearance. I’d never heard of actress of film until this week and that, my friends, is what this show they call Le Giornate is all about!

On to the evening and two films from people I know and in films I’ve seen.

The Vampire, Philip Burne-Jones

Rudyard Kipling’s The Vampire was written to accompany the exhibition of a illustration by his cousin Philip Burne-Jones depicting a female vampire; another link between cinema and painting as per Tableaux Vivants. This vampire is a sexual predator draining her partners of their energies, funds and self-respect. The poem begins with the line A fool there was… and warns against the folly of falling for women who “…could never know why and could never understand!” decent family society presumably.

It is not a hugely complex story but it has one massive power point: Theodosia Goodman aka Theda Bara who turns what could have been a run of the deMille Victorian morality tale in to very modern sexual picaresque. Her vamp is working her way through male batteries like there’s no tomorrow and lives only for herself and yet she’s doing it in style! We want to go to Theda’s parties, hang out at the clothes store for the endless fittings her cool, cool, cool clothes demand and tell the straights to just go hang!

Theda is a punk rocker, Theda is a punk rocker, etc...

Theda is punk – Siouxsie, Poly and Pauline Murray would be nothing without her approach to mascara – and has a wit that just blasts everyone else off screen. Yes, there are deeper meanings to the struggle between family and pheromones but we’d all like a friend like Theda… er, wouldn’t we?

This was a much better print than the one used for the old Kino DVD although the source material is sadly not perfect. Still a real thrill to see it projected and to have accompaniment from Philip Carli with the premier of his new score for quintet! The music was as closely fit as one of Theda’s dresses and played off the humour as much as the drama just as Theda and, indeed, you and I… Philip played piano and was joined by David Shemancik, Günter A. Buchwald, Romano Todesco and Cristina Nadal. They are Theda’s band for her next all-nighter!

Last up was another who took sexual liberation a major cinematic step forward with Pola Negri in Mania, her third film of the week and her first film (?). This is not the playful Pola of Carmen but an equally passionate one who follows her heart into all kinds of trouble. A matchgirl spotted as the face of the brand, she falls for the artist’s muso buddy and, two stars of kind of born as Mania uses her “connections” to get her guy a break… Needless to say he doesn’t appreciate it and, as is usual – Theda being the exception… the woman pays.

I’d seen Mania before at its UK premier in 2011 and it is a very impressive restoration with some gorgeous close-ups of our heroine and without her trademark eye makeup… but it’s not the mascara that maketh the woman it’s the personality! Pola is also “punk” as it happens: fresh, to the point and boundless…