PORDENONE 2016
The Pordenone Gionate del Cinema Muto is one of the last hold outs for the serious (or indeed frivolous) movie goer. Even as the train was pulling out of Venice Centrale, the action was starting as familiar faces began the kind of informed conversation that is missing from the Australian film scene. I would find myself discussing the career of Chow Yun-fat over diner and trading Gian Maria Volonte DVDs in the breaks.
This is all agreeable - no exceptional - but the enthusiastic surface covers serious divisions. Now that there is actually money changing hands, tensions are emerging over who actually owns vintage films (which most of the time means old Hollywood). The companies, the archives and the entrepreneurs all eye one another suspiciously. Kevin Brownlow has lost the right to show the Gance Napoléon, his lifetime project.
My sympathies tend to lodge with the buccaneers. Salaried officers at institutions seem too eager to think that outsiders, who have been sufficiently enterprising to acquire at their own expense work that the civil servants might have been expected to find themselves, should hand it over for nothing. If there really is a question of who owns the material that companies and archives have ignored, sometimes for a century, the answer clearly is the viewers. It was made to their specifications and they paid for it - sometimes not enough but that’s another matter.
The Pordenone Gionate del Cinema Muto is one of the last hold outs for the serious (or indeed frivolous) movie goer. Even as the train was pulling out of Venice Centrale, the action was starting as familiar faces began the kind of informed conversation that is missing from the Australian film scene. I would find myself discussing the career of Chow Yun-fat over diner and trading Gian Maria Volonte DVDs in the breaks.
This is all agreeable - no exceptional - but the enthusiastic surface covers serious divisions. Now that there is actually money changing hands, tensions are emerging over who actually owns vintage films (which most of the time means old Hollywood). The companies, the archives and the entrepreneurs all eye one another suspiciously. Kevin Brownlow has lost the right to show the Gance Napoléon, his lifetime project.
My sympathies tend to lodge with the buccaneers. Salaried officers at institutions seem too eager to think that outsiders, who have been sufficiently enterprising to acquire at their own expense work that the civil servants might have been expected to find themselves, should hand it over for nothing. If there really is a question of who owns the material that companies and archives have ignored, sometimes for a century, the answer clearly is the viewers. It was made to their specifications and they paid for it - sometimes not enough but that’s another matter.
This year’s Pordenone Silent Movie week landed their new director Jay Weisberg with the big ask of following last year’s twin highlights, a great Victor Fleming retrospective and the six hour Henri Fescourt Les Miserables, with Neil Brand on piano, doing the whole show and getting a standing ovation.
M. Fescourt was back again this year with his 1929 Monte-Cristo for which they furloughed Neil Brand to offer Donald Sosin and Frank Bockius doing a perfectly adequate score for a mere two and a half hours. The pair had to compete with the still resonant memory of last year.
Montecristo becomes an anti climax, stuck with Jean Angelo (Epstein’s Robert Macaire, Feyder’s L’Atalantide) who could be a passable costume hero but would never match Miserables’ Gabriel Gabrio as a performer. Angelo’s early scenes, made up youthful, get him off to a shaky start. The ever impressive Lil Dagover, Bernard Goetzke, Gaston Modot and young Marie Glory don’t get much scope. The production was ambitiously decorated and a largely forgotten support cast inhabit the familiar characters well enough. The departures from the usual adaptations were minor - giving Angelo time to explore the island of Monte Christo and offering unusual prominence to Tamara Tsezenko’s Hayddée.
Hopes ran high for a William Cameron Menzies season coming in the wake of James Curtis’ book on him as art director phenomenon - creator of the role of Production Designer, populariser of the concept of Story Board and instigator of Bat Man. This proved a bit of a fizzer with Curtis’ book nowhere to be had and no exhibition of the Menzies sketches which would have made a notable event on their own.
The films on show were mainly familiar items like Lewis Milestone’s Garden of Eden and better the John Barrymore Tempest both 1928 or they were fragmentary - Roland West’s 1927 The Dove and a couple of Menzies sound shorts. Raoul Walsh’s 1922 Kindred of the Dust had little of design interest beyond building the shack setting on a real shore line and Henry King and Sam Taylor’s 1928 The Woman Disputed lost impetus after a rousing opening with the prisoner going over Menzies shadowed prison wall with gun shots from his jailers shattering the street light next to which Norma Talmadge is peddling her wares. For those first couple of minutes, characters who vanish or become key to the intrigue pile onto the screen, including Gustav Von Seyfertitz reproaching our fallen women heroine. After this, attention falls away and cliché takes over.
The films on show were mainly familiar items like Lewis Milestone’s Garden of Eden and better the John Barrymore Tempest both 1928 or they were fragmentary - Roland West’s 1927 The Dove and a couple of Menzies sound shorts. Raoul Walsh’s 1922 Kindred of the Dust had little of design interest beyond building the shack setting on a real shore line and Henry King and Sam Taylor’s 1928 The Woman Disputed lost impetus after a rousing opening with the prisoner going over Menzies shadowed prison wall with gun shots from his jailers shattering the street light next to which Norma Talmadge is peddling her wares. For those first couple of minutes, characters who vanish or become key to the intrigue pile onto the screen, including Gustav Von Seyfertitz reproaching our fallen women heroine. After this, attention falls away and cliché takes over.
The big night was a live orchestra presentation of the Fairbanks-Menzies Thief of Bagdad. This season is being expanded for a New York showing and I’ll get back to Menzies.
Der Adjudant des zaren directed by Vlad Strizhevsky in 1929 added to that gallery of swashbuckling, uniformed Ivan Mozhukhin heroes that continually delight the regulars at Pordenone. Unfamiliar till a copy was retrieved from Der Danske Filminsitutet, I was one of the people who confused it with the Mozhukhin Courier of the Czar, his Michael Strogoff. It turns out to be the most perfect of the star’s vehicles. His other films were sometimes more ambitious, sometimes better but this one is flawless.
Der Adjudant des zaren directed by Vlad Strizhevsky in 1929 added to that gallery of swashbuckling, uniformed Ivan Mozhukhin heroes that continually delight the regulars at Pordenone. Unfamiliar till a copy was retrieved from Der Danske Filminsitutet, I was one of the people who confused it with the Mozhukhin Courier of the Czar, his Michael Strogoff. It turns out to be the most perfect of the star’s vehicles. His other films were sometimes more ambitious, sometimes better but this one is flawless.
Rescuing cloche hat damsel in distress, the winning Claudia Boni, from a crisis at the rail station, Ivan is rapidly smitten. They marry. However she is not what she appears, actually a pawn in the hands of sinister revolutionist Alexander Granach (later in Kameradschaft & Hangmen Also Die). Fearsome Chief of Police Fritz Alberti guards the safety of the Tsar, who they treat with a surreal reverence. When Ivan tumbles the plot, it looks like he will have to sacrifice his great love to the cause (startling moment when they realise she has left her purse with the small pistol in it where Alberti will find it) Troikas race to the border and shots are exchanged. I felt like cheering.
Blowing the dust off the grim Mozhukhin-Volkoff 1924 Kean one more time was an anti climax.
Most agreeable surprise proved to be Sinclair Hill’s 1928 The Guns of Loos, another glimpse of the little viewed British silent films. This one featured the screen debut of a (brunette) Madeline Carroll opposite Ironmaster Henry Victor (L’Argent, Confessions of a Nazi Spy) as the munitions magnate who leads his workers battalion when shipped to the WW1 Battle of Loos, and is overtaken by “funk”. The film’s great set piece is the scene of galloping the artillery to safety under fire.
It’s comments on class and politics are a bit on the scary side (Victor punches out one of those bolshy workers’ leaders the way Leslie Banks does in Michael Powel’s Red Ensign) but the imposing staging, not obvious in never fielding more than a couple dozen people on screen, gives the impression of great film making skill. All right then, how about Sinclair Hill’s 1927 Boadicea?
The British cinema was also (sort of) represented by US director George Fitzmaurice’s presentable 1922 version of Three Live Ghosts shot there with a cast that included Norman Kerry and Edmund Goulding. The copy was retrieved from Russia, where it had originally been re-edited to conform to the socialist ideal, removing the inter-titles by Alfred Hitchcock. The competition to have the earliest Hitchcock is fierce, with the British offering one reel of the Seymour Hicks two reeler Always Tell Your Wife where they speculate Hitch worked on the missing half.
It was OK to see the splendid Garbo Mysterious Lady again on the big screen with an orchestra, though Carl Davis failed its ultimate silent movie music test. The set piece scene of Conrad Nagel pacing his cell in time to the superimposed drum beats of his court martial needs inspired handling.
After that the pickings got thin. There were a few nice pieces among the shorts. The largely uninspiring Al Christie programs did include the 1923 Navy Blues from Harold and better known brother William Beaudine with Dorothy Devore involved in lively hijinks at sea. Lau Lauritzen Sr’s Danish 1917 Min svigerinde fra amerika was a surprisingly racy infidelity quarter hour. There was another look at George Lacomble’s imposing La Zone. An uncharacteristically serious 1913 Selig Tom Mix The Escape of Jim Nolan stood out in the always intriguing early westerns and it’s nice to see the pre WW1 Emile Cohls. The Japanese Momotaro cartoons were also enjoyable and the unknown 1928 Disney Africa Before Dark in a beautiful copy was a treat.
On the other hand, the screening of Hans Werkmeisters’ 1920 Algol with Emil Jannings demonstrated that no matter how good the restoration is, a nice copy of a pretentious and boring film is still a pretentious and boring event. The English Shakespeare primitives could also have been left on their DVD. 1913’s Ventianische Nacht, an early film by Max Reinhard no less, with Alfred Abel (Metropolis) proved just a ballet in real location curiosity, though, among the primitive material, I did enjoy the German Chromolithograph loops printed from the hand painted coloured films made for the projector toys in the pre WW1 era.
The novelty of repeated street scapes and City Symphonies wore off and the so called canon programs revived items like Mauritz Stiller’s drear 1920 Erotikon (Lars Hanson & Tora Teje) and Renoir’s grubby 1926 Nana with the lackluster duo of Jean Angelo and Catherine Hesling fronting Werner Krauss and Valeska Gert. We scored an even tackier 1917 version with one Tilde Kassay. Bring back Martine Carol I say! The legendary Esther Shaub Fall of the Romanov Dynasty compilation offered terrible lab work and pedestrian assembly.
Also outlasting its welcome was the serial - actually series - Who’s Guilty? where the same players enact different social reproach dramas in each half hour episode. Howard Estabrook, Anna (Q.) Nilsson and Tom Moore figured. No connection to the Columbia fifties serial beyond the name.
Most agreeable surprise proved to be Sinclair Hill’s 1928 The Guns of Loos, another glimpse of the little viewed British silent films. This one featured the screen debut of a (brunette) Madeline Carroll opposite Ironmaster Henry Victor (L’Argent, Confessions of a Nazi Spy) as the munitions magnate who leads his workers battalion when shipped to the WW1 Battle of Loos, and is overtaken by “funk”. The film’s great set piece is the scene of galloping the artillery to safety under fire.
It’s comments on class and politics are a bit on the scary side (Victor punches out one of those bolshy workers’ leaders the way Leslie Banks does in Michael Powel’s Red Ensign) but the imposing staging, not obvious in never fielding more than a couple dozen people on screen, gives the impression of great film making skill. All right then, how about Sinclair Hill’s 1927 Boadicea?
The British cinema was also (sort of) represented by US director George Fitzmaurice’s presentable 1922 version of Three Live Ghosts shot there with a cast that included Norman Kerry and Edmund Goulding. The copy was retrieved from Russia, where it had originally been re-edited to conform to the socialist ideal, removing the inter-titles by Alfred Hitchcock. The competition to have the earliest Hitchcock is fierce, with the British offering one reel of the Seymour Hicks two reeler Always Tell Your Wife where they speculate Hitch worked on the missing half.
It was OK to see the splendid Garbo Mysterious Lady again on the big screen with an orchestra, though Carl Davis failed its ultimate silent movie music test. The set piece scene of Conrad Nagel pacing his cell in time to the superimposed drum beats of his court martial needs inspired handling.
After that the pickings got thin. There were a few nice pieces among the shorts. The largely uninspiring Al Christie programs did include the 1923 Navy Blues from Harold and better known brother William Beaudine with Dorothy Devore involved in lively hijinks at sea. Lau Lauritzen Sr’s Danish 1917 Min svigerinde fra amerika was a surprisingly racy infidelity quarter hour. There was another look at George Lacomble’s imposing La Zone. An uncharacteristically serious 1913 Selig Tom Mix The Escape of Jim Nolan stood out in the always intriguing early westerns and it’s nice to see the pre WW1 Emile Cohls. The Japanese Momotaro cartoons were also enjoyable and the unknown 1928 Disney Africa Before Dark in a beautiful copy was a treat.
On the other hand, the screening of Hans Werkmeisters’ 1920 Algol with Emil Jannings demonstrated that no matter how good the restoration is, a nice copy of a pretentious and boring film is still a pretentious and boring event. The English Shakespeare primitives could also have been left on their DVD. 1913’s Ventianische Nacht, an early film by Max Reinhard no less, with Alfred Abel (Metropolis) proved just a ballet in real location curiosity, though, among the primitive material, I did enjoy the German Chromolithograph loops printed from the hand painted coloured films made for the projector toys in the pre WW1 era.
The novelty of repeated street scapes and City Symphonies wore off and the so called canon programs revived items like Mauritz Stiller’s drear 1920 Erotikon (Lars Hanson & Tora Teje) and Renoir’s grubby 1926 Nana with the lackluster duo of Jean Angelo and Catherine Hesling fronting Werner Krauss and Valeska Gert. We scored an even tackier 1917 version with one Tilde Kassay. Bring back Martine Carol I say! The legendary Esther Shaub Fall of the Romanov Dynasty compilation offered terrible lab work and pedestrian assembly.
Also outlasting its welcome was the serial - actually series - Who’s Guilty? where the same players enact different social reproach dramas in each half hour episode. Howard Estabrook, Anna (Q.) Nilsson and Tom Moore figured. No connection to the Columbia fifties serial beyond the name.
Too many featured seasons proved unrewarding, like a John H. Collins retrospective. It was interesting to watch his awareness of film form develop from 1915’s On the Stroke of 12 through to his Riders of the Night of 1918, as he realised that editing could be a tool rather than a just means of recording and the quality of his collaborators improved with John Arnold (The Wind) on camera but his sensitivity remained stage melo. Collins’ celebrated Blue Jeans even has the hero rescued from a great big saw that gets nearer and nearer. Collins’ wife and star, the pixieish Viola Dana, who has a double role in his 1917 The Girl Without a Soul, would turn up years later as the lead in Frank Capra’s That Certain Thing.
There’s always the spot the star game - Richard Alexander, Flash Gordon’s Prince Barin and Ike Clanton to Walter Huston’s Wyatt Earp, makes a pass at Garbo in Mysterious Lady, already venerable Russell Simpson presides over his court room in Blue Jeans and there’s a spunky young Hermoine Badley speaking up for the factory girls in The Guns of Loos.
Poland contributed a dispiriting selection. Opera director Richard Ordynski’s draggy, incomplete 1928 costume drama Pan Tadeusz (also on U-Tube in a nice tinted but untranslated copy) lacks a rousing finale in it’s present form. 1929s Mocny Czlowiek / The Strong Man has a more modern feel but fails to involve as ambitious protagonist Gregori Chmara steals his dead friend’s MSS and finds his multiple duplicities catching up with him during a stage presentation of the work. Henryk Szaro’s 1930 Janko Muzykant was a ring-in where where they’d lost the track, with lengthy shots of the lead bowing away soundlessly on his violin. I was sitting there watching the l919 frock coat melo Ludzie bez jutra without any enthusiasm, thinking maybe I was being too hard on Polish movies when the man in the next seat started snoring.
Historical material like this has a place in an event like Pordenone, though how big is speculative. (I just wish they’d play it on the years I don’t go) It’s a bit much to expect the event to string masterpieces end to end when they have so many academic, business and national factions to satisfy. I guess it's enough that they are there and that they offer the satisfactions that they do.
There’s always the spot the star game - Richard Alexander, Flash Gordon’s Prince Barin and Ike Clanton to Walter Huston’s Wyatt Earp, makes a pass at Garbo in Mysterious Lady, already venerable Russell Simpson presides over his court room in Blue Jeans and there’s a spunky young Hermoine Badley speaking up for the factory girls in The Guns of Loos.
Historical material like this has a place in an event like Pordenone, though how big is speculative. (I just wish they’d play it on the years I don’t go) It’s a bit much to expect the event to string masterpieces end to end when they have so many academic, business and national factions to satisfy. I guess it's enough that they are there and that they offer the satisfactions that they do.
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