Film concert Erotikon (Gustav Machatý, 1929) – music by Andrej Goričar and Orchestra of the Imaginary, Ljubljana

Gustav Machatý: Erotikon (CS 1929) with Luigi Serventi (Jan), Ita Rina (Andrea) and Olaf Fjord (George). Fotografia di Vilém Ströminger. ⓒ Dilia – All rights reserved.

Gustav Machatý: Erotikon (CS 1929) with Ita Rina (Andrea). Fotografia di Vilém Ströminger. ⓒ Dilia – All rights reserved.

Gustav Machatý: Erotikon (CS 1929) with Olaf Fjord (the seducer George Sydney) and Ita Rina (Andrea, the railway guard’s daughter).

Gustav Machatý: Erotikon (CS 1929) with Ita Rina (Andrea)

Gustav Machatý: Erotikon (CS 1929) with Ita Rina (Andrea) and Olaf Fjord (George).

MIDWEEK EVENT: SPECIAL EVENTS
EROTIKON (CS 1929)
regia/dir: Gustav Machatý.
scen: Gustav Machatý, Vítězslav Nezval.
photog: Václav Vích.
scg/des: Julius von Borsody, Alexander Hackenschmied, J. Machoň.
cast: Ita Rina (Andrea, la figlia del casellante/the railway guard’s daughter), Karel Schleichert (casellante/railway guard), Olaf Fjord (il seduttore/the seducer George Sydney), Theodor Pištěk (Hilbert), Charlotte Susa (Gilda, sua moglie/Hilbert’s wife), Luigi Serventi (Jan, Andrea’s husband), L. H. Struna (carrettaio/carter), Milka Balek-Brodská (ostetrica/midwife), Bohumil Kovář (ferroviere/railwayman), Beda Saxl (proprietario della sartoria/owner of the bespoke tailor’s establishment), Vladimír Slavínský (sarto/tailor), Bronislava Livia (cliente del salone di bellezza/beauty salon visitor), Václav Žichovský (proprietario del negozio di pianoforti/owner of the piano shop), Jiří Hron (uomo nell’ufficio postale/man in the post office), Willy Rösner (wrestler in a pub).
prod: Geem-Film.
dist: Slaviafilm.
uscita/rel: 12.7.1929 (gala, Elite, Karlovy Vary), 3.1.1930 (Hvězda, Radio, Skaut, Prague).
copia/copy: 35 mm, 2441 m, 89 min (24 fps), sequenze imbibite/tinted sequences; did./titles: CZE.
fonte/source: Slovenska kinoteka, Ljubljana.

Score by: Andrej Goričar
performed live by: Orchestra of the Imaginary: Andrej Goričar (piano, conducting), Jakob Bobek (clarinet), Jan Gričar (saxophone), Matej Haas (violin), Ana Julija Mlejnik (violin), Valentina Mosca (viola), Milan Hudnik (cello)
Music score commissioned by the Slovenska kinoteka

Le Giornate del Cinema Muto (GCM), Pordenone. Corona emergency security: half programming, half capacity, COVID certificate required, temperature measured, hand hygiene, face masks, distancing.
    Viewed at Teatro Verdi with English subtitles and e-subtitles in Italian, 6 Oct 2021.

Michal Bregant (GCM 2021): "There are at least two authors of Erotikon: the poet Vítězslav Nezval (1900‒1958) and the director Gustav Machatý (1901‒1963), though the poet’s contribution remained anonymous, as he was unwilling to be seen as betraying his position within the radical modernist art movement. Machatý had no such qualms, and it was he and cinematographer Václav Vích who conceived the film’s stylistically progressive nature. For decades, Erotikon has been celebrated as a rare example of an internationally successful feature embodying a fusion of modernist form and mainstream narrative. The first 15 minutes contain all the elements required for a film of this type – dramatic scenery, multilayered subtexts, sensual tension, carefully sculpted characters – the building blocks of any successful drama."

"Ever since its release, broadminded critics have praised the film’s audacity for openly showing a woman experiencing orgasm, yet few have interrogated the scene within its narrative framework. The man is the alpha, dominant element, and it’s he who gives her this moment of sexual pleasure, reinforcing the traditional distribution of roles. Perhaps the time has come to ask whether this problematic acceptance of her image as object of desire and victim has been overlooked because the scene is so masterfully shot and edited."

"Erotikon attracted the attention of bourgeois audiences by showing something that the “old” generation would view as provocative: it was made for those who imagined the smell of mothballs in their parents’ closet. The film as a whole endorses a set of values prevalent among progressive films at this particularly intense moment of European film history. A truly cosmopolitan drama, it’s adorned with props such as oriental curtains and a toilette set, elegant locations like a piano shop and a bespoke tailor’s establishment, and dramatic moments connected with infidelity and amorous entanglements. As just one of the film’s many clichés, it ends with a departure for Paris. To ensure his message was clearly conveyed the director-producer utilized a linear story, so that audiences in 1929 would fully understand its psychological nuances, just like viewers today, who also appreciate the film’s moderately avant-garde style."

"Andrea, the female protagonist played by Slovenian actress Ita Rina, has her roots in the world of Emile Zola. Her beauty, charm, and sex appeal are in total contrast to the hopelessness of her home life; no matter how much her father cares for her, she has no future in this small, lonely place. Everything that happens to her is predetermined by her social background, which also becomes an excuse to deny her psychological depth. Her seducer George equally behaves according to prescribed social rules, projecting an air of charm and gentlemanly decency when he comes to stay at the railroad guard’s house because he missed the last train, though audiences feel he exudes a more pungent odor than simply his eau de cologne, named “Erotikon”. The railway guard’s daughter will become a victim of this well-dressed predator: what happens next is neither the result of romantic momentum nor the kind of iconic love scene that might take place during a rainy night. Instead, the film positions us as witnesses to a rape – Zola, adapted to the tastes of late-1920s moviegoers."

"The camera’s sophisticated eye gets into the body and mind of both the man and the woman in this short-term relationship, but the male gaze dominates here, as it does throughout the rest of the film. In the beginning, Andrea discovers her sexual desire alone in her room. We are there with her, never to leave her: the viewer will closely witness all the dramatic shifts of her narrative, but without much understanding or empathy. She has no privacy, and is just an object of desire, though, unlike Buñuel’s, not particularly obscure. Wherever she travels, the viewer’s gaze follows her, but rarely takes her perspective. Later in the story, when George, her one-night stand, feels weak and trapped in his feelings, he is still powerful. The modernization of Zola is seen on the surface of the narrative, in settings and costumes, and partly in the social roles."

"When we look at the roles of the protagonists from a distance, we can see a paradoxical gender symmetry. At first George is presented symbolically as a traveler, and Andrea as the naïve innocent. Later Andrea becomes a kind of traveler herself, visiting a large town to give birth. Traveling back to her father’s house, she faces another rapist, but this time she is saved, and seems to find the right track for the rest of her life. Now, who else could derail her fragile existence other than the first, fatal love of her life? Here begins the drama of accommodation: she finds herself in a new world, and has to deal with unfamiliar class rules, which offer her the only way out from her past."

"The release of Erotikon could not have happened at a worse time, since silent film distribution in early 1930 was practically guaranteed to fail. In 1933, sound versions of the film in two languages (Czech and German) were released, with dubbed dialogue instead of intertitles, and a musical score by Erno Košťál which is now missing. A new release of the reconstructed version, with a musical score by Jan Klusák, premiered in Prague in 1995."

"Except for Erotikon, Machatý’s production company Geem-Film did not make any deep impression. As a producer he made two films in 1919 (Teddy by kouřil, which he also directed, is lost), and then in 1927 two more. But after Erotikon, Machatý dived into a new production (again in cooperation with Nezval), and in 1932 he directed his masterwork, Extase (Ecstasy), another variation of a sexually driven narrative focused on a female protagonist (Hedwig Kiesler/Hedy Lamarr)." – Michal Bregant

The music 

Andrej Goričar (GCM 2021): "There was always something that drew me towards Erotikon, though I can’t definitively place a finger on it. Maybe it’s the delicate scenes, like the one with the droplet sliding down the window, akin to a bygone lovers’ night that shall never come again. Maybe it’s because the most important things in the film are stated by silence itself? It sounds contradictory, but I’m not talking about the absence of decibels when I refer to silence. I’m talking about the inner silence or sound of the silent film. At any one point it is completely quiet, loud, or screaming, all the while it never actually gives off physical sound. It’s probably the same phenomenon as painters “hearing” colours and composers “seeing” sounds. The secret of my affection towards Erotikon might also lie in the following quote from the former director of the Slovenian Cinematheque, Silvan Furlan: “Just like actors have to breathe a soul into the characters, directors have to lend to the film. In Erotikon, both have succeeded”"

"My aspiration while writing the score for Erotikon was to imbue the music with a soul as well – not to judge or explain, only to experience. On many occasions in the past while I was improvising for Erotikon on the piano, I let myself go with the movie and the darkness of the hall. In moments like that, when the soul is most daring, wonderful things can happen. I picked one of those performances – the one at the Isola Cinema Festival in Izola, a little Slovenian town by the Adriatic Sea, as the starting point for my new ensemble score (it seems like the summer night breeze and the scent of the sea always do the job). This was a starting point in terms of the pace, mood, and spirit of the music. After that I selected the instruments. Nothing can be more passionate than a string quartet, more naïve than a clarinet, more melancholy than a saxophone, or more delicate than a piano. Or maybe the characteristics should be swapped? They certainly could. If there are moments in time that I realize that not everything is as it appears to be, they are certainly when I play or compose for silents. Later on I had a lot of fun with actual composing. Here the credit goes to the incredible musicality of this silent film."

"So, it is all about silence. Music always starts from silence. Silence is the constituent part of the music. Music then always ends back in silence. That is, if it ends at all; that is, if we don’t hear it in a silence." – Andrej Goričar

AA: Gustav Machatý made a powerful impression in Nordic cinema. Extase was one of Ingmar Bergman's "primal shocks", and he also liked Nocturno. In Finland, Extase was a big favourite of Teuvo Tulio, as was Erotikon. "The Station Master" plot of Erotikon was shared by Tulio in films including The Cross of Love and Sensuela. We screened Erotikon in our "Tulio's Influences" series in 2002 at Cinema Orion.

"The Station Master" narrative derives nominally from Aleksandr Pushkin's sober vignette in Ivan Belkin's Tales, but there is a world of difference with its film melodrama lineage. I would like to know where that tradition started, perhaps with Aleksandr Ivanovsky's Stantsionny smotritel (1918) starring Vera Orlova. For Tulio, a decisive influence was Gustav Ucicky's Der Postmeister (1940). Erotikon was not released in Finland, but Tulio may have seen it abroad, probably in Sweden.

Erotikon may be Machatý's finest film. As Michal Bregant observes above, it was created during the late golden period of silent cinema. Machatý and his cinematographer Václav Vich tell the tale with eloquent visuals. The forces of nature are behind it all. The plot may be conventional, but the cinematic storytelling is sophisticated with complex webs of looks. The chess game sequence (see the first photo above) is a case in point. Looks tell everything.

Erotikon does deserve re-examination in the age of Me Too. Andrea becomes a victim of a rape attempt on a desolate winter road by a coachman. At the last minute she is rescued by Jan who risks his life to save her and is in turn saved by Andrea who volunteers to blood transfusion at the surgery room.

The first encounter of Andrea and George is not a rape. George is a man of the world and Andrea an inexperienced village girl. George takes advantage of her but does not force himself on her. It is a case of "seduced and abandoned" because when Andrea gets pregnant, George is not there to protect her.

Their relationship is complex. It is a case of mutual attraction and seduction, and their love survives even George's unmanly behaviour which he regrets and for which he apologizes. What Andrea and George recognize in each other at first sight is their exceptionally high sexuality with which they struggle to get in terms. They try to resist it until they cannot.

Machatý stages their love scenes with passion and poetry. The storm. The barking dog. The train. The whisky. The perfume called Erotikon. The rain. The superimposition of close-ups when Andrea and George recognize their mutual sexual potential for the first time... almost at first sight. The looks of desire. The key and the lock. Andrea's rapturous dream. The slow kisses, the sucking of the finger. The quiet, unhurried progress to ecstasy. George clearly knows what he is doing in bed. "I know you'll never come back".

From ecstasy to agony: Andrea's childbirth scene conveys pain and suffering, and infinite sorrow and misery as the child is stillborn. Andrea has no money and is thrown into the street in shame when she is still weak and hardly able to walk. Simultaneously her father, for whom she has meant everything, is being crushed by regret and longing, as in Pushkin's vignette.

For me, Erotikon is far from being a case of the "male gaze". Rather, it is unreservedly on Andrea's side. In this movie, she is we. We identify with Andrea, and see George as a callous seducer, not without contradictions, perhaps unable to control his passions, but not someone to root for.

Ita Rina gives a brilliant and radiant performance as Andrea: sensitive, forceful and intelligent. This is a Bildungsroman of a young girl's harsh life lessons that could crush anybody. Andrea survives and becomes stronger.

Erotikon becomes a triangle tragedy like the first feature film directed by Machatý, The Kreutzer Sonata (1927) based on the long story by Leo Tolstoy.

Andrej Goričar and the Orchestra of the Imaginary provided a sensitive, passionate and rousing music interpretation to this memorable evening.

Exhausted after high pressure and long hours at distant office work and Teams meetings during the festival, I fell asleep for a part of the screening but caught up afterwards with online viewing.