Blood, sweat and tears on the screen today. And to cap it all off, prizes! That’s Friday in Pordenone, folks. Read all about it.
Your scribe is a little squeamish, I must confess, so this morning I had to resort to an old trick, and pop my glasses off during some of Arabi (Nadezhda Zubova, 1933), a drama about sheep farmers organising to form a collective and defeat the feudal powers that exploit their labour under the old system. That doesn’t make me squeamish, I’m all for it – it was the killing and skinning of lambs that turned my stomach. Still, I thought this was terrific, with some very sharp editing, especially in the opening sequence, and lovely low camerawork of the herd out in the field.
A little Hollywood glamour should soothe my frightened peepers. And so we turn to Stronger than Death (1920), directed by Herbert Blaché, designed by Ben Carré, starring Alla actual Nazimova, and apparently with a young Dorothy Arzner on duty as script and costume coordinator too. Well, this was pretty indeed, with Nazimova simply stunning in some beautifully draped and embellished gowns, and gorgeous settings designed to transport us to India, under English rule. Those colonial attitudes were all too obvious here, but otherwise this is a fair vehicle for Nazimova, with a climax requiring her to keep dancing in the temple ruins in the moonlight, after a few lessons by Theodore Kosloff. She strikes the most elegant poses, playing an acclaimed Paris dancer who is recuperating and husband-hunting in India after a health scare. Though this being a Nazimova picture, the presence of her passionately devoted, passionate, devoted travelling companion Smithy, raised a few more questions… Donald Sosin and Franck Bockius gave great voice to this spectacle, keeping the narrative line flowing even when Nazimova was pausing in profile.
We don’t bandy the E word around lightly, but this afternoon’s big movie was Expressionist with capital E. Raskolnikov (1923) is, as you’d guess, an adaptation of Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment, directed by Robert ‘Caligari’ Wiene and starring Grigori Chmara, the Ukrainian-born actor who was at the time married (and occasionally co-starring with) Asta Nielsen, and a cast drawn from the Moscow Art Theater. Angular, tilted sets, painted shadows and dark vignettes, heavy makeup, accentuated performances… and all in service of one of the greatest tales of moral anguish and social inequality ever written. We were a little wary, with a running time of two hours twenty, but we were rapt. Chmara was intensely good, intense and good – he has the say of playing up enough to stand up to the emphatic surrounding, but with enough nuance for psychological credibility. Like Asta, but not so much so. A marvellous restoration by Filmmuseum Munchen too, using material from all over, and looking as fierce as a nightmare. Richard Siedhoff has composed an orchestral score, but gave us a trimmed-down version on the piano, which was tremendously effective.
Excellent programming, to my mind, to follow this with a programme of experimental films, from the Joris Ivens studio, the locus of the Dutch avant-garde in the 1930s. Some of these films were pure experiments in light, colour and editing rhythm, another is a first-person perspective of a commuter’s (rather leisurely) morning. Collisions (Gerard Saan, 1934), a sound film, clips from a Hollywood comedy are stitched together with actors confronting each other in the studio and the clash of billiard balls on the baize. Elsie Keppler, one of the students at the studio, reappears in a few of the films and stars in Elsie – Of a Girl and a Little Dog (Wim Gerdes, 1934).
Less complicated pleasures abounded in the evening’s feature presentation. Anna May Wong returns in Richard Eichberg’s Pavement Butterfly (1929), a picturesque melodrama of love and loss set in Paris and Nice. Wong plays Mah, a circus performer who escapes from a mob baying for her blood after she was setup by a brutish colleague Coco (Alexander Granach), and runs straight into the studio of Russian artist Kusmin (Fred Louis Lerch)., They fall in love, but the art crowd are circle Kusmin, and Coco is out for revenge against Mah… it all ends up on the riviera with Mah forced into desperate acts and ultimately a sacrifice. But aha, she doesn’t die in this one. Nice. It’s a very beautiful, evocative film and Wong is fantastic, so charming and yet so visibkly asware of the threats just out of sight, in this film which was her second starring role for Eichberg, and her final silent film. If you are a fan of the use of stairs in movie (and why wouldn’t you?) there are some beautifully sequences for you here, as Mah moves precariously up and down French society’s scales. And the party sequence in Kusmin’s loft is one of the all-timers, complete with two gangly, double-jointed Chaplin lookalikes, and a kiss behind every corner. The film looks stunning too, in the new restoration by DFF – Deutsches Filminstitut & Filmmuseum. What would I know, but I imagine this sort of film is a delight to accompany, despite the challenges of the shifting moods as Coco turns up the heat on Mah. I certainly hugely enjoyed the captivating accompaniment by Günter Buchwald, Frank Bockius and Mirko Cisillino, who turned the whole evening into a celebration.
Which was entirely appropriate. Before Anna May Wong, the main event tonight the presentation of the Jean Mitry award to two very worthy winners: Mark Paul Meyer of Eye Filmmuseum, and a name that will be very familiar and very dear to readers of this blog, Bryon Dixon, silent film curator of the British Film Institute. I highly recommend that you head to the Giornate website to read the full citations for both, as they have racked up some serious achievements between them. Let me just add that Bryony Dixon has been an inspiration to yours truly for many years now, between her evangelism for British silent cinema, her intellectual generosity and wit, and the remarkable work she has done at the National Film Archive. Plus, she has always been a great friend to this blog, from its very beginnings, and more recently an excellent festival buddy on our shared silent jaunts. It was fabulous to see her honoured tonight.
Intertitle of the Day
“I’m not afraid of anything, Colonel Boucicault – except ugliness, in word or deed.” You and me both, Nazimova. That’s Stronger than Death, of course.
