Climb every mountain*… Le Giornate del Cinema Muto 42, Day Six

We finished off day six climbing every stairway, late after dinner and relegated to the Gods for the spirited but slightly odd Poker Faces (1926) featuring Edward Everett Horton and Laura La Plante in a winning combination of cheeky chappie and Universal’s top star for much of the Twenties who didn’t manage to achieve his career longevity, retiring as a movie star at just 30 in 1935 by which point Horton was pushing 50 and with years of success ahead.

 

Horton plays Jimmy Whitmore a man whose face gives nothing away expect, he’s Edward Everett Horton so, of course, there’s a lot of comic meaning flashing across his face, he’s no Buster Keaton in this regard. If anything, La Plante as his wife Betty is better at stoneface especially frustrated by his glacial career advancement – and consequent lack of new rug – and then stone-cold furious as his big break turns into a farce – a little forced compared with say Marie Prevost’s Up in Mabel’s Room, but still funny and with the charm of these two leads.

 

Jimmy gets offered a promotion so long as he can close a big new deal with out-of-town big shot George Dixon (George Siegmann) who he has to meet at the station. By this time Betty has stormed off to get a job of her own after Jimmy nixes the new carpet and thinking he sees her about to leave town, wearing a veil with similar luggage (of course) pursues her and starts to remonstrate. This attracts the attention of Big George who chivalrously steps in to defend the woman who, veil lifted, turns out to be of Chinese origin so, of course, she couldn’t be Jimmy’s wife… and our collective cringe went up a gear as an intertitle of Chinese appeared. That was 1926 that was.

 

Edward's way with women.

Jimmy and George don’t know who the other is though, despite having unknowingly got off on bad terms Jimmy’s boss Henry Curlew (Tom Ricketts) invites them to his house for dinner to finalise the deal. He also invites Jimmy’s wife which is an issue as the latter thinks he’s been deserted by his inconveniently ambitious spouse and has to hire a woman to act as his wife (Dorothy Revier). She’s married to Pug (Tom O'Brien) a prize fighter… not someone you’d want to upset in any way. Can you guess where this is going?

 

Naturally chaos erupts at Curlew’s house as the men find out who each other is and the old man’s new secretary is unveiled… it’s Betty who is probably more surprised about his new “wife” than Jimmy is about her new job. There follows extended confusion and confrontation as Jimmy tries to protect the honour of this young woman as George takes a shine to her. It’s well played by everyone, and the direction is well timed by Harry A. Pollard.

 

It’s a farce. sometimes you’re in the mood sometimes you’re not and tonight I was.

 

The daftness was enlivened considerably by a new score composed and conducted by Juri Dal Dan performed live by Zerorchestra, Pordenone’s finest and who played for this on the tradition GCM eve screening. The band were swingling and tight, turning musical direction on the flip of a dime and with short solos highlighting and reinforcing the comic energy. No wonder the Verdi was packed out to the rafters where we sat!

 

Hannes Schneider

Before our evening exertions we were on top of the world with Arnold Fanck and his intrepid mountaineering filmmakers for Der Berg Des Schicksals (Mountain of Destiny) (1924), the film that reputedly inspired dancer Leni Riefenstahl to get in touch with its pioneering director, Arnold Fanck, who then featured her in The Holy Mountain. I love Fanck’s films, the scenery obviously, the sense of actual adventure filming at these altitudes and the bravery of the leads taking on the actual crags and scrambles.

The “destiny” is for the son to follow the father in conquering the peak which he tried but failed to climb. Inspired by the fatal attempt of climber Carlo Garbari to summit the Guglia (“spire”) di Brenta in the Dolomites, Winter Olympian Hannes Schneider plays Bergsteiger who is haunted by the peak and his son is Alpine expert Luis Trenker who would star in other Fanck films and who looks like he was hewn from the granite of these mountains (was he Married to the Mountains?!).

 

Fanck would start by shooting footage of dangerous climbs and incredible landscapes and then evolve his stories later and sometimes there’s more climbing than character but there’s good support from non-climbers like Erna Morena as the climbers’ wife and mother as well as Hertha von Walther as Hella who Trenker has to go to rescue on a stormy night. She climbs well and looked familiar to me as she’s an uncredited actor in Pabst’s Joyless Street (1925).

 

Airy accompaniment was provided by Mauro Colombis and the ubiquitous Frank Bockius who is no doubt familiar with these Germanic hills! Stunning visuals on screen and hard-hitting, syncopations on stage!

 

Harald Madsen charms Marguerite Viby and Nina Kalckar

The Slapstick programme brought us down to earth with the existential crises of  Pat and Patachon in Højt paa en kvist (High Up on a Twig) (1929) which featured the following intertitle: “One is tall, the other is short”, which I though was a very dry joke I’d made about their comedic proposition at the Kennington Bioscope in 2018… The two madcaps are engulfed a series of comedic situations during the course of this feature and attempt to romance two attractive young women, played by Marguerite Viby and Nina Kalckar, who are clearly such generous souls that they see the inner beauty in both men although they are under the misapprehension that they’re rich.

 

The film was apparently a return to form for the couple who had been working together for over 25 years at this point. Ulrich Ruedel is very good in the Giornate programme on the reasons for their success and on just why their comedy was different to the Brits and Hollywood. Clearly both men, Pat (Harald Madsen) and Patachon (Carl Schenstrøm) were good actors playing a different style to the gag-based Brits and it’s our challenge to understand why even if we just don’t laugh as much.

 

Meg Morley made her GCM42 debut and as usual accompanied with assured melodic invention and her jazz-practiced improvisations always have a distinctive quality even as she presents musical themes that are very much of the period, jazz age in spirit as much as form.

 

Mary Harald in the fields

Vendémiaire (1918), presented as one feature, was essentially a two parts plus prologue, from the master of the multi-part adventure, Louis Feuillade and showed a more considered and down-to-earth, director three years on from Les Vampires and the War. There were some lush landscapes of the canals and countryside near Lyon and a feature feel to the lengthy episodes as a plot unfolded about two escaped German POWs infiltrating a group of farm workers in the Great War.

 

René Cresté plays Pierre Bertin a soldier on leave to recover from his mental and physical wounds and he meets a family heading away from the front line to seek work and to find out what happened to their siblings. They all end up working on a vineyard in Lunel (Feullade’s hometown) run by Capitaine de Castelviel (Feuillade regular Édouard Mathé) and where the two Germans also infiltrate.  Wilfred (Louis Leubas) and Fritz (Manuel Caméré) cause much disruption as they try to further the fading German cause and frame a gypsy, Sarah (Mary Harald, who also featured in the director’s Tih Minh (1918) and who was of mixed race possibly born in Hong Kong or Vietnam) as they rob the Captain… there are fuller characters than in the director’s more adventure-based serials and, as the propaganda it undoubtedly was, Vendemiaire stirs your heart as you hope for the best for these refugees.

 

Accompaniment for the 143 minute run time was split between Gabriel Thibaudeau and John Sweeney who both provided the lyricism and spirit the subject matter demanded; John’s triumphant cadences at the films’ end were especially moving as the certainty of the victory at the time of release was clearly less and we now know that the new peace was only to last barely twenty-odd years.

 

There were also some extra special entrees before Poker Faces accompanied by maestro Stephen Horne and including some wonderful colour shots around Niagara Falls in, er, Wonderful Water (1922) and Max Roach comedy, A Truthful Liar (1924) featuring Will Rogers as Alfalfa Doolittle who becomes Ambassador to Cornucopia where he dispenses with formalities and gets matey with the King (Richard Pennell) who would much rather go to an American bar in the city than spend time with his suffocating court. Alfalfa duly uses his cowboy powers to rescue the King from runaway horses and would be assassins. It spoofs the whole Ruritanian idea and features the immortal couplet:

 

Roses are red,

Violets are blue,

I’m against royalty,

How about you?

 

There were also some poignant footage of the man Chaplin called The Master, Max Linder in 1924, still so full of charm and intelligence and yet struggling with mental health issues after the war that would lead to his death the following year. Enjoy yourself, it’s later than you think…

 

 

René Cresté and Gaston Michel Vendémiaire (1918) 

 

*See Le Giornate del Cinema Muto 42, Day Four

Wakes Wednesday… Le Giornate del Cinema Muto 42, Day Five

Three piers, The Golden Mile, The Big Dipper, trams, a Tower to rival Paris, arcades and donkeys; even in it’s dotage Blackpool still defiantly breaks more hearts than any other UK seaside resort but, as we saw tonight, Llandudno’s subtle charms can compromise even the most careful girl. For, climbing the Great Orme, near the still-extant Victorian pier and staying at the Grand Hotel, where I worked two summer seasons as a student, Fanny Hawthorn risked her future with some posh fella on the lookout for more than fresh air and fun.

 

Maurice Elvey told the BFI in 1949 that Hindle Wakes was “the greatest play ever written” and one of the films he most enjoyed making and, in fact, he was so keen on Stanley Houghton’s play that he made it twice. This is more than just a “Lancashire film for Lancashire people” as the publicity had it, this was a liberating tale for all at a time of increasing class awareness and the growth of unions and the Labour Party. Houghton’s play was written just a year after the Liverpool general transport strike which, apart from causing Home Secretary Winston Churchill to send troops and a battle cruiser up the Mersey, did so much for union membership. My grandfather was a tram driver who withdrew his labour for the strike during which two men were shot dead and hundreds injured by the army.

 

Elvey had produced plays by Chekov, Strindberg, Ibsen and he was a trade unionist who would have identified with the play’s message of working-class independence. He also wanted naturalism in the film and both Estelle Brody and Peggy Carlisle spent time in a mill to learn how to properly look like they were doing the work and to understand the culture, Peggy was from Liverpool and would have known Blackpool well but Estelle was an American: welcome to the real Playground of the World!

 

Watching this new BFI 35mm print – a full restoration is apparently ongoing – the film stands out as one of the major works of British silent cinema because of the expertise with which Elvey controls character and the narrative. It may be a bit slow-paced for modern viewers but everything is there to serve a purpose and every character will have their moments.

 

Fanny and Mary – Peggy’s haircut is so darn sharp! – feel like modern women all the more surprising given the date of their origin, years before they could vote. The fact that Fanny feels confident enough to exert her right to independence against all odds, is one of the great feminist statements of British silent film. I love her strength and sass as she refuses to let the situation of her dalliance with Allan Jeffcote (John Stuart) and the instant respect from mill-owner Nathaniel Jeffcote (a very fine showing from Norman McKinnel) who recognises someone with drive and grit like himself. She may be a bonny lass Mr Jeffcote but she’s far too good for your Alan!

 

Similarly, Fanny’s parents are mini masterpieces of characterisation with Humberston Wright as her intelligent yet timid father and Mary Ault as her firebrand of a mother who eye’s her daughter’s transgression as an opportunity to be exploited and just will not be silenced about it, if only there was an audio recording of her improvisations! Mouth almighty as they’d say in Lanky!

John Stuart, Humberston Wright, Peggy Carlisle and Estelle Brody

The sequences in Blackpool are outstanding especially the footage of the Big Dipper – show the restoration in the BFI IMAX and there’ll be folk passing out at that.

 

It’s a film that strengthens every time I see it and given the politics of 1926-7 as well as 1912, it is simply a remarkable statement about ordinary people’s right to self-determination. Away with the old morality and guilt, time to stand up and play a bigger part.

 

The score was composed and conducted by Maud Nelissen and performed live by Daphne Balvers (soprano & alto sax), Lucio Degani (violin), Francesco Ferrarini (cello), Rombout Stoffers (percussions & accordion) as well Maud Nelissen on piano. In the catalogue she talks of how she researched locations and culture for the film, immersing herself in mill town history and the times of the annual wakes weeks when t’ whole mill shut down and the workers went off together in search of precious joy. On the evidence of this lovely, soulful score she’s now an honorary Lassie from Lancashire.

This morning there was more Harry Piel serving up top-notch entertainment with Der Mann Ohne Nerven (1924) in which der mann himself plays without fear and spends a good portion of the action attempting to rescue the beautiful damsel Aud Egede Christensen (future Mrs Piel, Dary Holm) from a runaway balloon flying high over Paris bumping into church spires and industrial chimneys. All starts with a bundle of meta-confusion with story is about a famous novelist and his new book, Der Mann Ohne Nerven which, it seems to me, suddenly takes to life as characters start to pursue the man without fear or perhaps that’s the book we’re experiencing.

 

Plot, who cares, it’s Harry’s World and we’re just watching it.

 

Mr Neil Brand accompanied as fearlessly as Harry, no safety net and with suspended chords chasing his balloonatic pursuit across the sky.

  

Jaque Catelain modelling the latest in lounge wear

More gorgeous Sonia Delaunay design next with Marcel L’Herbier’s Le Vertige (1926) (also entitled The Living Image but literally Vertigo, with elements of Hitchcock’s later film of the same title as Stephen Horne pointed out) one of his major films I’ve not seen and quite possibly one of Jaque Catelain’s best performances, as a baby-faced Ivan Mosjoukine as someone termed him. He plays two parts, a young Russian army officer who is killed by General Svirsky (Roger Karl) the horrendous husband of his lover Natacha (Emmy Lynn).

 

After the Revolution to couple relocate to Nic and taking a trip to Paris Natacha sees a young man, Henri de Cassel (Jaque Catelain again) who looks exactly like her dead lover. Stranger and stranger with some spectacular design, old jealousies are revived and history begins to repeat itself.

 

Stephen Horne supplied uncannily stylish accompaniment.

 

Eugen Klöpfer tracking Aud Egede-Nissen

I’ve also managed to avoid seeing Die Strasse (1923) another of the canon revisited stream which was a digital restoration with reconstructed titles and a mix of sources. Karl Grune’s film is indeed impressive in terms of cinematic technique as well as its pointedly political take on German life encapsulated on one street.

 

There’s a bored middle-aged man who definitely doesn’t work in the publishing industry (Eugen Klöpfer) who sets out for a walk on the wild side of his street, twirling his umbrella and feigning interest in shop windows* as he approaches the local sex workers. There’s some amusing interplay between one such woman (Aud Egede-Nissen) and this nervy punter, a dance she’s played many times before. As we later find out, she shares a house with a small child and a blind man played by the protean Max Schreck; two vulnerable people who exist in the criminal uncertainties of this low life.

 

The man finally bucks up the courage to follow the woman into a night club where his seduction and exploitation can be controlled, it’s a tense voyage into the underworld, with a dreamlike quality that doesn’t make the realities being dramatized any less pitiful.

 

Partners in crime Günter Buchwald (violin and piano) and Frank Bockius (hitting things) accompanied in fine style with so many hints of contemporary club anthems, Ain’t She Sweet being ironically right on point!

Obligatory banging on about Liverpool... 

*In one of the shop windows he passes by there’s an advert for The White Star Line including Liverpool as one of the destinations. The White Star offices still stands in Liverpool as does The White Star public house just off Mathew Street and The Cavern were fifty years after Fanny and Mary, girls went for a good time increasingly on their terms.

The wifi's decent as well...

Liverpool has some fabulous architecture.

Forde every stream… Le Giornate del Cinema Muto 42, Day Four

Tonight’s special was Pêcheur d'Islande (1924) with accompaniment from Gabriel Thibaudeau and Frank Bockius (again) and I wonder if it is possible that in future years we will look back on this GCM as The Bockius Edition, so involved has the percussionist been in the screenings I have enjoyed the most as well as this accompaniment; excellent interplaying, spirited lines and improvisation.

As for the codfish, I suppose someone had to make a film about the fragile mortality and crashing uncertainty of the Bretton fishermen in the Icelandic sea, the anguished weeks and months for those at home waiting for loved ones to return as other members of the family were despatched in colonial wars or just dropped dead off camera; the sheer uncertainty of life on the edge, extrapolated in visceral ways on screen, making the point with the bluntest instruments of cinematic convention being used to generate expectation - hopes raised not once, not twice but three times - before finally jabbing the audience right on the nose. Pêcheur d'Islande is that film. As the advertising had it at the time, it’s an “…affirmation of crushing fatalism which brings to the scale of the elements our humble and proud humanity.”

 

The film looks a dream and there are fabulous performances from Charles Vanel, Sandra Milovanoff (see above), Roger San Juana and Madame Boyer, yet the fatalism crushes the film relentlessly. The tragedy was not earned, it was imposed.

  

Mabel resists Ford's crushing fatalism

And yet, only a few hours ago I was so happy… The morning saw a top-quality slapstick session and you just get the warm giggles the second you see a line up of Mabel Normand, Mack Sennet and yes, even Ford Sterling. The gang are At Coney Island (1912) and are probably making things up on the spot with Mabel shining brightest. The same can be said for Harold Lloyd and his practically perfect From Hand to Mouth (1919) two-reels that pack as much in as Gance of von Stroheim did over ten – well, certainly more gags. Harold’s going hungry and gets caught up in  trying to save a young girl (his first film with future wife, Mildred Davies) and her inheritance. There’s bent lawyers out to cheat her and Snub Pollard out to kidnap her with only one hungry Harry and his instant wit to help her; they don’t stand a chance!

 

What can I say about the man who went on to direct Arthur Askey, a Liverpool-born funster of World-historic proportions, in The Ghost Train (1941)?

 

Walter Forde’s last silent film is packed with inventive routines: a baby and a doll mix up in the toy store, serving up toy soldiers just like chips on newspaper with oil for gravy and trying to wrap balloons in brown paper for a bespectacled Rees-Mogg-model junior toff. Forde’s an inventor, he’s not sure what of, but it seems to work until it blows his landlord’s house up. He gets a job in a toy shop and meets an attractive young woman Pauline (Pauline Johnson) who just happens to work for the War Office, he invites her for dinner cooked by his uppity roommate, Cuthbert (Arthur Stratton) who, in a constant battle of wills, refuses to act the role of his butler.

 

Walter making a right pig's ear of things

Walter’s invention of a remote-control tank could be a game-changer but a group of spies finds out and set’s off to stop him demonstrating the kit to the Minister for War. Their leader is modelled on a similar mastermind in Fritz Land’s Spies and sits at a huge desk, pushing buttons for everything he needs, drinks, photographs, cigarette and lighters… There’s a very funny bit of business on the Underground as the baddies chase Walter up lifts and down emergency spiral staircases in scenes reminiscent of Keaton in The Cameraman and elsewhere. The gags are mostly good and Forde lets things flow without over-extending his ideas, no wonder he worked so well with Big-Hearted Arthur.

 

He gets his chance to demo for the Minister but the enemy agents kidnap him and Pauline, and, as Walter pushes his pal Cuthbert too far, the real-life tank runs amok to comic effect. The filmmakers were clearly delighted to get the loan of kit and crew and have the crushed cars, walls and buildings to show for it.

Hurry up Harry!

Harry Piel’s taken some stick at the Festival for his repetitions and improbably plotting – but things mostly came together for the epically daft Rivalen (1923) in which we finally got to see his acting as well as his directing and writing. Piel is dynamic and eye-catching with Fairbanks wit and physicality  allied to Houdini-esque escapology with one section in which he is lowered into a lake in a glass pyramid and then seen in a studio tank struggling to escape.

 

It's possible that the film was a sequel to Das schwarze Kuvert as well as being followed by Der letzte Kampf according to Hemma Marlene Prainsack and Andreas Thein in the programme notes. That would make sense of the bad blood between Piel’s character Peel (see what they did there?) and the evil Dr Ravello (Charly Berger) – he’s got a robot! – and the fact they’re both pursuing the same woman, rich industrialist John Evans’ daughter Evelyn (Inge Helgard). The pace has the relentlessness of a serial and the outlandish sci-fi plot barely makes sense nor does it need to.

 

I loved the “Heaven and Hell” masked ball with the theme, held in Evans’ castle with lots of Teutonic debauchery and outrageous set designs from Hermann Warm who worked on Caligari and Albert Korell. It provided and interesting contrast with the even more spectacular work of the French Sonia Delaunay who is also being highlighted during the festival.

 

Accompaniment was from Günter A. Buchwald and Frank Bockius – The Man Who Never Sleeps – and they lifted the film and the fun with their swinging affinity.

 

Fishing about on the river

No greater contrast could be found than in the long-lost documentary, Amazonas, Maior Rio Do Mundo (1918) which was only rediscovered this year and even made the news in The Guardian. It’s a fascinating document of the life and importance of the huge waterway which revealed hitherto unknown details about Brazil Nuts – they’re encased in fruit!? – as well as rubber and mahogany. Vegetarians and omnivore’s alike looked away for the scenes of manatee hunting but at least they killed what they ate. It reminded me of the basking shark hunt filmed by Flaherty for Man of Aran only real. A window into the past that was seemingly shattered exists again.

 

Accompaniment was from José María Serralde Ruiz and it was definitely Amazon prime!

 

Mack and Mabel provided my third trip to Coney Island in a few weeks after Eleanor and James in The Crowd (BFI) and Clara and Antonio in It (Kennington Bioscope). They used to say it was The Playground of the World, a bit like Blackpool… and that’s exactly where we’re headed tomorrow on Wakes Wednesday! I can not wait!

I want you to crush him, fatalistically!

What goes around, finally comes around… Le Giornate del Cinema Muto 42, Day Three

 

Monday night and it’s time for something mighty begun by Erich von Stroheim and completed by Rupert Julien as the studio system clamped down on all that trust, creativity and budget abuse… not to mention Erich's "...flagrant disregard of the principles of censorship”. Lewis Milestone later claimed this as the moment when “the age of the director” was superseded by the producer system. Maybe Merry-go-Round (1923) is also then, the first example of a film that suffered as a result of no single vision?

 

It's certainly a film with many powerful moments, not least the finest performance I’ve ever seen from Mary Philbin as Agnes the poor fairground worker who is romanced by a Prince incognito played by Norman Kerry. There’s part of the problem as Norman is better at the confident Prince than the lovelorn warrior and the segment after WWI could have done with some trimming, re-editing. There’s also some issues with tone with the unremitting cruelty of the demon Merry-go-Round owner, played by George Siegmann who terrorises his staff, doesn’t care of they live or die and tries to sexually assault, feels very von Stroheim whilst the more romantic interludes, perhaps Julien – accounts vary.

 

But all this said, the film is dramatic and keeps you guessing right until the far from Hollywood ending – it’s not all joyous. It was a smash hit and tonight it looked as fabulous as is possible. It is the most complete version to date and the restorers of this new version spent 20 years conducting a worldwide search, comparing each of the elements shot by shot, to restore tints and scenes in order to reconstruct the whole film in its original form. It's a Hollywood classic with excellent support from Cesare Gravina as Agnes' Punch and Judy man father, George Hackathorne as the steadfast "hunchback" Bartholomew, Edith Yorke (Ursula Urban), the fab Dale Fuller as the wicked fairground owner's terrified wife and Dorothy Wallace as the Countess Kerry's Count is contratually obliged to.

 

Their efforts were supported further by two hours of finely wrought accompaniment from Mauro Colombis, Romano Todesco and Frank Bockius – currently the hardest working drummer in show business! The three combined as a tightly together as with the film and for the second night running my arms hurt from too much clapping: just stop it guys!

 

Ludwig Trautmann

Getting to know almost forgotten German, actor, director, writer, producer… Harry Piel’s tricks and flicks. Not for nothing was he known as "the dynamite director" as cars and illicit diamond factories blew up in today’s first film, Das Teufelsauge (The Devil’s Eye) (1914), a breathless adventure spinning at a Paul Auster level of coincidence much like yesterday’s Das Abenteuer Eines Journalisten (1914) whilst also featuring two drops from bridges into water, one more than Erblich Belastet (1913). It was clearly a winning formula although there were gasps when a horse appeared to fall off a bridge and certainly there was a high risk of equine injury when our hero and his pursuers are chased down a very steep sandbank on horseback.

 

Ludwig Trautmann plays François Rennée, an attaché) who is romancing Countess Rita Pignatelli (Anny [Anni] Timm) but, dressed as a Pierrot at one of her parties, gets accused of stealing her crown jewel, The Devil’s Eye… Even though she’s a woman of influence he has to go on the run, and charges off a clown on horseback, jumping of bridges into moving cars, performing a kind of pierotte parkour, a clown in constant motion off to prove his innocence. It’s inventive, comic-book fun and an improbable story well told by Piel.

 

The other Piel film was Das Rollende Hotel (The Rolling Hotel) (1918) was altogether gentler with a young private detective trying to help his friend Editor Tom marry the girl he loves rather than the suitor her father prefers on financial grounds. Even this took us into a wild chase with scenes high in the snow and of a portable hotel/caravan which, as you’d expect, crashed off a bridge and into the waters below! This was a very entertaining film with a lively cast including Heinrich Schroth as Detective Joe Deebs, Josef Ewald as Tom and the girl he wants to marry is Addy played by Käthe Haack who, in reality, chose Heinrich Schroth.

Italia Vitaliani

La Madre (1917), featuring Italia Vitaliani, an almost forgotten Italian Diva from the great age and who was first cousin once removed of Eleonora Duse, who was considered as her rival on stage for technique and naturalistic playing. La Duse influenced everyone from Bertini and Borelli to Asta and it’s rare to see her cousin on screen. Giuseppe Sterni’s film was only recently found and restored in the Netherlands and allows the actress to run through her expressive repertoire as the mother of a would-be artist who finds the wrong muse… she preservers to save him from himself and in her anguish provides him with the perfect portrait.

 

Diva film are perfect little arias that make sense unto themselves, every time I watch I relax and float down stream suspended entirely by belief.

Alternative title

The programme had this next section as Slapstick – Prog 2 "Clowns and Cretins"? I understand why this subtitle was chosen but “cretins” is now an ableist slur used to cover a whole range of neuro-atypical conditions. Yes, André Deed used a number of screen names but Cretinetti Che Bello! was made in 1909, we’re all historian enough to understand the title but we shouldn’t be reducing the significance of this word which, as the father of an ASD son I find uncomfortable.

 

On the bright side Deed is on fine form, with a typically surreal adventure – whatever his name he was anarchic and innovative, tearing himself apart and pulling himself together again.

 

As for the clowns, the famous Fratellini Brothers, François, Paul and Albert, get a chance to show parts of their act and then to fill out the thinnest of plots as they try and work out why Dolorès Braga (Yane Odoni) is the only person in the tent not laughing at their jokes. Dolorès, I’m with you babe, I was traumatised as a small child at Blackpool Tower Circus and I now can’t look at a clown without crying…

Madeline Hurlock, Ben Turpin and Dave Morris

In the battle of two mythical mid-European states Ben Turpin emerged as a surprise winner on account of laughs per minute and the coherence of his ideas in When a Man’s a Prince (1926) leaving Elinor Glyn’s project, The Only Thing (1925) in it’s wake as a confusion of anti-royalist/anti-revolutionary/pro-glamour. Ben’s on top form and the timing is impeccable throughout with a great supporting cast including Madeline Hurlock as a flirty lady-in-waiting, Dave Morris as Grand Duke Ludwig and Blanche Payson Hilda, The Princess of Amazonia!

 

On the plus side, having seen Eleanor Boardman in the deliberately “unglamourous” The Crowd, last month at the BFI, it’s great to see her on the big screen showcasing the kind of style she was famous for. She doesn’t have much to work with but does have good chemistry with the equally decorative Conrad Nagel and the two form a classy bubble in a story also full of Glyn’s entitlement and exploitative cruelty.

 

Boardman is Thyra, Princess of Svendborg, politically forced into a marriage with the ageing King of Chekia (Edward Connelly) and there’s a running joke about how he has ‘orrible big ears as do all of his family, even the one working with the revolutionaries. Its hardly a prospect that would delight and carries uncomfortable echoes of royal marriages before and since. Anyway, she fancies the British noble, he fancies her and yet what could stop her fulfilling her duty? A revolution perhaps, and one involving perhaps a bit too much tortured female flesh and outlandish cruelty for my liking. Mildly grumpy on Day Three... 

 

King Charles, Eleanor Boardman and Conrad Nagel

Another fine day in Pordenone, feels like Wednesday but it’s still barely Tuesday. Weds is Hindle Wakes Day, in fact it’s Wakes Week in so many ways… (niche Yorkshire/Lancashire reference that will make sense come the day!!

Don't dream of clowns...

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.

 

Our divine voyage… Le Giornate del Cinema Muto 42, Day One

And so we came, by planes and boats and trains, back to the home of silent film festivals, Pordenone North of Venice and a very fine town indeed. My first time here since 2019 having been stymied by the lockdown and then by C-19 itself but not this year in spite of attempts by wild publishing horses to keep my mired in gobbledegook: get thee behind me Croydon!

 

Before the biggest of finishes we were served a reminder of the importance of this festival, breadth, rarities, new discoveries and men on horseback. Star of the Day was Pauline Frederick in The Love That Lives (1917) which had some foreshadowing of The Crowd and Stella Dallas… Pauline made me cry in 2019 with Smouldering Fires and she had me welling up again with her performance in this dramatic tragedy. She had a pair of the most penetrating eyes in Hollywood and here she looked so much younger as a put upon young mother who is preyed on by her boss and her drunken husband.

 

Her transformation by the end would have made even L Gish baulk at the physicality, she looked thirty years older yet still with enough love and grit to provide divine inspiration. Philip Carli accompanied with sensitivity and spirit.

 

Pauline Frederick

Meanwhile, in Ruritania – Part 2 of the GCM’s deep dive into mythical monarchies – there was some confusion in La reina joven (1916), a Spanish film – rare to see one of this vintage for me – as a romance between a Queen and an anti-monarchist went in ways that you might not expect. Said Anti-Royalist Rolando (Ricardo Puga) bravely rescues the young Queen Alexia (Margarita Xirgu) after her horse bolts and he throws himself around the beast’s neck to bring it to a halt… we almost saw it, but the editing was not so brave as the hero.

 

Anyway, once Alexia fails to die from the shock – the levels of distress-induced female mortality were so high at this time, someone should have investigated – things progress in resolutely non-romcom ways, as despite their romance, neither will change course. Oh, if only there was an evil Archduke to stir things up and thereby avoid criticism of legitimate political concerns about the Spanish system of government… Ace accompaniment was from Mauro Colombis who had fun with all the regal romance and that horsing about.

 

Queen Alexia takes to horse

A horse, a horse, my kingdom or a horse, yelled one British King according to Shakespeare, but Harry Carey had loads of horses, exactly when he needed them. Carey’s a handsome cowboy and it’s a treat to see the festival highlight him in his pomp after only really seeing him in talkies and with his good friend John Wayne (The Searchers, that final shot… Wayne standing at the door with his hand holding his arm like Harry used to, magnificent).

 

Carey’s a fabulous actor and has lots of physical motifs that indicate concern or casual thoughtfulness, a thumbnail stare here, a pensive thumb to the lips there… he might well have been studying Asta Nielsen. All of this plus his ability to fight and act make him a magnetic screen presence and these three simply whipped by with Stephen Horne riding along with gusto.

 

Most striking of all was the partially two-strip tinted Man to Man (1922) directed by Stuart Paton which featured some outstanding vistas and dynamic action as Steve Packard (Harry C), fights to clear his name, rescue the family ranch and win the heart of Terry Temple (Lillian Rich). To do this he must overcome the extreme disapproval of his grandfather, Old Hell-Fire Packard (Alfred Allen) and his confederate, Joe Blenham (Charles Le Moyne) who is the wrongest of wrong-uns.

 

Again, it’s striking how much of the wild western formula was in place this early with an impressive mass stampede of cattle organised by the baddies to ruin the ranch and the extended man-to-man combat of the closing sequence. Then there’s Harry who was rightly lionised by Wayne, he’s the real deal and I look forward to watching more of his gun-totin’ horseplay as the week unfolds.

 

 

The Divine Voyage (1929) with Antonio Coppola and the Octuror de France, Gala 

 

I missed this one last year at the BFI and so was especially keen to see it on the big Verdi screen and with a stunning new score from Antonio Coppola who conducted a nine-piece ensemble who translated his dynamic lines and simply gorgeous themes to accompany this magically-real story of hope and faith in spite of everything from capitalist carelessness to mutinous muscle men and the cruel sea itself. The music was packed with interest and recurring themes that are still replaying in my head and all done in the service of Julien Duvivier’s striking narrative and sumptuous visuals. The whole village turns out to wave ships off in good hope and to cheer their return, well the global Pordenone village does the same for works and music like this! Brava Antonio and the Octuror de France ensemble.

 

 

There is so much pleasing late-silent technique on show from Duvivier in this film – Renoir’s “rigorist poet” in action – with a roving camera that moves in and out of buildings, follows crews as they race to the harbour side or to confront wrong-doing. Close ups of locals cast for “face” that rival Dreyer for impact and rapid cutting that shows the influence of both Russian and German directors. The locations, Paimpol in Brittany, Louvigny sur Mer in Normandy and Ermenonville are superbly photographed and edited to create an impression of a people on the edge, battling unforgiving nature. Were you watching Michael Powell?

 

The film’s critique of blind capitalism is one of the reasons it was heavily censored at the time, and it begins with an act of desperate revolt when a mariner Kerjean (Henri Valbel) who has defaulted on his rent, attempts to assassinate unforgiving businessman Claude Ferjac (Henry Krauss), Ferjac in his chateau. Ferjac runs the town with a callous calculation and he will push the citizens to the brink before the story is through. Times is very much money and Ferjac makes it clear to the local mariners that manning the insufficiently repaired La Cordillère is of far more importance than the risk to their lives. Captain Jacques de Saint-Ermont (Jean Murat) makes their case but he knows there’s no way of changing Ferjac’s mind. The meeting between the boss and the sailors shows the hatred and fear they feel for this man and the desperate calculations they have to make for their families.

 

There’s further intrigue with Ferjac’s daughter Simone romantically attached to Captain Jacques and the two meet in the bay, separated by a fishing net, both trapped in their relationships with her father who will listen to no one be it the curate (Louis Kerly) or Jacque’s mother (Charlotte Barbier-Krauss).

 

The ship sets sail and includes the last-minute arrival of a mariner from outside the area, Mareuil played by Thomy Bourdelle who gives a stand-out muscular performance as the faithless opportunist upon whose actions so many lives will rest. Simone visits the Curate in his church and dedicates herself to repainting the frescoes and especially the painting of Maris Stella, she who is the “Star of the Sea”. Things swiftly go awry on the voyage as Mareuil decides that stealing the cargo is the way forward – another heartless capitalist? – and persuades most of the men to revolt, throwing one unfortunate who refuses into the sea to drown. His group overpowers the captain and his men, taking control just before the sea, as it was always going to do, erupts in a storm that would challenge even the finest of ships.

 

Back on land, the body of the murdered man is found and there’s a harrowing passage as his wife, Jeanne (Line Noro) is told of the news and leads a march to confront the man responsible. Ferjac is busy hosting a lavish dinner party to announce the marrying off of Simone to one of his business contacts, she cannot even hold her glass to toast the depressing nuptials and then Jeanne arrives followed by dozens of the locals who are now convinced that the ship has sunk and there’s only one man to be blamed. It’s a powerful set piece – fake elegance rudely interrupted by anguished poverty.

 

This is only the narrative entrée though and the Divine Voyage is yet to really begin… there’s a magical realism at play and faith, fate and hate will all have their roles as the full story enfolds. Duvivier maintains not only the pace but also a startling consistency of cinematic expression throughout as well as bringing out some extraordinary performances.

 

What a way to end this first day back “home”, as festival director Jay Weissberg said in quoting his predecessor, David Robinson.

Who knows were the river flows… Partie de Campagne (1936), on BFI Blu-ray now

Everyone ought to live life like a cork on a stream…From time to time, you make a hard turn to the left or to the right, but always in the direction of the current. Pierre-Auguste Renoir, painter and father.

 

The mid- to late thirties were a purple patch for Jean Renoir who directed or was involved in film’s that addressed class and left if centre politics with some skill and a restraint that left audiences to join their own dots. It’s very popular of the modern “right”, especially say in the US, to attack films for a heavy handed carrying of The Message but that reductionist approach just doesn’t apply to a work as subtle and as lovely to look at as this. After all, you can take what you like from Renoir’s film, and we don’t get to fully understand what may or may not have happened until the very end or even then.

It could be a film about duty and it could be a film about lost opportunities but you can decide for yourself. Why the film remained uncompleted remained a mystery to me until this release with Barry Nevin, Renoir’s biographer explaining that it was more of a miracle that anything was shot at all with firstly major delayed by massive studio strikes followed by heavy rainfall during June and July which restricted the shoot to just twenty-two days over the course of seven weeks. By this time the director had to move onto his next project to direct Les Bas-fonds. Such is the price of success.

 

That so much was achieved so quickly is largely down to Renoir’s crew and cast being packed with familiar collaborators: producer Pierre Braunberger had previously backed three films by Renoir; Marcel Lucien had worked as a cameraman on La Nuit du carrefour and Boudu sauvé des eaux (both 1932); and Claude Renoir (Jean’s nephew) had been cinematographer on Toni (1935). The film’s eventual emergence, ten years later, was also down to two further key collaborators, Renoir’s long-time editor and companion, Marguerite Houllé. Marguerite, who produced a new cut whilst composer Joseph Kosma who has also written scores for La Grande illusion, La Marseillaise, La Bête humaine and La Règle du jeu (1939) – also out now on wonderful BFI Blu-ray -  actress Sylvia Bataille  (Henriette) considered the newly edited footage un-screen-able and yet ‘when Kosma composed his great score for it, the entire film came together flawlessly ... It was a complete surprise’.

Sylvia Bataille and Georges d’Arnoux

 

It has to be said that the cast were also pretty flawless with Bataille the centre of things, a beauty who could so easily escape her destiny of working in and marrying into her Parisian Father M Dufour’s (André Gabriello) hardware merchant business. The film is based on a short story by one of my favourite French “realists” Guy de Maupassant published in 1881 (set in 1860 during the reign of Emperor Napoleon III) and offering a sharp shock of bitter fate for the perpetually disaffected ranks of Third Republic cognoscenti. 

Dufour takes his family and his clerk, Anatole (Paul Temps), who, despite his dishevelment is Dufour’s pick for his daughter’s hand, into the countryside where they stop at an inn run by a manager played by Jean Renoir. Two young men, Henri (Georges d’Arnoux) and Rodolphe (Jacques Brunius), are bewitched watching Henriette and her mother (Jane Marken) on the swings and resolve to try their luck. All innocent fun but things get rather more serious when the two couples head out on the water… just a simple day in the country, what could be less innocuous. 

Renoir’s career was notable for his fascination with waterways and, in addition to The River (1951), he also directed his first feature, La Fille de l’eau (1925), just a few kilometres away in Marlotte from Partie’s location on the banks of the Loing and the Essonne rivers some way out from Paris. The river is life, its unpredictable and yet it can rush us to our destiny, it swirls with emotional depth and you can run aground in the shallows, marooned on shore out of options. The trees at the water’s edge can bind lovers together but they can also hide and confuse. As much as the river is present, the dense foliage surrounding the main characters suggests the complexity or their seemingly simple life choices.

Backgrounds are as important as foregrounds. Flowers, faces and mountains are not just placed side by side. They constitute a collection of elements all rolled into one, amalgamated by a love stronger than their differences. Jean discussing Auguste 

I could go on, but for just 40 minutes, this film is a mini masterpiece of supple narrative and meaning and, as with father so with son, the backgrounds are densely realised with the players blurring ever so slightly into the context. Now, it’s bad enough me being compared to my father – 23 books published – let alone Julian or Sean with John or Stella with Paul (OK, easy that one) but try being young James. I’m not sure how much pressure was on Jean because of his lineage but his work does have that family sensibility and, being in a different medium, stands comparison on the level playing field of talent, innovation and success on his own terms… which brings us back to Stella.

Partie was digitised and restored by Les Films du Panthéon with Les Films du Jeudi and La Cinémathèque française, with the support of the CNC and the contribution of the Fonds Culturel Franco-Américain.

Special features

•             Restored in 2K and presented in High Definition

•             Audio commentary by film historian and critic Philip Kemp (2003)

•             Un Tournage à la campagne (1994, 89 mins): a selection of the film’s outtakes held at La Cinémathèque française, compiled by filmmaker Alain Fleischer as part of celebrations for the centenary of Jean Renoir’s birth

•             Screen Tests (1936, 9 mins): a selection of screen tests shot in June 1936, assembled by Claudine Kaufmann

•             Jean Renoir Lecture (1963, 89 mins): an audio recording of a lecture and Q&A given by Jean Renoir at the BFI’s National Film Theatre

•             Illustrated booklet* with new essays by Barry Nevin and Pasquale Iannone, a biography of Jean Renoir by Philip Kemp, film credits and notes on the special features

If you already love Renoir this is a no brainer… it’s a film that feels like so much more than 40 minutes and a simple tale of love, class and duty. Eternal.

*First pressing only so better get in quick! Order now from the BFI Shop.