Quirks, strangeness and charm… Le Giornate del Cinema Muto 42, Day Seven

And so, to penultimate day and, as the minstrel sang, “I’m still standing…” or rather sitting, a lot, in the dark, watching. Today there was charm Sonia Delaunay’s innovative shaping and it was approaching midnight when Mae Murray moved to a convent, taught children, had her ankles runover by truck and, oh my, was inspired to take up her bee-stung lips and walk! If there was such a thing as a typical day at Le Giornate, this wouldn’t have been it, at all.

 

So, let’s start at the very ending as that’s a very good place to start as dozens of cinemutophiles (TM P. Hutchinson of Worthing) staggered out of the Verdi trying to process what we’d just seen with Circe, the Enchantress (1924) which progressed from a saucy mythical entree, Circe/Cecilie Brunner (Murray) turning men into pigs (I know, right?), through nightclub low-jinks with her gaggle of male admirers, to the aforementioned redemption sequence. It was undoubtedly great fun and considering it was a lost film for so long, a miracle of mythical proportions that it exists at all especially as it shows us so much of why Mae was a true star.

 

While she is more than capable of inhabiting the role of an enchantress ancient and modern, we also get a chance to see her dance as well as pout and she can dance having, as Artemis Willis puts it in the catalogue notes, pioneered the path from Ziegfeld Girl to Hollywood star. There’s one number influenced by modern ballet – say Denishawn or even Isadora Duncan – then a dance with a jazz ensemble. This is American cabaret and there’s even a moment when Cecilie jumps into a water feature in the club and her men follow her. There’s one gay character, not even coded and there’s William Haines too who always has a twinkle!

 

Interesting that this festival has feature both Billy and his friend Eleanor Boardman who won the "New Faces of 1922" contest and travelled to Hollywood together. He’s good as Cecilie’s most passionately lost paramour surrounded by harder hearts in the group all still unable to resist their lady’s allure. It’s only when surgeon Peter Van Martyn (James Kirkwood, Sr.) arrives on the scene that things change as he’s got the moral strength to stand apart and Cecilie finds that very attractive.

 

The film has some ten minutes missing but the sense remains even if the final turn-around is a jolt. It matters not as Murray the Enchantress is in full bloom. Willis quotes Florence Lawrence writing in the Los Angeles Examiner, “The story…gives the piquant star a vivid and chameleon-like characterization. She is alternately the spoiled and petted darling of a circle of rich adorers, and the wistful woman, beseeching attention from the one worthwhile man in the whole of her acquaintance.”

 

Accompaniment was from a spirited trio comprising Günter Buchwald (piano and violin), Aaron van Oudenallen (sax and woodwind) plus Frank Bockius who I believe is a percussionist and without whom no GCM 42 day is complete!

 

Peter C. Leska, Mady Christians and Diana Karenne

Eine Frau Von Format (1928) proved to be the most delightful of any of the Ruritanian stream, with a superb performance from Mady Christians which caused my hardened heart to melt with a pitch perfect performance of wit and intelligence, timing and a smile that charms as it disarms. Christians enjoyed a long and successful career including as Priscilla Queen of the Deserters in The Runaway Princess (1929) and many more. She’s got such presence and whilst obviously not a stunner in the manner of Russian diva, Diana Karenne, she draws the eye with expressiveness and energy.

 

She plays Dschilly Zileh Bey the ambassador from Türkisien who has been sent to negotiate the acquisition of an island from Princess Petra of Silistria (Karenne, who it was good to see again after the rediscoveries of her work screened at this year’s Cinema Ritrovato Bologna). In this she must compete with the ambassador from neighbouring Illyria, Count Géza von Tököly (Peter C. Leska) and we’re into classic romcom territory from the get-go. The Count tries to woo Princess Petra and moves her reception forward a day so that he can be alone with the Princess, but Dschilly responds by reversing that and leaving him to think on his feet as guests arrive in their dozens to rain on his private parade. This is only the beginning of a light-hearted competition that demonstrates its operatic origins as it makes light of the diplomatic love triangle, if that’s what it is?

 

In their catalogue essay, Amy Sargeant and Jay Weissberg quote a positive review from La Dépêche (02.08.1930) “It’s a lively, graceful work, with all the colour of Viennese operetta and in a thoroughly modern vein. It takes place in the midst of enchanting locales, on a marvellous island that bears a strong resemblance to those of Lake Maggiore, and the perfume of the Borromean Islands wafts ceaselessly in the luminous air.”

 

Meg Morley provided her own musical travelogue with accompaniment that was as airily in touch with the film’s tone as well as location in time and space. There were some sumptuous recurring motifs and the playing generated the same good humour as Mady on screen, in terms of all-round engagement a festival highlight!

Hope Hampton

Now, you’ve either got or you haven’t got style and for sure Sonia Delaunay’s stands out a mile. Here we had a collection of short films showing her design as well as her influence in the case of Ballet Mécanique (1924), that classic of cubist/Dada cinema from Fernand Léger, a member of the Delaunay circle, along with Dudley Murphy. Then there was striking haute couture in two-colour Kodachrome which highlighted model and actress Hope Hampton’s shock of red hair as much as the designs from Vionnett, Poiret et al. Hampton was in The Gold Diggers (1923), James Cruze’s Hollywood (1923), The Truth About Women (1924) and fair few others into the talkies.

 

Others shorts from Germaine Dulac and Marcel Duchamp were shown along with L’ÉLÉLÉGANCE (1926) directed by Sonia Delaunay and Robert Delaunay and The Delaunay Keller-Dorian Colour Test (1928). All of which made my chance meeting with some friends in Venice and our visit to the Peggy Guggenheim Collection make artistic sense of the last eight days. Cinema was part of the artistic innovation of the early part of the last century and there was a boldness and dynamism which still strikes as “new” and challenging in 2023.

 

Masterclass student Andrea Goretti provided artful accompaniment! Welcome on board.

 

Now for the quickfire round:

 

The slapstick special today included Modern Love (1929) which gave a rare chance to hear Charley Chase talk, the film was an early sound film with a mix of sound and music with title cards before we get to dialogue. Charley was in his usual mess as his dress designing wife (Kathryn Crawford) has had to keep their relationship secret and then gets an offer of work in Paris with a new customer, François Renault played by the super Jean Hersholt. It’s a fine mess but you know our hero will win through and it’ll be a lot of fun in the process. It must be said that this hybrid format was not that popular at the time and the recording quality of the voices was not hi-fidelity, age or original process/both.

 

The Oath of the Sword (1914) a story of a Japanese family whose son goes to study in the USA and who pledges an oath with his beloved to return on his return. Time passes, as does he with flying colours but all this Americanisation is as nothing when he returns to find she has married a US airman… cue the sword and that oath…

 

Harlem Sketches (1935) directed by Leslie Bain was a slice of cinéma verité showing the black community of Harlem in New York City. The title cards talked of their “miserable existence” and there is much poverty in evidence as well as defiance and humour. The film was banned in some American states, including Ohio, whose censorship commission turned down the print: “Reason for Rejection: Showing Negroes of Harlem banded together in groups carrying banners displaying Communistic ideas. Advocates equal social rights for Negroes.”

 

That future the artists in Europe could see wasn’t coming anytime soon to certain communities, was it?

 

Mady makes her point.

We can be heroes… Le Giornate del Cinema Muto 42, Day Two

 

And so, from the sublime to the gorblimey and back again as my granddad might of said; from a France vs Wales rugby match (I know, during the Rugby World Cup as well!), to a runaway table, (literally, a table that runs away,) via three cowboys and a little baby and Charlie Chaplin’s brother Syd playing “Charlie’s Aunt” with all the comic aplomb of Arthur Askey in his prime; it was an incident-packed day from the serial winners of the Silent Film Premiership.

 

Where to bloody start though as the actors probably said to the director, Cecil Hepworth in his remarkable The Doll’s Revenge (1907) which featured as part of the closing Feminist Archive Fragments segment. During the film a doll comes to life invents the Robot dance a century too early and then proceeds to eat the severed limbs of an annoying boy; I loved it! Also eye-popping was a tinted colour copy if Émile Cohl's Clair de Lune Espagnol (1909), in which a silly senor upsets the Moon and there’s a musical dialogue from Stephen Horne and Frank Bockius using a Swanee whistle to pay tribute, surely, to The Clangers (possibly an in-joke too far for the Brits, but the World needs to know of these cuddly moon-dwellers…).

 

Kraftwerk, Peter Crouch's Robot Dance, Die Puppe... Cecil invented everything.

What made this section so sublime was that it followed perhaps the hardest hitting of the films screened so far, William Wyler’s Hell’s Heroes (1929) as accompanied by John Sweeney and Frank Bockius – who put in a very decent shift over the 90 minutes and the 60 in extra time.). After the first half an hour of this film, after the four main characters, all outlaws have terrorised a small town, robbed their bank and killed  in the process, as they made their getaway across the parched desert I was thinking what could possibly redeem these characters, especially with no heroes in sight apart from the two six-gun totin’ preacher, the Sheriff (Walter James) too busy ogling the bar’s dancer Carmelita (Maria Alba).

I, of course, was wrong – which is kind of this blog’s USP - José (Joe De La Cruz, who sees a hearts during the raid, gets shot and collected by the same vehicle but the other three Bob Sangster (Charles Bickford), "Barbwire" Gibbons (Raymond Hatton) and "Wild Bill" Kearney (Fred Kohler) escape to the desert. They survive a sandstorm and lose their horses whilst Bill has also been shot in the shoulder by the posse. They proceed on foot, their only hope a well spring miles ahead, they come across an abandoned waggon and inside find a dying mother (Fritzi Ridgeway) who hands them her baby, appoints them godfathers and asks them to promise to take his to his father, a teller at the very bank they have just robbed.

As moral set ups it is a clever one and the tough guts, perhaps aware that their chances of survival are limited make the calculation to try and save the baby… but even that is unlikely when they find the spring dry, other wells poisonous and hundreds of miles of sand in every direction.

 

John Sweeney played with thunderous command on the Giornate’s world-class piano and Frank Bockius added so much drive and tone on percussion; these two really play well together (not a soccer reference) and their ideas are always in service of the film. But, as the film moves towards its Christmas climax in the town’s church, a choir, sat on both sides of the Verdi broke into Silent Night, and it sent a shiver around the auditorium and right down my spine. This was 1929, a film about the ultimate redemption, for a Christian audience… the humanity still shines through and the audience erupted for Frank, John and every singer dotted around us.

 

This collective connection was also made by Sydney Chaplin’s turn in Oh! What a Nurse! (1926), which was easily the best of his performances I’ve seen and the audience in the Verdi laughed louder and more often than for anything else so far. Syd’s got those familial skills alright and he’s got charm too to match the quick changes of expression, lightness of touch and stage-hardened physicality. He plays newspaper reporter who draws the short straw in covering for the love expert column writer Dolly Whimple. Dolly has advised June Harrison (Patsy Ruth Miller) not to marry Clive Hunt (Gayne Whitman) who proves her right by coming into to have it out with her at the newspaper. Jerry dresses up as Dolly and, before you know it, he’s caught up in mod business and ill deeds that mean he must dress as a nurse to save June… OK, it sounds daft but you really don’t know how daft and funny until you’ve seen Syd in his high heels. All in the great British tradition natch!

 

Charles Reisner directed and Donald Sosin kept up with the crazy on keyboards.

 

Le P’tit Parigot: 1 La Premiere Partie (1926) was the feature length starter for a six-part comic serial which is playing across every day of the festival. Georges Biscot plays Georges Grigny-Latour, the titular titch who just happens to be the star of the French rugby team, the only Parisian in the side and, duh, the smallest. He has energy and charm but he’s no Chaplin, Charlie or Syd. It’s a thoroughly enjoyable romp though, consistently daft with George banging heads with his establishment Dad,

 

Special mention must be made of the absolutely stunning costume and scenic design from Sonia Delaunay. There’s a nightclub scene with outrageous modernist designs and clothing, as well as a startling amount of nudity – there never was a pre or post code in France? The dancer Marcelle Rahna, is featured in one of these striking outfits here and she’s the Giornate’s poster girl for 2023.

 

Mauro Colombis accompanied anticipating every twist and turn.

Ain't no party party like a Sonia Delaunay party!

 

More horses and guns but back to the wining ways of Harry Carey in two films that again showcased his meticulous yet relaxed acting style – fluid, able to shift on a dime from smile to anger – good with horses and, it turns out, children. In both Blue Streak McCoy (1920) and The Fox (1921), Harry ends up acting as either a mentor or guardian for a young boy, which says much for his appeal. The Fox, directed by Robert Thornby, was my favourite featuring a lot of action, a complex criminal gang, led by Alan Hale, and a Hole in the Wall Gang type outfit hidden in the desert who require the US Cavalry to take down in an epic confrontation.

 

Philip Carli rode along with his compadre in perfect step and clearly had a blast.

 

Harry's big country

Now for Harry Piel, a prolific German actor, director, writer and producer who made some 150 films and yet is little known today. Part of the reasons for this is that a large number of these were destroyed in an allied bombing attack although his membership of the Nazi Party and association with the SS arguably had a bigger impact.

 

All this was in the future when he wrote and directed Erblich Belastet (1913) and Das Abenteuer Eines Journalisten (1914) two films that are full of action and purpose. The latter is the more impressive and comes under the category of Sauerkraut Western as our hero heads west after being wrongly accused only to find his accuser already there and hunting him down. Betrayal, retribution and redemption are strong themes and I look forward to seeing more.

 

José María Serralde Ruiz accompanied with style.

There’s more, much more, but tomorrow’s apparently another day and moving forward is the only way: we have to jump for it.