In a month’s time I will be in Pordenone, north-eastern Italy, taking in Le Giornate del Cinema Muto. I’m really looking forward to catching up with friends, drinking wine on the piazza, and watching a tonne of films! Given that it’s coming up so soon, permit me a self-indulgent post where I have a look at what’s on the menu this year, as well as muse on past experiences.

The 2014 programme

The full programme is not yet available, but the main themes have been announced and some of the films.

John, Ethel, and Lionel, 1902. Photo via GCM

On of the main strands is devoted to the Barrymore family, which, while not a main draw for me, should certainly have some good stuff. I’ve never seen any of Ethel’s work, but I do enjoy John and Lionel. In fact, the selection suits me quite well as I’ve never gotten around to watching Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1920) or When a Man Loves (1927), and I’m intrigued by the sound of earlier titles like A Case of Eugenics (1915). I’ve also long wanted to see The Bells (1926), having loved Bill Morrison’s experimental film work on it.

Things really get going with the section on film colour (which reminds me, I have a half-written post on the topic that I need to finish …)  I predict that this is going to be a real treat: beautiful material, and the chance to see some rare colour processes screened. It will be interesting to hear/read about the methods used to restore these materials, as in some the colour will have to have been recreated for modern screening. Currently, only the first two of the six programmes is listed in full, but the first one looks great, and features a film of (or by?) Sonia Delaunay, made in the Keller-Dorian colour process.

Tinting, toning, and stencil colour in a scene from Asta Nielsen’s Hamlet.

I’m also really looking forward to the section on Russian laughter. In popular perception (and sometimes in film history), Russian cinema of the 1920s is usually synonymous with the montage filmmakers, but of course the film output of Russia was more diverse than that. This section, focusing on Protazanov, includes some films I’ve been meaning to watch for ages (e.g., Закройщик из Торжка | The Tailor from Torzhok, 1925). I don’t know if anything can beat my favourites (Дом на Трубной | House on Trubnaja, 1928; and Шахматная горячка | Chess Fever, 1925), but it should be great! And if one does need a dose of montage, there is the 1930 sound version of Броненосец «Потемкин» | Battleship Potyomkin.

Another huge draw is that benshi Kataoka Ichiro will return, this time to accompany several Keystone Chaplins. His performances last year were fantastic. We also get a previously-thought-lost Conrad Veidt film, Richard Oswald’s the Lady Hamilton (1921), which also features Werner Krauss; as a big fan of Veidt, I’m intrigued. However, the most interesting rediscovery to me is the Chinese film 盘丝洞 | Pán sī dòng | The Cave of the Silken Web (1927), which was reported last year as being discovered in Norway. The film is based on a famous episode from Journey to the West aka Monkey, one of the four great classical novels of Chinese literature. I haven’t read Journey to the West in full, but it’s a pretty good yarn. Also in east Asian film, the GCM will screen a programme of Japanese short films of the 1900s.

Photo via Nasjonalbiblioteket Norway

The Canon Revisited section features heavy-hitters like Pabst’s Die Liebe der Jeanne Ney (DE 1927), Stiller’s Herr Arnes Pengar | Sir Arne’s Treasure (SV 1919), and Raoul Walsh’s Regeneration (US 1915); all classics that I have not seen yet – I suppose it is clear from this blog that I am not a very ‘canonical’ watcher. Also on offer is the recent restoration of Fritz Lang’s Die Nibelungen duology (1924), which showed at my local film society earlier this year. I only managed to catch Kreimhilds Rache, though, so it’s good to have another opportunity to take in Siegfried on the big screen.

Margarete Schön’s eyebrow game is outrageous.

The return

Having also attended in 2012 & 2013, I’ll be completing a hat-trick this year. I’ve had brilliant experiences each time. Apart from the chance to watch silent films en masse, with a bunch of other fanatics, one of the best things about the festival is the unexpected pleasures that you find in the rareties on offer, and in watching films that you would not normally seek out. In 2012 I was looking forward to the Anna Sten programme, Phono-Cinéma-Théâtre, and others, but there were also unexpected delights such as Das Geheimschloss, the “Oh! Mother-in Law” short film programme, the films of W. W. Jacobs, and the underrated and sensitive The Goose Woman (US 1925).

2013 was possibly more of a mixed bag; still great, but somehow I managed to miss a bunch of the crowd-pleasers. The benshi performances were a true highlight, and I loved the Soviet animation programmes as well as Космический рейс | Cosmic Voyage (USSR 1936). When you go to outer space, don’t forget your cat!

Courtesy Swedish Film Institute.

Flickan i Frack | The Girl in Tails (SV 1926), about a woman who scandalizes her town by wearing a tuxedo, was great fun. As someone who’s spent the last couple of weekends making dress pants and a waistcoat, obviously I approve of such shenanigans. I also have to mention Шкурник | The Self-Seeker (UkrSSR 1929), a comedy of errors about a man and a camel. The Ukrainian films in general were great. I felt that the Anny Ondra programme was a bit of a let-down, if still interesting; I wrote about this in my Collegium essay, which I may eventually post here. There was a great short film programme called Suffering Men (hahaha), and lots more that isn’t coming to mind right now.

 Rockin’ the ruffles with Anny.

A brilliant temptation of Pordenone is the FilmFair, held on the fourth floor of the Teatro Verdi in the years that I’ve attended. I bought a frankly ridiculous amount of DVDs and books there last year and will probably not leave empty-handed this time, either. One of the stalls has a large amount of vintage lobby cards of actors, and I nabbed a few of those in 2012. Just recently I digitized them, so it seems a good chance to share:

One of my favourite actresses, easily.

The delightful Clara.

That dress!

Andra was an American circus performer/actress who was popular in German films of the teens. She’s most well-known for Robert Wiene’s Genuine, die Tragödie eines seltsamen Hauses (1920), but another film of hers, Um Krone und Peitsche | Crown and Whip (DE 1918) is available here on European Film Gateway.

Back to Pordenone: one of the greatest things about Le Giornate del Cinema Muto is the conversations you have with people, the sense of community and the social aspect. I’m looking forward to seeing fellow returnees and meeting some others. Who is going this year?

[This was originally tagged onto my Pordenone post, but I decided to separate it out ...]

This post is just a brief aside … lately I’ve been thinking a lot about analogue film in a medium, both in relation to my own work, Kodak’s announcement that they’re stopping production of several black & white 16mm stocks, and a spate of articles that have been doing the rounds on social media. Of course, the hand-wringing about the Death of Celluloid is nothing new, but this article in The Hollywood Reporter makes a key point about film as a preservation medium:

But receiving less attention — though urgent — is archiving. Studios know that if they keep archival film prints of their movies on a shelf in a cold room, they can last for at least a century. [...] In fact while nobody wants to name names, there have been whispers that some motion pictures have in fact been completely lost when stored digitally. (The film prints of these movies, however, still exist.)

In fact, if we are talking about modern polyester film, a century is a very low estimate. Obviously, I love digital video and digital technology in general, but I’m of the opinion that a film preserved on fine-grain duplicating polyester stock is much more likely to stand the test of time than a digitization of the same. Leaving aside the whole issue of codecs, wrappers, compression, etc, there is no ‘store and ignore’ option when it comes to digital files, and LTO isn’t going to cut it in the long term. Despite all the hype about the cloud, a proper OAIS-compliant digital repository is expensive and therefore not easily available to many institutions, and the costs are long-term. That is not to disparage digital preservation – it’s a mature and rapidly advancing field, one where a lot of great work is being done. It’s obviously very important and very necessary! I’m just making the point that things aren’t simple regarding moving image formats.

That article is more about emerging technologies, though. One, PIQL, sounds basically like a souped-up version of microfilm, where data is stored on (presumably ultra-fine-grained) polyester film in human-readable or binary form. The other, DOTS, came out of Kodak’s R&D department and involves binary data stored metal alloy tape that is apparently stable for over 100 years (except if you pour lemonade on it). 8000 dots across the width of 1/2″ media is impressive. One assume that it was developed to sidestep the issue of photochemistry entirely. Interesting concept, although their emphasis on patents (is that an American thing?) gives me pause.

The Wall Street Journal published a couple of prominent articles on analogue film recently. This photo essay on Kodak’s production plant is pretty cool. This article mostly covers the business/Hollywood side, but does include this aside:

But proponents have also pointed out that film is the only medium still used for preservation of all types of movies for long periods of time—even ones shot digitally. Digital files need to be regularly transferred, putting them at greater risk of being damaged.

Finally, a week or two ago The Atlantic published a short documentary titled The Death of Film: After Hollywood Goes Digital, What Happens to Movies? The title is a misnomer, because it doesn’t really engage with that question, but per the description, is a series of interviews with film “during their last days on the job at a soon-to-be-defunct movie theater”. The musical cueing is over the top, and it’s a bit too sentimental for my taste, but there’s some nice footage of film projection and equipment, as well as a good explanation of the mechanics of projection. (Incidentally, my first job was in a movie theatre; I was always a bit fascinated with the projection booth, even if I didn’t know much about what went on there).

Closing up this ramble of a post: I admit, I have a huge feeling for the tactility and visual characteristics of film, and I understand why some filmmakers feel so passionately about it (and equally why many prefer digital). But in my totally non-biased opinion :), the preservation angle might be the most salient argument in favour of its continued existence.

Photos via the Nitrate Film Interest Group on Flickr.

Edit 09 Sep: and yesterday, another article in this vein from the New Statesman. Features the usual information about distribution, digital projection, comparative costs, quotes about the tactility and unique look of analogue film, etc. But again, the preservation side of things is touched on: “Yet the switch [to digital] matters. It is changing the way movies are made and exhibited. And long from now, it promises to dictate what works survive.” The author also quotes Jan-Christopher Horak of UCLA in this passage:

You might think that the “immortal” qualities of digital cinema would help safeguard against similar losses in the future – but experts warn of exactly the opposite. Jan-Christopher Horak is the director of the UCLA Film and Television Archive in Los Angeles, one of the largest repositories of movies and television programmes on the planet. “The problem, in a nutshell, is that there is no such thing as a digital preservation medium,” he explains. “There is no physical carrier on which you can put digital information that will last anywhere near as long as the analogue alternative.”

In short, hard drives aren’t built to last. Tests suggest that polyester and chemical film will endure “400 to 500 years minimum” if stored at proper temperatures and humidity, Horak tells me. “We can take a preservation-quality negative, put it in a vault and, as long as we’re paying the electricity bill, that film will be in good shape long after all of us are gone.”

By contrast, when it comes to digital, archivists are faced with two problems. The first is the perishability of the physical equipment. The second is that every 18 months or so, a new file format comes along to displace its predecessors and, as a result of this constant upgrade cycle, archivists face a kind of Sisyphean dilemma.

The 18 month timeline, hmm.  True on one level, but not totally applicable if you’re doing preservation-level digitization of your film or video. That said, format obsolescence is certainly a long-term concern. The article also wrongly describes LTO as a format rather than a storage medium. Still, it’s generally a good article, and I’m glad to hear the voices of film preservationists are getting out there.

What if Hamlet was actually … a woman? That is the central premise of the 1921 film adaptation of Shakespeare’s play, starring Asta Nielsen in the role of Prince Hamlet.

Source: Det Danske Filminstitut

The concept is drawn from an 1881 publication, The Mystery of Hamlet: An Attempt to Solve an Old Problem (available here at the Internet Archive). The author, Edward P. Vining, was apparently a railway engineer before he turned to literary criticism. In his opinion, the well-known contradictions and perceived deficiencies in Hamlet’s character could be perfectly explained by the fact that he is, in fact, a woman. “When God created man in his own image, male and female he made them,” he explains. The discerning reader will recognize that Hamlet demonstrates an essentially female nature:

Gentleness, and more or less dependence upon others, are inherent qualities of the female nature, and Hamlet possessed both. [...] Where strength fails, finesse succeeds; and therefore Hamlet plans and plots. His feigned madness, his trial of the mimic play, are stratagems that a woman might attempt, and that are far more in keeping with a feminine than with a masculine nature.

Hamlet is hesitant, more of a talker than a doer, doesn’t really like anyone other than Horatio, and is not that keen on fighting. In the face of such a lack of manliness, how could a reasonable person not reach the same conclusion as Vining? Even if the Bard didn’t necessarily write Hamlet as a secret woman, Vining had uncovered the facts … and the subtext was all too clear.

It is not claimed that any such thought was in our immortal poet’s mind when first he conceived and put the drama into shape: the evidence is strongly to the contrary. It is not even claimed that Shakespeare ever fully intended to represent Hamlet as indeed a woman. It is claimed that in the gradual evolution of the feminine element in Hamlet’s character the time arrived when it occurred to the dramatist that so might a woman act and feel, if educated from infancy to play a prince’s part, and that thereafter the changes in the character and in the play were all in the direction of a development of this idea.

It may be based on ridiculous, reductive ideas about gender, but I admit that I got a kick out of Vining’s theory. In itself the genderbending concept is intriguing; even if Vining’s approach to it is pretty crackpot, he is just so earnest about the whole thing that it circled back around to amusing for me.

It is also worth noting that there is a long history of female actresses playing Hamlet; Sarah Bernhardt (‘The Divine Sarah’) is the most famous example, even if it seems that she got rather mixed reviews. (A film version of her Hamlet survives; the duel scene with Laertes was filmed for the audio-visual Phono-Cinéma-Théâtre spectacle shown at the 1900 Paris exposition). This and other cases were of women playing a male role, though, rather than the genderbending of Asta’s version.

I actually think that having Hamlet be secretly a woman is a great concept, especially in the context of a silent film. Adapting Shakespeare to the silent screen, especially a play that is so much about internal conflict and deliberation, is a big ask. Presenting a female Hamlet forced to live as a man reintroduces some of the complexity of characterisation that is inevitably lost in the lack of soliloquizing, etc. And of course, it’s a pretext for the greatest Danish actress to play the most famous of all Danish characters. Asta has the acting abilities to pull off such a role, and with her slim figure costumed in androgynous garb, her face expressively made up, she looks the part of the brooding prince.

Asta’s Hamlet depicts events that occur before the start of the Shakespeare play, which starts in medias res. In the film, we get a prologue showing the Norwegian and Danish armies at war. During the conflict Hamlet Senior despatches King Fortinbras, but himself is grieviously injured. Back in the royal castle, Queen Gertrude has just given birth to a girl when she hears of King Hamlet’s mortal wounds; to preserve succession, she takes up the suggestion of passing her daughter off as a prince. However, Hamlet Senior survives, buoyed by the news. Upon returning he learns the truth about his child’s gender, but by that point the deception is entrenched.

The film proper starts when Hamlet is a young adult. Her parents worry about her solitary habits, and consequently send her to the University of Wittenberg. It’s here that she meets Horatio (for some reason identified as being from Provence). In the Shakespeare, Horatio was Hamlet’s most trusted friend, but here there is a bit more going on. They get an honest-to-goodness meet-cute, bumping heads in the lecture hall when Hamlet drops her pencil. Hamlet is instantly taken with Horatio, and we see her give him the eye …

   

Intertitle: “Provence must be … wonderful.”

She also meets Fortinbras, crown prince of Norway. It is awkward when you realize that your father murdered the father of your classmate. But Fortinbras is willing to make like Black Flag and rise above, and the two of them shake on it. Pals!

She also meets fellow Dane Laertes, whose father Polonius is the main counsellor of King Hamlet, and whose sister Ophelia is part of the royal court.

But as we all know, something is rotten in the state of Denmark. King Hamlet has died after being bitten by a snake. Hamlet arrives back in Denmark to a combination funeral/wedding celebration, her uncle Claudius having hurriedly wed Queen Gertrude. Hamlet is disgusted at the crassness and haste of the event, and withdraws.

Even aside from the central concept of a female Hamlet, this adaptation takes many liberties with the source material. I have to admit that I’ve never read the play (what can I say, the public school system failed me on this), but I did a bit of background reading, as well as peppering questions at my partner, who has read the play, while we were watching. (Side note: there is some amazing subtle trolling happening in the Wikipedia article on the plot of Hamlet). Obviously, all of the scenes at Wittenberg University are completely fabricated, and conversely other parts of the play are omitted or truncated. For example, although Hamlet talks to her father at his crypt and also in a dream, the ghost does not appear in the film at all; instead, the suspicion of foul play is planted by Hamlet having witnessed previous interactions between Gertrude and Claudius (who, it must be said, are not very good at keeping things on the down-low), and finding her uncle’s dagger on the lid of the snakepit.

 Hamlet at her father’s tomb.

To uncover the truth, Hamlet decides to feign madness. This means that we get some great scenes where Asta schemes, cackles, and generally causes mischief. Her objective, however, is to catch her uncle offguard and confirm her suspicions, while neutralizing herself as a threat in his eyes.

Another plot strand of the central part of the film is Hamlet’s interactions with Ophelia. Initially she brushes Ophelia off, but as it becomes apparent that Horatio has fallen in love with Ophelia, Hamlet steps up her game and flirts with her quite boldly (well, interspersed with pushing her away with her crazy behaviour). Motivated by the desire not to lose Horatio to Ophelia, Hamlet succeeds in winning Ophelia’s love.

   

It might be cute if it wasn’t so doomed.

The initial prompt for the Ophelia-Hamlet relationship came, of course, from Polonius. I found his portrayal bizarre. With facial hair seemingly inspired by the catfish, it looks like he wandered in from another set entirely.

Hamlet’s turmoil increases. There is a revealing scene in Act Four between Gertrude and Hamlet; Gertrude is unnerved by Hamlet’s increasingly erratic behaviour, though she is more concerned about Hamlet blowing her cover than she is about Hamlet as a person. The following intertitle reveals the inner conflict Hamlet feels:

“I am not a man, and am not allowed to be a woman! I’m a toy that hasn’t been given a heart!”

It’s also the first time she realizes that Queen Gertrude was behind the deception that Hamlet is living.

I’ll skip forward now to Hamlet’s despatch to Norway with Rosencrantz and Guildenstern. The trip is to end in her death, but she modifies the text on the parchment to have Rosencrantz and Guildenstern killed instead. After greeting her as his old friend, Fortinbras is a bit perturbed as he reads the missive that Rosencrantz and Guildenstern be beheaded. Hamlet’s casual shrug of reassurance and then glee after they are hauled off is just great.

Meanwhile, Ophelia has gone crazy in the wake of Polonius’ death. Laertes returns to the castle to find her agitated and unable to recognize him. After she drowns herself, he blames Hamlet for the situation.

Lilly Jacobson as Ophelia.

Everyone is familiar with the end of Hamlet, but again gender adds another wrinkle to the story in this version. In the duel with Laertes, Hamlet has been stabbed in the stomach area, and Horatio keeps trying to look at the wound, while Hamlet twists away and tries to keep her shirt semi-closed. After she dies, however, the secret is out, as Horatio’s hand finds her chest.

I know it’s a very serious climactic death scene, but … LOL.

All of a sudden, all of those funny feelings Horatio has been having snap into focus, but of course, time has run out …

“In death your secret is revealed! Your golden heart was that of a woman! Too late, beloved, too late!”

And he kisses her goodbye tenderly.

It’s a touching ending scene, but a bit out of nowhere. The way it is played strongly implies that Horatio has romantic feelings for Hamlet, but the rest of the movie portrayed the feelings as being on Hamlet’s side, while Horatio was in love with Ophelia. I guess the audience is to assume that Horatio realized how he felt about Hamlet once a heterosexual framework for those feelings was established.

I found Asta powerful and charismatic throughout the film. It’s a challenging role and she brings nuance, emotion, and humour to it. It was the first project she tackled after setting up her production company Art-Film, and the film was successful, if somewhat divisive to critics for its changes to the Hamlet story.

 Majestic cape sweeping.

Hamlet was available only in black and white for many years, until an original nitrate coloured print was acquired by the Deutsches Filminsitut (DIF) in 2005. Hamlet was shot with two cameras and the copy previously in circulation (via the MoMA’s film library) was actually made from the export camera neg, differing in many ways from the German version (which can be considered the A-camera negative). The DIF used German and French distribution prints, which had both been struck from the A-camera neg, as the main source materials for their restoration. The Desmet method was used to simulate tints and tones. However, Hamlet also includes a couple of scenes featuring stencil colour; for these, therefore, the restoration team worked with scans.

This is a significant film, I think. Asta is worth watching in anything, of course, but below the surface of the film are some interesting ideas about gender roles and identity. Rather than just a gimmick, it’s an eloquent reimagining of a very familiar character.

- – -

Hamlet. Dir. Svend Gade & Heinz Schall. Berlin: Art-Film-GmbH, 1921.  Released on DVD by Edition Filmmuseum.

Opening credit shot of N. Chernobaeva (Elena/Tina)

Daydreams is a story about love, grief, and the blindness that can result from these states. As the story opens, Sergei Nedelin (Aleksandr Vyrubov) is mourning his wife Elena, whom he had loved passionately.

 Side note: Bauer reuses this set in other films, including Дети века | Children of the Age (1915).

Out walking one day, he sees a woman who bears a striking resemblance to Elena (and indeed is played by the same actress, N. Chernobaeva). He walks after her, seeing in her the ghost of Elena and gaining her attention: “You were mistaken,” she tells him coolly. But he follows her anyway, to a theatre where she is performing in a production of Giacomo Meyerbeer’s opera Robert le diable (1831). This performance, which we watch with Sergei, is the main set piece of the film: wonderfully gothic and spooky. Viz.:

Convinced that the actress, Tina, is the reincarnation of Elena, he calls upon her, and the two become involved. But the relationship is doomed from the start. They are both insensitive people; Sergei doesn’t see Tina as a real person and treats her without care, and Tina is vulgar and calculating, mainly concerned with taking advantage of Sergei. Inevitably, the two clash; when Sergei asks Tina why she is angry, she retorts: “Because I am bored with your love for Elena!” He is stunned by the idea that she could resent being used as a substitute for a dead woman:

In the film’s final scene, Sergei is in disturbed spirits when Tina arrives to his house. Tina goes to console him, but then asks: “Are you forgetting about your Elena at last?” His look is answer enough.

Finally, the long-simmering fuse is lit. Tina keeps pushing him; commenting on the portrait of Elena on the wall (“but she’s not bad looking!”), picking up a picture of her from the desk, all to Sergei’s visibly growing alarm. But it’s when Tina takes out the plaited length of Elena’s hair that he keeps in an ornamental box (see the GIF above of him smelling/kissing it) that he really starts to lose it. Tina taunts him:

“Your precious flea-breeding tuft ..” !

To Sergei’s immense horror, Tina prances around with the hallowed tresses, mockingly pretending to wear the length of hair as a boa, a scarf, a belt.

I’m sure you can guess the outcome of this action …

A contemporary review noted that the production was very satisfactory, but was also somewhat critical: “The plot gives sufficient material for a film drama but in this film it is used with insufficient skill [...] the second part appears superfluous.” (Проектор | The Projektor, 1915). But in my opinion, this film is very strong. It brings together Bauer’s gothic sensibility, his emphasis on psychology, and his interest in the complexity of relationships with great style. As always, it’s beautifully staged and composed, and like The Twilight of a Woman’s Soul, features an evocative tracking shot.

The opera scene is a highlight. I had only heard of Meyerbeer’s opera in passing, but I always enjoy the macabre. As a point of interest, Daydreams is based on Georges Rodenbach’s novel Bruges-la-Morte (1892), known for being a key work of Symbolism, for being the first work of fiction illustrated with photographs, and for possibly indirectly influencing the plot of Hitchcock’s Vertigo (1958). Although I have not read it, available synopses state that Robert le diable also figures in the plot of the novella.

Bit of a Spinal Tap moment there on the right, though.

Also interesting is the way Elena appears to Sergei as a vision on two occasions during the film: at his house, before the final scene (shown below), and immediately before he strangles Tina. How to interpret this – a warning, a sanction, or simply proof of Sergei’s lessening grip on reality? Whatever the case, it certainly spurs him on to commit the murder.

In The Magic Mirror: Moviemaking in Russia, 1908-1918, Denise Jeanne Youngblood writes of how Bauer sets up a contrast between the Victorian, pure Elena, and the modern, brash Tina.

Elena has a sweet, bland face; long, flowing tresses; a loving, retiring manner; and of course, she is dead. [...] Tina, on the other hand, is bold and vivacious, with her hair done up in a modern style. We see her initially as the flâneuse who so disturbed European men in the modern era: striding along, alone, in a public space, looking at a strange man directly, openly, without shame of fear.

Under such a dichotomy (which, it must be said, is uncharacteristic of Bauer), a mobile, déclassée woman like Tina must be punished for her transgressions against society and for leading a ‘good’ man like Sergei astray – strangling her with the hair of her saintly doppelgänger is just a very literal way of enacting this penalty. In Daydreams, this opposition is somewhat mitigated by the fact that Sergei is, at least to my mind, also rather unsympathetic; perhaps he was meant to be perceived as a tragic figure brought to the brink by a woman’s wickedness, but his casually cruel behaviour undercuts that interpretation. Ultimately, I suppose there are two ways to interpret the story: women as the root of problems (whether by dying inopportunely, as Elena; or living presumptuously, as Tina), or a broader tale about flawed people and human psychology. My reading tends towards the latter, while recognizing the archetypal nature of the female characters. All in all, it’s an intriguing and well-made film.

—

Грёзы [Daydreams]. Dir. Yevgeni Bauer. Russian Empire: Khanzhonkov, 1915. Available on this DVD by Milestone Films.

Is it too soon to speak of a ‘wave’ of 21st century silents? We’ve had a great one (The Artist, 2011), a visually beautifully disappointment (Blancanieves, 2012), and some that totally missed the mark (cough).

Add to the former category a current project by Alex Barrett: London Symphony. Barrett and his team are drawing upon Soviet montage theory to create a portrait of the vitality and diversity of modern-day London, with a particular eye to modes of transport. This film will be a city symphony in the vein of films such as Ruttmann’s Berlin: Die Sinfonie der Großstadt (1927), Dziga Vertov’s Man with a Movie Camera (1928), Sheeler and Strand’s Manhatta (1921), Cavalcanti’s Rien que les heures (1926), and São Paulo, Sinfonia da Metrópole (1929). Another strand of influence is the poetic realist tradition (e.g., Ivens’ Regen, 1929; the work of John Grierson; Koyaanisqatsi, 1983; and dare I say, In Spring). The location shots look stunning:

      

Images courtesy of Alex Barrett

A previous short film, Hungerford: Symphony of a London Bridge (2009; watch here on Vimeo) is the prototype for London Symphony. I liked it very much; great combination of static and moving shots, beautifully edited. I can’t imagine how long the editing process would have taken. Hungerford is stylish and assured without being self-consciously retro in the way some néo-silent shorts I’ve seen are; it simply hits the mark.

 Clearly, London Symphony will be one to look forward to! Alex even has the endorsement of Kevin Brownlow, that god among film archivists, as well as other silent-world movers and shakers like Pamela Hutchinson and Bryony Dixon. Alex is currently running a crowdfunding campaign to complete the project; also regard his campaign video (which includes some great familiar shots). This all looks fantastic. Can someone do a project like this for my city, too?

1914 on film at the British Film Institute

A couple of months ago, the BFI launched a new channel on their online video website: 1914 on film. As they write:

What did our forebears watch a century ago? Discover the cinema of 1914 in this very mixed programme from the year the world changed.

Some cool material is on display: Shackleton’s dogs, a trick film where a magnifying glass gives x-ray vision, a saucy vicar. While I’m grateful that material is made available in any form – I truly believe that we are living in the golden age, film-accessibility-wise – the quality of the digital encode for the videos on display is disappointing, to say the least. Perhaps it is a deliberate strategy to control reuse of the material, or maybe their policy is that free-to-play material is only released in low quality. So many blocking artefacts:

 Why???

This has me thinking … has any archival-type website really cracked the presentation of online video?  European Film Gateway has great material, but is seriously hampered by its bizarre lack of a proper search function. (Although, must mention that some of the institutions from which it draws material have quite good interfaces; for example, the Filmportal, and the Cineteca di Bologna’s Cinestore). Australian Screen Online is one of the best, in my opinion – the design is fantastic, and it features very in-depth curatorial notes. Unfortunately, you cannot usually watch whole films there (though they have a function to freely allow people to download clips, which is cool).

 The wonderful Lottie Lyell in The Woman Suffers (AU  1918)

But from the Antipodes back to Britannia – a propos of nothing, here’s a GIF from The White Shadow (GB 1923), a very silly film that I didn’t get around to reviewing when I watched it a while back.

Betty Compson as Nancy, the ‘bad’ twin.

And remember: please consider throwing a few quid towards London Symphony!  There are some great pledge rewards. Apart from downloads of the film, Alex and co. are offering very cool rewards like copies of the script, flipbooks, photographic prints, and etchings. And even the opportunity to be in the film!

London Symphony poster by Andrew Yap.

A quick roundup before I head to Le Giornate del Cinema Muto! First, a few more notes on film preservation. I was interested to read this short article on the complexities of audiovisual archiving; head staff at NARA and the LoC are quoted. The article has the usual talking points, but it’s a good overview, and after years of hype around digital access to film, it is nice to see the conversation swinging back around to long-term preservation and how that can best be achieved. Of course, I’m hugely in favour of digital access, but the long view needs to be considered as well. The article sketches out how analogue (polyester) film is still the gold standard for moving image archiving:

Add to this the fact that no one has come up with a satisfactory equivalent to old-fashioned film, which is a more robust, tangible medium than anything in the digital world. Archivists make repairs to decaying reels before copying the original onto polyester “safety” film stock. (Most film today, even what Hollywood types refer to as celluloid, is made of polyester.) Once they put the resulting print, called a preservation master, into cold storage, it can last several centuries.

“Film is simple,” says Criss Kovac, supervisor of the National Archives’ Motion Picture Preservation Lab. “It’s elegant. If we create a new copy and do the quality control, we know we can come back to it in a couple hundred years and it’s still going to be there, exactly the way it was when we printed it in 2014.”

Indeed, there are very compelling reasons to preserve film-to-film while the technology and material are available. However, digital technology has a huge role to play as well. The article closes with this nice quote from Gregory Lukow of the LoC:

The Library of Congress remains “committed to preserving film as film as long as we can,” Lukow says. “At the same time, we recognize that we have to position ourselves for the post-film world.”

In related news, Eastman House in Rochester, NY, just announced the acquisition of a digital lab, donated to them by Kodak. The facility will be used to preserve born-digital works, as well as for digitization of films from their collection, and will supplement their analogue preservation programme. Quoth Paolo Cherchi Usai:

“Motion picture film remains the best and most durable carrier of moving images. Cinema has thrived for over 120 years in photochemical form, and our museum is committed to preserving and presenting it as such for posterity. Film and digital are different media—each with its own merits. Our institution embraces their coexistence as powerful tools for creativity and knowledge. Our investment in the digital future will be as steadfast as our passion for cinema as an art form.”

It would be interesting to know more about what digital capabilities Eastman House had before this acquisition. The press release also notes that the lab will allow digital restoration to become a greater part of the curriculum of the Selznick School.

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Here are a few images that I’ve made that didn’t fit anywhere else in particular, but that amused me.

An Asta GIF that didn’t find a home in my review of Das Liebes-ABC (DE 1916):

From Dziga Vertov’s Энтузиазм (Симфония Донбаса) | Enthusiasm, A Symphony of Donbass (UkrSSR 1930):

\m/

A frustrated man in Tigre Reale (IT 1916):

And the best GIF for last … from Ernst Lubitsch’s Die Austernprinzessin | The Oyster Princess (DE 1919).

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Next post will come from Italy!  Via Nina Giacomo (Primeiro Cinema), here’s a photo of a whole bunch of us Pordenone last year.

I’m the one at the back trying to make the Fresh Prince revival happen. 

Looking forward to the festival and catching up with people! In the unlikely event that anyone reading this doesn’t know me already, come and say hi. :)

Ahhh … it’s good to be back!  I arrived in Pordenone on Friday night, well in time for things to kick off on Saturday – and the weather is beautiful, the people are fantastic, the Spritz-Aperol is plentiful, and silent film is in abundance. I’ll take the opportunity to note a few of the highlights so far. Screenings started on Saturday afternoon – including a range of Sidney Drew shorts, the most salient of which (Boobley’s Baby, US 1915) had Mr. Drew carting around a fake baby in order to gain concessions on public transport – just the right kind of off-the-wall humour. I also enjoyed the Protazanov picture Горничная Дженни | Chambermaid Jenny (RU 1918) – perhaps a slight picture, but I’ve been wishing for some time to see Olga Gvorskaya on screen. Things really kicked off, however, with the Saturday night gala screening of John Barrymore vehicle When a Man Loves (US 1927).

Pinched this photo from Silent London :)

This film was total schlock. Shallow characterisation, silly dialogue, excessive use of the John Barrymore Profile Shot (TM), great sets and costumes – it was great fun. Would be an excellent film to watch with some friends and a glass or two of wine. It is a Manon Lescaut adaptation, except that instead of dying at the end, a boatload of people perish so that John and Dolores Costello can escape on a boat to Tennessee.

My pick of Sunday was Das Frauenhaus von Rio (DE 1927), a sensational drama concerning a gang of white slavers and the innocents who get caught up in their schemes. A very slick production – well-plotted and paced, great performances, and lots of delicious melodrama. My kind of film!  Later in the day, Pan (NO 1922) was another extremely striking picture (for wholly different reasons) that in some ways was uneven, but has really stuck in my mind.

The big events yesterday were the opportunity to watch two previously lost (or at least unavailable) films – Colleen Moore’s Synthetic Sin (US 1929) and Conrad Veidt’s Lady Hamilton (De 1921). I’m a big Colleen Moore fan, and Synthetic Sin was a hoot! The plot concerned a small-town wannabe actress, who determines to go to New York and experience the seedier side of life in order to broaden her dramatic range, with hijinks ensuing. Colleen Moore was playing the naive ingénue to the hilt, and indeed, her character’s antics did become hard to take (and the film is also marred by a totally extraneous and cringeworthy blackface scene). Colleen herself was great, though. Her screen persona is interesting – the prototypical flapper in many ways, but squeaky-clean – none of the sensuality of Louise Brooks or Clara Bow. Moore herself described her screen presence as “sexy, sexless” – certainly she is always girlish rather than womanly, as she is in Synthetic Sin - her preppy clothing is deliberately contrasted with the more sexy, grown-up attire of other women in the film.  Her early scenes in particular are a delight – my favourite part was early in the film, when she donned a wig and moustache in order to impersonate Padarewsky playing Rachmaninoff.

A Pordenone notebook full of incisive criticism, as you see

The ending was pretty groan-worthy, though, as Colleen Moore’s character Betty decides to turn away from acting: “The only part I want to play is Mrs. Anthony!” In fact, there was an audible sigh in the theatre at that intertitle.

I have to report that Lady Hamilton was rather a let-down. Perhaps the missing footage (represented in the film by production stills and explanatory titles) would have improved the picture, but my overriding impression was that it was quite pedestrian. Of course, it’s always fun to see watch Conny look intense and haunted, as he does in this role as Admiral Horatio Nelson. I liked Liane Haid as Lady Hamilton quite a lot – I can’t say whether or not it was a great performance, I simply enjoyed her screen presence. Admittedly, this may be partly because she at times reminded me faintly of a young Pola Negri, and also of someone I once dated.

The early colour and Technicolour programmes are one of the main draws for me. I greatly enjoyed the Collegium lecture given yesterday by James Layton and David Pierce of Eastman House, outlining the first twenty years of the company’s history. (James talks about this a little in this post on the Eastman House blog). This lecture comes ahead of the publication, early next year, of a beautiful-looking book on the history of Technicolour in this period. At the end of the presentation, my question was about the survival of original camera negatives (rare – The Toll of the Sea is an exception, most films survive as only prints) and the preservation workflow. I was interested to hear that in preserving and restoring these films, they create and work with b&w separations as much as possible, as using Eastmancolour interneg did not produce good results. A nice anecdote from the presentation: for The Black Pirate, Doug Fairbanks’ facial hair had to be coloured reddish, as otherwise it was photographing too green!

And that brings us to now! Earlier this morning I watched the Technicolour Prog. 1 – somewhat of a misnomer, as it features a range of colour processes. Absolutely one of my favourite screenings this year so far, and I hope to devote a full post to this at a later date.

In other news, my friend from Finland made me a present of the DVD of Pohjalaisia (FI 1925), which will be interesting to watch!

And even some Tom of Finland stamps!

Notable quotes

“Don’t panic, you have fallen into white slave traders’ hands!”

- Das Frauenhaus von Rio (DE 1927 – listed at the Filmportal under the much less cool title of Plüsch und Plümowski).

“I’m sorry, Fabien – but I’m just a woman. I shall always love jewels and pretty clothes!”

- When a Man Loves (US 1927).

“I’m a slave of desire – a puppet of passion.”

“Let’s you and I make hey hey while there’s moonshine!”

- Colleen Moore in Synthetic Sin (US 1929).

Obligatory Pordenone banner photo:

Me and Charlie C. (Thanks to Stefanie Tieste for the photo!)

Herr Arne’s Treasure.

I’m back with another report from on the ground at Pordenone! Continuing from where I left off in my last post: Tuesday was a blockbuster afternoon. I considered skipping Herr Arnes Pengar | Sir Arne’s Treasure (SE 1919) since it is widely available, but I’m really glad that I watched it in the theatre. A slow, beautiful look at the destructive consequences of theft and murder, set in the desolate coastal regions of Sweden. Two scenes particularly stuck in my head: when the three Scots sink their horse and carriage into the ice to cover their tracks, and the final procession of women bearing the body of Elsalill (the film’s archetype of purity and femininity) across the ice.

One point though – I thought, and a couple of people agreed with me, that the print was very dark, particularly in the start of the film – not just the fact that the lighting was low key, but also the general grade and darkness of the tints. One assumes that this represents the visual qualities of the existing elements, but the contrast was notably low.

The evening session begain with the presentation of the Collegium essay prize to the lovely Cesar de la Rosa Anaya, for his paper on digital restoration work on early/silent cinema: the uniqueness and Benjaminian aura of these film materials, and the ethics and decisions involved in the digital scanning and restoration process. I look forward to being able to read it in full!

The presentation was a bit dramatic for me, though, as my graphic novel-style submission got a special mention as the most original entry, and without warning to me, was projected to the huge auditorium screen for all to see! (They also credited a different person, haha). A big shock for me, and really it would have been nicer to separate it from Cesar’s moment!

Woo hah! Got you all in cheque. (Photo by José María Serralde Ruiz)

Following this was one of the festival’s marquee events, the performance of benshi Kataoka Ichiro. As mentioned in my preview post, I greatly enjoyed Mr. Kataoka’s performance last year, accompanying Keaton short The Boat (US 1921), a Japanese samurai film, and the memorable and intriguing Fukujusô  (JP 1935), a tale of the intense and homoerotic relationship between two sisters-in-law. This year, Mr. Kataoka accompanied 喧嘩安兵衛 | Hot-Tempered Yasubei (JP 1928), the plot of which can be concisely summarized as: Tamasaburō Bandō laying waste to the town of Edo. The rest of the programme consisted of the 1914 Chaplin shorts Kid Auto Races at Venice (the début of the Tramp – I’d forgotten just how much Charlie breaks the fourth wall in the film!), His New Profession, The New Janitor, and Dough and Dynamite (which also features a young Charley Chase, back when he was Charles Parrott). I don’t speak Japanese, so could not follow the content of Kataoka’s narration (beyond “arigato gozaimashite” and “dy-na-mite!”), but his accompaniment lends something really special to the film-watching experience: the rhythm, the tones, the cross-lingual humour of certain well-timed lines.

The late screening was 西遊記·盤絲洞 | Pán sī dòng | The Cave of the Silken Web (1927). I had eagerly anticipated this film, though perhaps more for its historical interest than as a work of cinema. But I loved it! It was a great, adventurous romp, with witty intertitles. The story is a chapter from the classic work Journey to the West, and it’s rather a short episode in the book (at least in my translation). The film follows the story: a Buddhist monk is travelling with his disciples (Monkey, Pig, and Friar Sand), when the group encounters a silken cave, populated with spider spirits masquerading as alluring women, who try to entrap the monk. No matter that the monk, serenely androgynous, refuses their advances (and, per one of the intertitles, their “heavenly nectar”!) – he is under their black magic and it falls to his disciples to rescue him. Definitely one for my dangerous female sexuality tag! This made extremely explicit by one of the ending intertitles: “Because she submitted to her desire, she was made to suffer.” Ha! The film included some great set pieces, including scenes where Pig is holding off several women with a rake while they menace him with swords, a game of keepaway played with Pig’s head (temporarily removed from his body), and the antics of the rather adorable hare spirit. Some nice special effects, such as the spider spirits fading into the web – very effective even if the registration wasn’t always perfect. The film was in relatively good condition except for the very beginning section, and the latter part featured lovely magenta tinting.

On Wednesday, my pick was La Statua di Carne | From the Beyond (IT 1921), which was just fantastic. A real highlight for me. I adore Italian diva films, and really, who could resist this catalogue write-up?

Italia Almirante in the roles of Mary & Naomi

The story was filled with glorious melodrama. Count Paul Santarosa is a grieving man who encounters in Naomi of the Ballets Russes the doppelganger of his dead beloved Mary (this story is told in the first part of the film), and then enacts a Freudian nightmare – installing Naomi in a secluded villa where she must dress a certain way and answer to Mary when he comes to visit her. At first willing to humour him, not surprisingly she quickly finds his behaviour perturbing: “And he just sits and stares at me. It’s uncanny!” It’s the kind of film where characters make pronouncements like “I pledge you a toast to death – the death of love!” Yet on another level, a kind of realism was operating – the characters call each other out on their behaviour (not that it helps, particularly); when Paul declares his intention to visit Naomi every day (this directly on meeting her), she is amused and taken aback, retorting “I’ve only known you a few minutes!” Italia Almirante was suitably glamorous and languorous in the roles of Mary and Naomi, and attired in the requisite fabulous gowns and headwear. Fluidly directed; an interesting formal aspect of the film was its frequent use of dissolves.  I really hope that the Cinémathèque Royale puts this film on the European Film Gateway at some stage.

Wednesday evening saw both parts of Die Nibelungen (DE 1924) shown in sequence. These restorations both screened at my local film society earlier this year, but I missed Siegfried, so was glad to have the opportunity to catch it on the big screen here. Aesthetically both of the films are just incredible: the framing and lighting, the stylized makeup, the visual effects, the geometrical motifs of the costumes and décor … who could forget Brunhild’s winged headdress? or Siegfried’s marvellous Beethoven-style über-bouffant hairstyle?

Relatively tamed here.

Apart from being a beautiful film, it’s a good piece of storytelling – though it’s long, for me the film never dragged. Having Kriemhilds Rache in my head, I was surprised by some aspects of Siegfried; tonally, and in pacing and storytelling, they differ quite a lot. The dragon was easier to kill than I would have expected. And Kriemhild’s demureness in the first film shouldn’t have taken me by surprise, yet did, as I was working with this mental image of the character – the burning, vengeful Kriemhild of Teil 2:

Burn it alllll … (Margarete Schön as Kriemhild).

Brunhild’s (here not a Valkyrie, as in the Wagner) ultimately tragic story arc was fantastic, and I really enjoyed Hanna Ralph in the role. As for King Gunther, played with froglike, halting energy by Theodor Loos – even more useless than I remembered. From his enforced marriage won via trickery, to his lack of action and culpability, was there any point where the character exhibited critical thinking skills?

“I have the worst brother.”

On Thursday morning, The Bells (US 1926) was another one I was looking forward to, and I wasn’t disappointed. I like Lionel Barrymore, he of the expressive undereye creases. Here he plays a man who commits a terrible crime for the sake of his family, and is thereafter haunted by the sound of bells (also suffering a Lady MacBeth episode as he looks at his blood-money). Also notable was Boris Karloff as the Mesmerist, eyes lamplike behind thick black-rimmed circular specs. It was a stylish, economical film that featured some nice double exposures.

Barrymore & Karloff

At lunchtime today, the Collegium session on early cinema was excellent. On the panel was Bryony Dixon (BFI), Vanessa Toulmin (National Fairground Archive), Céline Ruivo (Cinémathèque Française), and Hiroshi Komatsu (Waseda University); each gave a brief presentation before taking questions (predictably, mine was about the practical aspects of preservation). The presenters, Dixon and Toulmin especially, really underlined the necessity of understanding the exhibitional context of early cinema – Toulmin made a remark about seeing these films as entertainment records rather than film texts (paraphrase; hopefully I remembered that correctly). As Ruivo pointed out, the idea of authorship as we understand it now cannot be fruitfully applied to this era of filmmaking; I also liked her description of Paul Nadar’s work as representing a synthesis of creativity and engineering.

Le Merveilleux Éventail Vivante | The Marvellous Living Fan (FR 1904).

Look out for another recap to round out the remaining two days of the festival!  In the meantime, go and read Silent London’s excellent coverage of the festival.

Notable quotes

A group of female slaves are roped together in Mooiste Waaiers ter Wereld | The Most Beautiful Fans in the World (FR 1927):

But lo and behold, they dance as beautifully as ever.

Oh, well that’s alright then!

Classic Tamasaburō Bandō in 喧嘩安兵衛 | Hot-Tempered Yasubei (JP 1928):

Every day Yasubei goes out to pick fights for free booze.

Repping vegetarianism in 西遊記·盤絲洞 | Pán sī dòng | The Cave of the Silken Web (1927). (slight paraphrase due to illegibility of my handwriting):

In the monk’s opinion, eating steak is as bad as theatre and dance.

Seductive euphemism: the Spider Queen to the Monk in Pán sī dòng:

“You are still not aware of how much fun you can have in our web.”

Bryony Dixon on what early cinema still has to teach us:

Well firstly, the correct technique for jumping in and out of barrels.

Celebrity sighting: Yuri Tsivian!

Photo courtesy of BFI National Archive, London.

(Previously: preview, recap 1, recap 2). This is a rather sketchy recap, as I’m still in the post-festival faze of another wonderful Giornate! But here we go:

Jeanne d’Arc (FR 1900)

Returning to Thursday afternoon – the programme on early French cinema was wonderful. The colour Méliès material was beautiful, and I liked the Paul Nadar films perhaps even more. Some of the latter were restored from paper prints, and I would like to know more about that material – the creases of the paper were quite visible in the image, lending it a very interesting visual quality, and they didn’t necessarily look like contact prints from 35mm. I could be wrong about that, though. There was one very strange presentation choice made with the Nadar films: several of them were extremely short, just two or three seconds, so they were played several times. Yet instead of playing them on a loop, they were played in forward motion and then in reverse, something I found quite disconcerting. Still, just incredible to see this material from almost 120 years ago.

It’s Grigor Samsa! Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (US 1920)

Thursday night saw John Barrymore doing Grand Guignol shtick in Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (US 1920). The highlight for me was the preceding short, Léonce Perret’s La Rose Bleue (FR 1911), a charming short film restored at Haghefilm by Selznick School graduate Lauren Alberque. The restoration process involved a digital intermediate process and a lot of careful colour correction, with very nice results!

Дон Диего и Пелагея | Don Diego and Pelageya (USSR 1928)

The late Thursday and early Friday screenings were both from the ‘Russian Laughter’ programme, and both were excellent. Дон Диего и Пелагея | Don Diego and Pelageya (USSR 1928) was a bureaucratic farce turned Komsomol promotion film, with a great turn from the leading actress Maria Blumenthal-Tamarina. She had previously acted on the stage and screen, but on the basis of this film and Его призыв | His Call (USSR 1925), she became a star in her late 60s. Well-deserved, in my opinion! The next morning, Чины и люди | Ranks and People (USSR 1929) was another unexpected delight: an anthology of three Chekhov stories, each with great direction and pacing, acted by members of the Moscow Art Theatre. Ivan Moskvin was particularly fine as the obsessively repentant accidental sneezer Chervyakov in Смерть чиновника | The Death of a Government Clerk.

A couple of shorts in the last Technicolour programme stood out to me. Who could resist Clara Bow throwing a fish to a pelican in the surviving fragments of Red Hair (US 1928)? Likewise, the dance film A Josephine McLean Dance Classic (US 1929) was a true pleasure, featuring several dance routines shot on an Art Nouveau stage, including ballet, modern dance, a vaguely East Asian-inspired number, and a group routine with compositions reminiscent of Henri Matisse’s La Dance (FR 1910).

Photo via Barbara Flueckiger’s Timeline of Historical Film Colours.

Perhaps the most interesting for me were the printing tests for musical Sally (US 1929). These tests had a lot of exposure changes, some double exposures, and for some shots the red and green matrices appeared to be printed out of register by several frames. It’s the kind of ephemeral material that I really enjoy. Incidentally, the shoot for this film sounds like a nightmare – 8,100,000 watts (!) were needed to light the largest stage, leading to makeup literally melting off the actors’ faces. Technicolour always had high lighting demands due to its optics (all the beam splitting prisms, filters, etc), and especially earlier on, the films were very slow, the system could be considered the equivalent of an ISO rating in the single digits.

And the finale screening of City Lights (US 1931), was, of course, beautiful. As for the afterparty, that was great fun too – but that’s another story …

Notable quotes

All the stuff and more in The Black Pirate (US 1926):

Being an account of BUCCANEERS & the SPANISH MAIN, the Jolly Roger, GOLDEN GALLEONS, bleached skulls, BURIED TREASURE, the Plank, dirks & cutlasses, SCUTTLED SHIPS, Marooning, DESPERATE DEEDS, DESPERATE MEN, and – even on this dark soil – ROMANCE.

Sage advice from Red Hair (US 1928):

For a man to have red hair has always meant trouble for someone. For a woman to have red hair has always meant trouble for a man.

I have a bright red ‘do at the moment. Watch out world …

The opening two intertitles of The Star of the Side Show (US 1912):

The peasants regret that their only daughter is a midget.

She refuses to marry a neighbouring midget.

And the closing screening – it’s a classic for a reason. City Lights (US 1931):

Yes, I can see now.

I’m still on holiday, but in the meantime here’s a post I wrote up a while ago:

An early work by renowned director Maurice Tourneur, Figures de Cire is a horror film that presages German Expressionism in its use of light and shadow. It’s a prototypical haunted-house film: out carousing with his friends, Pierre boasts that he is totally without fear (“la peur [..] cette sensation m’est inconnue”), and takes a bet that he can spend the night in the most sinister of places without batting an eyelid.

While searching for an appropriately creepy place, Pierre and his friend Jacques stop in at the local off-licence, where they encounter the morose proprietor of a wax museum.

Problem solved! They check out the wax museum and Pierre gets locked in for some bonding time with waxy clowns, murderers, and dead women.

Pierre is just fine … at first. But eventually his nerves start to fray – and the outcome is not what you might expect …

Figures de Cire is only a one-reeler (11 minutes), so it’s a slight story, but one that is well-realized. The script was written by André de Lorde, the main writer for the Le Théâtre du Grand-Guignol. Tantalizingly, Tourneur also directed another Grand Guignol film penned by de Lorde, Le système du docteur Goudron et du professeur Plume (The System of Dr. Tarr and Professor Fether, 1913; after the story by Edgar Allan Poe). The stage production of the story was apparently considered a “peculiarly revolting spectacle”. The film was released in the US as The Lunatics, and the American distributor took out full-page ads in Moving Picture World:

Notice the ad for Polaire, too!

A full review with a detailed synopsis was published in the 20 June 1914 edition of Moving Picture World; the reviewer found it to be “the kind of picture that will put immediate quietus on any buzz of conversation in the auditorium and will be called a ‘terrible, powerful’ picture. It is artistic, real, and gripping”.

But back to Figures de Cire. There is some beautiful use of shadow, such as here:

Another point of interest is the memento effect in the introductory ‘credit sequence’ shot of Monsieur Henri Gouget (aka the wax museum proprietor).

Keen-eyed viewers may also note the Éclair logo featured on one of the sets. Such ‘bugs‘ were common practice in early cinema as an anti-piracy device – so that companies could not just get hold of a rival company’s film, slap a new title on, and market it as their own. One notices them particularly in Pathé films. Here, see how the Éclair logo is incorporated into the set of the wax museum.

I have a fascination with intertitles, and those of Figures de Cire are great as visual elements.

The wind howls, and the darkness lends the immobile figures a dangerous and mysterious appearance.

This film was considered lost for many years before Lobster rediscovered a tinted print in 2007. It is partially damaged, yet it is one of those cases where the nitrate damage parallels the story almost fortuitously, appearing right as Pierre is starting to lose it.

I have to confess that I am not very familiar with Maurice Tourneur, never having seen any of his most renowned films: The Poor Little Rich Girl (1917, with Mary Pickford), The Blue Bird (1918; after the play by Maeterlinck), or The Last of the Mohicans (1920). His reputation is that of an outstanding pictorialist, and from Figures de Cire, it’s clear that even this early in his career, he had a keen grasp of storytelling and composition. (Also of note: Maurice Tourneur’s son Jacques became a filmmaker too, directing the great 1942 film Cat People). If anyone has a favourite Tourneur, please let me know and I’ll start there!

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Figures de Cire. Dir. Maurice Tourneur. Paris: Éclair, 1913. Date is given as 1914 in several books, but I’ll go with Lobster Films’ stated date of 1913. Available to watch here on YouTube. The film was apparently rereleased in 1918 as L’homme aux figures de cire, which may explain the clumsy English title.

In this Vitagraph short, anarchism threatens to ruin lives and families. Luigi and Rosa are a couple with an adorable child, but trouble is afoot – Luigi has become an anarchist!

It’s the French release of the film that survives.

Rosa and her daughter had been out walking; the girl had been running around, and if not for the intervention of Princess Marie Louise, would have been flattened by a motorcar. When Rosa returns home, Luigi is drinking with his anarchist buddies, who include a man with a very fake beard and a man in blackface, or at least some kind of ‘ethnic’ face- darkening makeup. (The way in which anarchism is coded as an immigrant, not-real-American pastime in this film is not exactly subtle). Anyway, the gang is plotting against that very same Princess, who is to make a public appearance that day. Rosa tells her husband about their fortuitous encounter, but Luigi and his friends aren’t having a bar of it. They only live to get radical!

Rosa gets banished to the bedroom while the men plot, and we get this great keyhole shot:

The men are talking about their plan of hiding a bomb in a bunch of flowers (!), but they see Rosa spying through the keyhole. Her husband forces her, at gunpoint, to write a note promising that she won’t betray them. Oh, well if there’s a note attesting that she won’t betray their criminal activities! These anarchists really are masters of foolproof planning.

Then they gag and tie her up. Luckily, she manages to get free and make her escape out the window.

At the keystone-laying (for a hospital for the Italian community – again reinforcing the idea of anarchism occurring in the immigrant sphere), Luigi gets his child to present the bomb-laden bouquet to the Princess. But just in time, Rosa runs in, grabs the bouquet, and throws it in the sea. Saved!

The next scene opens in the hospital, where Rosa is convalescing. Luigi shows up looking pathetically hangdog, his body language conveying shame and contrition.

Rosa seems to accept this (and the title card that precedes the scene reads ‘le pardon’ – ‘forgiveness’). But then comes the coda where Luigi leaves, putting on his hat, only to feel the heavy hand of the law:

“You’re nicked, chum!”

Vitagraph studios

Vitagraph was a leading studio in this era, and it seems that they were especially prolific in the years 1912-14: Marianne Lewinsky of the Cineteca di Bologna writes that “According to the IMDb filmography, the Vitagraph Company of America produced a total of 3,121 films between 1898 and 1925 – of which a third (1,073 titles) were in the three years from 1912 to 1914″. She also writes that during her archival research, Vitagraph productions stood out for the quality and style of their productions. Indeed, The Anarchist’s Wife is a well-made film with clear direction and a nice stylistic flourish in the keyhole shot.

This film isn’t mentioned in any of the usual places (IMDb, AFI Catalogue, etc), but I found an advertisement listing it (description: “A deep-laid plot”) in the December 1912 edition of Motion Picture Story Magazine.

The lead is played by Florence Turner, “the Vitagraph Girl”, one of the first big movie stars in the US. It is generally agreed that she and Florence Lawrence (“the Biograph girl”) were the first American actresses to be famous purely on the basis of their screen work (rather than initially via theatrical work), and among the first performers to make personal appearances in promoting their films. At the height of her popularity in 1912, Turner was unequivocally the most popular film actress in America. She left for Britain in 1913 to have more autonomy over her career, starting her own studio there; although she didn’t maintain the same level of popularity as in her Vitagraph days, her films from that period were still extremely successful and contained the wonderful Daisy Doodad’s Dial (1914; look out for a 100 years ago post on that later this year).

Anarchism on film

Anarchists were very much a part of popular culture in America in the early twentieth century; consider well-known fictional portraits such as Joseph Conrad’s The Secret Agent (1907, which I still haven’t read), and The Man who was Thursday by G. K. Chesterton (1908; a favourite). It seems that they frequently appeared in films of the teens, too. Browsing around the Media History Digital Library brought up the following titles (a non-exhaustive list):

• Lulu’s Anarchist (Vitagraph 1912): No description, but it sounds like wholesome entertainment: “A comedy that the people appreciated and liked [...] it can be shown at churches or other private entertainments and will be popular”. (Moving Picture World, 16 March 1912)
• Los Anarquistes (Republic 1912): “A sensational story of some European republic, in which an anarchistic plot to kill a president is utilized as the background of a love story, in which the chief of the secret service and the abused wife of the anarquist feature in the principal roles. [..] The story is fairly well woven and the figures are distinctly drawn.” (Moving Picture World, 27 April 1912)
• The Recoil (Reliance 1912): a love story featuring a crazy anarchist. Commentary on it is rather intriguing: “A great factory with its environments, serves as the background to this picture. [..] Labour troubles are utilized but are not brought directly into the story; they and the agitator’s attitude to capital, merely serve as the springboard for it. [..] This is the tensest picture we have ever seen. It is terrific.” (Moving Picture World, 25 May 1912)
• The Anarchist (IMP 1913): some star power here, as it’s a King Baggot film directed by Herbert Brenon. “Heart interest is established at the very beginning (this is worthy of especial note) and the picture was shown without titles; none were needed.” (The Motion Picture News, 22 November 1913)
• Cupid in a Hospital (L-KO 1915): a crippled anarchist is in love with a nurse, plants a bomb under the bed of his rival to her affections, and they both end up being blown into a lake. (Moving Picture World, 02 January 1915)
• The Painted Anarchist (Alhambra 1915): “Syd tries to put one over by posing a live subject as his masterpiece.” (Moving Picture World, 13 Feb 1915)
• The Funny Side of Jealousy (Universal 1915): a man is incredibly jealous of his wife and disguises himself as an anarchist to blow up her supposed lover (it’s actually her brother). Luckily, he is quite an inept anarchist, and comedic situations ensue. (Moving Picture World, 13 March 1915)
• The Lost House (Majestic 1915): a Dorothy Gish film; she plays “the unfortunate young heiress whose unscrupulous uncle places her in the clutches of an anarchist”. Considered a good production by the reviewer, except that “the beard of the anarchist is too noticeably false”. (Moving Picture World, 27 March 1915). [Note: Other sources list this as a Lillian, not Dorothy Gish film; is this a mistake in MPW or in latter-day research?]

Judging from the commentaries available, anarchists unsurprisingly seem to have appeared in films primarily as bomb-wielding comedy villains and/or actual villains. It would be very interesting to view some of these titles, if they still exist!

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The Anarchist’s Wife. Dir. William V. Ranous. New York: Vitagraph, 1912. Available to watch here on European Film Gateway.

A Soviet girl dreams of Hollywood in the charming short combined live action/animated film Одна из Многих | One of Many (USSR 1927). Like Потцелй Мери Пикфорд | A Kiss for Mary Pickford, also 1927, One of Many takes its cue from Mary Pickford and Douglas Fairbanks’ visit to Russia in 1926. The story follows a film-obsessed young girl (played by Aleksandra Kudriavtseva) who arrives home, still dizzy with excitement.

Because today was the day that she saw … Mary and Doug!

And not only that, but: “Mary SAW ME!” The inserted newsreel footage is cut so as to give the illusion of a special moment of eye contact between her and Mary & Doug.

Her joy is palpable. “She’ll take me to – AMERICA!” And when the girl lies down to take a rest, she is transformed into a cartoon character – and the film enters an animated Hollywood dreamland.

She awakes on Hollywood Boulevard, lit by signs and with a background graphic that sort of recalls the Moloch set from Metropolis. However, it’s most likely a reference to Intolerance, given that next up she meets none other than:

D. W. Griffith! Here described in an intertitle as the “Hollywood Bolshevik” … well, that’s one way of looking at him, I guess. From there, she meets Chaplin on the street – he’s mean to her and so she gets upset, but luckily Pat & Patachon (Karl Schenstrøm & Harald Madsen) are there to help her out.

    

The grimace of Chaplin; Pat und Patachon.

Pat und Patachon (originally Fy og Bi in their native Danish) are forerunners of Laurel and Hardy, in that they’re a screen comic duo made up of one tall skinny man and one short fat man. I’ve not been highly enthused about what I’ve seen of them, but they were very popular in Europe in their time. Really, their inclusion in this film is a bit surprising, as they never worked in Hollywood – but let’s not quibble. Pat and Patachon form a human horse to transport our heroine – all the better from which to spy Harold Lloyd’s motoring mishaps!

Skyscraper hi-jinks ensue before the girl is plucked from the sky by a dinosaur and completes the holy trinity of silent comedians by meeting the dino’s master: Buster Keaton, clothed in his caveman outfit from The Three Ages (1923).

In contrast to her European compatriats Pat und Patachon, Hollywood comedians are nothing but trouble in this film. Buster drags her off by her hair and then lets her get snatched by a bandit who puts the girl in a vice and squishes her flat as a pancake. It’s cowboy star Tom Mix who comes to her rescue this time:

The films dénouement, of course, involves Doug and Mary. Well, mostly Doug; my guess is that the writers/animators had trouble finding good caricature material for Mary. So we get Doug à la The Thief of Baghdad:

And The Gaucho Doug!

Needless to say, Doug saves the day. The girl wakes to see all of her movie portraits making faces at her from the wall …

Doug; Mary; Keaton; Chaplin; Lloyd

One of Many was made at the famous Mezhrabpom-Rus studio in Moscow, directed by Nikolai Khodatayev, working with a mostly female team. I find the animation style very appealing – not polished, sure, but that adds to the charm. And as a device for looking at the difference between dreams, reality, and the movie screen, the combination of live action and animation is very successful. I first saw this film when it screened at the 2013 Giornate del Cinema Muto in Pordenone; I immediately thought of Sherlock, Jr. (1924; one of my all-time favourites), and indeed in the catalogue notes Sergei Kaptarev cites Keaton’s film, released in Russia as Одержимый | The Obsessed, as a possible reference.

Soviet poster via Cinefessions.

The film needs to be seen in the context of the Soviet Union’s New Economic Policy (NEP; 1921-28). Relative to the first years of the USSR (and of course, the Stalin era following it), the NEP was a period of greater economic and cultural freedom. That is not to say that it paralleled Western culture; in her article The Dance Class or the Working Class: The Soviet Modern Girl, Anne E. Gorsuch notes that the main sources of cultural transmission in the USSR differed from those in capitalist countries, with advertising, commerce, and the mass media functioning differently therein compared to in many other locales. Movies were a key source of international cultural information; between 1921 and 1931, the Soviet Union imported about 1700 American, German, and French films. Not surprisingly given the content of One of Many, Gorsuch cites Pickford, Fairbanks, Lloyd and Chaplin as the audience favourites.

Gorsuch’s focus is on the ‘Modern Girl’ figure: a new type of woman that emerged as a distinct phenomenon in the 1920s, known variously as flappers, garçonnes, neue Frauen, modeng xiaojie, etc. The student character in One of Many could be seen as an example of a Soviet Modern Girl; vivacious, flapperishly dressed, American-movie-obsessed … far from the more sober general ideal of the Komsomol, some of whose members considered a femme appearance to be unrevolutionary (though others embraced, or at least tolerated, American fashions in dancing, music, and clothing). Fashion as a powerful force for personal expression and creativity, or a capitalist diversion from true female liberation? An open question …

One of Many is a fun look at Hollywood through the Soviet lens. As an intertitle asks: “HAVE YOU EVER SEEN ANYTHING LIKE IT?!.”

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Одна из Многих [Odna iz Mnogikh]. Dir. Nikolai Khodatayev. Moscow: Mezhrabpom-Rus, 1927.

On this day in 1893, the women of New Zealand voted in a general election for the first time. New Zealand was the first self-governing nation in the world to grant universal suffrage, following the tireless campaigning of activists such as Kate Sheppard, generally considered the figurehead of the suffrage movement in New Zealand. After an unsuccessful similar attempt in 1891, the 1893 Suffrage Petition was signed by close to a quarter of the adult female population of New Zealand and led to the Electoral Act 1893, enshrining female voting rights into law.

While on holiday earlier this year, I was very happy to pick up a copy of the 2010 edition of Cineteca di Bologna’s Cento Anni Fa (One hundred years ago) series: Comic Actresses and Suffragettes 1910-1914.  Today, then, is a good date to visit the suffragettes portion of the release: included are two comedy shorts and a range of actuality footage of suffragettes. It’s a fascinating, if frustrating, look at perceptions of the women’s rights movement in the early twentieth century.

Les Femme Députées | Women in Parliament (FR 1912)

First up is the Lux short Les Femmes Députées. Mmes Dupont and Dubois are suffragettes who spend their time canvassing the streets and speechifying, winning the minds of women and agitating for political rights.

There is another concern, though, which is the fact that the two ladies are neglecting their rightful place in society by not being home to cook for their men! This is a problem because they are married to dunces who lack the brain power to carry out simple everyday tasks, such as washing the dishes.

Oh, the humanity!

Luckily, the ladies don’t let the intense struggles of their menfolk interfere with their larger goal of ensuring political equality for women. Women in the street flock to them and their message. Who cares about ads for laundry soap when you could listen to a reality check about misogynistic oppression in society?!

The suffragettes also get together indoors to discuss the issues involved in tackling their lack of political representation.

And the husbands hang out in the park with their babies, wearing nursemaid sashes on their top hats. Awww, that’s nice. THE END.

Oh wait, there are several minutes of the film left. The suffragette meeting devolves into a slap-fight. Women: always with the bitchiness and infighting! Except when they’re naturally nurturing, or seductive harpies, or frigid ice queens. It’s hard to know which stereotype to adhere to sometimes. Anyway, the scene leads to Mme Dubois tending her resignation. She returns home to her uproaringly laughing husband and her baby, renouncing the suffragette cause.

‘Fun’ fact: French women did not gain the right to vote until 1944.

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The Pickpocket (US 1913)

The Pickpocket is a ‘Bunnyfinch’ comedy, starring the rotund John Bunny and the lean Flora Finch, who made a huge number of shorts together. Finch is involved in the suffragette movement, spending time at a suffragette club where she lectures to an eager audience.

“Where has my suffragette gotten to?” wonders Bunny. He is at home, where due to the absence of his wife at dinnertime, things are pretty wretched for him. For example, he must deal with difficult trials such as making himself a sandwich (a task that he does poorly) … and … drinking directly from a bottle! The cheek of women, honestly, making him undergo such horrors. What is the world coming to. Cats and dogs, living together … mass hysteria!

Dreaming of better times.

But Bunny has a plan to get out of the living hell in which he has found himself. He organizes a ruse whereby he gives his wife a false/stolen ticket to the theatre. Ha! Then she’ll get arrested and that’ll show her! And he and his assistant/secretary cackle like Bond villains.

So when Finch goes to the theatre, she is detained by the police. John Bunny’s moon face watches with glee through a convenient porthole as she protests angrily.

Can you imagine anything more comedic than having your wife arrested.

It gets worse. Not content just to watch his trap be sprung and see her proclaim her innocence, he actually tells the police to keep her under lockdown.

“That’s my wife. Lock her up, we’ll free her after the show.”

“She is a suffragette.”

Once he explains that she is a suffragette, the policeman is of course fine with going along with Bunny’s plan. Meanwhile, his poor wife is quite understandably distressed, angry and frightened at being locked up.

She marches out of the cell with furious righteousness, but when she rings her husband (he’s drinking and smoking cigars and having a laugh with his friends at a bar), he tells her that he’ll only have her set free if she promises to leave the suffragette club.

“I hereby resign from the suffragette club. I am convinced a woman’s rightful place is at home.”

Raaaage. Here is a Kriemhild GIF if you need it. In my mind, there is a lost ending to this film where Finch offed him out of sheer fury. Surely no jury would convict her.

Oh, and earlier in the film there was this gem regarding women and their insistence on having thoughts and opinions:

“Speech is silver; silence gold.”

Women should be seen and not heard and their feeble female brains certainly can’t be trusted with trifles like independence or voting rights. Worst. WORST.

‘Fun’ fact: while several states enfranchised women in the 19th century, universal suffrage in the United States occurred only in 1920, with the ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment.

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Let’s have some footage of actual suffragettes as a palate cleanser:

Suffragette Demonstration through London, 19 June 1910 (Pathé, FR 1910)

Emmeline Pankhurst banners! Yeah!

Mrs Pankhurst, Founder. Champion of Womanhood, Famed for deeds of Daring Rectitude

Note the ‘Votes for women’ sashes worn by many of the suffragettes. Edited to add: Mark Fuller informs me that the arrowheads carried by the women marching are the ‘broad arrow’ symbol used for convicts’ uniforms between the 1870s and 1922 in the UK. The women carrying them are ex-prisoners who had been imprisoned for their political beliefs.

‘Fun’ fact: limited voting rights were extended to the women of the United Kingdom in 1918; universal suffrage took another decade.

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Suffragette: Emmeline Pankhurst (Gaumont, FR 1921)

A close-up of the great woman, Emmeline Pankhurst née Goulden (1858 – 1928).

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This was a bit a depressing post to write, honestly – these two comedies, like other similar films I’ve seen, really brought home to me the negative popular perception of suffragettes in the teens. But there was a lot of support too, as we see from the marches, the protests; even in the fictional films, where many women take part in the women’s movement (even though they are ultimately punished for doing so). The suffrage movement had flaws, certainly, but let’s take a moment to remember the suffragettes who quite literally fought and sometimes died for the right to female political expression, respect, and independence. They are why I have and always will consider voting a feminist act as well as a democratic one.

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Les Femmes Députées [Women in Parliament]. France: Lux, 1912. Courtesy Lobster Films.

The Pickpocket. Dir. George D. Baker. United States: Vitagraph, 1913. Courtesy EYE Film Instituut Nederland.

Suffragette Demonstration through London, 19 June 1910. France: Pathé, 1910. Courtesy BFI National Archive.

Suffragette: Emmeline Pankhurst. France: Gaumont, 1921. Courtesy Gaumont-Pathé Archives.

All films available on the DVD set Cento anni fa: Attrici comiche e suffragette 1910-1914 | Comic Actresses and Suffragettes 1910-1914, available from Cineteca di Bologna.

Before Morrissey, before Morris Day … there was another: the original Moz. And that Moz is Ivan Mosjoukine, né Мозжухин (Mozzhukhin) … Vanya to his friends.

This man. This man.

He has been seen before on this blog, but only briefly and not in his full glory. A massive star in both pre-Revolutionary Russia and as an émigré in 1920s France, Mosjoukine is not nearly so well-known as he deserves; I assume this is due to him never really cracking the Anglophone market. Yet he is a great actor, possessed of a wonderful, beaky, distinctive face, and a truly charismatic screen presence. Furthermore, as Le Brasier ardent (his only solo directorial credit) proves, the Moz had a quirky, visually inventive sensibility. It failed to strike a chord with contemporary audiences – though appreciated by critics, the film was a box-office failure – but luckily today we can appreciate his strange and wonderful vision.

 Heaven of the fleeced … “Find All” Agency … Thieves’ hell

The Cinémathèque Française gives the following synopsis of the film: In a dream, a young woman sees an unknown man throw her into a crucible. Her husband hires a detective to determine the origin of this nightmare. I’m not sure if that’s how I’d characterize the plot, but it’s this extended nightmare sequence that opens Le Brasier Ardent.

   

Mosjoukine, Natalie Lissenko, demonic happenings … is this the lost ending to Сатана ликующий | Satan Triumphant (RU 1917)?

Fire, brimstone, and Natalie Lissenko being pulled by the hair. Now she is being pursued by the same man, this time besuited:

In a third scene, the man is a Putin-esque priest from whom she is receiving penance.

Almost ten minutes of the film elapse before the woman character (identified only as Elle – she) wakes, amused and startled at the dream she has had after falling asleep reading Through the Human Jungle, the memoirs of the famous detective Z.

As we see from the book, Z is a man of much intrigue and many disguises.

A wandering preacher …

An abbot …

Infiltrating the underworld.

Elle is kept in comfort by her rich industrialist husband (‘Le mari’), who adores her, and for whom she feels a great deal of affection, even if she isn’t in love with him.

It’s Nicolas Koline! Aww.

So we have the basic setup: a mysterious detective, a distracted wife, and a concerned husband, mixed together with a few doses of surrealism. But the plot doesn’t proceed as you would think – it’s full of intriguing ellipses and diversions. Detectives are not what they seem; a woman is in love, but not with another man; Elle goes missing, but is found again soon; a marriage licence is stolen, then recovered. All of this is delivered with a lot of flair: sets are striking and often larger than life, reinforcing the outsize nature of the plot. Even regular scenes will have odd touches, such as the futuristic gadgetry in Elle’s bedroom.

The standout scene, a true set piece, is the one in which Le mari happens upon the ‘Club des Chercheurs’ (Seekers Club). He knocks upon a door, only to find himself being flipped into a hallway guarded by black-clad men.

At the top of the spinning staircase, a radiating series of hallways, each doorway containing different disembodied body parts.

Le mari is nonplussed by the concierge, asking him “what’s this about ‘seekers’? Where am I, anyway?” He is directed to the room titled Return of Missing Wives, filled with a semicircle of detectives from which Le mari must make a selection.

Return of missing spouses. Success guaranteed! No down payment!

Again, there are strange moving sets and gadgets, and the detectives themselves are distinctly odd. Or are they? After Le mari makes his choice, their disguises too are revealed to be all part of the game.

It’s an absolutely fantastic sequence. Le Brasier ardent settles down into a more conventional story thereafter, but the first act is among my favourite in film.

Apart from having fingerprints all over the scenario and direction, Mosjoukine excels as Z le détective. As Richard Abel writes, the role seems crafted to showcase his acting range:

His penchant for eccentric fantasy and comedy made him a Protean master of disguise, a synthesis of character types … In the rest of the film, he shifts among a series of contradictory personae – a brilliant detective, a silly buffoon, a cruel dancing master, a shy lover, and a mama’s boy.

As mentioned above, the other leads are played by Nicolas Koline (Le mari), an actor I find very charming, and Natalie Lissenko (Elle), Mosjoukine’s frequent collaborator, and for a time, real-life partner. I go back and forth on Lissenko, but what is certain is that she and the Moz play off each other very nicely.

Another scene worth mentioning is that of the ‘dance marathon’, in which, egged on by Elle, Z’s frenetic piano playing drives the dancers to the point of collapse. Another echo to a very similar scene in Сатана ликующий | Satan Triumphant (RU 1917), though this time with more humour.

Most of the visual intrigue of the film comes from graphic elements – clever sets and staging. However, Mosjoukine’s use of negative footage to introduce a flashback stood out to me as an unusual cinematic device – I can’t think of other films from this era (or indeed later times) where I’ve seen that.

There are also some shots that are simply beautiful, such as this Loïe Fuller-esque moment from the dream sequence.

Likewise, I always appreciate a good double exposure, such as in this shot of Lissenko (adorned with the kind of crown-like fan of hair that always reminds me of Asta Nielsen’s headdress in Die freudlose Gasse).

I’ve praised Le Brasier ardent a lot in this review. It’s not a perfect film, of course; the pacing is a bit erratic, f0r one thing. But I do think it is something special, and at its best, it really is spectacular. I would certainly consider it one of my silent films of the year.

Incidentally, Le Brasier ardent is on the record as inspiring a young Jean Renoir to get into films: “I was delighted. Finally, I had a good French film before my eyes. [..] I decided to give up my trade, ceramics, and try to make films”. (Early results were, uh, mixed).

A unique and beautiful film. Here, have one last parting shot of Mosjoukine, réalisateur, actor, and possessor of flawless eyebrows.

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Le Brasier ardent [The Burning Crucible]. Dir. Ivan Mosjoukine. Montreuil, France: Films Albatros, 1923. Available on this DVD set from Flicker Alley, which any fan of silent film should own. Tantalisingly, Flicker Alley are also strongly rumoured to be preparing a release of the Mosjoukine/Albatros serial La Maison de mystère (FR 1922). Update: On Facebook FA told me that it’s in preparation, with a tentative release date of Spring (March thru June) 2015.

Diva films are a genre that I’ve been wanting to talk about on this site for some time. Many cinematic actresses could be called divas, undoubtedly, but it’s a specific film type that the term diva film is generally used to represlent: the female-led melodramas of Italy in the 1910s (and to some extent, the 1920s) – one of my favourite facets of the rich history of the silent era.

  

  

The beautiful painted rendition of Lyda Borelli that opens the Ma l’amor mio non muore DVD.

I was instantly drawn to these films when I learned about them, probably from Peter Delpeut’s compilation-film tribute Diva Dolorosa (NL  1999). What may be vices to some are virtues to me: I love the often operatic nature of the acting, the fanciful and sometimes bizarre costuming, the sensational plots. And most importantly for me, woman are placed at the centre of the storyline: the divas are front and centre, entrusted and chosen to carry the film.

These are not unheralded feminist works, by any means: the diva is usually more mater dolorosa than independent woman (or even femme fatale or vamp). But there is something special about these films: the woman at the eye of the storm, the outsized emotion, the expressiveness of body, clothing, and décor.  Mariann Lewinsky may have put it best in the liner notes of the Sangue Bleu DVD: “It is a wonderful genre: the films are as gorgeous as birds of paradise, with plots that have no use whatsoever for probability.” Although the diva’s character can cross social classes, the films generally focus on high society or aspirational settings – even situations of ruin or poverty, and the diva’s lives are frequently menaced by a variety of hazards – are pervaded with a certain sense of glamour.

Francesca Bertini in Diana, L’Affascinatrice (IT 1915)

It was the flowering of something different, enabled by the rise of film as a mass medium, the modern social context, the increasing urbanization of life. As Michele Canosa puts it (again in the Sangue Bleu DVD liner notes), “A diva does not arise from the sea foam, but is shot out of the bustling metropolis.” She continues:

The concept was new to the screen: a thorny drama – modern – feature length – with a female star. [..] Now the costumes and circus of ancient Rome competed with modern settings, fine tailoring, and toilettes à la page. This high-society version of a “Made in Italy” genre became better known by the term, which later became antiquated, cinema in frac (tux films) – “in heels and tuxes”.

Yet as argued by Angela Dalle Vacche, these films were not just empty spectacles: they also had social relevance, tackling issues such as divorce, shame, abandonment, illegitimate childbearing – important in a strongly Catholic country that trailed other Western European nations in women’s rights issues. In her words, “Thanks to its social awareness, cinema strengthened its bond with female audiences to an outstanding degree”.  Interestingly, it seems the popularity of the genre is connected to the very language used for film in Italian: according to Dalle Vacche, it was with the emergence of the diva film that the linguistic shift from il cinematografo to a feminine noun (la film; la pellicola) occurred.

Who were the divas?

In the WWI era – the heyday of the Italian film diva – Lyda Borelli, Pina Menichelli, and Francesca Bertini were the most famous Italian actresses to grace the screen: all beautiful and talented, each bringing something different to the cinema.

Lyda Borelli in Carnavalesca (IT 1918)

Although not the first of the three women to get into films, Lyda Borelli is generally considered to be the first film diva, and continues to be marketed as such (e.g., Lyda prima diva! by the Cineteca di Bologna). Borelli was a well-established stage actress who launched her film career in 1913 with Ma l’amor mio non muore! | Love Everlasting (lit. But my love will never die!) Being of the stage, Borelli’s cinematic acting was very influenced by theatrical conventions. She acts with a unique, flowing, decadent style which gave rise to the verb borelleggiare (i.e. “to Borelli-ize” or imitate Borelli): the 1917 edition of the Dizionario Moderno explains the term as “Young women fussing and moping around, in the manner of the beautiful Lyda Borelli’s gratuitous and aestheticizing poses”.  It is an acting style that is out of fashion now, perceived as dated and perhaps overdetermined (although very appealing to me!), based on poses and dancelike movements based on painterly figures. But it was much, if not universally, appreciated at the time. Francesco Pitassio quotes an anonymous reviewer of the early 1910s:

Lyda Borelli is the actress who epitomizes grace and elegance; her movements on the scene, which appear to have been forged by an artist expert in decorations and plastic effects, […] the flexible body of the diva Lyda is something evanescent and dream-like.

Ma l’amor mio non muore is essential viewing, as is one of my favourites, Rapsodia Satanica (IT 1915/17); Malombra (IT 1917) is great fun and has a rather gothic theme, unusual for the genre. Like all of the divas, there is little available on DVD, but digital copies for several of her films are out there.

Francesca Bertini is perhaps the diva actress with the most range: she took on a wider variety of roles than Borelli and Menichelli, and is generally (and rightfully) credited with a more realistic acting style. Due to their different acting styles as well as their professional rivalry, Bertini has often been contrasted with Borelli. As Pitassio writes, her style is characterised by a more naturalistic and economic approach, something that was admired by contemporary critics. In 1914, a critic wrote:

Francesca Bertini does not pursue and unrealistic ideal through an artificial deployment of poses; instead she conveys reality through spontaneous facial expressions and natural gestures. […] She is not a model who strikes a sculpture-like pose, she is, rather, a woman of the real world.

Francesca Bertini in Assunta Spina (IT 1915)

Bertini took a very active role in her career, shaping her image and choosing her roles carefully, as well as founding her own production company, Bertini-Film. Her breakout role was Sangue Bleu | The Princess of Monte Cabello (IT 1914), released on DVD this year as part of Cineteca di Bologna’s Cento anni fa (one hundred years ago) series; the great Assunta Spina (IT 1915) was another key success.  One of her early films, Histoire d’un pierrot (IT 1913), is one that I really hope to see in future; in this film Bertini was the first Italian film actress to play a role in male clothing. It also reportedly contains a lesbian subtext. (A copy is preserved at the Library of Congress and some months ago I enquired about a digital access copy, but the fee was rather beyond my budget, sadly …)

Pina Menichelli in Tigre Reale (IT 1916)

This brings us to Pina Menichelli, my personal favourite of the big three. Possessed of a striking face and a charismatic sensuality, I find her to be a fascinating screen presence. She doesn’t have such an easy characterisation as Borelli or Bertini, but Dalle Vacche describes her as the most defiant of the divas, which seems fitting – not quite mischievous, but less regal than Borelli. Starting out with Cines, it was her move to Itala that led to her breakout, with the film Il fuoco | The Flame (IT 1915), directed by the venerable Giovanni Pastrone. This is my favourite diva film – the reigning champion. It is my fervent wish that it will be next year’s Cento anni fa release. Il fuoco is not typical of the diva genre in some ways … but that’s a topic for a future review. Other key Pina films include Tigre Reale (IT 1916) and La Storia di Una Donna | The Story of a Woman (IT 1920).

The list of second-tier divas usually includes women such as Maria Jacobini, Leda Gys, Italia Almirante Manzini (middle picture above; regular readers will remember that I enjoyed greatly in La Statua di Carne at Pordenone), Elena Sangro. Though not really a film diva, Carmen Boni is an Italian actress of the 1920s that, from descriptions, I would be very interested to see the work of.

Writing about divas

 The main person to have written about diva films is scholar Angela Dalle Vacche, who has published the book Diva: Defiance and Passion in Early Italian Cinema (2008) as well as a series of papers on the topic.  Unfortunately, I can’t wholeheartedly recommend her writing.  Certainly she has done a huge amount of good research, but I find her analysis sometimes unconvincing, and her writing features some strange non sequiturs. To my mind she overextends some metaphors and concepts beyond usefulness – more poetic in nature than a workable theoretical construct.  However, I am grateful to her for raising the lid on this genre, and by publishing information unavailable elsewhere.

This post has been in the works for some time, but I’ve found it difficult to express my thoughts on the diva film. After all, they are often rather formulaic, and undistinguished cinematographically – rather static camerawork is the general rule. The plots are pretty silly, and I’ll probably make fun of them in future reviews – but only from a place of true affection. In the end, what attracts me to the diva film is the central figure of the diva herself – her phenomenal screen presence and movement, her dresses, her struggles, triumphs and sufferings. The figure of the excessive woman, writ large in film in 1910s Italy.

Throughout the rest of the month, I’ll tackle several of these films. Stay tuned for ‘Diva December’.

Pina Menichelli in La Moglie di Claudio (IT 1918)

Lyda prima diva! What better place to begin Diva December than the film that started it all: Ma l’amor mio non muore! | Love Everlasting (IT 1913), starring the inimitable Lyda Borelli.

Ma l’amor mio tells the story of Elsa Holbein, the daughter of a Colonel in service to the Grand Duke of Wallenstein. At the opening of the film, she and her father are living in comfort, receiving guests in their grand home. Enter Moise Sthar: spy!

The secret agent works his charms. 

He steals military documents from the Colonel, and in despair over the resulting accusation of treason, the Colonel shoots himself. Also disgraced, Elsa is exiled to Switzerland. It is unclear to me whether they thought she too was culpable in the theft, or whether she was simply tainted by association. One thing is sure: the diva’s trials have begun, and the stage is set for drama.

One of the lavish, expansive interior sets.

This all takes place over the first couple of acts of the film, which are relatively slow – this section is generally told in lengthy shots where the action is staged in deep space. It’s skilfully done, and the sets are lovely, but on the whole the setup drags a bit. This part of the story is drawn out more than necessary, in my opinion, but the filmmakers also make a more serious error: filling the screen with a large amount of actors who are not Lyda Borelli. Luckily, the filmmakers seem to have realized this, and the camera thereafter consistently finds its rightful view: the dramatic grace of la divina Lyda.

Lyda Borelli as painted by Cesare Tallone, 1911.

In my introductory diva post I talked about how Borelli’s acting was based on a series of plastic poses and dance-like mannerisms; more in line with opera performance than what we now consider the aim of screen acting, but quite marvellous when taken on its own terms. Lyda is always in motion; arms stretching and compressing, head tilting to the perfect noble angle. It’s with Col. Holbein’s death that we get her first scene of high emotion:

Perhaps slightly overcooked, and yet effective, distinctive. In Switzerland, Elsa christens herself Diana Cadouleur (symbolic naming alert: douleur being French for ‘pain’) and reinvents herself as a singer and actor. We see her on stage, performing Zazà and Salome. These roles are deliberate recreations of Borelli’s most prominent real-life stage successes, and one wonders if it was at her behest or the screenwriters that they were chosen.

It’s in her new locale that she meets Maximilian; already caught by her stage performances, love blossoms between the two when he comes upon her playing the piano in a church. Alas, the course of true love never runs smooth; he hopes for her to give up the theatre. He’s a brooder, that Maximilian:

“My girlfriend is successful and that threatens me.”

As it turns out, there is a (somewhat) valid reason for his concern: he is in fact Prince Maximilian, heir to the duchy from whose society she has been cast out (unbeknownst to him). When she finds out his identity, she decides to leave him; composes a letter, heartbroken. But the two will meet again. In one of the more interestingly framed shots in Ma l’amor mio, Maximilian watches Diana perform, as if on a screen.

But it is too late for Maximilian and Elsa/Diana; too late for Elsa at all. Enacting a death scene on stage, Maximilian gradually realizes that it is no performance; he rushes onstage where, in his arms, she collapses. (I don’t recall it being shown explicitly, but it is clear that she has taken poison – another Evlaliya Kadmina situation). Her last words before expiring: “But my love will never die!”

And then comes a moment of unintentional comedy that I can’t believe they didn’t retake. I’m sure it was meant to be a dramatic cascade, but what happens is this: Maximilian, visibly perturbed and struggling with the sudden dead weight of Lyda, just drops her. Lyda falls on to the chaise longue, fanning out her arms as her head bounces off the ground.

 I didn’t capture the head bounce, but you can imagine it.

A more fitting ending is provided by this oval vignetted shot.

Doomed perfection, love everlasting.

Corporeal movement in space

As with all diva films, large part of the enjoyment of Ma l’amor mio simply comes from watching Lyda. As Ivo Blom writes,

Borelli appears as one of the first actresses to understand the importance of the effect of the body and the face on the screen. She knew how to show her long delicate fingers, her marble-like shoulders, her long neck twisted towards the spectator in a Mannerist fashion, her Beardsley-like profile, her forehead lifted proudly while her eyes were half-closed with melancholy. […] Her artificial language of gestures and poses, like the hand under the chin for the melancholy pose or at the forehead expressing thought or despair, became one of the ingredients of a style in acting named after her, Borellismo.

The scene where Lyda reads the letter dropped by the Prince and realizes his true identity is a masterclass in Borellismo:

The diva always insists on her own physicality, commands the eye. Interestingly, even American adverts also made special mention of Lyda’s poses.

The Motion Picture News, 24 Jan 2014.

The diva and the mirror

Mirrors recur often in diva films, as they do cinema in general. It is a well-worn motif in the visual arts: the mirror distances and objectifies, but also reveals truth, and is often connected to the sin of vanitas (vanity). The mirror can imply a surplus or excess of self, different identities, an internal conflict. And of course, from an aesthetic point of view appealing compositions or effects can be obtained. In short, mirrors can function as an expressive and functional device in a number of ways.

It’s already notable from the shots above what a prominent role Lyda/Elsa/Diana’s triptych mirror plays in the film. Kisses and gestures are echoed in it, actions are revealed, and Lyda and her beauty multiply, inviting the audience to consider Borelli the diva, Elsa the exile, Diana the actress. In early scenes, the mirror is used cleverly to put Lyda in centre stage while revealing her suite of admirers approaching. Likewise, before her final performance, it’s through the mirror that Lyda initially perceives Maximilian’s entrance.

Indeed, one could almost consider the mirror to be the main co-star of Ma l’amor mio non muore.

The diva essentials

I spent some time pondering how to write about diva films. Normal rubrics don’t necessarily apply; what are the essential elements by which one could evaluate films of this kind? Besides those already discussed, here are some other parameters essential to the success of a diva film.

Copious costume changes. I counted 13, or roughly one outfit per six minutes. Here are the most important ones:

Hats that border on the avant-garde:

A necklace of especially long length:

A dramatic scene involving flowers:

Other notable moments:

• An intertitle tells us that Diana is sad and lonely; cut to a shot of her surrounded by a bevy of admirers, apparently enjoying herself.
• The resemblance between Colonel Holbein and Slovenian theorist/provocateur Slavoj Žižek.
• A lengthy shot of Lyda arriving at and ascending the stairs to a castle is completely distracted by a horse that keeps twitching its tail in the foreground. This shot is then repeated when the Prince follows her. At one point the horse even looks around as if to say, “who, me?”
• Multiple male actors sport conspicuously fake beards and sideburns; presumably the costume budget was already used up on Lyda’s dresses.
• The breeze of Italy is clearly, charmingly visible in the indoor sets.

Ma l’amor mio non muore abroad

Moving Picture World, 31 Oct 1914.

According to Angela Dalle Vacche in her chapter in Italian Silent Cinema: A Reader, diva-films sold well abroad – she cites Latin America, Russia, Japan, the Balkans, Egypt and Spain as export markets. I have seen advertisements for diva films in American trade journals, but not much about their reception stateside; the acting styles and slower editing may have been less appealing to the American public than the homegrown product, particularly given the import time-lag. Therefore, whether Ma l’amor mio made a splash with the people of Illinois, Iowa, Wisconsin, Michigan, Ohio and Indiana is an open question.

However, I did find a review in the 24 January 1914 edition of The Motion Picture News, which singled out the luxurious Europeanism of the sets as a key attraction. They also noted the shot below: “The two generals sit at a table plotting, with the light falling across their faces creating a very weird effect.”

It is somewhat strange given that the same scene of the generals is also shown in long shot under normal indoor lighting conditions, but indeed it’s striking.

Also, in the American/English language edition, the spy is called Leslie Swayne, and Lyda’s stage name is Marjorie Manners.

But is it any good?

After the slow start, I really enjoyed it; Lyda is just fabulous. As a diva film, it is, of course, a foretelling of what was to come rather than a fulfilment of it; but even right off the bat, many of the essential elements of the diva film are in place. However, this is a question that can perhaps be best addressed by quoting the typically florid Mariann Lewinsky in the DVD booklet:

Almost all cultural products (of every type, from opera to cooking) can be placed on a scale of values. Halfway on the scale are the medium works, above the diamond-studded tiara of masterpieces, below the pit of rubbish.

For a few works, however, a classification is impossible. They are exceptions, unique, unclassifiable. They are often lacking in the perfection of masterpieces, but they develop the strength of overwhelming events.  […]

Love Everlasting is considered to be a diva film. We can also look at it as a documentary on how the actress Borelli, on her first attempt, knew how to use the cinema and the camera to explore her own expressive art to the limit, in an experimental way. A documentary that comes to us from a past where the words art and actress rang with major significance.

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Ma l’amor mio non muore! [Love Everlasting]. Dir. Mario Caserini. Turin, Italy: Gloria-Film, 1913. Available on DVD from the Cineteca di Bologna.

Lyda Borelli is the star of this update of the Faust legend. La diva Lyda plays Contessa Alba d’Oltrevita, who at the beginning of the picture is an elderly woman, looking on jealously at the youthful beauty that surrounds her. When Mephisto appears with a bargain for her – her youth and good looks restored, with the proviso that she cannot fall in love – it takes little for her to be persuaded.

Mephisto takes her by surprise, but she agrees to the bargain, and throws down his hourglass to seal the deal.

Alba preening, delighted at the return of her beauty.

She heads to the local festival, full of flowers, people, dancing, and music; men flock to her.

It’s there that she meets brothers Sergio and Tristano. It’s Tristano she likes, but Sergio falls for her, quickly and hard; she simply scoffs at him, too busy enjoying herself. There is a letter: “I’ll wait for you under your window. If I don’t see you before midnight… I will die in front of your house.” Tristano goes to her and entreaties her to stop Sergio, but she is too caught up in herself and in Tristano: Sergio shoots himself.

From there to a series of scenes where we watch Lyda thinking, hoping, and dreaming in the dance-like mannerisms so particular to her. Clothing plays a large role: Borelli continually uses it to emphasizes the movement of her body, dressed throughout the film in the Fortuny and Poiret gowns that she favoured, replete with floating silk wraps and draped veils: very reminiscent of the Loïe Fuller’s famous serpentine dance.

Watching the visual richness of the costuming and staging in Rapsodia Satanica (not to mention the striking and lavish the use of colour) brings to mind Tom Gunning’s influential model of the ‘cinema of attractions': the idea that early cinema was more about aesthetic impressions, spectacle, and visual attractions than telling a coherent story. As a corollary, the framework for making, understanding, and receiving these films was different than what we expect now, after many decades of narrative-driven cinema. Gunning was talking about an earlier period than that of Rapsodia Satanica, but then again, narrative cinema, and all its hallmarks that we take for granted today (goals, structures, editing techniques) was still being refined and institutionalized in the teens. And as he writes, “the cinema of attractions does not disappear with the dominance of narrative, but rather goes underground, both into certain avant-garde practices and as a component of narrative films.” Consider Busby Berkeley’s kaleidoscopic dance sequences, Len Lye’s painted films, the Broadway Ballet sequence in Singin’ in the Rain (1952) … even the requisite explosions in your typical Hollywood blockbuster are as much (or more) about spectacle than storytelling. So for me, it’s a useful concept – and an applicable one to the visual feast of Rapsodia Satanica, a film which carefully avoids any hint of realism. The way to watch films like this is to enjoy them for what they are – in this case, a strange phantasmagoria from the past. Otherwise, you will end up disappointed like IMDb reviewer Michael Koltan, whose review proves that one person’s trash is another’s treasure.

Rapsodia Satanica is one of the heights of Italian aestheticism. It exists in a dreamlike world of melodrama, fueled by the dramatism and lyricism of Lyda Borelli’s acting. The director, Nino Oxilia, died young in WWI. One of the key diva directors of the mid-teens, one must regret that we do not know what he would have gone on to do. And special mention must be given to the incredible beauty of the film’s colours: it is tinted and toned throughout, also featuring stencil colouring in many scenes.

A reminder of the ephemerality of beauty …

And the ending? Well, the devil must have his due …

Advertising

Moving Picture World, 25 July 1914.

Advertising for the film makes mention of Pietro Mascagni score, which fits beautifully with the film. On the copy of Rapsodia Satanica that I have, it is performed by the Staatsphilharmonie Rheinland-Pfalz.

The diva essentials

Let’s have a look at the diva-riffic properties of Rapsodia Satanica.

Copious costume changes. Eleven by my count, or one outfit per four minutes, and they’re all stunners. A great deal of sheer silk is involved.

An incredible headdress.

Symbolic naming. Alba d’Oltrevita, lit. ‘Dawn over life’.

Mirrors! So many of them. Lady Alba looking into a hand mirror as an old woman, and then after she becomes youthful. Lyda admiring her reflection in a fountain. Distress as she sees a wrinkle on her face. Alba as she looks upon her reflection before veiling it … this reinforcement of themes such as beauty as artifice, doubled selves etc. is none too subtle.

Trials and tribulations. Being unconvincing old; faded beauty. Two brothers being in love with you, one of whom has read Romeo and Juliet a few too many times.

Incredible intertitles.

Alba has a confusing idea: the whole universe is love …

She veils her face, the priestess of love and death.

Unintentional comedy. Where will that Mephisto turn up next? Outside the window, behind a vase, busting a groove up a tree?

Dramatic piano playing.

A notable scene involving flowers. The whole film is filled with them; a festival of flowers, boats decorated with them, vases of blooms used as mise en scène. Then there is this classic exchange:

- “You love her …”     – “It’s not true.”    – “And the rose she gave you?”    – “I drown it.”

However, the big floral moment comes later in the film. “Bring me the most beautiful flowers of the garden,” Alba commands. And she proceeds to scatter them on the ground:

An iconic piece of Borellismo that was used in both Diva Dolorosa and Gustav Deutsch’s Film Ist.

Other notable moments:

• Mephisto makes a suitably dramatic entrance, emerging from a painting.
• At one point, Borelli holds a cat which is violently trying to squirm out of her grasp.
• The tinting, toning and stencil-colouring is just incredible throughout. (Yes, I mentioned this above, but it bears repeating!)

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Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, I rest my case. Rapsodia Satanica is a beautiful and stylish film and quite probably the diva film par excellence.

Just in case you were wavering, here is, again, the painted scene used by Cineteca di Bologna as an opening sequence on their last couple of DVD releases.

  

  

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Rapsodia Satanica [Satan’s Rhapsody]. Dir. Nino Oxilia. Roma, Italy: Cines, 1917. RS was filmed in 1915 but did not see release until 1917, so it has been attributed to both dates. I am greatly hoping that this will receive a DVD/BR release in the next years.

Postscript: Please admire the fact that I managed to resist the temptation of using the headline ‘The Lyda of the pack’.

With the release of Sangue Bleu in 1914, reviews were glowing: “This splendid masterpiece is transfused by all of Ms. Bertini’s soul as an incomparable artist.” Francesca Bertini was already launched as a film star, and as a major production, Sangue Bleu helped solidify her fame (which would climb to greater heights the next year with the success of Assunta Spina). From 1912 to 1914, the Roman studio Celio-Film produced 25 films starring Bertini; Giovanni Lasi writes that Bertini was the “crown jewel” of the production company, prior to her move to Cesar-Film.

Francesca Bertini as Mira van Monte Cabello; André Habay as Jacques Wilson.

As I discussed here, on the continuum of diva acting styles Bertini fell on the realist end, opposite to Lyda Borelli’s luscious posing. Indeed, one only has to compare this film to Rapsodia Satanica, also directed by Nino Oxilia, to see how the director adapted his talents to the different characters of the two stars. Of Bertini, Francesco Pitassio writes, “What characterized her style was a marked economy of bodily gestures and of movements within each scene, as well as a greater reliance on her gaze.” Indeed, Bertini has a directness that one does not find among the other divas of this period, and her films are grounded in real-life situations to a greater extent than Borelli or Menichelli.

In Sangue Bleu, Bertini plays Princess Mira van Monte Cabello (original Italian: Elena di Montvallon), “a woman who, for her noble feelings and blue blood, will not be degraded by degradation,” according to the copy from the back of the DVD. Though undoubtedly a melodrama with Bertini at the centre, Sangue Bleu is much more plot-driven than either of the Lyda Borelli films I’ve written about. As Mariann Lewinsky writes in the DVD booklet, Bertini plays a noblewoman and mother who is betrayed, misjudged, exploited, blackmailed, and humiliated. The film opens with some tension between Princess Mira and her husband; an intertitle informs us that ‘The relationship between the prince and the princess has been shaken recently by Mira’s jealousy.’ At a soirée hosted by the couple, Mira is snubbed by the Countess de la Croix, who pays a little too much attention to the Prince.

Seeing the duo’s interactions at the party, Mira’s jealousy grows, and with good reason – they certainly aren’t being discreet about the affair. Shortly after, Prince Egon asks her for a divorce: ‘Last night’s scene has convinced me that living together has become impossible. I propose that we seek a divorce by mutual consent.’ Unless there is missing footage of Mira and the Countess throwing down, surely the Prince and the Countess were the ones creating the scene … but with no other options, Mira agrees, as long as she keeps custody of her daughter Liane.

Pensive Mira, after the party; stunning use of light and shadow.

Mira performs a scene from Madame Butterfly for a charity benefit, directed by actor Jacques Wilson. Wilson finds out by telegram that his mother is ill, and he doesn’t know how to reach her; Mira offers to take him in her motorcar. However, this is all part of a plot of the Countess de la Croix, who has arranged for private detectives to follow them and take pictures.

The incriminating photo.

The pictures cause a scandal and ruin Mira’s reputation; they look innocuous to 21st century eyes, but one assumes that the suggestion of an affair (especially a cross-class one), or perhaps the simple act of spending time with a man unchaperoned was scandalous at the time – or at least in the world of the film. Mira loses custody of little Liane, who we had been told earlier was her only consolation in life.

A year later, Mira and Jacques are in Monte Carlo, where he has gambled away all of their money, even forcing her to sell her jewellery. She receives a letter from Liane, where the child tells her that the Countess is always angry with Liane, and that the child has been told that her mother is in heaven (!!) One wonders how/why Liane was posting the letter … but it’s even more tragedy for Mira, acted powerfully by Bertini. When Mira finds out that her daughter is in Cannes, she takes action to see her, but is overpowered by Jacques and the man to which he owes money; to meet his debts, he blackmails her and forces to dance in a music hall.

The ‘tango of death’ advertised on billboards, using an image of Bertini from L’Amazzone Mascherata.

Also spotted in Motion Picture News, 29 November 1913.

The performance is imminent; Mira writes a letter to the Prince, telling him that she will not compromise his name again, and imploring him to give her child the bracelet that Liane had previously given to her. And then, the dance. The tango scene was almost certainly inspired by Asta Nielsen’s gaucho dance in Afgrunden | The Abyss (DK 1910), a scene which has lost none of its erotic power 114 years later; Bertini herself admired Nielsen. Tango had recently been introduced to Italy, and was derided in the Catholic press as sinful and immoral; therefore, in the context of the times, the inclusion of a tango dance scene in Sangue Bleu can be seen as rather outré. Bertini smokes, insouciant in the manner of one who has nothing left to lose.

And the climax: Jacques rushes on stage with a knife; a scuffle ensues. In the words of Michele Canosa:

Mira leaves the make-believe scene behind, and stabs herself in the chest. That is what a lady is: sangue bleu. Here is what a diva is – an Italian one.

There is a coda to the story – Mira convalesces at the Prince’s home, her daughter running to her. The family hug tightly. ‘ Your child … Our child … She will not cry for her mother anymore.’

But is it any good?

I would say that it’s an above-average melodrama, elevated by the performance of Francesca Bertini, who sells the tragic scenes as much as the lighter ones. Sangue Bleu is distinguished by her acting and its wonderful mise en scène, lighting, and framing. Ever-changing costumes, detailed below, are a feast for the eye, and it’s a well composed film, made spectacular through its bright tints and tones.

One particularly memorable scene sees Mira walking along the seashore at dusk, pursued by Jacques and the money lender. The beauty of the shot lies in its simplicity and striking use of contrast, and here the gothic edge of diva films is also apparent.

Other notable moments:

• Mira, with pasted-on smile, to the Countess at the charity event: “Countess, it pleases me that you still keep busy making other people happy.” 
• Speaking of which, why was the Countess so unnecessarily cruel? She went to a lot of trouble to ruin Mira’s life even after Mira and the Prince were already divorced and the Countess was free to be with him.

The diva essentials

Let’s see how Sangue Bleu scores on the diva scale.

Copious costume changes. This is one category when Sangue Bleu really shines – I counted around 19, or one outfit per 3.7 minutes. Clothing plays a key role in setting mood; ensemble as plot device. Here are some of my favourites (click to view slideshow of larger images):

A special mention also to the woman on the right here.

Hats that border on the avant-garde. Another category in which Sangue Bleu cleans up the competition.

Special mention: in the Monte Carlo gambling scene, an extra is wearing an hat with two antennae topped with black pompoms.

Mirrors. Mirrors do not feature particularly in Sangue Bleu. However, it’s sitting at the mirror that Francesca Bertini acts her most painful scene, accepting that she won’t see her child again and writing the letter to the Prince, asking him to give her bracelet back to her daughter.

Symbolic naming. None in particular, but there’s something amusing about the name Jacques Wilson. Fun fact: cabello is Spanish for ‘hair’.

Trials and tribulations. Divorce; separation from your child; poverty; class differences and the conditions of social standing; chest wounds; evil French countesses and Franco-English actors.

The Countess brandishes the incriminating photo.

A dramatic scene involving flowers. Interestingly, the role of expressive foliage is played by bamboo in Sangue Bleu. Bamboo provides the backdrop to several key moments, such as one of the scenes between the Countess and the Prince that fuels Mira’s jealousy.

Mira spies on her husband and the Countess.

Later in the film, when Jacques Wilson and his goons go after Mira, after creeping after her on the beach, it’s in the bamboo that they ambush her.

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Restored and on DVD

Sangue Bleu was this year’s Cento anni fa (‘one hundred years ago’) release from the Cineteca di Bologna. The film survives in the legendary Desmet collection of EYE Film Instituut Nederland; an exhibition on this treasure trove, Jean Desmet’s Dream Factory, has just opened at the EYE cinémathèque building. (It goes without saying that I am incredibly sad to miss it!) The surviving copy was a tinted and toned 35mm nitrate print of 1308m, and the internegative created from that was the basis of this restoration/release. Since the original Italian version is lost, we cannot know if it differs from the Dutch release; the names of characters differ slightly.

As a bonus, the film includes the short comedy Kri Kri e il tango | Kri Kri and the Tango (IT 1913), starring Raymond Frau (pseudonym: Raymond Dandy). Along with André Deed (Cretinetti), Marcel Fabre (né Perez; Robinet), Ferdinando Guillaume (Tontolini, Polidor), Frau was one of the main actors working in comica, or the genre of Italian comedy shorts. Kri Kri e il tango is a madcap, slapstick take on the European tango craze of that era.

 Before the ball, Kri Kri practices the tango.

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Sangue Bleu [Blue Blood, a.k.a The Princess of Monte Cabello]. Dir. Nino Oxilia. Roma, Italy: Celio Film, 1914. Available on DVD from the Cineteca di Bologna.

L’Amazzone Mascherata sees Francesca Bertini in the role of Franca di Roberti, a woman who vows to clear the name of her husband after he is framed for treason. Here she is, appearing in the opening ‘credit sequence’ as both di Roberti and her alter-ego, the Masked Amazon:

After her husband is court-martialled and sent to jail, di Roberti figures out the identity of the one who framed him: Jean Stérosky, circus director and secret Silistrian spy, with whom Franca and her husband had previously organized a show. However, she lacks proof, so she decides to go undercover: “I’ll visit him in Silistria, but he won’t recognise me.” She joins a travelling circus and achieves fame as The Masked Amazon.

The Mask Amazon and her circus travel eventually to Silistria, where Stérosky is living the high life, attending soirées at which serpentine dancers perform.

Stérosky is eager to meet the famed, mysterious Masked Amazon. But she won’t remove her mask just yet …

But is it any good?

In my opinion, L’Amazzone Mascherata is a solid 1914 film. It’s not particularly innovative, but certainly not backward-looking stylistically; its main virtue, besides Bertini, is its well-structured and paced plot. All in all it’s a decent adventure film, refreshing for having a female protagonist who drives the action and saves the day.

L’Amazzone Mascherata is mostly told in medium and further shots; I would have loved a few good closeups of Bertini. Editing is rather standard, with a few nice choices; the transition between the Silistrian Loïe Fuller dancers and Franca looking pensive; a double-exposure in which di Roberti recalls Stérosky and his assistant (played by Leda Gys in blackface as a gypsy-type character); the cross-cutting to Lieutenant di Roberti in his cell as she thinks of him.

Franca realizes the truth … the vision of Stérosky and his accomplice.

That said, a couple of the main set pieces don’t really come off. The serpentine dance sequence is short and not particularly well staged, and the car and train chase shown in the poster above is not nearly as cool as the poster makes it look. It was obviously meant to be a major climactic scene, but it lacks much momentum or fizz, although we do get this nice overhead shot of the car:

What I enjoyed far more were the scenes where di Roberti vamps Stérosky in an attempt to gain the evidence to clear her husband’s name. Layers of clothes, veils, and masks, that she sheds as she gets progressively closer to her goal.

Also noteworthy: Bertini as Franca laying one on her husband. That’s a pretty bold kiss for a 1914 film!

The diva conditions

Really, L’Amazzone Mascherata is more of an adventure story than a diva film; Franca di Roberti spends much more time in plot-driven, self-motivated action than she does just lounging around. However, being a film starring La Bertini, many diva properties are still in effect.

Copious costume changes. I counted a solid eleven, maybe even a couple more. That’s one outfit per five minutes. Here’s a selection:

Hats that border on the avant-garde. Bertini is the mistress of striking hats, particularly the plumed variety.

A veiled diva.

Symbolic naming. Not symbolic per se, but there’s some obvious branding going on when Francesca Bertini plays a character named Franca de Roberti.

A notably long necklace. Bertini/de Roberti wears extremely long necklaces in several scenes, and bonus points should be awarded for the gown seen in the above screenshot (an the publicity still further down the page), where her dress is wearing the necklace.

Mirrors. In L’Amazzone Mascherata, the theme of double selves/identities is taken up by Bertini’s masks and veils. However, there is an interesting scene in which the Silistrian plotters are shown in a bar, a sharply tilted mirror in the background apparently reflecting them. It’s a nice idea, even if action within the scene shows that mirror is not actually catching them.

A dramatic scene involving flowers. The Masked Amazon has a room full of flowers sent by her admirers, but she can’t help but remember her wrongly jailed husband.

Men with strange and unusual hair. After the fake beards in Ma l’amor mio and Mephisto’s getup in Rapsodia Satanica, this is surely a category to be considered. This award for L’Amazzone Mascherata goes to the unique style of Stérosky. Not only does he have the kind of facial hair which makes it looks as though he’s wearing a bridle, he appears to have grown a moustache on top of his head.

Is he eating his sideburns?

A side note: in her book on the Italian divas, Angela dalle Vacche mentions Stérosky as an example of anti-Semitism in early Italian cinema. This makes me think that the original Italian intertitles for L’Amazzone Mascherata must differ considerably from the Dutch ones, because I didn’t see any indications in the film that Stérosky was meant to be a Jewish character.

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Bertini and L’Amazzone Mascherata in America: The Woman Who Dared

The Moving Picture World, 20 March 1915

L’Amazzone Mascherata was released in America in March 1915 under the title The Woman Who Dared.  The IMDb page states that the Italian title for the latter is undetermined, but they are certainly one and the same – reviews and adverts in the trade press and fan magazines describe the plot in detail and feature stills from the film. In this era Bertini’s films were distributed in the US by George Kleine, who promoted The Woman Who Dared as “a story founded more on wit than violence.” A review in the 5 September 1914 edition of Motography states that Frances [sic] Bertini “has seldom been seen to better advantage”, succeeding at “heavy emotional acting under the most trying circumstances”. The reviewer also praises the photography, attractive settings, and well-structured plot. James S. McQuade of The Moving Picture World (20 March 1915) also reviewed the film positively:

I was deeply impressed and all the time much pleased when viewing two private presentations of “The Woman Who Dared”. [..] The story has a powerful grip, and is so well constructed that interest never wanes until the final fade-out. The production is marked by fine acting, costuming, settings and photography. [..] The acting of Francesca Bertini is always admirable.

The Moving Picture World, 20 March 1915

Less positive was the review in Variety (15 March 1915), which summed it up as “the usual foreign production” and noted that a number of people walked out before the end of the screening. While Bertini’s work was praised, the reviewer wrote:

The male members have not all been well selected. Some are decidedly unpleasant looking individuals. The man playing Ivanhoff [i.e., Stérosky] has a comedy makeup good for a number of laughs. The moustache looking affair at the top of his head looks ridiculous.

I can’t disagree with that. (Incidentally, this review comes directly after one for A Fool There Was). Also of note: in the US edition, names were changed: Countess Bertrand rather than Franca de Roberti, Alexander Ivanhoff rather than Jean Stérosky. Full points for keeping the theme of Bertini’s name across the languages.

Francesca Bertini was known to American audiences from several films: the highly-thought-of L’histoire d’un Pierrot (IT 1913), released in the US as Pierrot the Prodigal; Venomous Tongues (Il veleno delle parole, IT 1913); The Song of the Soul (La canzone di Werner, IT 1914); and Rameses, King of Egypt (La rosa di Tebe, IT 1912). From what I can tell, it does not seem that Sangue Bleu was released in America; and interestingly, the publicity still of Bertini in the black dress with attached necklace from L’Amazzone Mascherata does not seem to have been used in connection to The Woman Who Dared.

Courtesy of EYE Film Instituut on the EFG.

And another quotation from McQuade, bolstering my wish to see L’histoire d’un pierrot: “a characterization as delicately and gracefully poised as a butterfly on the petal of a flower. [..] I shall always admire Signorina Bertini for the apparent ease with which she simulates the varied whims and passions of human life. And her depictions are not confined to types of her own sex; for Pierrot was a man, and a very complex type of man at that.”

Interestingly, an American film called The Woman Who Dared, starring Beatriz Michelena, was released in 1916 by the California Motion Picture Corporation. The American film was based on a 1903 novel of the same name by Alice Muriel Williamson. Like the Italian film, it centres around a European spy intrigue, but according to the available synopsis, the plot is quite different. It seems likely to me that the American title for L’Amazzone Mascherata was taken from Williamson’s book to provide name recognition to the audience and due to the similarity in subject matter.

This advertisement for The Woman Who Dared (US 1916) appeared in Moving Picture World in May 1916 and in Motion Picture News on 27 May 1916.

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L’Amazzone Mascherata [The Masked Amazon; De Geheimzinnige Amazone; The Woman who Dared]. Dir. Baldassarre Negroni. Roma, Italy: Celio-Film, 1914. Available at the European Film Gateway.

Il fuoco: la favilla, la vampa, la cenere. The fire: the spark, the flame, the ashes. Menichelli! Il fuoco was the film that established her as a major film diva, in which she plays the femme fatale par excellence.

Like Rapsodia Satanica, Il fuoco is a film so atmospheric as to be surreal, representing the height of D’Annunzian decadence. It exists on the plane of myth and symbolism much more so than that of the real world: passion and mysterious caprice abound, buoyed by extended visual and narrative metaphors about fire and birds of prey.

Menichelli plays an unnamed poetess, who is also a duchess. At sunset one day, she meets an unknown painter (played by Febo Mari) in the countryside, both working on their art by a reedy riverbank. She approaches him, creeps up on him almost; he is instantly fascinated with this strange, bird-like, beautiful woman, wondering if he will see her again. When they encounter each other the next day, she wounds him when she pretends not to recognize him: “Stupid peasant! What’s wrong with you? Go away!” But among the reeds, he finds a poem inscribed on a sheet of paper that she has left. An omen, an invitation, and a promise …

I will reach your nest secretly and in darkness – unexpected. I’ll stretch my hooked claws and wings to seize you, and you’ll be taken to the skies. You’ll try to imprison me, but only the stronger will be victorious.

That night she appears at the painter’s house. Already, there is worship in the way that he receives her.

 “You live alone?” She asks. “There is no love in your nest?”  Love is like a flame, she tells him. She smashes his lamp: “See! Like the passion, its flame rises to the skies and flashes … but just for a moment. Choose!”

The option of choice is a false one; he is already hopelessly ensnared. He leaves his home in favour of the woman’s lair, the Owl Castle. She becomes his muse, posing for him in a painting that will make his name and achieve success and fame for him. But it ends as suddenly as it starts; we see the poetess receive a letter that her husband the Duke is soon to return home. She tells him: “Remember: the flame lasts only a moment and we’ve lived it.” The painter is as distraught as she is nonchalant:

And the owl flees her nest, leaving the painter to a now-empty castle. He is angry and saddened; he returns home, but his life and painting is disturbed, and her memory haunts his artwork.

The painter attends an elegant soirée, where he sees the object of his obsession. He runs to her, tries to talk to her, but she pretends not to know him. Mocking laughter is followed by a moment of thought, and perhaps, regret? The diva’s motives remain as opaque as ever.

As for the painter, his outburst gets him landed in an institution, mad, and … well:

SAD MALE ANGST ORIGAMI. This is his life now.

La divina Pina

In my diva intro post I mentioned that Pina Menichelli was my favourite diva, and there is an almost feral edge to her flamboyant elegance and posing in Il fuoco that I find fascinating. Like Borelli, she has a very stylized manner, always insisting on the primacy of the movements of her body, rather than in service to the story, as one sees with Bertini. Consider how she moves as she wraps her coat around herself: maximizing the screen space, drawing the eye to the fullest extent possible, emphasizing her clothing and gesture.

At other times, she conveys an amazing sense of joy and passion, as in this shot (which you might recognize from my banner image).

It’s a mesmerizing performance, is particularly apt for the luxurious, mythological symbolism of Il fuoco. Along with Malombra (1917), Il fuoco is one of films that best embodies the gothic edge of diva films to me. I also enjoy what an unapologetic character Menichelli plays – such a unrepentant femme character is unusual (perhaps unique) in this genre, and represents the closest that Italian diva cinema got to the Hollywood vamp archetype. As Linda Williams has said,

Pina Menichelli’s diva is pure, unadulterated femme fatale. Like most divas of the Italian cinema of this era, she moves sinuously and elegantly, giving herself more to the camera than to the man she seduces. But unlike many of the other divas, in this role she is untouched by fatal disease, uncanny apparitions, or even by a blemished reputation. For once, the woman is as much an artist as the man. She is a practiced predator. Her owl headgear, clenched teeth, and parted lips reveal an animalistic instinct to hunt, but not to devour her prey. Rather, her pleasure is to pounce on her little field mouse of a painter, toy with him, and then toss him away. After she orchestrates his creation of a masterpiece with her as its subject — a daring and kitsch nude portrait modeled on Cabanel’s The Birth of Venus — she will have no further use for him.

Interlude shots such as this reinforce the metaphor of woman as bird of prey.

Menichelli’s feminine excess was not universally appreciated: critic Nino Frank gave her the nickname “our lady of the spasms” for her screen acting techniques (which sounds like a compliment to me, but he probably did not mean it as such). Colette – incidentally, one of my favourite writers – also lampooned diva clichés and Il fuoco in particular in her 1918 magazine article “A Short Manual for the Aspiring Scenario Writer”:

Q: And between the apotheosis and the fall of the femme fatale, isn’t there room on the screen for numerous passionate gestures?

A: Numerous, to say the least. The two principal ones involve the hat and the rising gorge …. When the spectator sees the evil woman coiffing herself with a spread-winged owl … he knows just what she is capable of.

Il fuoco had a legendary director-cinematographer team in Giovanni Pastrone (La caduta di Troia, Cabiria) and Segundo de Chomón, best known for his wonderful trick films. The emphasis of the film is mood rather than plot; the camera lingers on the sumptuous costumes and settings. There are, however, several dolly shots, which one would expect from the director of Cabiria, but don’t commonly appear in other diva films of this era.

The tinting and toning is wonderful throughout, enriching the atmosphere. As an aside, there are a couple of instances where the tinting changes mid-shot indicating different lighting: in the fire shot above; and prior to that, when the painter lights the lamp in the first place. A small thing, but I always enjoy these shots.

The diva details

Though atypical, Il fuoco is an important diva film. Let’s see how it stacks up in the main categories …

Copious costume changes. Pina wears relatively few outfits in this film; 6 or 7, I think, or roughly one per 7-8 minutes. But what she lacks in quantity, she makes up in quality: her outfits are incredible.

Hats that border on the avant-garde. Pina’s headwear is generally strong, but it is an objective fact that Il fuoco features the most important, greatest head adornment in history: the owl headdress.

It’s the best thing that I’ve ever seen.

A veiled diva. Metaphorically. Pina Menichelli embodies the mystical veil of femininity:

“Don’t move! Your veil is the mystery, you – the woman!”

Symbolic naming. Although Febo Mari’s character is named in the film as Mario Alberti, Pina Menichelli is known only as Lei (her). He is but a man; she is an elemental feminine force, outside nature and language …

A dramatic scene involving a mirror. Strangely, none, perhaps because the idea of multiple identities and mirrored selves is represented through Alberti’s painting of the poetess.

A pivotal scene involving flowers. When the poetess and the painter meet again in her castle (The Owl Nest), he rains flowers over her:

Trials and tribulations. None for Pina! In Il fuoco it is the painter Alberti who must suffer, preyed upon by Menichelli’s character.

Incredible intertitles. This film rivals Rapsodia Satanica in its use of the written word. The poem has already been covered above, but there is far more where that came from. Consider this sequence:

“Love, as you know, is like this lamp. It gives out a little light to a bit of space and lasts one whole night …”

“But if I smash it …”

“See! Like the passion, its flame rises to the skies and flashes … but just for a moment. Choose!”

The flame metaphor is reinforced throughout:

And from the sparks of the flame that she aroused he got the light for his creation.

And one final one that I liked just for its simplicity:

Nightstalker.

In conclusion: I love Pina Menichelli, and I love Il fuoco. A stunning film, with overarching metaphors about the femme fatale as bird of prey, the power and transcience of fire/love, and feminine influence on the artistic process. It’s a resplendent, surreal film with the magnetic presence of la divina Pina … and an ending that involves not the sufferance of a diva, but instead the male lead being reduced to a life of sad owl origami, something that will never not be funny.

And that’s it for Diva December! I hope you’ve all enjoyed the ride. Next diva season I’ll look at some of the following: Malombra (1917), Carnevalesca (1918), Assunta Spina (1915), Diana l’affascinatrice (1915), Tigre Reale (1916), La storia di una donna (1920), and – hopefully – Fior di male (1915).

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Il fuoco [The Fire]. Dir. Giovanni Pastrone. Torino, Italy: Itala-Film, 1915. Il fuoco is preserved by Il Museo Nazionale del Cinema Torino. It is not available on DVD.