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| Cover photo: Harry Piel: Sein grösster Bluff / The Big Bluff (DE 1927), starring Harry Piel (as the twins Henry Devall and Harry Devall). Photo: Filmmuseum Düsseldorf. Grafica e immagine coordinata: Giulio Calderini & Carmen Marchese. Impaginazione: Michele Federico, con la collaborazione di Ilaria Cozzutti, Caterina Vidon. |
Dedicated to Russell Merritt
ASSOCIAZIONE CULTURALE “LE GIORNATE DEL CINEMA MUTO”
Soci fondatori: Paolo Cherchi Usai, Lorenzo Codelli, Piero Colussi, Andrea Crozzoli, Luciano De Giusti, Livio Jacob, Carlo Montanaro, Mario Quargnolo†, Piera Patat, Davide Turconi†
Presidente: Livio Jacob
Direttore emerito: David Robinson
Direttore: Jay Weissberg
CATALOGO
Redazione: Catherine A. Surowiec, Piera Patat.
Grafica e immagine coordinata: Giulio Calderini & Carmen Marchese. Impaginazione: Michele Federico, con la collaborazione di Ilaria Cozzutti, Caterina Vidon.
Traduzioni / Translations by: Elena Beltrami, Paolo Cherchi Usai, Frank Dabell, Aurora De Leonibus, Daniela Leonardi, Piera Patat, Giuliana Puppin, Catherine A. Surowiec, Jay Weissberg, Key Congressi.
Lettura bozze italiane / Italian proofreading: Ilaria Cozzutti
Bilingual (Italian and English).
Soft cover, 335 pp.
Pordenone: Associazione culturale "Le Giornate del Cinema Muto", 2023
Presentazione / Introduction - Jay Weissberg
Premio Jean Mitry / The Jean Mitry Award - Natalia Noussinova & Heide Schlüpmann
The Jonathan Dennis Memorial Lecture - Mindy Johnson
L’arte dei costumi / The Art of Costume Design - Beth Werling
Collegium 2023
The 2023 Pordenone Masterclasses - Andrea Goretti, Timothy Rumsey
Eventi speciali / Special Events
Poker Faces
La Divine Croisière
A colpi di note
9 1⁄ 2
Hindle Wakes
The Pilgrim
Sherlock Holmes Baffled
Sherlock Jr.
Ruritania - 2 - Amy Sargeant, Jay Weissberg
Harry Piel - Andreas Thein
Origini dello slapstick / Origins of Slapstick - Ulrich Rüdel and Steve Massa
Harry Carey - Richard Abel
Sonia Delaunay - Hilde D'hayere, Steven Jacobs
Pierre Loti - Elif Rongen-Kaynakçi
Hans Berge Travelogues - Tina Anckarman
Il canone rivisitato / The Canon Revisited - Paolo Cherchi Usai
Hell’s Heroes
Ma l’amor mio non muore!
Merry-Go-Round
Die Straße
Vendémiaire
Cinema delle origini / Early Cinema
Early British Films from the Filmoteca de Catalunya - Bryony Dixon
Ten Early Dance Films by Peter Elfelt - Thomas Christensen
Riscoperte e restauri / Rediscoveries and Restorations
Amazonas, maior rio do Mundo
Der Berg des Schicksals
Circe the Enchantress
Conrad in Quest of His Youth
Harlem Sketches
The Love that Lives
La madre
Italia Vitaliani bezoekt regisseur Giuseppe Sterni
The Oath of the Sword
La tournée del Genoa Cricket and Football Club
Vent debout
La vita e la morte
The Haghefilm Digitaal-Selznick School Fellowship - Alma Macbride
Feminist Archives in Fragments - Maggie Hennefeld, Enrique Moreno Ceballos
AA: This year I started to return to something resembling normality in my film festival attendance. The COVID-19 pandemic changed everything in March 2019, including four editions of Le Giornate del Cinema Muto (2019, 2020, 2021 and 2022). The pandemic is not over. I still wear a face mask in public transportation and selectively in cinema screenings. The international world of film culture is still in an existential crisis. But the worst may be over.
The corona years were the hardest in my working life as a film archive programmer. The world of film business, film culture and film transport landed in chaos and crisis. Even the most reliable contacts became unreliable. Those years were full of chain reactions of delays, trouble and headache. During festivals, most of the time I spent in my hotel room remote working. I missed most screenings and had no time to blog.
However, that was compensated by a refound joy in the cinema experience itself. I wrote about that in my Pordenone remarks in 2021. That joy is nowhere greater than in Pordenone. Why?
The joy of the cinephilic community is equally great in Midnight Sun Festival (Sodankylä, Lapland), but the impact in Pordenone is enhanced by the fact that there is only one venue: Teatro Verdi. The catchphrase in the opening speeches of Jay Weissberg, relayed from David Robinson, "Welcome home", is accurate.
A sense of a tight knit, happy community is made possible by the commitment and hospitality of the festival staff. It elevates everything and puts all films, including the tiniest bits and pieces, in an ideal context.
In Pordenone, there is an emphasis on beauty and elegance in design. Many films are rare, and refinement of display of their stills and posters is part of the experience. It is not possible to see everything, and it is not possible to remember everything. The stylish layout, the graphic design and the loving care of presentation enhance and prolong the memory of the films.
...
The schedule and the program were published online on Thursday, 28 September 2023, nine days before the festival, and I got my copy of the catalog on Tuesday, 10 October 2023, four days after the start. I made my viewing plan based on the schedule only. Having finished reading the catalog on Thursday, 19 October, the programme made full sense to me and I knew what I had been missing. (The catalog appeared online on 7 October, but I preferred to wait for the hard copy).
The introductions and program notes are of the highest level. They are not only well written, they present original insights. The Pordenone and Bologna catalogues are major contributions to a collective project of re-thinking cinema history.
There was a retrospective called "Origins of Slapstick". For me the title was misleading, because for me slapstick is the least interesting aspect of the Golden Age of Film Comedy. I missed much because I did not know what to expect. Most films in the series were only marginally slapstick, as I found out from the catalogue. I have been thinking a lot about the silent decades of comedy and would like to pursue the hypothesis that it was not only a golden age of film comedy but comedy in general, of all times. Just think about the Serata finale at Teatro Verdi with the inspired double bill of The Pilgrim and Sherlock Jr., Chaplin and Keaton at their greatest and their strangest.
"Ruritania". Masterpieces by Stroheim and Lubitsch have been set in Ruritania, following traditions in operetta and opera, also in Shakespeare and Enlightenment authors who evaded censorship by setting their tales in exotic or imaginary lands. A similar concept is also behind Gulliver's Travels. Fables by Aesop and Krylov are related, as are fairy-tales of many kinds ("Emperor's New Clothes"). In all, "de te fabula narratur" (Horace). But because I read the catalogue post festum, I missed these films. I have not made up my mind whether Ruritania is an interesting theme or mostly an ingenious "Troyan" narrative device.
Harry Carey is a long-term favourite of mine. He was a true presence since his start with D. W. Griffith and John Ford, and until his last appearances in films like Air Force, Duel in the Sun and Red River. Remarkably, he was always the same, but with a complexity in his seemingly simple persona. He could be a saddle tramp and a bum, yet with a fundamental dignity inside. The Outcasts of Poker Flat and Marked Men belong to the films I would most like to see, but they seem to be missing believed lost. Perhaps The Trail of '98 could find its way to the programme one day?
"Canon Revisited" has become a backbone of the festival. It was launched when it turned out that many of us had never seen some of the supposedly familiar masterpieces. Besides, a classic is by definition a work that should be revisited. Plus of course restoration changes reception, sometimes markedly. A philosophical question: does not a digital transfer by definition mean a fundamental change to the film work? I would welcome a "Canon Revisited" selection every day, and that actually was the case this year, albeit not always under that rubric.
Early Cinema is an essential focus point. This year I was happy to see for the first time a series of films by Peter Elfelt, the pioneer of Danish cinema, albeit only as opening shorts. Of the curated short film programs, the Pierre Loti theme show was my favourite of all the films at the festival. On the highest level was also Early British Films from the Filmoteca de Catalunya. I would have welcomed more curated early cinema shows. They are the most indispensable offerings at silent film festivals.
"The Morning Serial" continues to be a delightful feature. Was it first established in Bologna, with Les Aventures de Robert Macaire in 2001? This year in Pordenone every morning started with an episode of Le P'tit Parigot in the Sonia Delaunay tribute.
The Sonia Delaunay series is an example of the festival's commitment to costumes and design. The Harry Piel retrospective was a major rediscovery of a great film star. Many German film legacies suffered because the artists were banned and exiled from the Third Reich. Harry Piel caused embarrassment after WWII because he was a Nazi and ein förderndes Mitglied der SS. Almost all his silent film negatives were destroyed in an air attack, and it was a mighty achievement from Andreas Thein and Filmmuseum Düsseldorf to have mounted this tribute. Harry Piel belongs to the greatest acrobat stars of the cinema, but in comparison with Douglas Fairbanks, Harold Lloyd and Buster Keaton, his talent is limited. Perhaps the closest cinematic point of comparison might be Harry Houdini.
Of films I had seen before I skipped this time Hell Bent, Hell's Heroes, Ma l'amor mio non muore! and Conrad in Quest of His Youth.
Of the films and programmes I saw my favourites include in the order of screening:
Pierre Loti compilation - my number one favourite show
...
MUSIC MATTERS
The musical contributions keep getting better and stronger. There is "musique non stop" live from nine a.m. until close to midnight. I still remember (but try to forget) how it was in the 1980s. The musical contributions have completely changed to the better.
I come from Finland, a land with a distinguished musical culture, and also a country with top female composers and conductors. The male bias of Pordenone strikes me as odd, and I would welcome more female presence in the screenings.
Teatro Verdi is an opera house with fantastic acoustics and a grand piano. This year for the first time I heard a rumour that the piano might have been amplified. Also for the first time I heard that people are considering earplugs.
...
BOLOGNA AND PORDENONE
This year, Le Giornate took a step back to substance. In the high pandemic years I had the feeling that it was basking in the bliss of Hygge, atmosphere, camaraderie, style and elegance.
I have visited Le Giornate since 1988, and a hallmark of the festival has been a commitment to the philosophy of history, reflected since the 1980s in themes such as The Path to Hollywood, Silent Witnesses (Russian cinema before the revolution) and Before Caligari, continuing until the pandemic for instance in memorials to WWI (still pursued this year in Vendémiaire). In any case, there has been a commitment to substance.
Meanwhile, the silent programme at Il Cinema Ritrovato has fortified into a full-grown festival inside the festival, without compromises during the pandemic. I am a Bologna regular, but because of its overwhelming "too much" approach, Draconian selection is necessary, and my selection criteria includes: no silents. That might become a problem if Le Giornate should decide to pursue a "Pordenone lite" variation focusing on style more than substance.
I am not a silent film expert, on the contrary. I see films from the 1890s through the 1920s in the context of cinema, culture, and world history in general. I am not a specialist, but hope to grow into a universalist, and I see the grandeur of cinema's silent era from that perspective.
This year I was not sure whether I wanted to return to Pordenone, and because I don't visit Bologna's silent programmes either, that might have meant a break to my commitment to silents. There is a time and place for everything, and it has been a privilege to participate in the resurrection of silent cinema.
I had misgivings before this year's Le Giornate. But I'm glad I went and plan to do so next year, too.
...
TOP PORDENONE BLOGGERS
Kari Glödstaf: Mykkäelokuvasivusto. A GCM 2023 summary and blog posts on selected films:
Walter Forde: Would You Believe It?
Robert Z. Leonard: Circe the Enchantress
Jack Conway: The Only Thing
Charles Reisner: Oh! What a Nurse
Stuart Paton: Man to Man
Robert G. Vignola: The Love That Lives
I saw none of these selections and regret each.
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