Die Büchse der Pandora / Pandora's Box (two blu-rays: The Criterion Collection 2024 and Eureka! The Masters of Cinema Series 2024)

G. W. Pabst: Die Büchse der Pandora / Pandora's Box (DE 1929). On Christmas Eve in a London slum in a desolate garret under a broken window Lulu (Louise Brooks) lights a candle and picks up the mistletoe. They have been bestowed on Jack the Ripper by a compassionate maid of the Salvation Army whose brass band plays Christmas carols during the finale. Photo from IMDb. Please click on the image to expand it.

Die Büchse der Pandora. Variationen auf das Thema Frank Wedekinds "Lulu" / Pandoran lipas / Pandoras ask.

    DE 1929. Nero-Film AG (Berliini). Copyright: Praesens-Film AG. P: Seymour Nebenzahl.

    D: G. W. Pabst. Ass D: Mark Sorkin, Paul Falkenberg. SC: Ladislaus Vajda – based on the tragedies Erdgeist (Maahinen, 1895) and Die Büchse der Pandora (Pandoran lipas, 1902) by Frank Wedekind . DP: Günther Krampf – panchromatic emulsion – 1:1,33 – b&w – silent – 8 Akte – 3255 m /20 fps, 19 fps/. AD: Andrej Andrejew, Bohumil Heš. Photos: Hans Casparius.

    C: Louise Brooks (Lulu), Fritz Kortner (Dr. Ludwig Schön), Franz Lederer (Alwa Schön), Carl Goetz (Schigolch), Krafft-Raschig (Rodrigo Quast), Alice Roberts (Countess Geschwitz), Daisy d’Ora (Dr. Schön's fiancée), Gustav Diessl (Jack the Ripper), Michael von Newlinski (Marquis Casti-Piani), Siegfried Arno (stage manager).

    German intertitles

    1929: 3255 m /20 fps/ 141 min, /19 fps/ 149 min

    1998 (Bologna, La Cinémathèque française): 3018 m /20 fps/ 132 min

    2009: 3068 m /20 fps/ 133 min, /19 fps/ 141 min

    Uraufführung 9.2.1929 Gloria-Palast, Berlin – banned in Finland 20.3.1929 – first screened at the Finnish Film Archive 13.3.1962 – first Finnish telecast Yle TV2 17.7.1984.

    Reconstruction and restoration: 

Analogue reconstruction-in-progress Filmmuseum – Münchner Stadtmuseum (Munich 1997).

Digital restoration Deutsche Kinemathek (Berlin 2009). 3068 m

This 2K restoration was created from three duplicate elements from the collections of the Cinémathèque française, Gosfilmofond and Národni filmový archiv. Funded by Hugh M. Hefner, this restoration was a collaboration between the George Eastman Museum, La Cinémathèque française, Národni filmový archiv, Gosfilmofond and the Deutsche Kinemathek - Museum für Film und Fernsehen. Restoration supervisor: Martin Koerber. Restoration: Haghefilm Conservation BV, Amsterdam.

    Blu-rays viewed and Alban Berg's opera Lulu listened to at home in preparation to my lecture "Weimar Cinema / Pandora's Box" at Aalto University, Department of Film, Marsio, Otakaari 2, 30 Oct 2024

G. W. Pabst: Die Büchse der Pandora / Pandora's Box (DE 1929). The 2024 edition of The Criterion Collection. Lulu (Louise Brooks) in funeral dress after the death of Ludwig Schön on their wedding night. Cover art: Eric Skillman. Photo: Hans Casparius.

Blu-ray special edition features:

New 2K digital restoration

Four musical scores, by Gillian Anderson, Dimitar Pentchev, Peer Raben, and Stéphan Oliva

Audio commentary (2005) by film scholars Thomas Elsaesser and Mary Ann Doane

Louise Brooks: Looking for Lulu (1998), a documentary by Hugh Munro Neely

Lulu in Berlin (1971), a rare interview with actor Louise Brooks, by Richard Leacock and Susan Steinberg Woll

Interviews with Leacock and Michael Pabst (2006), director G. W. Pabst’s son

PLUS: An essay by critic J. Hoberman (2006), notes on the scores, Kenneth Tynan’s 1979 “The Girl in the Black Helmet,” and an article by Brooks on her relationship with Pabst (1965).

Optional English subtitles

Region: A

3068 m /19 fps/ 141 min

G. W. Pabst: Die Büchse der Pandora / Pandora's Box (DE 1929). The 2024 edition of Eureka! The Masters of Cinema Series. Cover art: Tony Stella.

SPECIAL FEATURES

Limited Edition Box Set - 3000 Copies

Limited Edition Hardcase featuring artwork by Tony Stella

Limited Edition 60-Page Book featuring new writing on the film by critics Alexandra Heller Nicholas, Imogen Sara Smith, and Richard Combs; alongside archival stills and imagery

1080p HD presentation on Blu-ray from a definitive 2K digital restoration

Orchestral Score by Peer Raben

New audio commentary by critic Pamela Hutchinson

New visual appreciation by author and critic Kat Ellinger

New video essay by David Cairns

New video essay by Fiona Watson

Optional English subtitles

Region: B

3068 m /20 fps/ 133 min

Alban Berg: Lulu (posthumous 1935 / premiered in two acts 1937 / complete in three acts 1979). Orchestration of the third act completed by Friedrich Cerha. The first recording of the complete opera: Deutsche Grammophon 1979 - Teresa Stratas (Lulu) / Franz Mazura (Dr. Schön) / Kenneth Riegel (Alwa Schön) / Yvonne Minton (Countess Geschwitz) - conductor: Pierre Boulez - Opéra de Paris. 3-CD Box Set with a booklet of 222 pages, libretto in German and English, 2000.

AA: It was a thrill to see the 2009 restoration of Pandora's Box for the first time. That restoration has been around all these years, but because I saw in Pordenone in 2007 the previous restoration at the closing gala, and the following year we screened that version in Helsinki ourselves, I felt no urgency to revisit the movie sooner.

I have been mesmerized by Pandora's Box since I saw it for the first time in 1981 at the Filmklubben / Filmstaden / Svenska Filminstitutet in Stockholm. The duration was 150 min, probably because it was presumably screened at 16 fps, and if that was the case, the length of the version must have been around 2770 m.

In all versions the distinction is the timeless presence of Louise Brooks as Lulu. G. W. Pabst had never met her before the filming started, but he knew she was right by her presence in A Girl in Every Port. Still today Louise Brooks is original and unique, a model for countless homages, imitations and influences, but only the exterior can be imitated.

Henri Langlois said that like sculptures of classical Antiquity still project the grandeur of the spirit of the age, Pandora's Box is capable of doing so in the coming millennia.

A key to this is how Louise Brooks transcends conventional sex and gender roles and received notions of identity. Words like "sexual ambivalence" and "bisexuality" have been evoked, but now I feel that she goes beyond even them, to an earlier, more original dimension of identity. Brooks said that she never acted sexy and never thought being sexy, not even while having sex. She was not self-conscious about sex. She was simply being herself.

Lotte H. Eisner, who had met Louise Brooks in Berlin when she was filming with Pabst (and reading Schopenhauer during a break), was the first to give full credit to her presence. That happened in Chapter XVIII "Pabst et le miracle de Louise Brooks" in L'Écran démoniaque (1952) which was translated into English as The Haunted Screen. 

Soon after at the "60 Years of Cinema" exhibition at the Musée National d'Art Moderne in Paris in 1955 there were "two gigantic portraits looming down from wires in positions of co-equal honor" (Barry Paris): Falconetti in The Passion of Jeanne d'Arc and Brooks in Pandora's Box. Since then, Pandora's Box has become a banner film of the 1920s - although it failed during its original run and was censored and cut - even banned in countries like Finland. But since the 1950s its status has kept growing, and it has even become a symbol for cinema itself.

Peter Graham (1939-2020): A Dictionary of the Cinema. A. Zwemmer Limited (London) / A. S. Barnes & Co. (New York), Tantivy Press, 1964. Probably my first film book. Photo: Lulu (Louise Brooks) examines the biceps of Rodrigo Quast (Krafft-Raschig) in G. W. Pabst: Die Büchse der Pandora / Pandora's Box (DE 1929). Photo: Hans Casparius.

Watching the restoration on the Criterion and Eureka blu-rays the Pandora experience turns even more profound than before. Because I hadn't seen the movie in 16 years I cannot reliably compare, but the film feels like new although there is probably nothing new storywise.

Martin Koerber, who was in charge of the restoration, has stressed how particular G. W. Pabst was with the editing. Pabst conducted the editing himself, although on some prints and copies others get credit. For Pabst, every frame counted, and the distinction in this restoration is that now every frame counts again. This was only possible to achieve by digital means. There are no original sources, and the restoration had to happen from duped and battered materials. The smoothness of the transitions and the consistent quality in the definition of light are impressive.

I love to disagree with Siegfried Kracauer on almost every page of From Caligari to Hitler. He fails utterly to comprehend Pandora's Box for starters, yet his discourse is unmissable on Pabst. Here he assesses Pabst's aesthetics of invisible cutting (in contrast to the confrontational and discontinuous montage of the Soviet school): "Pabst departs from them technically, because he ventures into the indefinite world of facts. His insistence upon cutting results from his keen concern with given reality. He utilizes tiny pictorial particles to capture the slightest impressions, and he fuses these particles into a finespun texture to mirror reality as a continuity".

Pabst has been with reason linked with New Objectivity, and his undeniable influences from Expressionism have been registered. But inspired by Kracauer's observation of Pabst utilizing "tiny pictorial particles to capture the slightest impressions" I also feel that Pabst has been influenced by Impressionism. Pabst is fascinated by the fleeting moment, and he takes trouble in covering minutiae. This restoration helps us appreciate this dimension better.

This time I registered how different all eight acts of Pandora's Box are. Each has a different imagery: - Lulu's apartment - Schön's apartment - Backstage - the Wedding - the Trial - the Night Train - the Ship of Gamblers - the London Fog. The movie is a showcase of the full range of the visual mastery of late silent cinema, Weimar cinema and G. W. Pabst.

...

PANDORA'S SECRET

There is a secret in Pandora's Box. In thrall of Louise Brooks, I did not get it at first sight, and in 1995, when I published the first edition of my MMM Film Guide, I still missed it, but in 2005 in the second edition I registered it.

It is implicit in Frank Wedekind's Lulu plays and Alban Berg's opera Lulu. I don't remember how it appears in Leopold Jessner's Earth Spirit.

In Pabst's film it is made explicit in heartbreaking intertitles. Lulu refers to Schigolch: "Er ist mein erster... Mäzen" ("He is my first... patron") and "Er ist mein Vater" ("He is my father").

Pabst has the tendency of turning the main clause into a subclause. It is part of his general drive to introduce an offbeat, unexpected and even contradictory approach into the fabula. For example whenever he employs a genre or a style, he executes it against the grain. 

Pandora's Box is an incest tragedy. However, not told in terms of dramatic emphasis but in the cool detachment of New Objectivity. There are also affinities with the Distancing Effect (Verfremdungseffekt / V-Effekt) of Bertolt Brecht and the Defamiliarization (Ostraneniya) of Russian Formalists such as Viktor Shklovsky.

The most tender sequence of the film is the finale with Jack the Ripper. "It is Christmas Eve, and she is about to receive the gift that has been her dream since childhood: death by a sexual maniac" (Louise Brooks). For Brooks, the only disappointment was that the knife did not hit the vagina.

Louise Brooks was born on 14 November 1906. At age 9, around 1915-1916, she lived in Cherryvale, Kansas. 40 years later Louise's childhood friend Betty sent her a photograph where Louise was together with Mr. Flowers. He was nice to little girls and offered them popcorn. Brooks had forgotten all about it, but now she remembered. One day Louise knocked on his door to ask for more. "I was done in by a middle aged man when I was nine", she wrote to Herman G. Weinberg. She also told Kenneth Tynan that "I was loused up by my Lolita experiences". At the time, Louise also told her mother. She put the blame on Louise for "leading him on".

For Barry Paris in his magnificent 609-page Louise Brooks biography, Mr. Flowers is the "Rosebud" of the star's life.

The insult to the injury is also already implicit in Hesiod's telling of the myth of Pandora's Box from which all the evils were unleashed into the world. There is a parallel to the myth of the Garden of Eden where Eve is the one who eats the forbidden fruit and gives some to the man, and consequently God expels them from Paradise.

Grossstadtschmetterling / City Butterfly (2023 restoration DFF Frankfurt)

 

From: Le Giornate del Cinema Muto.

Großstadtschmetterling: Ballade eine Liebe / (Fior d’ombra; Pavement Butterfly) / City Butterfly.

Katuperhonen

Titoli di lavorazione/Working titles: Die Fremde; Asphalt Schmetterling.

    DE/GB 1929. Prod: Eichberg-Film GmbH (Berlin) / British International Pictures Ltd. (B.I.P.) (London). dist: Südfilm A.G. (DE); Wardour (GB).

    Dir: Richard Eichberg. scen: Adolf Lantz, dalla “filmnovella” di/from the “filmnovella” by Hans Kyser. photog: Heinrich Gärtner, Otto Baecker. scg/des: W. A. Hermmann, W. Schlichting. 

    Cast: Anna May Wong (Mah), Tilla Garden (Ellis Working), Fred Louis Lerch (Fedja Kusmin), Alexander Granach (Coco), Gaston Jacquet (il Barone/Baron de Neuve), E. F. Bostwick (Mr. Working, il mercante d’arte americano/an American art dealer), Szöke Szakáll (Paul Bonnet), Nien Sön Ling (Mr. Wu), [John Höxter]. 

    Première: 10.4.1929 (Universum, Berlin; Titania-Palast, Berlin); 7.12.1929 (Regal, London).

    Helsinki premiere: 3 Nov 1930 Scala – Suomen Biografi Osakeyhtiö – 16582 – 2540 m

    Copy: DCP, 96'33" (da/from 35 mm neg. nitr., 7989 ft, orig. l: 2452 m [DE], 7989 ft. [GB], 24 fps); did./titles: GER. fonte/source: DFF – Deutsches Filminstitut & Filmmuseum, Frankfurt.

    Le Giornate del Cinema Muto (GCM), Pordenone 2024: Anna May Wong.

    Musical commentary: Günter Buchwald, Frank Bockius, Mirko Cisilino.

    Viewed at Teatro Verdi with e-subtitles in English and Italian, 11 Oct 2024

Yiman Wang (GCM 2024): "Großstadtschmetterling: Ballade eine Liebe was Anna May Wong’s second European star vehicle directed by Richard Eichberg, who was on loan from Südfilm to co-produce with British International Pictures. Like Song, her previous feature with Eichberg, Großstadtschmetterling mobilized Wong’s exotic Chinese and modern American personae as well as multi-lingual intertitles and

cosmopolitan visual appeals to promote the “Film Europe” project. Adolf Lantz’s script was freely adapted from a “filmnovella” by Hans Kyser, though shortly after the film’s Berlin premiere Kyser sued Eichberg-Film (Kinematograph, 15.4.1929), demanding his name be removed from the credits, presumably due to disagreements with Lantz’s alterations – too late for the posters, which still bore the author’s name. Filming lasted from December 1928 to February 1929, with studio shooting in Neubabelsberg and location work in Monte Carlo, Nice (for the Carnival scenes), Menton, and Paris. As with Song , this was a German-British co-production, but this time the German and British versions have markedly different endings and the English-language release appears to have been censored: “This film has obviously been considerably cut, and suffers in continuity as a result.” (Kinematograph Weekly, 12.12.1929) Großstadtschmetterling opens on Bastille Day in Paris. Wong plays the dancer Mah, billed as “the world famous Princess Butterfly” from New York, who is framed by vengeful ex-suitor Coco for the death of Chinese performer Mr. Wu in a stunt show. She escapes, falls into a delirium (visualized through a montage of vortex images), frantically seeks refuge by ascending flights of stairs (economically captured in one long crane shot), and finally ends up outside the door of impoverished Russian painter Kusmin. The artist is captivated, painting her life-size portrait, which he sells to Baron de Neuve. Kusmin asks her to cash the check, but Coco robs her, leading Kusmin to assume she’s the thief. Jilted, Mah turns to the baron, who refashions her in furred gowns and helps clear her name. Kusmin, now coupled with Ellis, the daughter of a wealthy American art dealer, invites Mah to stay, leading to an extreme close-up of Mah slowly tearing up, looking aside, then looking at Kusmin off-screen. In the German version she rejects his offer with the line “Ich gehöre nicht zu euch” (“I do not belong to you”), omitting the second line in the script, “I want to return home.” In the English version the lines are: “I don’t belong to your world. I belong to the pavements.” Both versions end with a poignant long-shot of Mah striding away in her sequin-trimmed evening gown, alone, into the darkness."

"Großstadtschmetterling and Song share a similar “Madame Butterfly” narrative, punctuated by cabaret comedy. Großstadtschmetterling has a more charged atmosphere, where lively carnival scenes are contrasted with fog-shrouded desolate night streets, further underscoring the disparity between the white man’s joy and Mah’s sorrow. While the film received criticism for the contrived and clichéd plot –

one reviewer even decried its racism (Sozialistische Bildung [Berlin], no. 5, May 1929) – Wong’s presence and performance were universally praised across the European press. Even in reprising the “Madame Butterfly” type, Mah commands subjective montage shots, including the vortex shots in delirium and the superimpositions in “melancholy,” and when she resorts to gambling. Furthermore, Wong’s character survives this time, despite screenwriter Adolf Lantz’s decision to “Play according to the rules of the industry,” as Cynthia Walk has noted (“Anna May Wong and Weimar Cinema: Orientalism in Postcolonial Germany,” in Beyond Alterity: German Encounters with Modern East Asia, 2014). A traditional happy ending would have involved Mah marrying a white man, yet that would have violated American anti-miscegenation laws and cost the film a valuable market (though it appears it was never released in the U.S.). Killing her off was what was expected, as Lantz himself wrote in “Filmstar muß sterben” [“Movie Star must die”] (Tempo, 4.10.1929). One has to wonder whether her walking away, alive, as she does here, might be the “happy” ending after all. Yes, she was excluded from the narrative, but she gained the power to exit from heteronormative coupling altogether."

"Following Song (1928) and Piccadilly (1929), Großstadtschmetterling was Wong’s last silent film. In late 1929, she learned German and French to make her first talkie, shot in three languages: Hai Tang (German), The Flame of Love (English), and L’Amour maître des choses (French), with the German and English versions directed by Eichberg, and the French by Jean Kemm. Yet another “Film Europe” project, these three films star Wong working with three different casts, speaking three languages. With this successful transition to talkies and her newly minted multi-lingual ethno-cosmopolitanism, Wong sailed back to the U.S. in October 1930, to star in the Broadway production of the play On the Spot by Edgar Wallace, and to jump-start the second phase of her Hollywood career." – Yiman Wang (GCM 2024)

AA: Like Song, Grossstadtschmetterling is a big, lavish entertainment film starring Anna May Wong. The new restoration by Deutsches Filminstitut & Filmmuseum (Frankfurt) does perfect justice to its glossy visual splendour. It is a thrilling journey into a world of continental spectacle and delusion, a descent into a vortex of delirium. It draws from the Weimar Strassenfilm of the 1920s and anticipates the desolate French Dans les rues school of the 1930s. Unfortunately Richard Eichberg was a pedestrian director. But he had the good taste to cast Anna May Wong in three of his films (Song, Grossstadtschmetterling and Hai-Tang). She is the shining butterfly in the world of Eichberg. Her presence is pure poetry, original and unique, ranging from grace and joy to solitude and desolation. She transcends and elevates everything.

Raskolnikow / Crime and Punishment (2023 restoration Filmmuseum München)

Robert Wiene: Raskolnikow / Crime and Punishment (DE 1923) with Grigori Chmara (Rodion Raskolnikov).

Delitto e castigo

    DE 1923.dir, scen: Robert Wiene, based on the novel by Fyodor M. Dostoyevsky, Prestuplenije i nakasanije, 1866. photog: Willy Goldberger. des: Andrej Andrejew. cast: Grigorij Chmara (Rodion Raskolnikow), Alla Tarassowa (Dunja), Michail Tarschanow (Semjon Marmeladow), Maria Germanowa (Katerina Marmeladowa), Maria Kryshanowskaja (Sonja), Pawel Pawlow (Porfiri Petrowitsch), Sergej Kommissarow (Luschin), Pjotr Scharow (Swidrigailow).

    prod: Lionardo-Film, for Neumann-Produktion GmbH. dist: Bayerische Filmgesellschaft. première: 15.8.1923 (Bio Hvězda, Prague), 26.9.1923 (Regina-Lichtspiele, München), 27.10.1923 (Mozartsaal, Berlin). 

    Banned in Finland (control number 12128) in 1923 by Suomen Biografiliitto.

    copia/copy: DCP, 142', col. (from 35 mm, tinted, orig. l. 3168 m, 21 fps); titles: GER. source: Filmmuseum München. Restoration © 2023.

    Le Giornate del Cinema Muto, Pordenone 2024: The Canon Revisited.

    Grand piano: Richard Siedhoff, a piano reduction of his orchestral score.

    Viewed with e-subtitles in English / Italian at Teatro Verdi, 11 Oct 2024.

Stafan Drössler (GCM 2024): "At the beginning of the 1920s, a rapidly growing community of exiled Russians settled in Berlin, opening stores and cafés in the city center and entering the city’s cultural life. When Konstantin Stanislavsky (1863–1938) and his Moscow Art Theater company presented Russian classics on stage at the Lessing Theater in September 1922, it was a society event and the theatre was sold out. On the last day of the guest performances, an announcement appeared in Film-Kurier (Nr. 215, 30.9.1922) that Lionardi-Film Gesellschaft was working on Raskolnikow, a film adaptation of Dostoyevsky’s novel Crime and Punishment, to be performed “exclusively by members of the Moscow Art Theater” under the direction of Robert Wiene. One day later, the Berliner Börsen-Courier (1.10.1922) reported that the project was “the first time that an attempt has been made to transfer a closed theatre ensemble, and one that is considered a prime example of ensemble art, as a whole to film”."

"Pjotr [Peter] Scharow, director and actor of the Künstlertheater (who played Swidrigailow in the film), explained in the same newspaper that the actors were “happy to have found in Robert Wiene a director who not only unites with us in his reverence for the poet, but whose art, according to his earlier creations, in its rejection of naturalism, carries the conditions for a production that goes beyond dry reality. We are pleased to be able to give him our artist A. W. Andrejew at his side, who gives everyone their room, everyone their corner.” Dostoyevsky’s novel was considered difficult to film. As Robert Wiene explained in Film-Kurier (Nr. 73, 25.3.1924): “This man Raskolnikow lives only in hypertrophic mental processes, in inner struggles to which the environment hardly corresponds. Nothing here is based on reality, and the visualization had to suggest this in an anti-naturalistic way.”"

"Filming took place in the fall of 1922. In February 1923, Raskolnikow was completed, submitted by Neumann-Produktion to the Film Review Board in Berlin, and was passed on 9 March 1923. However, the film was not immediately released in German cinemas, but was first offered for world sales. 1923 was the year of galloping inflation in Germany, a time for speculators and profiteers. Selling German films abroad for hard currency was a lucrative business. Hans Neumann had just founded his company Neumann-Produktion to produce his own first major project, I.N.R.I., for a worldwide 1923 Christmas release. He hired Robert Wiene to direct the film and Gregori Chmara to play Jesus. Apparently, Neumann had helped Lionardo-Film financially and taken over Raskolnikow. But while he launched an unprecedented advertising campaign to promote I.N.R.I., he did not pay much attention to Raskolnikow. The first verifiable public screening took place on15 August 1923 at the Bio Hvězda cinema in Prague. From 26 September, the film was shown in Munich at the Regina-Lichtspiele, before Neumann-Film sent out invitations for the official “premiere” of the film at the Mozartsaal in Berlin on 27 October."

"The German film critics consistently praised the performance of the cast: “We want to say it without envy: No German actor could have achieved what these Russians did with such naturalness, warm humanity and harrowing realism ... not acting, but: living!” (Reichsfilmblatt Nr. 44, 3.11.1923) Wiene’s cinematic concept, on the other hand, was controversial: “An artistic-aesthetic impossibility, however, is an expressionistically free decoration to the thoroughly impressionistic-naturalistic play, to the historically authentic costume...” (Süddeutsche Filmzeitung Nr. 40, 4.11.1923) Kurt Pinthus polemicized in Das Tage-Buch (Nr. 46, 17.11.1923): “One always asks oneself: How were these original Russians thrown into these jagged rooms, stairwells, streets that lose themselves in the infinite and mysterious?” But he admits: “The film is very exciting, it eats in your brain; you sense Dostoyevsky’s greatness and depth; you are shaken, taken away, purified. And that proves that there was more going on here than just the criminal case: a filmic experience beyond mere stretched psychology.” The film’s powerful impact is documented by an incident in Warsaw’s Apollo cinema: “At the moment when Raskolnikow reached for the axe for the second time to kill the witness to his murder of the pawnbroker, one of the spectators shot at the screen with a pistol in order – as he later explained – to prevent the second murder.” (Express Poranny, 25.10.1923)"

"Raskolnikow was shown in many countries in various edited and modified versions. In Bucharest, the film filled the 2,000 seats of the Ekoria Cinema for four weeks. In Kyoto, Raskolnikow was the opening film of the Shochikuza Cinema on 28 January 1925. In London, the film was in one of the first Film Society programs – the film ran without an intermission and silently without musical accompaniment, “an experience unique in a public cinema” preventing the film from being impaired by “anachronistic or hackneyed music”. (The Evening Standard, 15.12.1925) In the USA, the Motion Picture Guild distributed Raskolnikow in 1927 under the title Crime and Punishment, opening on 19 June 1927, with a one-week run at the Little Theater, a progressive arthouse in Washington, D.C. (which also played Potemkin and Caligari)."

"Today only foreign versions of the film have survived, all of which are incomplete and significantly shorter than the German censorship length of 3168 metres. In 1991 the Nederlands (now Eye) Filmmuseum created a reconstruction based on a Dutch nitrate print, supplemented with footage from a Russian copy from Gosfilmofond, into which parts of an Italian version from the Cineteca Italiana in Milan had already been incorporated. For the new reconstruction, in addition to the original nitrate print from Italy, a dupe negative of the American distribution version was used, which contained previously unknown scenes and, above all, better shots from the A negative, while the Dutch and Russian material came from a B negative and a C negative."

"Unfortunately, no detailed synopses, screenplay, original score, or censorship files are known to exist which could help to recreate of the original version of Raskolnikow. As contemporary critics emphasized that the film “faithfully followed in the footsteps of its poet, most of whose text had been used verbatim in the titles” (Lichtbild-Bühne Nr. 44, 3.11.1923), the 1912 German translation of the novel by Hermann Röhl had to serve as the basis for the reconstruction. The wording for the texts of the intertitles was also taken from this source, and their new graphic design is based on a font developed from the intertitles of Wiene’s Das Cabinet des Dr. Caligari. Since the Italian fragment of Raskolnikow still had traces of the coloring, some of which differed from the color specifications found on the leaders of the American dupe negative, a new color scheme was developed, based on times of day and locations. Richard Siedhoff has composed an impressive new orchestral score, which very subtly emphasizes the moods of the main character; he will perform a piano reduction of his score at this year’s Giornate." –Stefan Drössler (GCM 2024)

AA: I saw in 1997 Raskolnikow in a Munich print of the 1991 Netherlands Film Museum restoration, 3031 m /18 fps/ 147 min, too long ago to compare.

But my general impression is that the new restoration is visually smoother, subtler and more gratifying. I love the subtle toning. The projection speed is now 21 fps, faster than before. In those days, silent films were routinely screened too slowly.

Dostoevsky in general and Crime and Punishment in particular are perfect for Expressionism, so perfect that visual excess should be unnecessary, but I was happily surprised to discover the shotgun wedding of the sophistication of Moscow Art Theatre and Robert Wiene's exaggerated nightmare cinema yielding such successful results. The overdone mise-en-scène conveys a world out of joint.

This is a valid Dostoevsky interpretation, faithful to the spirit, but there is not always an irresistible, compelling drive. The best adaptation is Crime and Punishment (1970) by Lev Kulidzhanov, with George Taratorkin as Raskolnikov and Innokenti Smoktunovsky as Porfiri, but it is distorted by the elimination of the spiritual transformation.

Dostoevsky is essential for the cinema and the matter is deeper than that of adaptations. Imperial Russian cinema of the 1910s, Weimar cinema of the 1920s, French cinema of the 1930s and American film noir of the 1940s all shared a profound Dostoevskyan undercurrent. Robert Wiene's Raskolnikow is fascinating from this perspective. It is great to have it back in this thrilling restoration.

D. W. Griffith: The Devil (1908) (2017/2024 digital scan 4K)

D. W. Griffith: The Devil (US 1908). George Gebhardt, Claire McDowell, Harry Solter. (Tracey Goessel, FairCode Associates / Library of Congress). Le Giornate del Cinema Muto 2024.

US © 1908 American Mutoscope & Biograph Company.
    Dir: D. W. Griffith. Story: based on the play by Ferenc Molnár, The Devil (Az ördög, 1907). Photog: Billy Bitzer. Cast: Harry Solter, Claire McDowell, Florence Lawrence, Arthur Johnson, Mack Sennett, George Gebhardt.

    Filmed: 12.9.1908 (NY Studio; undetermined NY Street location). Rel: 2.10.1908. 

    Copy: DCP (4K), 10'08" (from paper print, 570 ft, 15 fps); titles: ENG. Source: Library of Congress National Audio-Visual Conservation Center, Packard Campus, Culpeper, VA.

    Film Preservation Society (FPS) / Tracey Goessel / Digital scan, 2017. Given the absence of original intertitles, new ones have been written by the Film Preservation Society. 2024 edition. 

    43rd Le Giornate del Cinema Muto (GCM), Pordenone: Early Cinema – The Biograph Project. 

    Grand piano: Philip Carli.

    Viewed at Teatro Verdi with e-subtitles in Italian, 11 Oct 2024 

There is no credit information in the film itself, just the title card with the year of copyright and the name and the address of the American Mutoscope & Biograph Company, like in The Adventures of Dollie.

Tracey Goessel (GCM/FPS The Biograph Project 2024): "Griffith had prior experience with stop-motion shots but always with the intent of not being noticed. Here Satan, complete with long chin and a single, inexplicable Indian feather, pops in and out of the frame with relish and abandon. But Griffith lacked the wit and visual charm of a Méliès. His popping cartoon devil is there to serve a melodramatic plot, not to charm and delight."

"The film bears little relation to the play upon which it was based. While each contains an artist and his model, temptation and, well – Satan, the Biograph tale is the sort of lurid melodrama that can fit into a single reel, ending with the protagonists’ bodies littering the floor. Film could not yet match the stage for complexities of plot."

"Nor for nuance of characterization. In the play, the Devil is of the urbane sort. (Think Laird Cregar in Lubitsch’s Heaven Can Wait.) In the movies? He is just a pitchfork, tail, and pair of horns away from a caricature."

"At the end of the day, the strongest element to this film is its cast. Not only is there Florence Lawrence as the beautiful model, but making her first appearance in a Biograph is the unconquerable Claire McDowell. There is nary a film she does not improve with her presence."

AA: The Devil (HU 1907) was the breakthrough play by the Hungarian playwright Ferenc Molnár. It turned into an international success, and it was produced also in Finland in 1908 (at Tampereen Teatteri). The only film adaptation I have seen is Griffith's, but Tom Gunning has been able to compare it with the Edison and Vitagraph versions.

When I first saw the film in 1997 the print was so weak that it was hard to make sense of, but I was impressed by the use of the "split screen" of two cursed couples on display together on the stage divided by a wall. Art of the overacting. "Then the Devil took their souls". Again, I am grateful for the restoration which makes sense of the movie storywise and visually.

I am reminded of Claude Chabrol's account of his first encounter with Alfred Hitchcock. Chabrol had been allowed to his press conference. Smoothly Hitchcock gave routine answers to routine questions. Then was Chabrol's turn, and he asked: "Mr. Hitchcock, do you believe in the Devil?" For once, Hitchcock fell silent. He paused to think, looked at Chabrol in the eye and said: "Yes, I believe the Devil is inside all of us, and we battle with him every day".

...

Tom Gunning 1997 capsule: "The Devil appears and tempts a married artist to seduce his model. When his wife finds out, the devil tempts her to take revenge through an affair. At a restaurant the two philandering couples meet. The Artist finds his wife with the other man, pursues her home and, again under the Devil's influence, kills her and himself."

In his full 1997 program note, Gunning compares (my paraphrasis:) three adaptations made at the time (by Biograph, Edison and Vitagraph) and notes that the others were dependent on audience foreknowledge of the play where the Biograph version stood on its own. Gunning highlights the unique use of stop motion. This is the only Griffith film at Biograph which uses this technique in such a flamboyant manner. Griffith's stop motion Devil is not a piece of a Méliès féerie but a personification of evil in the human psyche. Even more striking Gunning finds the parallel editing with the immediate cut from artist kissing his model to his wife pacing the floor at home impatiently. Gunning also points out to Griffith's tendency to grim endings at this point of his career. (End of my Gunning paraphrasis).

...

I saw The Devil in GCM's Griffith Project (DWG 54), pomeriggio 15 Oct 1997 at Ridotto del Verdi on 16 mm at 233 ft /15 fps/ 11 min, titles missing, Donald Sosin at the piano.

Moving Picture World synopsis from Biograph Bulletin, No. 175, October 2 1908: "A BIOGRAPH PORTRAYAL OF PSYCHIC FORCE. "There's the Devil to pay." Don't worry, the Devil is a good collector, and never discounts. In the ever-existent psychomachy in the human being, Satan attacks the weaker side, the flesh, and has in most cases an easy task in overthrowing the soul. In this picture we have attempted to show in the material that conflict by personifying that which is evil and sinister in our natures by figure of the traditional Satan; hence, in this subject, the Devil is intended to illustrate psychic force."

"Herold Thornton, a successful artist, is so deeply in love with his wife that apparently no power, natural or supernatural, could swerve him from the path of honor. But, alas! he is human, and in his employ is a very beautiful girl as model. This girl has loved her employer with a suppressed, hopeless passion, which needed but a breath to fan it into a blaze. In justice to her it must be said that she didn't realize the strength of this feeling, smothering it with admiration for the artist's devotion for his wife."

"Ah, but the Devil knows how to play the game, and his promptings are so fascinatingly impressive that few can resist. But who is the Devil? He is the embodiment of our evil inclination warring with the pure. So it was that at his prompting the artist falls, as does his model. They are discovered by the wife, who in turn is prompted by the Devil to "get even," which she heeds."

"She is surprised by her husband in a private dining-room of a café in company with a gentleman friend. In frenzy he leaps at his wife's throat, and the Devil laughs. He would have sent her to him then and there, hut for the intervention of the waiters."

"In terror, the poor woman rushes to her home. She is followed by the crazed husband. In vain she pleads, but the Devil prompts: "Kill." Taking a revolver from the dresser-drawer, he moves deliberately toward the terrified wife, and the Devil laughs. A shot and a body and soul part; another shot, and "There was the Devil to pay," and he collected."

"This subject, while thrilling, is most ingeniously handled, with photographic quality of the highest order, showing a stereoscopic effect never before attained." —Moving Picture World synopsis from Biograph Bulletin, No. 175, October 2 1908

D. W. Griffith: The Stolen Jewels (1908) (2017/2024 digital scan 4K)

D. W. Griffith: The Stolen Jewels (US 1908). Restoration comparison photo: Film Preservation Society.

US © 1908 American Mutoscope & Biograph Company.

    Dir: D. W. Griffith. Story: ?. Photog: Billy Bitzer. Cast: Harry Solter, John R. Cumpson, Florence Lawrence, Linda Arvidson, Charles Inslee, George Gebhardt, D. W. Griffith.

    Filmed: 24.8, 15.9.1908 (NY Studio; New York Curb Exchange, NYC). Rel: 29.9.1908.

Copy: DCP (4K), 11'12" (from paper print, 630 ft, 16 fps); titles: ENG. Source: Library of Congress National Audio-Visual Conservation Center, Packard Campus, Culpeper, VA.

    Film Preservation Society (FPS) / Tracey Goessel / Digital scan, 2017. Given the absence of original intertitles, new ones have been written by the Film Preservation Society. 2024 edition.

    43rd Le Giornate del Cinema Muto (GCM), Pordenone: Early Cinema – The Biograph Project.

    Grand piano: Philip Carli.

    Viewed at Teatro Verdi with e-subtitles in Italian, 11 Oct 2024 

There is no credit information in the film itself, just the title card with the year of copyright and the name and the address of the American Mutoscope & Biograph Company, like in The Adventures of Dollie.

Tracey Goessel (GCM/FPS The Biograph Project 2024): "Here is a little film with much to offer: a crime drama with no crime, and a mystery that is no mystery at all. And that is the charm of the thing. A little girl stuffs her mother’s jewels into a candy container/toy dog. The family believes them to be stolen. The market crashes and hard times follow: furniture is repossessed and the father’s brokerage business goes bust." 

"All through these trials, Griffith keeps the jewel-filled toy in our view. We know it is the solution to the family’s crisis, but they do not. Florence Lawrence, at the height of her despair, clutches the toy, and actually twists its head back and forth. One can just picture the audience crying out “Look in the dog!”, the way modern audiences call out to the screen in horror films today."

"The exteriors are also of interest. In the curb market on Broad Street we see Griffith himself, enacting a shoving match with Harry Solter." (Tracey Goessel)

AA: Tom Gunning in his 1997 essay for The Griffith Project registered in The Stolen Jewels an inversion of Betrayed by a Hand Print (released four weeks earlier). In both films, the audience knows where the jewels are and who took them. In The Stolen Jewels, there is no crime, but the loss of the diamond necklace becomes a catalyst to disaster. 

The stockbroker Robert Jenkins loses everything, including his home and all his belongings. Only a chair and the little toy doggie of Baby Jenkins remain. From the doggie's belly the diamond necklace is found. The toy has been in plain sight all the time.

Because The Stolen Jewels is not a whodunit, it becomes a psychological study about a family in catastrophe. Their life is destroyed, but they have each other and true friends like Smithson. There is a happy final plot twist, but their true strength has already been proven. They face disaster together, they find joy together.

Mastery of the plan-séquence. Intimate home scenes are intertwined with epic crowd scenes of market panic. "The curb market" is a piece of fascinating arcana in the history of finance. The sense of cool observation anticipates A Corner in Wheat.

The Stolen Jewels is one of my favourites in the year 1908 of Griffith and his great team.

A copy of nice visual quality has been redeemed from paper print origins.

...

I saw The Stolen Jewels in GCM's Griffith Project (DWG 55), pomeriggio 15 Oct 1997 at Ridotto del Verdi on 16 mm at 630 ft /15 fps/ 9'30" without intertitles and Donald Sosin at the piano.

...

Moving Picture World synopsis from Biograph Bulletin, No. 174, 29 Sep 1908: "It would have taken more than the wonderful powers of deduction of a Sherlock Holmes to dispel the mystery that shrouded the disappearance of a case of jewels at the home of wealthy stockbroker Robert Jenkins, and although they were eventually brought to light, it was through a most remarkable accident."

"Mr. and Mrs. Jenkins are getting ready for an evening at the opera, and as usual Mrs. Jenkins is tantalizingly slow in her preparations, and is almost carried out of the house by the impatient Jenkins. Baby Jenkins is very much in evidence, and requires a bribe to induce her to remain contented with the maid. This Mrs. J. furnishes in the shape of a papier-maché doggie, the head of which is removed to find its interior filled with candy."

"Mrs. Jenkins is inclined to deck herself out in her diamonds, and takes the case from the strong-box, but in her anxiety to appease her husband's flustering, she hurriedly kisses baby and departs, forgetting all about the jewels. They are not long in the theater before the thought of the diamonds comes to her, and the awful possible result of her carelessness. She will not rest until Mr. Jenkins takes her home."

"On arriving there, sure enough her worst fears are apparently confirmed. There on the desk lies the jewel case empty. Good heavens. what's to be done? No one was in the house but the baby and nurse, both of whom are now abed. There is no trace or sign of the entrance of a thief. How did it happen?"

"Well, the detectives are summoned and put to work on the case, but without success, although a reward of $10,000 is offered for the apprehension of the robbers and return of the jewels. The detectives finally give the matter up."

"Poor Jenkins is certainly up against it, for the loss of the jewels is the beginning of a streak of wretched luck. He is beaten on all sides in the stock market until at length he is forced to the wall. Poverty, disgrace and even starvation stare him and his loved ones in the face."

"Forced to sell his house and then the furniture to satisfy his creditors, he is in the depths of despair as he stands and views his precious little one playing on the floor with her doggie, unconscious of the anguish of her father. Piece by piece the household effects are seized, until there remains but a couple of chairs, on one of which Baby places her doggie."

"At that moment the door opens and Smithson, Jenkins' friend, enters to offer his sympathy and aid. Smithson is a good hearted, blustering fellow, and in the enthusiasm of his friendship, flusters about, finally throwing himself into the only chair in the room, not noticing the toy, of course crushing it to atoms."

"Leaping to his feet, he is profuse in apologies, when, lo and behold. there among the fragments of the broken dog lay the diamonds. The clouds that hung over the household are dissipated and the little family may start anew. There are many sensational incidents in the course of the film; one showing the curb market of New York is most unique." —Moving Picture World synopsis from Biograph Bulletin, No. 174, 29 Sep 1908

D. W. Griffith: A Smoked Husband (1908) (2017/2024 digital scan 4K)

 

D. W. Griffith: A Smoked Husband (US 1908).

US © 1908 American Mutoscope & Biograph Company. 

    Dir: D. W. Griffith. Story: Frank E. Woods. Photog: Billy Bitzer. Cast: John R. Cumpson, Florence Lawrence, Arthur Johnson, Linda Arvidson, Charles Inslee, Mack Sennett, Robert Harron, Harry Solter, George Gebhardt. 

    Filmed: 26-27.8.1908 (NY Studio; West 12th Street, NYC). Rel: 25.9.1908. 

    Copy: DCP (4K), 8'22" (from paper print, 470 ft, 16 fps); titles: ENG. Source: Library of Congress National Audio-Visual Conservation Center, Packard Campus, Culpeper, VA.

   Film Preservation Society (FPS) / Tracey Goessel / Digital scan, 2017. Given the absence of original intertitles, new ones have been written by the Film Preservation Society. 2024 edition.

    43rd Le Giornate del Cinema Muto (GCM), Pordenone: Early Cinema – The Biograph Project.

    Grand piano: Philip Carli.

    Viewed at Teatro Verdi with e-subtitles in Italian, 11 Oct 2024

Tracey Goessel (GCM Program Note 2024): "It might be argued that this is not the first “Jones” comedy, as Florence Lawrence and John Cumpson are dubbed “Mr. and Mrs. Bibbs” in the Biograph Bulletin. But it is their first comic pairing as spouses, and why split hairs?"

"Florence Lawrence (Photoplay, January 1915, p. 105) recalled the film as an example of how “the ‘Jonesy’ comedies kept up with the fashions of the times, as was evidenced by the ‘sheath’ gown in A Smoked Husband.” Indeed, the prospect of Miss Lawrence’s stunning gams moves not only her husband to horror, but modern audiences to delight."

"As cinema, this little film does little to advance the craft. The trick shot substitution of Cumpson for his dummy stand-in is a mere expedient; not used to meaningful or comic effect as Méliès had been doing years before. And the trope of having the characters besmudged with black coal or white paint was new when the Dead Sea was only sick."

Tom Gunning in his essay on A Smoked Husband in the Griffith Project (1997) stated (in paraphrase) that in retrospect, A Smoked Husband appears as the first in the Jones series, about eight comedies Griffith directed in 1908–1909 – until Florence Lawrence left Biograph. All starred Lawrence and the rotund comedian John Cumpson as a middle class man and wife and involved a series of marital gags and situations, reminiscent of television sitcoms of decades later. The series was extremely successful. When Lawrence left for IMP company, their publicity described her as "known to 1000's as Mrs. Jones". The idea of a series must have come only after the success of this films. Regardless of the name, the characters and situations are identical to those of the later Jones series. – The idea of a middle class comedy set in bourgeois domesticity may have been an innovation. In these films a sense of bourgeois propriety is essential. – However, the film still has strong ties to the earliest and most lasting gags: the literal besmirching of a character. Early Biograph gag films such as A Black Storm (US 1903) consist of little else, and the tradition goes on in the Golden Age with the custard pie. – The discomfort of Bibbs in the chimney once the fire has been lais is conveyed through alternating editing. – The climax of the film is not only marked by the capture of the real burglar and the embarrassment of the husband, but by a somewhat spectacular fall from the roof and a final besmirching gag. – The final fall into the white cement reverses the black face besmirching (which always takes on racial overtones in American comedies) and recalls the primal scene of all besmirching film comedies, the various versions of "The Miller and the Sweep" in which soot and flour intermingle as the characters fight it out. (End of Tom Gunning paraphrase).

AA: It is fascinating to learn that the Jones comedy series was extremely successful, that a middle class comedy series set in bourgeois domesticity was an innovation, and that A Smoked Husband may be the first in a long and popular tradition.

D. W. Griffith had a lovely sense of humour that he expressed in his great films, from romance to tragedy, from historical epic to temperance drama. He also knew to employ witty screenwriters such as Anita Loos.

But I don't remember a single great comedy by him. A Smoked Husband may be an attempt at a comedy of manners, but it is also a hyperbolic catastrophe farce in the tradition of Georges Méliès, Jean Durand and André Deed. There is a Biograph link from French comedy to Keystone. Griffith is not a great director of a comedy of manners, nor is he a master of the farce. But he paved the way for others.

Nice visual quality in the new restoration. I keep being amazed at the Biograph 1908 discoveries. So many innovations in a short period of time. Amazing grace: I was blind but now can see.

...

I saw A Smoked Husband in GCM's Griffith Project (DWG 48), mattina 15 October 1997 at Ridotto del Verdi on 16 mm at 470 ft / 15 fps / 8 min without intertitles and Antonio Coppola at the piano.

...

Moving Picture World synopsis from Biograph Bulletin, No. 173, 25 September 1908: "GROUNDLESS JEALOUSY GETS ITS JUST DESERTS. This smoked husband, though little better than a smoked herring, more properly belonging to the crustacean type of piscatory, the lobster, for such he was and no mistake. While our friend Benj. Bibbs was not exactly parsimonious still there were times when he kicked most vigorously against his wife's extravagance. Such an occasion opens our story." 

"Milady Bibbs has just had sent home a hat and gown, for which poor Bibbsy has to give up, but when he sees her attired in the duds, he softens, for she certainly does look stunning. All is well until she turns around when, O, horror! It is a sheath gown of a most pronounced type. "You brazen hussy, to appear such!" "

"He could say no more, for he fairly choked with rage, and rushes from the room in a state of turbulent perturbation; but not until he has ruthlessly thrown a floor rug over his shameless wife."

"The maid of the family is in league with a crook, and the pair have plotted to rob the place. To this end the crook has written a note to the maid, telling her to signal when the coast is clear. This note falls into the hands of Bibbs, and as it is simply addressed "Honey" and signed "Lovingly, Tom," his jealous nature at once associates it with his wife."

""Aha! Sheath gown, honey, signal from the window, meet in drawing room, lovingly, Tom. I see it all: You would deceive me, eh? We shall see!" Into the fireplace and up the chimney he goes to hide, intent upon trapping his apparently perfidious spouse and her paramour."

"He is hardly ensconced when the maid, on order of the madam, builds a fire on the hearth, and yon may imagine Bibbs' position is not a pleasant one. To descend is out of the question, and as he ascends he dislodges the soot which covers him from head to foot. The noise induced by his scrambling amid smoke and soot alarms the women folks and several policemen answer their cries, who capture "Lovingly, Tom" 'neath the rose tree in the garden."

"The women insist that the real offender is still in the flue, and a mad rush to the roof brings the coppers there just as poor soot-begrimed Bibbs emerges from the chimney. Chased over the roofs, he in desperation leaps off, coming down on the heads of a couple of Willie boys who are gossiping alongside a mortar box."

"Into the cement tumble the trio, and a sorry sight they present when the police and others arrive. Explanations prove what a colossal fool Bibbs has been, but still it served him right, and his discomfort is the spectators' sport, for the subject is a most hilariously humorous one, with a scream in every foot of length."

—Moving Picture World synopsis from Biograph Bulletin, No. 173, 25 September 1908

D. W. Griffith: Where the Breakers Roar (1908) (2017/2024 digital scan 4K)

 

D. W. Griffith: Where the Breakers Roar (US 1908).

US © 1908 American Mutoscope & Biograph Company.

    Dir: D. W. Griffith. Story: ?. Photog: Arthur Marvin, Billy Bitzer. Cast: Arthur Johnson, Linda Arvidson, Florence Lawrence, Charles Inslee, Mack Sennett, Edward Dillon, Robert Harron, Harry Solter, George Gebhardt.  

    Filmed: 21.8, 25.8.1908 (NY Studio; undocumented beach location). rel: 22.9.1908.

    Copy: DCP (4K), 10'04" (from paper print, 566 ft, 15 fps); titles: ENG. source: Library of Congress National Audio-Visual Conservation Center, Packard Campus, Culpeper, VA.

    Film Preservation Society (FPS) / Tracey Goessel / Digital scan, 2017. Given the absence of original intertitles, new ones have been written by the Film Preservation Society.

    43rd Le Giornate del Cinema Muto (GCM), Pordenone: Early Cinema – The Biograph Project.

    Grand piano: Philip Carli.

    Viewed at Teatro Verdi with e-subtitles in Italian, 11 Oct 2024

There is no credit information in the film itself, just the title card with the year of copyright and the name and the address of the American Mutoscope & Biograph Company, like in The Adventures of Dollie.

Tracey Goessel (GCM/FPS The Biograph Project 2024): " Breakers has that glorious, sunny, by-the-sea quality that gives us the feeling of peeping through a time machine to a late August day in 1908. The presence of enlisted townspeople provides the wonderful sense of reality mixed with melodrama. Granted, the escaped lunatic provides a fly in the ointment (he breaks free of his guards on the only stage-shot scene: a painted backdrop of a stone building, helpfully labeled “Insane Asylum.”) "

" We can see Griffith stretching his creative muscles here. Long before The Musketeers of Pig Alley (1912), he gives us the prospect of the actor (madman Charles Inslee, clutching a knife) coming straight up to the camera. "

AA: Tom Gunning wrote a superb program note about Where the Breakers Roar for the Griffith Project. He registers the impressive use of the beach location shooting and the dynamic relation of actor movement and camera placement. He uses in a systematic manner the exit towards the camera with an effect of enlarging the actors – to express a sense of threat. Such an invasion of the space of the camera/spectator by a movement coming close to the camera was used in the early cinema of attractions, but Griffith uses this motion to create a sense of threat within the world of the story. Griffith thus translates visual attractions into narrative devices. – While the film is not based on actual parallel editing, Griffith does tell the story with two converging plot lines. – Griffith's control of space in the threatening sequences makes this an impressive stage in his mastery of visual storytelling. – "The transformation of the spectator's relation to this threat from the involuntary flinch at the action towards her and the laughter that follows of the cinema of attractions to an anxiety about the characters on the screen represents a key moment in the development of narrative cinema". (End of my Tom Gunning paraphrase).

This simple anecdote is based on the stark contrasts of life and death, love and madness, joy and murder. 

Griffith is inspired by the natural light and beach fun in this outdoors sketch. Love, fun and games at the beach are interrupted by a lunatic on the loose from an insane asylum, armed with a knife.

Griffith's art of visual expression is developing, but the performances feel clumsy.

An ok – fair copy.

...

I saw Where the Breakers Roar in GCM's Griffith Project (DWG 47), mattina 15 October 1997 at Ridotto del Verdi on 16 mm at 566 ft /15 fps/ 9 min without intertitles and Antonio Coppola at the piano.

Moving Picture World synopsis from Biograph Bulletin, No. 172, 22 September 1908: "AN AGONIZING EPISODE IN A SEASIDE ROMANCE. When love is young, all the world seems gay; hence Tom Hudson and Alice Fairchild are carefree and happy as they join the little party for a outing at the beach. Though the young folks find great sport cavorting in the breakers. Tom and Alice are well content to sit on the sand under a sunshade and spoon. This induced their friends to tantalize them a bit, and seizing Tom, carry him into the surf and give him a ducking, promising the same treatment to Alice. She, however, leads them a merry chase."

"During the forenoon, a dangerous lunatic, who was being conveyed by keepers from the train to the asylum nearby, overpowers the keepers and escapes. Coming upon an Italian laborer in the road, assaults him and secures his stiletto. Armed with this he terrorized the neighborhood and comes onto the beach as Alice, playfully pursued by her friends, jumps into a puntboat to row out from shore. Before she is aware of it, she is driven to sea by this maniacal fiend, who is now brandishing the stiletto in a most terrifying manner."

"The keepers have now reached the beach and alarm the party by acquainting them with the real character of the girl's companion. A rowboat is procured, and the keepers, with Tom, start in pursuit. The fanatic makes a strenuous effort to outstrip them, but with poor success, until at length, finding his apprehension inevitable, leaps to his feet and is about to plunge the knife into the breast of the terror-stricken girl, when a well directed bullet from the keeper's gun fells him to the bottom of the boat. The poor girl is then taken to shore by Tom and revived by her girl companions. "

—Moving Picture World synopsis from Biograph Bulletin, No. 172, 22 September 1908

Song (2022 restoration Filmmuseum Düsseldorf)

Richard Eichberg: Song (DE/GB 1928). Anna May Wong (Song).

SONG. DIE LIEBE EINES ARMEN MENSCHENKINDES (Schmutziges Geld) (Show Life) (May Song, la bambola di Shangai) / Kiinalaistyttö Song.

    DE/GB 1928 Eichberg-Film GmbH (Berlin), British International Pictures Ltd. (B.I.P.) (London).

    Dir: Richard Eichberg. Scen: Adolf Lantz, Helen Gosewisch, from the novella by Karl (Carl) Vollmöller (1926?). Photog: Heinrich Gärtner, Bruno Mondi. Des: Willi A. Herrmann. Mus: Paul Dessau. 

    Cast: Anna May Wong (Song), Heinrich George (Jack Houben [DE vers.]; John Houben [ENG vers.]), Mary Kid (Gloria Lee), H. A. [Hans Adalbert] von Schlettow (Dimitri Alexi), Paul Hörbiger (Carletto), J. E. Herrmann (the “director”). 

    Dist: Südfilm A.G. (DE), Wardour Films (GB).

    Rel: 21.8.1928 (Alhambra, Berlin); 19.11.1928 (Capitol Haymarket, London). 

    Helsinki premiere: 3 March 1929 – Olympia – Suomen Biografi Osakeyhtiö – 15435 – 2540 m.

    Copy: DCP, 102', col. (from 35 mm, orig. l. 2739 m, 21 fps, toned; titles: ENG. Source: Filmmuseum Düsseldorf.

    Le Giornate del Cinema Muto (GCM), Pordenone: Anna May Wong.

    Musical commentary: Stephen Horne, Frank Bockius.

    Viewed at Teatro Verdi with e-subtitles in Italian, 9 Oct 2024

Yiman Wang (GCM Catalog 2024): " Anna May Wong’s weeping was “famous among her colleagues. One can travel to Neubabelsberg to witness it,” writes Walter Benjamin in his article “Gespräch mit Anne [sic] May Wong: Eine Chinoiserie aus dem alten Westen” [A Conversation with Anna May Wong: A Chinoiserie from the Old West] (Die Literarische Welt, 6.7.1928). Benjamin met Wong during her initial European visit as she was finishing her first starring vehicle in Germany, Song. Die Liebe eines armen Menschenkindes (Schmutziges Geld), based on Karl Vollmöller’s script written especially for the star (shortly after, Vollmöller wrote Der blaue Engel). Co-produced with British International Pictures and mostly shot in Neubabelsberg, this was Wong’s first collaboration with Richard Eichberg, a German director known for star-making Hollywood-style genre films. Capitalizing upon what I’ve called Wong’s “ethno-cosmopolitanism” (see my book To Be an Actress. Labor and Performance in Anna May Wong’s Cross-Media World, 2024), Song contributed to the “Film Europe” project that combined European resources to make broadly appealing co-productions designed to resist Hollywood dominance."

"Wong arrived in Germany accompanied by Vollmöller in April 1928, leaving behind Hollywood, where she had won fame as “the most beautiful oriental on the screen,” but remained relegated to decorative and doomed supporting roles. Wong later commented sarcastically, “I left America because I died so often. I was killed in virtually every picture I appeared in. Pathetic dying seemed to be the best thing I did.” (Picturegoer Weekly, 17.10.1931) Commenting on Wong’s newly-minted European stardom, British writer-turned-filmmaker Oswell Blakeston wrote: “the little ex-laundry girl, ex-Hollywood actress […] had to go to Germany to be made a star, only to be Americanized, for Show Life is full of the stock movie situations punctuated by large heads of the star.” (Close Up, 12.1928)"

"Even as a star, Wong’s protagonist meets yet another gruesome death in Song (the name echoes Wong’s Chinese name Wong Liu Tsong; Wong referred to the film as “Tsong” in an 1931 interview with Ciné-Miroir, 11.1931)."

"Set in Istanbul, the film opens with beautiful stock footage. Song, “one of Fate’s castaways,” is harassed by local ruffians, and then rescued by John Houben (Jack Houben in the German version), a music-hall knife-thrower. With “the devotion of a dog and the soul of a woman” as proclaimed in the French Odéon programme (2.1930), Song clings to John, who recruits her as the human target in his knife-throwing act. John’s suspenseful to-rabid knife-throwing prompted a French reviewer to wonder how the German censor could “freely allow the expression of this sadism or recklessness.” (Maurice Mairgance, Anna May Wong Clippings, 10.1929) Yet the sado-masochistic partnership is broken when John’s old flame, the now-famous ballerina Gloria Lee (Mary Kid), comes to town, rendering Song disposable. Many twists and turns later (including Song’s fur-coated white masquerade for the temporarily blinded John), John finally recognizes the value of Song, who has ascended from the human-target-cum-hula-dancer to a glamorous dancing star. His sudden appearance startles her in the middle of her scimitar dance routine, causing her to fatally fall on the knife-studded rotating stage. She dies “beautifully” in a haloed close-up shot, tears glistening. For Blakeston (Close Up, 12.1928), this exemplified Wong’s Americanized stardom, wrought by the cameraman Heinrich Gärtner, who used white gauzes to smudge the frame and a strong spotlight to create the halo effect. Cynthia Walk, in her essay “Anna May Wong and Weimar Cinema: Orientalism in Postcolonial Germany” (in Beyond Alterity: German Encounters with Modern East Asia, 2014), discusses how the story “replicates the reassuring orientalist fantasy of a dependent and gratefully submissive East.” "

"What animated the film’s aesthetics and defied the sado-masochistic narrative was Wong’s tour-de-force performance, catapulting her to celebrity stardom in interwar Europe. German Expressionist painters Willy Jaeckel and Max Pechstein sketched her on set, and at the December 1928 Berlin artists costume ball she basked in her newfound aura, playfully posing with two German newcomers – Marlene Dietrich and Leni Riefenstahl – captured by photographer Alfred Eisenstaedt. Her star debut won positive reviews around the globe. The Bioscope (London, 19.9.1928) celebrated Wong’s “veritable triumph.” An Italian reviewer resorted to Orientalism, misidentifying Wong as “the interesting Japanese actress … with slanted eyes,” but praised her “intelligence and grace. To watch her is a joy, and so satisfying: she nobly engages art on a truly serious level, a quality only rarely found among the great screen actresses. (Cinema-teatro, 15.1.1930) Upon its 1929 release in Shanghai’s first-run Grand Theatre, Wong’s “pure artistry” was credited for making the film “one of the greatest pictures we have seen in many a long day.” (“Anna May Wong’s Starring Vehicle at Grand Theatre,” The China Press, 29.3.1929)"

"Propelled by this resoundingly successful “Film Europe” project, Wong signed an 18-month contract with British International Pictures for four films (Variety, 31.10.1928), while venturing into the London legitimate theatre and onto the Viennese stage, emerging as “the most popular stage star in years.” (Evening Star [Washington, D.C.], 28.9.1930)"

"The present restoration from Filmmuseum Düsseldorf is derived from the best surviving material available. The main sources are an original nitrate negative from the British Film Institute (2301 m), and a contemporary nitrate print from the National Film and Sound Archive of Australia (2556 m), both with English intertitles. The version screening at the Giornate is the English language one. For the German-language version, intertitles have been recreated based on the censorship cards kept at the Bundesarchiv. The sepia tinting [AA: should read: toning] is based on the Australian distribution print." – Yiman Wang

AA: Anna May Wong is luminous in Song, in which she gives a marvellous and deeply moving performance. The director Richard Eichberg in this film, considered perhaps his best, is very competent  indeed, but little more than that. Three times Anna May Wong had a great director - Raoul Walsh in The Thief of Bagdad, Herbert Brenon in Peter Pan (she was Tiger Lily) and Josef von Sternberg in The Shanghai Express - and she also had good ones like Chester M. Franklin in The Toll of the Sea and E. A. Dupont in Piccadilly - but Richard Eichberg, who directed her in Song and Grossstadtschmetterling is not in their class. Still Song is very much worth seeing because we can enjoy a great star in a memorable role.

The screenplay by Adolf Lantz and Helen Gosewisch is heart-breaking in its sado-masochism. Acts of brutal violence display racism and misogyny of the most atrocious kind. Willi A. Hermann as art director creates a vivid and exciting world of the music hall. The cinematography by Heinrich Gärtner and Bruno Mondi is powerful and expressive in the best Weimar mode. The sabre dances and knife-throwing numbers are dangerous and thrilling. But if we compare Song with E. A. Dupont's Varieté and Josef von Sternberg's Der Blaue Engel, we notice that something is missing inside, an inner compelling urge, and unfortunately Song remains too much on a surface level of the decorative and sensational.

Song is essential viewing from the viewpoint of Anna May Wong and the complexities of Orientalism in the history of the cinema. We see the great talent and lament a great unfulfilled potential.

The restoration by Filmmuseum Düsseldorf is wonderful. It does justice to the film's visual glory and the radiation of its stars, also including Heinrich George at the height of his powers. I enjoyed the subtle definition of light and the sepia toning.

Vanina (1922) (2024 restoration)

Arthur von Gerlach: Vanina (DE 1922). The finale with Asta Nielsen as Vanina Vanini. Photo: Deutsches Filminstitut & Filmmuseum.

Die Galgenhochzeit (AT) / Notte di fuoco / La Noce au pied de la potence / Verihäät Turinissa / Blodsbröllopet i Turin.

    DE 1922 Union-Projektions A.-G. 

    Dir: Arthur von Gerlach. scen: Carl Mayer, based on the novella by Stendhal [Marie-Henri Beyle], Vanina Vanini (1829). photog: Frederik Fuglsang, Willibald Gaebel. des: Walter Reimann. 

    Cast: Paul Wegener (Governatore/The Governor), Asta Nielsen (sua figlia/His Daughter), Paul Hartmann (Octavio), Fritz Blum (aiutante del Governatore/The Adjutant), Bernhard Goetzke (sacerdote/The Priest), Raoul Lange (boia/The Executioner), Hans Waßmann, Hans Studen (due soldati/Two Soldiers), Sigmund Nunberg (domestico/A Servant). 

    Dist: Ufa. Première: 6.8.1922 (Sedlingertor-Lichtspiele, München). 

    Finnish premiere: 30 Oct 1922 - 11867 - 1450 m - Astoria - distributed by: Ab Maxim Oy.

    Copy: DCP (4K), 73', col. (from 35 mm, 1450 m, orig. l. 1550 m, 18 fps, tinted); titles: GER. Source: Det Danske Filminstitut, København. Restored by Cinémathèque royale de Belgique, Filmmuseum München, Det Danske Filminstitut.

    Le Giornate del Cinema Muto (GCM), Pordenone: Rediscoveries.

    Grand piano: Daan van den Hurk.

    Viewed at Teatro Verdi with e-subtitles in English/Italian, 9 Oct 2024

Stefan Drössler (GCM Catalogue 2024): "Featuring a prominent cast by combining for the first time the top stars Paul Wegener and Asta Nielsen, Vanina marked the film directing debut of Arthur von Gerlach. He came from the theatre and had spent ten years as the artistic director of the Elberfelder Stadttheater. In 1919, he joined Union-Film in Berlin and succeeded Paul Davidson as General Director. Today his name is largely forgotten, as he died of a heart attack in 1925 at the age of 49 while preparing his third film. The obituary in Der Kinematograph (Nr. 964, 9.8.1925) noted his tenure at Union-Film: “He arrived at a time of trials and tribulations and, in his own way, could hardly assert himself as an administrative man. He was an artist, perhaps too straightforward for the complex world of film.” "

"The screenplay for Vanina was written by Carl Mayer (1894-1944), at the time already one of Germany’s most respected film authors. He freely adapted Stendhal’s novella into a dark kammerspiel (chamber drama) ballad exploring themes of revolution and resistance, love, hatred, and death, all unfolding over the course of a single night. Illustrierte Filmwoche (Nr. 42/43, 1922) described Vanina as an experiment blending theatre and film: “Director von Gerlach has created excellent cinematic images here with stage-like means. Throughout this night of fate, an incessant battle rages between insurgents and the vassals of Governor Paul Wegener. Bombs, gunshots, detonations, weapons swaying back and forth explode incessantly. Lovers Vanina (Asta Nielsen) and Octavio (Paul Hartmann) are thrown into the middle of this chaotic scene and must inevitably perish that night.” "

"Vanina premiered on 6 August 1922, as part of the German Film Art Week in Munich, and was promoted as an “art film”. Münchner Neueste Nachrichten (9.8.1922) wrote, “The way in which the director has brought together all the gestures from the mimic (Wegener, Nielsen, Hartmann) and architectural realms to create dramatic expression touches on genius.” Der Kinematograph (Nr. 808, 13.8.1922) commented, “Technically, the film offers the highest level imaginable; the lighting, elaboration of the images, photography, settings, and tinting are master pieces!” However, when the film was released in German cinemas on 6 October, some reviews were less positive. In the Berliner Lokal-Anzeiger (9.10.1922), Alfred Rosenthal gleefully enumerated all the improbabilities of the plot’s logic: “The whole story now appears exceedingly improbable on film, losing interest, especially towards the end.” In an open letter to Arthur von Gerlach published in Film-Kurier (Nr. 222, 8.10.1922) under the title “Der Irrweg von Vanina” [The Wrong Path of Vanina], Paul Ickes called Vanina “stylized kitsch” [“stilisierter Kitsch”]: “The images are uninteresting because they leave you cold, because no life lives in their mannerism, no pulse pulsates, no breath breathes.” "

"Vanina was exported to many countries. In France it was appreciated as “a film that tells us a great deal about cinematographic developments in Germany, and proves to us not only a willingness to make an effort, but a strength of personal, original expression, which has nothing to do with sentimental nonsense.” (Léon Moussinac in Le Crapouillot, 16.2.1923)"

"Today only differently abridged and edited foreign-language versions have survived, sourced from two different camera negatives. The reconstruction is based on a tinted nitrate print with French and Flemish intertitles and a black & white nitrate dupe negative with French intertitles, both from the collection of the Cinémathèque royale de Belgique. Filmmuseum München provided the internegative of a tinted and hand-colored fragment with French titles. The wording of the original intertitles was taken from the German censorship card dated 26 July 1922. Contemporary reviews and articles helped to sort out details of the continuity."

"The greatest difficulty was the editing, which was designed like a piece of music, with recurring motifs and repetitions. Single shots were shifted concealing jumps in time and plot continuity caused by cuts. Determining which shots and intercuts were alternatives or variants of repetitions was challenging, and remains somewhat speculative until further prints, the original script, or detailed production documents are found. The restoration of Vanina is a collaborative project involving the Cinémathèque Royale de Belgique, Det Danske Filminstitut, and Filmmuseum München. In Brussels, the three film materials were scanned in 4K including color grading and coloration. In Munich, the philological work was carried out, the editing plan was created, and the German intertitles were designed. In Copenhagen, image restoration and retouching were done. The restored version is 100 metres shorter than the German censorship length of 1550 metres, which corresponds to about 5 minutes." – Stefan Drössler

AA: It was with great anticipation that I visited the screening of the restored Vanina. Arthur von Gerlach directed only two films: Vanina and Zur Chronik von Grieshuus. Both are masterpieces. Of Vanina I had previously only seen and programmed in 1988 the surviving colour fragments that Enno Patalas made available at Filmmuseum München.

But those fragments were unforgettable in their visual poetry, enhanced by their fantastic, incandescent colour world.

Carl Mayer completely changed Stendhal's plot and transformed it into a cinematic ballad. Arthur von Gerlach created a mise-en-scène with an irresistibly operatic drive. Each shot is like a painting charged with Stimmung. Von Gerlach excels both in crowd scenes and intimate encounters.

What emerged was an archetypal Weimar classic. Paul Wegener embodies the crippled governor of Turin with furious, atavistic abandon. Yet again, he creates a sadistic monster in the lineage of the épouvante.

This is the age of the Counter-Revolution. To crush the people's rebellion in Turin, the governor instils a bloodbath and sentences the leader, Octavio (Paul Hartmann) to death. But his daughter Vanina (Asta Nielsen) loves Octavio and tries to save him by marrying him. The governor agrees to the marriage – only to order the sentence to be carried out anyhow. 

The escape in the labyrinthine castle transforms into a nightmarish psychic journey, in which "every new passage is another mysterious and ghostly mark of destiny" (Béla Balázs). The sense of space in the castle built by Hans Reimann is haunting. With her anti-realistic pantomime, Asta Nielsen is at the height of her powers as the bride of the blood wedding. Arthur von Gerlach brings everything together in his vivid visual tapestry, conveying an unrelenting landscape of terror. Forces of freedom and love never die, but this time the battle is lost. The final images convey infinite sorrow and pain.

Thanks to this restoration, for the first time in my lifetime, von Gerlach's masterpiece makes full sense again.

...

Stendhal published the short story "Vanina Vanini" in 1829 in Revue de Paris. After his death, it was collected in Chroniques italiennes (1855).

Roberto Rossellini filmed Vanina Vanini in Technicolor in 1961, starring Sandra Milo (Vanina Vanini), Laurent Terzieff (Pietro Missirilli) and Paolo Stoppa (Prince Vanini).

[Liebestragödie] GCM 2024 Sine Nomine 7

Film non identificato n. 7 / Unidentified film #7

[LIEBESTRAGÖDIE] (titolo assegnato/assigned title) [Tragedia dell’amore/Love Tragedy] (DE?, ca 1923?) (fragment) dir: ? cast: ? prod: ? copy: DCP, 8'30", col. (from 35 mm pos. nitr., 176 m, 18 fps, tinted & toned); titles: GER. source: DFF – Deutsches Filminstitut & Filmmuseum, Frankfurt am Main (Archive no. DFF Nr. 20.028).

    Edge code: AGFA with flat-topped A, extending over half a frame (pre-1925). No company markings on film edges or in titles. Digital duplication 2015 at ARRI in shorts programme “Frühe Farbfilme”, from a tinted & toned nitrate print of unknown provenance; no archival arrival date recorded.

    Le Giornate del Cinema Muto (GCM), Pordenone: Sine Nomine – Film da identificare / Unseen and Unidentified

    Grand piano: Daan van den Hurk

    Viewed with English / Italian e-subtitles at Teatro Verdi, 9 Oct 2024

Anke Mebold (GCM Catalogue 2024): " This “Weimar Street Film”-style fragment looks like a Berlin based film industry production. It shows interesting dynamics regarding power and abuse, family and workplace environment, and gender roles and stereotypes. The central characters are a working-class mother, Frau Hart, employed in the packing department of a factory. She has two children, a girl around 5 years old and a happy-go-lucky wayward daughter, Magda, probably in her late teens, who is in charge of the household while her mother is at work. "

" Magda is an avid reader of sentimental novels, and is deeply in love with Paul, whom she seems to have recently met. He belongs to a family of better financial standing and higher social class. Magda comes home late at night, after enjoying cake and sweet wine at Paul’s place. A man of somewhat ominous demeanor, perhaps the husband of Mrs. Hart or her eldest son, lives in the Hart household and works in the same factory. To curb Magda’s excessive evening excursions and keep her occupied, he and mother Hart decide to get Magda employment at the factory, and approach the factory owner about it. Meanwhile Paul is torn between his liaison with Magda and his affiliation with a woman from his own class, whose father is expecting to meet him. " – Anke Mebold

AA: Scenes from the éducation sentimentale of Magda Hart, a teenage daughter of a working-class family, in a budding love affair with Paul, a son of a more upscale family, expected to marry comme il faut. Romantic illusions on a crash course with social reality. Moments of urban solitude.