Presented by Aleksandar Erdeljanovic. E-subtitles in English + Italian, grand piano: Gabriel Thibaudeau, viewed at Teatro Verdi, Pordenone, 6 Oct 2009.
From the GCM Catalogue: "The Jugoslovenska Kinoteka (today the National Film Archive of the Republic of Serbia) was founded in 1949 in Belgrade. It began with a few hundred film prints surviving from the pre-war period and the Nazi occupation. Today, with around 95,000 films in its archive, the Jugoslovenska Kinoteka not only represents the largest film archive in southeastern Europe, but is one of the most important on the Continent as well. Apart from film prints, its cinema treasures include 15,000 posters, 500,000 photos and stills, and 10,000 scripts. It also holds an extraordinary collection of 650 objects pertaining to pre-cinema and cinema history, as well as a library of 22,000 books. Around 85% of the films in the collection are foreign, which makes our archive particularly interesting for international researchers and archivists. In the last couple of years, more than 20 rare (and sometimes unique) films belonging to cinema’s classic period have been found in our archive.
This year’s celebratory programme is a combination of historic Serbian films and rare prints of foreign films held in our archive. The domestic films are In God We Trust (1932), made by Mihajlo Al. Popovic, the most important Yugoslav feature film from the inter-war period, and Belgrade in Winter (1914), produced by Svetozar Botoric. The international segment of the programme contains some real "pearls", such as Akt-Skulpturen. Studienfilm für bildende künstler, filmed by Oskar Messter in 1903; Luigi Maggi’s L’ostaggio, from 1909; the American film Hansel and Gretel, directed by J. Searle Dawley in 1909; and a beautiful Pathé stencil-colour print of Barcelone, principale ville de la Catalogne, made by Segundo de Chomón in 1912, as well as a homage to the legendary Henri Langlois filmed in 1954 during his visit to the Jugoslovenska Kinoteka. The special curiosity items are two unidentified 1920s cartoon films featuring "The King", Charlie Chaplin, and a selection of pornographic silent "classics" made in the 1920s, 30s, and 40s.
The completion of our new building with several cinema theatres, the opening of a new vault for the storage of colour films, and the reconstruction of the old storage facility for black-and-white films, as well as the introduction of a new department for digital restoration of image and sound, have all provided much better conditions for the Jugoslovenska Kinoteka to treasure and preserve its outstandingly rich film collections. Aleksandar Erdeljanovic."
Sa verom u boga [In God We Trust] (M.A.P. Film, Serbia, 1932). D, P, SC, DP, AD, ED: Mihajlo Al. Popovic; CAST: Ljubisa Jungovic-Kosmajac (Ivan), Desanka Janojlic (Smilja, Ivan’s wife), Jelisaveta Dimitrijevic (Ivan’s mother); 1117 m /24 fps/ 42 min; from: Jugoslovenska Kinoteka, Beograd. Serbian intertitles (Cyrillic). From the GCM Catalogue: "The film starts as a village idyll, which is ended by the outbreak of World War I. From that point on, two parallel stories develop: one follows a young soldier, fighting far from his homeland, while the other deals with his family’s life under occupation. When the soldier finally returns home, he finds only his son, who doesn’t remember him... - In God We Trust, made in 1932, is considered the most successful feature film produced in the Kingdom of Yugoslavia. Inspired by reading “The Deserted House”, a story written by Branislav Nusic, and a chance encounter with a war hero begging for money, Mihajlo Al. Popovic conceived this film about a Serbian peasant who becomes a soldier, is away at war for 4 years, and returns home an invalid. The entire film was shot in the village of Kumodraz, near Belgrade. Apart from the leading lady, Desanka Janojlic, a professional actress, all the other participants were amateurs with no film experience. Made when sound was already dominant, In God We Trust was filmed silent due to the shortage of funds, and a soundtrack was post-dubbed using music from phonograph records. Both lyrical and cruel, full of patriarchal values and cinematic modernism, In God We Trust is the most sincere expression of the suffering and salvation of the Serbian people in the Great War. The closing scene, in which the father, crippled in war, calmly explains to his son, “When you grow up, you will understand,” nobly expresses the sense of tragedy, without hatred, linked with a strong desire for a new beginning. - Using preserved footage, and with the assistance of its author, Mihajlo Al. Popovic, the film was restored in 1988, when it was first screened at the Pordenone Silent Film Festival. Occasional storyline gaps are the result of missing footage. – Aleksandar Erdeljanovic". -The film starts with a beautiful pastoral sequence of waking up on a farm. It has a warm, bucolic, humoristic and sensual feeling. Then the shots of Sarajevo change everything.
Beograd po zimi [Belgrade in Winter] (Svetozar Botoric, Serbia, 1914). D: ?; P: Svetozar Botoric; DP: ?; 418 m, (18 fps) [15 min announced], actual duration 23 min; from: Jugoslovenska Kinoteka, Beograd. Serbian intertitles (Cyrillic). From the GCM Catalogue: "The first film dedicated to Serbia’s capital Belgrade was discovered in 2007 in the Ignaz Reinthaler collection at Filmarchiv Austria in Vienna. Unusually long for its period, the film had not appeared in any of the existing Serbian filmographies. This poetic film mural immortalizes many of the city’s most attractive streets and squares, important institutions, and favourite picnic sites, some of which have changed little to the present day. It also depicts Serbia’s first permanent cinema theatre, the "Paris", opened in 1908 within the luxurious "Grand Hotel", by Svetozar Botoric, the first Serbian film producer. Botoric’s signature can be spotted in the intertitles, confiming the film’s origin. The most impressive sequence is surely the scene of ice floating down the Danube, shot in February 1914 during an extremely cold and heavy winter, and depicted by Botoric’s anonymous cameraman in a "Flaherty manner". - The new copy was made this year at the "Synchro" film laboratory in Vienna, from the nitrate positive print. – Aleksandar Erdeljanovic". - A wonderful tour of Belgrade in long pans, sometimes shaky, but always revealing interesting sights. A duped look in the print.
L'ostaggio / Jemstvo / [The Hostage] (S.A. Ambrosio, IT 1909). D: Luigi Maggi; P: Arturo Ambrosio; based on the ballad Die Bürgschaft (1798) by Friedrich Schiller; DP: Giovanni Vitrotti; CAST: Mirra Principi, Mario Voller Buzzi, Vitale De Stefano, Serafino Vite, Alberto A. Capozzi, Ernesto Vaser, Ercole Vaser, Oreste Grandi; 35mm length: 253 m; Beta SP (alas) (transferred at 18 fps) [9 min announced] actual duration 12 min; from: Jugoslovenska Kinoteka, Beograd. Serbian intertitles (Cyrillic). *No 35mm print of this film is currently available for screening. - From the GCM Catalogue: "A young man sentenced to death manages to postpone his execution because of the impending wedding of his poor sister, who is to be married off. His best friend vouches for his return. After taking care of his sister, the young man hurries back, but is delayed by numerous unexpected obstacles. Nevertheless, he continues the journey, determined to join his now-presumably dead friend. Impressed by such nobility, the tyrant pardons them both, beseeching their friendship. - The Italian film pioneer Luigi Maggi is today being discovered by critics as the first authentic cinematographer of the Appenines. As a master of spectacle (he directed Gli ultimi giorni di Pompei, 1908, the first international Italian film success), he introduced numerous innovations, e.g., the flashback. Recently identified in the Jugoslovenska Kinoteka’s archive, L’ostaggio and La fucina – both from 1909, and inspired by the works of Friedrich Schiller – demonstrate Maggi’s exceptional dramatic and visual talent. These films represent an important discovery, since the greater part of Maggi’s oeuvre is now considered lost. – Aleksandar Erdeljanovic". - A handsome production that takes place in the classical antiquity. The ballad of Schiller is used as the intertitles. The rush of the protagonist, overcoming obstacles such as the broken bridge and the attack of the robbers.
Akt-Skulpturen. Studienfilm für bildende Künstler. (Messter’s Projection GmbH, Berlin, DE 1903). D: ?; P: Oskar Messter; 87 m, (16 fps) [3 min announced] actual duration: 6 min; from: Jugoslovenska Kinoteka, Beograd. - From the GCM Catalogue: "Item No. 1 in Gerhard Lamprecht’s famous filmography of German silent cinema, Deutsche Stummfilme, 1903-1930, is a short film made by cinema pioneer Oskar Messter, entitled Akt-Skulpturen (wittily translated into Serbian as "The Ballet in Eve’s Costume"). According to Lamprecht’s description, the film had 7 intertitles, corresponding to 7 scenes (tableaux). Messter engaged a couple of the most prominent artist’s models of the time from Berlin, who performed nude on a rotating stage, presenting various scenes from mythology, history, and literature. The two naked, well-formed human bodies symbolized the “cult of human body and beauty”, which was so very characteristically German. On the other hand, Messter’s commercial motivation was also obvious – these erotic scenes were intended to draw as many viewers as possible to a newly-born attraction: cinema theatres. - The print owned by the Jugoslovenska Kinoteka is considerably longer than the one mentioned in filmographies. Instead of 7 scenes, it contains as many as 14 (the final one, "The Parting", has not been preserved). - The newly restored print was made at Haghefilm in Amsterdam, from the nitrate positive, which is kept on deposit for the Jugoslovenska Kinoteka at Filmarchiv Austria. – Aleksandar Erdeljanovic". - Simple and elegant: a female nude and a male nude against a black background on a revolving platform. Each pose is recorded in a 360 grade movement of the platform. The motifs include Adam and Eve, Paradise Lost and the Abduction of the Sabines. - The nude models are beautiful in a classical fashion.
Barcelone, principale ville de la Catalogne (Barcelona, Hauptstadt von Katalonien) (Iberico Film, for Pathé, FR 1912). D, DP: Segundo de Chomón; 62 m, (16 fps) [2 min announced] actual duration 4 min, col. (pochoir); [35mm announced] actually screened on video; from: Jugoslovenska Kinoteka, Beograd. Deutsche Zwischentitel. - From the GCM Catalogue: ""The city extends in a semicircle along the sea coast, rising gently towards the hills of Montjuich and the Montañas malas. The downtown is intersected by arteries – wide streets bordered by beautiful houses and broad avenues lined with trees. The city is full of life, with busy traffic, especially along La Rambla, with hotels, restaurants, and theatres splendidly lit up in the evening." (Henri Bousquet, Catalogue Pathé des années 1896 a 1914, p. 592)
A beautiful Pathé stencil-colour film, with colours which are as vivid today as they were a century ago. In the Pathé studio at Vincennes near Paris, more than 400 women worked with colour templates (matrices), which were used for mechanical colouring. Here Segundo de Chomón, another forgotten genius, an immediate successor to the magic of Méliès, and inventor of the first "travelling" shots, in Pastrone’s Cabiria, immortalizes Barcelona, together with what was yet to become its trademark – the architecture of Gaudí. – Aleksandar Erdeljanovic". - A wonderfully beautiful colour vision of Barcelona by Segundo de Chomón.
Izlozba Francuske Kinoteke [Exhibition of la Cinémathèque française] (Filmske novosti, YU 1954). D: Olivera Gajic; DP: Mihailo Ciga Jovanovic; ED: Milica Petrovic; CAST: Henri Langlois; 37 m, 1'30" (24 fps), sonoro/sound; from: Jugoslovenska Kinoteka, Beograd. - From the GCM Catalogue: "In April 1954, the legendary Henri Langlois visited the Jugoslovenska Kinoteka for the presentation of his exhibition "Fifty Years of French Cinema". Visitors were introduced to the very beginnings of cinematography, from "Chinese shadows" (Ombres chinoises) to various animation devices and optical toys designed to depict the illusion of movement, including Émile Reynaud’s Praxinoscope. The recreation of the world’s first projected film show to paying customers, at the Grand Café in Paris in 1895, was a sensation, and the actual poster of Louis Lumière’s famous L’Arroseur arrosé was displayed. In an interesting silent film programme, the audience saw Sarah Bernhardt in La Dame aux camélias, as well as the first cartoon films of Émile Cohl, the forerunner of Walt Disney. This huge cinema event attracted numerous film-lovers, as well as the camera operators of the state-owned company "Filmske novosti", who filmed a newsreel story about it. – Aleksandar Erdeljanovic". - A charming news subject that documents the inspiration of Langlois.
Hansel and Gretel / Jovica i Marica (Edison, US 1909). D: J. Searle Dawley; P: Edwin S. Porter; DP: Carl Gregory; cast: Cecil Spooner, Mary Fuller, Ethel Browning; 191 m, (16 fps) [7 min announced] actual duration 12 min; [35mm announced], actually screened on video; from: Jugoslovenska Kinoteka, Beograd. Serbian intertitles (Cyrillic). - From the GCM Catalogue: "Tired of waiting for the return of their father, who sells brooms to provide food, Hansel and Gretel wander off into the woods, where they come upon a house made of sweets, but they also meet a horrible witch. However, Gretel manages to free Hansel and other captive children, while their father brings home plenty of food. - One of the earliest movie adaptations of this well-known fable by the Brothers Grimm, this 1909 film demonstrates the extraordinary professional skill of director James Searle Dawley, who was among the first to use the technique of double exposure. - Dawley here tells a classic story in a simple but effective manner, thus predicting his masterpiece, which was to be filmed less than a year later – the first version of Frankenstein (1910). The print of Hansel and Gretel was discovered and identified in the archive of the Jugoslovenska Kinoteka in 1995. – Aleksandar Erdeljanovic". - An important discovery. This film was not included in the 4-dvd Edison The Invention of the Movies box set (2005). An American féerie in charming colour.
[Kralj Zidara] [Il re dei muratori/The King of Masons] (?, c.1920-25) D: ?; AN: ?; 147 m, (16 fps) [5 min announced] actual duration 9 min; from: Jugoslovenska Kinoteka, Beograd. Title in Serbian; no intertitles.
[Kralj Sanja] [The King Is Dreaming](?, c.1920-25) D: ?; AN: ?; 148 m, (16 fps) [5 min announced] actual duration 9 min; from: Jugoslovenska Kinoteka, Beograd. Title in Serbian; no intertitles. - From the GCM Catalogue: "The greatest hero in film history, the unequalled Tramp, who lives a light-hearted and vagrant life, was the ideal inspiration for the as-yet-unidentified creators of these short animated comedies. Building a tower of bricks, a dramatic duel with the Sun, the rescue of an innocent girl from villains – these charming scenes from The King of Masons seem worthy of Chaplin himself.
The King Is Dreaming is an equally interesting work by the same authors, depicting the adventures of our Tramp in an enchanted castle.
In spite of imperfect and inflexible animation, these charming pearls from the film archive of the Jugoslovenska Kinoteka will surely please animation and Chaplin fans alike. We hope their screening at this festival may also be an opportunity for these films to be fully identified. – Aleksandar Erdeljanovic". - Inventive Chaplin animation, maybe British; the hand becomes visible and writes the word Zip. In the first one, Chaplin lays with bricks a chimney so tall that it blocks the movement of the moon. In the second one, Chaplin falls asleep in front of a castle on a hill and sees a wild dream full of transformations.
Wednesday, October 07, 2009
Monkeys' Moon
GB 1929. PC: Pool. D: Kenneth Macpherson; 750 ft /20 fps/ 10 min; from: La Cineteca del Friuli, Gemona / The Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University, New Haven, CT. No intertitles. Grand piano and violin: Günter Buchwald. Viewed at Teatro Verdi, Pordenone, 6 Oct 2009. - From the GCM Catalogue: "Until recently, Borderline (1930) was thought to be the only work from experimental filmmaker Kenneth Macpherson known to survive, together with a few fragments from his first two films, the shorts Wing Beat (1927) and Foothills (1928). His third film – also a short – has now resurfaced, a lavishly photographed nocturnal elegy involving two little monkeys in a moonlit garden before the rain, and a jazz musician. Arts patron Annie Winifred Ellerman (nom de plume, Bryher) and Macpherson had monkeys in their home in Switzerland; those featured in this tiny cinematic jewel are two cute dourocoulis, commonly known as night monkeys. – Paolo Cherchi Usai. -A painter with a passion for film, Kenneth Macpherson (1903-1971) made up a curious ménage à trois with the American poet “H.D.” (Hilda Doolittle, 1886-1961) and the British heiress “Bryher” (Annie Winifred Ellerman, 1894-1983). Outside their bewilderingly entangled sexual relationships (Macpherson and Bryher were homosexual, H.D. bisexual; and despite a variety of outside relationships and marriages, H.D. and Bryher’s friendship lasted till the older woman’s death), they made a brief but startling impact on cinema with the establishment of “Pool”. Between 1927 and 1933 Pool published its progressive and opinionated magazine Close Up, which lauded the new and avant-garde and lambasted the commercial cinema, especially British films. Pool also produced Macpherson’s four films. His departure from the ménage seems to have coincided with the end of Close Up, after which he moved to the U.S., where for a time he lived with Peggy Guggenheim, and in 1947 co-produced Hans Richter’s Dreams that Money Can Buy. – David Robinson". - A fine avantgarde discovery in a brilliant print. Atmospheric imagery in a nocturnal garden with the monkeys.
The Sign of Four
[The film was not released in Finland].
GB 1923. PC: Stoll Film Company. D+SC: Maurice Elvey, based on the novel by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (1890), translated in Finnish as Neljän merkki; DP: John J. Cox, Alfred H. Moises; AD: Walter W. Murton; CAST: Eille Norwood (Sherlock Holmes), Arthur Cullin (Dr. Watson), Isobel Elsom (The Girl [Mary Morstan]), Norman Page (The man with the withered leg [Jonathan Small]), Arthur Bell (The Police Inspector [Inspector Athelney Jones]), Henry Wilson (The Pigmy [Tonga]), Humberston Wright (The Thief [Dr. Thaddeus Sholto]), Frederick Raynham (The Prince [Abdullah Khan]), Madame D’Esterre (The Housekeeper [Mrs. Hudson]); 6750 ft /20 fps/ 79 min
From: BFINA. E-subtitles in Italian, grand piano: Philip Carli. Viewed at Teatro Verdi, Pordenone, 6 Oct 2009.
From the GCM Catalogue: "Arguably the best of the surviving Sherlock Holmes silent features, The Sign of Four shows off the Stoll Film Company’s capacity for producing high-budget dramas with visual flair, in contrast to their posthumous reputation for stolidly conceived literary adaptations. The film is also an excellent example of Maurice Elvey’s skills not just as director but writer, reworking the Conan Doyle novel in a way especially sensitive to cinematic narration. Variety’s critic Gore heaped praise, enthusing, “This new Stoll picture…is one of the best screen melodramas this firm has made. Keeping well to Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s story, the film runs smoothly and is full of grip and thrill. Maurice Elvey has seized every opportunity the story gives and the result is a ‘Sherlock Holmes’ story which is fine entertainment of the strong, sensational type.”
Elvey first tackled the Holmes tales with the 1921 series The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes and, in the same year, the feature The Hound of the Baskervilles. In line with Stoll’s shrewd policy of tie-ins, The Sign of Four was released to coincide with the final episodes of The Last Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, Stoll’s follow-up series directed by George Ridgwell. While Elvey doesn’t stick quite as close to the original as Gore implies, he’s nevertheless faithful to the spirit of the book, capturing a lightness of tone often absent in earlier film adaptations. This is true not simply for Holmes himself (more on that below), but for the general tone, conveyed through often wry intertitles which occasionally spill into distinctly non-Conan Doyle territory.
The film is well-paced and beautifully edited, not merely in the famous chase sequence on the Thames. While Conan Doyle wraps up his narration with an extended flashback that puts all the characters in place, Elvey minimizes the traditional flashback structure (there are a few scattered about), integrating the strands and choosing a superimposition device that keeps the action moving forward while explaining Holmes’ logic. Gore was so taken by this method that he singles it out for praise: “Another effective innovation is when the detective is explaining things to his friend Watson, the explanation aided by ‘ghost’ effects instead of the usual irritating ‘flash backs’. Some new camera effects are also used for the first time, including a great improvement on the usual ‘fade out.’”
One of the key results of the superimposition device is that it enables the audience to clearly follow Holmes’ line of reasoning while keeping the focus on the great man himself, furthering the identification with the character that’s such a vital element of the stories. The reader/viewer is encouraged to think they too can be master sleuths, provided they cultivate the necessary qualities as spelled out in the novel of The Sign of Four: observation, deduction, and knowledge. Watson makes this link explicit by asking himself “What would Holmes do?”, prompting the viewer to mentally answer back in the style of their idol, while Elvey furthers the pact between Holmes and his audience of would-be detectives by having Holmes turn to the camera and exclaim, via an underlined intertitle, “This is going to be exciting.”
And exciting it is, culminating in a thrilling pursuit on the Thames. Elvey slightly changes the original by adding a car chase (Conan Doyle complained in his memoirs about such updates), though the extratextual modification is organically integrated and allows the director to indulge in even more London sightseeing than would strictly be possible via the river. It’s worth quoting Elvey’s description of the shoot:
“Twenty-nine separate days, spread over a period of some weeks, were occupied in obtaining ideal effects… The screen does not reveal the difficulties under which we worked, nor does it indicate the material used in obtaining what I required. Though only one yacht and four launches appear in the picture, seven yachts were requisitioned. The Thames is a tidal river, and the varying times of the tides and the varying speed and roughness of the water rendered taking difficult. Particularly did we discover the latter fact when using the light motor racing boats, brought in from Monte Carlo for the purpose. Heavy seas were often running in the lower reaches, but patience was eventually rewarded.”
In her work on Stoll, Nathalie Morris discusses Elvey’s emulation of American methods, partly necessitated by the company’s desire to stoke an ever-increasing U.S. demand for Sherlock Holmes product in a style considered most sellable in the States. There’s something of an irony here, considering Stoll’s foundation in 1918 as a company created to present “British films by British producers, breathing the British spirit”, but as Morris states, Stoll’s methods were to promote Britishness via American models, initially through marketing strategies and production methods but occasionally, as with The Sign of Four, even emulating a certain perceived U.S. studio style. Elvey himself temporarily moved to America, and Fox, one year later.
With 45 series episodes and two features (plus stage adaptations), the star Eille Norwood became as identified with Holmes as William Gillette, and though it’s now impossible to make comparisons, Norwood certainly feels right. Conan Doyle himself was delighted with the actor, stating in his memoirs: “He has that rare quality that can only be described as glamour, which compels you to watch an actor eagerly even when he is doing nothing. He has the brooding eye which excites expectation and has also a quite unrivalled power of disguise.” Here in The Sign of Four he also enjoys Holmes’ dry wit, revealing an almost pixieish humor that makes the outwardly strict man of science so appealing. One major change in casting from the previous Stoll incarnations was Arthur Cullin as Watson, considered a more plausible romantic partner (!!) for the comely Isobel Elsom (then married to Elvey) than their regular Watson, Hubert Willis. Cullin was no stranger to the role, essaying Holmes’ right-hand man in Samuelson’s 1916 The Valley of Fear, opposite H.A. Saintsbury. – Jay Weissberg".
Professionally made entertainment, handsomely produced. Eille Norwood is fine as Sherlock Holmes. - The violin-playing of Sherlock Holmes is often on display, but in the live music of the screening that aspect was ignored. - The visual quality of the print is variable and passable. Some shots of the torture of Watson seemed misplaced. - My favourite character was Dr. Sholto, performed by Humberston Wright in an eccentric and inspired fashion. His dilapidated house in Kensington was also memorable. - A funny touch is that the bridges of London have been identified in the intertitles of the final chase that grows into a sight-seeing tour of London. - Among the visual touches one can single out the last shot: a close-up, with a mask, of the eyes of Sherlock Holmes.
GB 1923. PC: Stoll Film Company. D+SC: Maurice Elvey, based on the novel by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (1890), translated in Finnish as Neljän merkki; DP: John J. Cox, Alfred H. Moises; AD: Walter W. Murton; CAST: Eille Norwood (Sherlock Holmes), Arthur Cullin (Dr. Watson), Isobel Elsom (The Girl [Mary Morstan]), Norman Page (The man with the withered leg [Jonathan Small]), Arthur Bell (The Police Inspector [Inspector Athelney Jones]), Henry Wilson (The Pigmy [Tonga]), Humberston Wright (The Thief [Dr. Thaddeus Sholto]), Frederick Raynham (The Prince [Abdullah Khan]), Madame D’Esterre (The Housekeeper [Mrs. Hudson]); 6750 ft /20 fps/ 79 min
From: BFINA. E-subtitles in Italian, grand piano: Philip Carli. Viewed at Teatro Verdi, Pordenone, 6 Oct 2009.
From the GCM Catalogue: "Arguably the best of the surviving Sherlock Holmes silent features, The Sign of Four shows off the Stoll Film Company’s capacity for producing high-budget dramas with visual flair, in contrast to their posthumous reputation for stolidly conceived literary adaptations. The film is also an excellent example of Maurice Elvey’s skills not just as director but writer, reworking the Conan Doyle novel in a way especially sensitive to cinematic narration. Variety’s critic Gore heaped praise, enthusing, “This new Stoll picture…is one of the best screen melodramas this firm has made. Keeping well to Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s story, the film runs smoothly and is full of grip and thrill. Maurice Elvey has seized every opportunity the story gives and the result is a ‘Sherlock Holmes’ story which is fine entertainment of the strong, sensational type.”
Elvey first tackled the Holmes tales with the 1921 series The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes and, in the same year, the feature The Hound of the Baskervilles. In line with Stoll’s shrewd policy of tie-ins, The Sign of Four was released to coincide with the final episodes of The Last Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, Stoll’s follow-up series directed by George Ridgwell. While Elvey doesn’t stick quite as close to the original as Gore implies, he’s nevertheless faithful to the spirit of the book, capturing a lightness of tone often absent in earlier film adaptations. This is true not simply for Holmes himself (more on that below), but for the general tone, conveyed through often wry intertitles which occasionally spill into distinctly non-Conan Doyle territory.
The film is well-paced and beautifully edited, not merely in the famous chase sequence on the Thames. While Conan Doyle wraps up his narration with an extended flashback that puts all the characters in place, Elvey minimizes the traditional flashback structure (there are a few scattered about), integrating the strands and choosing a superimposition device that keeps the action moving forward while explaining Holmes’ logic. Gore was so taken by this method that he singles it out for praise: “Another effective innovation is when the detective is explaining things to his friend Watson, the explanation aided by ‘ghost’ effects instead of the usual irritating ‘flash backs’. Some new camera effects are also used for the first time, including a great improvement on the usual ‘fade out.’”
One of the key results of the superimposition device is that it enables the audience to clearly follow Holmes’ line of reasoning while keeping the focus on the great man himself, furthering the identification with the character that’s such a vital element of the stories. The reader/viewer is encouraged to think they too can be master sleuths, provided they cultivate the necessary qualities as spelled out in the novel of The Sign of Four: observation, deduction, and knowledge. Watson makes this link explicit by asking himself “What would Holmes do?”, prompting the viewer to mentally answer back in the style of their idol, while Elvey furthers the pact between Holmes and his audience of would-be detectives by having Holmes turn to the camera and exclaim, via an underlined intertitle, “This is going to be exciting.”
And exciting it is, culminating in a thrilling pursuit on the Thames. Elvey slightly changes the original by adding a car chase (Conan Doyle complained in his memoirs about such updates), though the extratextual modification is organically integrated and allows the director to indulge in even more London sightseeing than would strictly be possible via the river. It’s worth quoting Elvey’s description of the shoot:
“Twenty-nine separate days, spread over a period of some weeks, were occupied in obtaining ideal effects… The screen does not reveal the difficulties under which we worked, nor does it indicate the material used in obtaining what I required. Though only one yacht and four launches appear in the picture, seven yachts were requisitioned. The Thames is a tidal river, and the varying times of the tides and the varying speed and roughness of the water rendered taking difficult. Particularly did we discover the latter fact when using the light motor racing boats, brought in from Monte Carlo for the purpose. Heavy seas were often running in the lower reaches, but patience was eventually rewarded.”
In her work on Stoll, Nathalie Morris discusses Elvey’s emulation of American methods, partly necessitated by the company’s desire to stoke an ever-increasing U.S. demand for Sherlock Holmes product in a style considered most sellable in the States. There’s something of an irony here, considering Stoll’s foundation in 1918 as a company created to present “British films by British producers, breathing the British spirit”, but as Morris states, Stoll’s methods were to promote Britishness via American models, initially through marketing strategies and production methods but occasionally, as with The Sign of Four, even emulating a certain perceived U.S. studio style. Elvey himself temporarily moved to America, and Fox, one year later.
With 45 series episodes and two features (plus stage adaptations), the star Eille Norwood became as identified with Holmes as William Gillette, and though it’s now impossible to make comparisons, Norwood certainly feels right. Conan Doyle himself was delighted with the actor, stating in his memoirs: “He has that rare quality that can only be described as glamour, which compels you to watch an actor eagerly even when he is doing nothing. He has the brooding eye which excites expectation and has also a quite unrivalled power of disguise.” Here in The Sign of Four he also enjoys Holmes’ dry wit, revealing an almost pixieish humor that makes the outwardly strict man of science so appealing. One major change in casting from the previous Stoll incarnations was Arthur Cullin as Watson, considered a more plausible romantic partner (!!) for the comely Isobel Elsom (then married to Elvey) than their regular Watson, Hubert Willis. Cullin was no stranger to the role, essaying Holmes’ right-hand man in Samuelson’s 1916 The Valley of Fear, opposite H.A. Saintsbury. – Jay Weissberg".
Professionally made entertainment, handsomely produced. Eille Norwood is fine as Sherlock Holmes. - The violin-playing of Sherlock Holmes is often on display, but in the live music of the screening that aspect was ignored. - The visual quality of the print is variable and passable. Some shots of the torture of Watson seemed misplaced. - My favourite character was Dr. Sholto, performed by Humberston Wright in an eccentric and inspired fashion. His dilapidated house in Kensington was also memorable. - A funny touch is that the bridges of London have been identified in the intertitles of the final chase that grows into a sight-seeing tour of London. - Among the visual touches one can single out the last shot: a close-up, with a mask, of the eyes of Sherlock Holmes.
The Peril of the Fleet
Kriegsschiffe in Gefahr.
GB 1909. PC: London Cinematograph Company.
D: S. Wormald?; CAST: Frank Bayley. Orig. l: 535 ft; 459 ft /16 fps/ 8 min; from: BFINA. Deutsche Zwischentitel. E-subtitles in English + Italian, grand piano: Philip Carli.
Viewed at Teatro Verdi, Pordenone, 6 Oct 2009.
Jay Weissberg in the GCM Catalogue: "A spate of invasion films appeared in 1909, taking advantage of the brewing preoccupation with Britain’s military might in the face of Germany’s rising naval strength. This cinematic mood was in some ways a late reflection of the increasing number of invasion scenarios hysterically fomented in both magazine serials and novels, beginning most famously with George Chesney’s The Battle of Dorking (1871). Like many of these works, Erskine Childers’ The Riddle of the Sands (1903) uses a pseudo-factual approach akin to first-hand reportage to stoke the fears of the reading public, offering convincing “proof” that “Germany is pre-eminently fitted to undertake an invasion of Great Britain”.
The North Sea Treaty, signed on 23 April 1908 by Germany, Denmark, France, Great Britain, the Netherlands, and Sweden to ensure the sovereignty of territories bordering the North Sea, appears to have done little to convince the public (or their governments) – the New York Times noted, “The chief significance attached to the declaration here is that it will disarm foreign suspicions of Germany’s designs against the integrity of the Netherlands.” With a rising military and economic rivalry between Germany and the UK, not to mention the jostling for colonies, such suspicions merely increased.
The Peril of the Fleet, much like Percy Stow’s The Invaders of the same year, needs to be seen within this context. Incorporating impressive actuality footage of the Battleships Agamemnon, Irresistible, and Drake (shot during the 1909 review of the Royal Navy fleet at Spithead) helped to reassure the public of Britain’s naval might, while the unspecified wicked foreign agents are foiled by a very English detective, the kind of happy-go-lucky chap who, as Simon Baker observes, succeeds more by luck than skill, “emphasizing the gentleman-amateur rather than the cunning organization of the foreigner”. As a whole the production appears to have been rushed through – children seen in the background of some of the location shots watch the camera with interest, and one of the female extras helping the temporarily thwarted detective seems very amused at finding herself part of the movie business. Ironically, this print, like the BFI’s copy of The Invaders, has German intertitles; tracking their reception within Germany would be a fascinating subject for research, though the spies have no defining national characteristics.
The Peril of the Fleet, much like Percy Stow’s The Invaders of the same year, needs to be seen within this context. Incorporating impressive actuality footage of the Battleships Agamemnon, Irresistible, and Drake (shot during the 1909 review of the Royal Navy fleet at Spithead) helped to reassure the public of Britain’s naval might, while the unspecified wicked foreign agents are foiled by a very English detective, the kind of happy-go-lucky chap who, as Simon Baker observes, succeeds more by luck than skill, “emphasizing the gentleman-amateur rather than the cunning organization of the foreigner”. As a whole the production appears to have been rushed through – children seen in the background of some of the location shots watch the camera with interest, and one of the female extras helping the temporarily thwarted detective seems very amused at finding herself part of the movie business. Ironically, this print, like the BFI’s copy of The Invaders, has German intertitles; tracking their reception within Germany would be a fascinating subject for research, though the spies have no defining national characteristics.
The film was produced by the short-lived London Cinematograph Company, formed in August 1908 by the exhibiting firm Electric Theatres to ensure a steady supply of frequently changing product to their cinemas. However, the venture was not a success, and by late 1910 it was succeeded by the Co-Operative Cinematograph Company. Little is known about the possible director, S. Wormald, whose name appears only to be connected with the London Cinematograph Company." – Jay Weissberg
AA: The audience responded with laughter to this naive film where the amateur detective foils the plans of the foreign powers. Cardboard sets. Passable print.
Die Kleine vom Varieté
Varieteetyttö / [The Little Girl from the Music Hall]
DE 1926. PC: Davidson-Film AG, for Ufa. D: Hanns Schwarz; SC: Wilhelm Thiele, based on the play by Alfred Möller; DP: Curt Courant; AD: Hans Jacoby; CAST: Ossi Oswalda (Ellen), Georg Alexander (Dr. Peter Kretschmar), Max Hansen (Fred), Vivian Gibson (Josette), Ferry Sikla (Jeremias Kretschmar); orig. l: 2290 m; 2262 m /22 fps/ 90 min
From: Bundesarchiv-Filmarchiv, Berlin. Restored in 2000. E-subtitles in English + Italian, grand piano: Stephen Horne. Viewed at Teatro Verdi, Pordenone, 6 Oct
From the GCM Catalogue: "This slightly silly but very charming comedy stars a hilarious Ossi Oswalda, who delivers an energetic performance as a knife-throwing vaudeville artiste. She is in love with an out-of-work dentist (Georg Alexander) whose rich uncle (Ferry Sikla) insists that he marries a supposedly dreary girl from the country. However, her rival – played by Vivian Gibson – turns out to be anything but boring: a member of an all-female jazz band, she wants to become the talk of the town in her own right. Numerous entanglements offer Oswalda plenty of opportunities to display her famous temperament, play hide-and-seek in male disguise, and celebrate anarchy. As one critic commented (in Tägliche Rundschau, 5 September 1926): “Messer blitzen, Revolver krachen, es regnet Küsse und hagelt Ohrfeigen.” (“Flashing knives, cracking revolver shots, a deluge of kisses, and plenty of people get their ears boxed.”)
Today, Ossi Oswalda (1897-1947) is primarily known as the cheerful lead of several early comedies by Ernst Lubitsch, which earned her the reputation of a German Mary Pickford. In contrast, her films from the 1920s are forgotten, although she remained very popular with audiences and continued to appear in many films. Die Kleine vom Varieté (The Little Girl from the Music Halls) presents itself as a fast-paced, skilfully made comedy, once again allowing Oswalda to demonstrate her comic talent. Although her own film career was virtually over by the advent of the talkies, she is here accompanied by a group of outstanding cinema artists (directors Hanns Schwarz and Wilhelm Thiele, and singer-comedian Max Hansen) who would ascend to the first rank of German film-makers during the early sound period, and were forced to emigrate in 1933, leaving their imprint especially on musical films and comedies. Last but not least, Die Kleine vom Varieté was also the final film produced by one of the pioneers of German cinema culture, Paul Davidson, an early patron of Ernst Lubitsch and a former manager of Ufa. Davidson died in 1927. – Philipp Stiasny".
I like Hanns Schwarz, especially Die wunderbare Lüge der Nina Petrowna, and I looked forward to this film. The print was excellent, and the audience obviously liked this farce, but I was not quite convinced. I watched some 40 minutes from the start. - Ossi Oswalda seemed to have lost some of the spark she had in her great Ernst Lubitsch films.
DE 1926. PC: Davidson-Film AG, for Ufa. D: Hanns Schwarz; SC: Wilhelm Thiele, based on the play by Alfred Möller; DP: Curt Courant; AD: Hans Jacoby; CAST: Ossi Oswalda (Ellen), Georg Alexander (Dr. Peter Kretschmar), Max Hansen (Fred), Vivian Gibson (Josette), Ferry Sikla (Jeremias Kretschmar); orig. l: 2290 m; 2262 m /22 fps/ 90 min
From: Bundesarchiv-Filmarchiv, Berlin. Restored in 2000. E-subtitles in English + Italian, grand piano: Stephen Horne. Viewed at Teatro Verdi, Pordenone, 6 Oct
From the GCM Catalogue: "This slightly silly but very charming comedy stars a hilarious Ossi Oswalda, who delivers an energetic performance as a knife-throwing vaudeville artiste. She is in love with an out-of-work dentist (Georg Alexander) whose rich uncle (Ferry Sikla) insists that he marries a supposedly dreary girl from the country. However, her rival – played by Vivian Gibson – turns out to be anything but boring: a member of an all-female jazz band, she wants to become the talk of the town in her own right. Numerous entanglements offer Oswalda plenty of opportunities to display her famous temperament, play hide-and-seek in male disguise, and celebrate anarchy. As one critic commented (in Tägliche Rundschau, 5 September 1926): “Messer blitzen, Revolver krachen, es regnet Küsse und hagelt Ohrfeigen.” (“Flashing knives, cracking revolver shots, a deluge of kisses, and plenty of people get their ears boxed.”)
Today, Ossi Oswalda (1897-1947) is primarily known as the cheerful lead of several early comedies by Ernst Lubitsch, which earned her the reputation of a German Mary Pickford. In contrast, her films from the 1920s are forgotten, although she remained very popular with audiences and continued to appear in many films. Die Kleine vom Varieté (The Little Girl from the Music Halls) presents itself as a fast-paced, skilfully made comedy, once again allowing Oswalda to demonstrate her comic talent. Although her own film career was virtually over by the advent of the talkies, she is here accompanied by a group of outstanding cinema artists (directors Hanns Schwarz and Wilhelm Thiele, and singer-comedian Max Hansen) who would ascend to the first rank of German film-makers during the early sound period, and were forced to emigrate in 1933, leaving their imprint especially on musical films and comedies. Last but not least, Die Kleine vom Varieté was also the final film produced by one of the pioneers of German cinema culture, Paul Davidson, an early patron of Ernst Lubitsch and a former manager of Ufa. Davidson died in 1927. – Philipp Stiasny".
I like Hanns Schwarz, especially Die wunderbare Lüge der Nina Petrowna, and I looked forward to this film. The print was excellent, and the audience obviously liked this farce, but I was not quite convinced. I watched some 40 minutes from the start. - Ossi Oswalda seemed to have lost some of the spark she had in her great Ernst Lubitsch films.
Tuesday, October 06, 2009
L'avvoltoio / Amore senza stima (1912, reissue 1923) (2009 reconstruction Cineteca Nazionale)
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| Baldassare Negroni: L'avvoltoio / Amore senza stima (IT 1912, reissue 1923) with Francesca Bertini (Maria) and Emilio Ghione (the seducer). Photo from: CMI Portale Cinema Muto Italiano. |
Amore senza stima [Love without Esteem] [L'avvoltoio / The Vulture?].
IT 1912. PC: Celio Film (Roma).
D: Baldassarre Negroni; DP: Giorgio (Giorgino) Ricci;
CAST: Francesca Bertini (Maria), Emilio Ghione (the seducer), Alberto Collo (man in bar), Noemi de’ Ferrari (fiancée), Angelo Gallina (the major-domo);
917 m /17 fps/ 47 min, col.; from: Cineteca Nazionale, Roma.
A reconstructed print with reconstructed intertitles via a 4K digital intermediate with Desmet tinting.
Le Giornate del Cinema Muto (GCM), Pordenone: Dive – Francesca Bertini.
E-subtitles in English, grand piano: Antonio Coppola.
Viewed at Teatro Verdi, Pordenone, 6 Oct 2009.
Irela Nuñez (from the GCM 2009 Catalogue): "The film tells the story of Maria (the name has been traced by Riccardo Redi, from unspecified sources), a young typist who falls in love with a distinguished gentleman by whom she becomes pregnant, without knowing that he is married. The gentleman, assailed by debts resulting from his dissipated life, depends upon his rich wife, and has no intention of marrying the poor girl. After having refused the money offered by him in compensation for her dishonour, Maria wanders desperately, with her baby in her arms, until she decides to accept the propositions of a stranger, with the single aim of buying a gun to carry out her own revenge."
"In this transgressive story, a true masterpiece of a first naturalism in the Roman cinema, the protagonist virtually prostitutes herself to effect justice by her own means, a heroine with a baby in her arm and a pistol in her hand."
"Celio Film, established in 1912, was a Cines brand name oriented to quality production, known for its refinement of mise-en-scène and realism in treating contemporary stories, at the time “outside the existing canons of the market”. The dramas issued by this “skilful firm” were welcomed as “the faithful and artistic expression of real life”, according to the editor of the magazine La Vita Cinematografica. At the same time they retain a certain freshness and openness, due to original stories and expert artistic direction, together with delicate photographic work and, despite limited production means, unique moments from their actors."
"The copy which has survived bears the title Amore senza stima (Love without Esteem) and dates from 1923, when Francesca Bertini, having become a diva, had retired from the screen, so that the public eagerly watched her old successes over again. Probably the print is the result of a process of re-editing, resulting in the elimination of some intertitles, and the title under which it was initially distributed remains uncertain. Preparatory research for this restoration enables us to exclude the possibility that it is the film that has often been attributed, La bufera (1913). The most authoritative hypothesis is that it is another film by Baldassarre Negroni, announced towards the end of 1912, L’avvoltoio (The Vulture), or, as it was re-issued in 1913, L’avvoltoio nero (The Black Vulture), above all for the character created by Emilio Ghione, the actor whom some sources credit as its assistant or associate director (which would not be surprising, since the film is still more a vehicle for Ghione than for Bertini)."
"The film contains some elements which enable us to associate it with a play by Paolo Ferrari, Amore senza stima, essentially in the relationship between the gambler and his wife, especially in so far as the crime is concerned, and this may explain why the film was so renamed. The same play by Ferrari served as the inspiration for a Cines film of 1914."
"The restoration, carried out in the PresTech laboratores in London, is based on the only existing print of this film, which had been recut several times and was found virtually without intertitles. The capture has been effected at 4K and the work carried out digitally because the film was in a critical state of decomposition. Some sequences were put back in order, while some intertitles have been inserted both with the aim of facilitating comprehension of the story and to create some temporal breaks in the somewhat elliptical narrative, also endeavouring to match the laconic style of the few surviving intertitles. The tinting has been restored using the Desmet method." – Irela Nuñez.
AA: I watched some 15 minutes of this film to get an impression of the impact of the 4K digital intermediate. I would not have recognized the print to be based on a digital intermediate, and the restoration work seems very good, indeed. – Emilio Ghione sports a huge beard, and the actor is not instantly recognizable. The male protagonist is a spineless crook, not worthy of the love of the three women. – Judging by the portion of the film I saw Francesca Bertini gives a subtle and sober performance as the mistreated single mother.
Wenn das Herz in Hass erglüht / When the Heart Burns with Hate
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| Kurt Matull: Wenn das Herz in Hass erglüht / When the Heart Burns with Hate (DE 1918) starring Hans Adalbert Schlettow (Count von Hohenau) and Pola Negri (Ilya Vörösz). |
Vampa d'odio.
DE (German Empire) 1918. PC: Saturn-Film AG (Berlin).
D: Kurt Matull; DP: Otto Jäger;
CAST: Pola Negri (Ilya Vörösz), Harry Hopkins (Hopkins, the circus director), Hans Adalbert Schlettow (Count von Hohenau), Magnus Stifter (Baron Ilfingen), Anna von Palen (Baroness Ilfingen, his mother), Tilli Bébé (Lydia Bébé)
Date of censorship: 1.11.1917; 983 m /16 fps/ 53 min
From: Cineteca Nazionale, Roma. Didascalie in italiano.
E-subtitles in English, grand piano: John Sweeney.
Viewed at Teatro Verdi, Pordenone, 6 Oct 2009.
David Robinson (from the GCM Catalogue 2009): "This film – which had been distributed in Italy as Vampa d’odio following Pola Negri’s rise to super-stardom – was first shown at the Giornate del Cinema Muto in 1994, when it was confidently but incorrectly identified as a Polish production, Jego ostatni zyn (1917). Only in 2008, thanks to the Polish historians Marek and Malgorzata Hendrykowski, was its true identity established."
"In 1994, also, the Giornate celebrated the centenary of one of Negri’s several reputed birthdates, though in fact she seems to have been born in 1897, as Apolonia Chalupiec, in Lipno, Poland. Like with most of the great superstars, her childhood was hard. Her father, a Slovak tinsmith, was exiled to Siberia, leaving his wife to raise their daughter in extreme poverty in Warsaw."
"Nevertheless she was given a place in the Warsaw Ballet School, until tuberculosis interrupted her dance education. It is a happy coincidence, for the centenary year of the Ballets Russes, that in 1908, on the night that Karsavina danced Swan Lake at Warsaw’s Wielki Theatre, the young Pola made her debut as one of the cygnets. Still in her teens, she found work in the theatre, and at 17 appeared in her first film."
"She was to make at least a dozen films in Poland, adopting the name Pola Negri, suggested by that of the Italian poetess, Ada Negri. Her beauty and charisma quickly drew international attention and in 1917 she was brought to Berlin by the Saturn film company. In little more than a year she was recognized by Lubitsch, and their films together rapidly made her an international star."
"In 1922 she was taken by Paramount to Hollywood. Her romances with Chaplin and Valentino made headlines, but she finally married Prince Serge Mdivani, whose brother was the husband of Mae Murray. With the coming of sound, Negri’s accent was against her, and from 1929 she worked in Europe (including Nazi Germany). In 1941 she returned to the United States, and in 1951 adopted American citizenship. She angrily declined the role of Norma Desmond in Sunset Boulevard. Pola Negri died in 1987 in San Antonio, Texas."
"In dramatic scenes, her body as well as her face are fiercely expressive: her head thrusts forward hungrily in seduction; she freezes in an undesired embrace; or commands rapt attention simply toying with a cigarette. Matull gives her the diva’s ultimate prop and partner – a large writhing snake, with which she dances, or affectionately embraces. This snake finally has a crucial role in the drama: as the intertitle says, “The snake saves its charmer.”
"The director Kurt Matull is an obscure figure in German cinema history. His career in films lasted barely 6 years, from 1914 to 1920, during which time he made some 20 films for various companies, before abruptly disappearing from the record. Saturn seem to have hired him specifically to direct Negri, with whom he made 5 films: Die toten Augen (1917), Nicht lange täuschte mich das Glück (1917), Rosen, die der Sturm entblättert (1917), Wenn das Herz in Haß erglüht (1918), and Küsse, die man stiehlt im Dunkeln (1918). It seems safe to assume that he was the same Kurt Matull (1872-1930?) who is better known as a pulp-fiction writer, the creator of a long Nick Carter series and of the Lord Lister series (1908-1911)."
"The surviving version of the film shown by the Giornate is from an Italian distribution print, with Italian intertitles and some changed character names. Negri’s character, Ilya Vörösz in the original, becomes Hilka; the villainous Count von Hohenau becomes Holfer."
"The first reel and two brief fragments are missing from the print, but the story, despite the sparing intertitles, remains quite comprehensible. The missing opening scenes would have established Ilya/Hilka as a snake dancer, the star performer in Hopkins’ circus. Jealous of Hopkins’ amorous interest in Ilya/Hilka, Lydie Bébé, the alligator handler, plots to get rid of her, and is successful when Baron Ilfingen takes llya/Hilka under his protection and arranges an audition for her as a dancer at the Palm Garden club. In the first of the other missing fragments, Hohenhau/Holfer and Hopkins discussed their plot to undo Baron Ilfingen; in the second, Ilya/Hilka revealed to the Baron’s mother the truth about the false accusations against him." – David Robinson
I watched just the start of this movie, and I agree with David Robinson that Pola Negri is already here "the diva supreme", in full command, with a strong sense of movement. This was the same year when Ernst Lubitsch detected Pola Negri and made her his Carmen and his best German star.
...
De.Wikipedia: Handlung
Lydia Bebé arbeitet im Zirkus als Dompteuse. Sie ist sehr eifersüchtig auf die Schlangentänzerin Ilka Vörösz, die sie ausgiebig verabscheut. Baron Ilfingen, der ein Auge auf Ilka geworfen hat, verschafft der jungen Frau ein Engagement im Etablissement Palmengarten. Zirkusdirektor Hopkins ist über ihren Weggang ganz und gar nicht erbaut und versucht Ilka zur Rückkehr zu bewegen. Vergebens. Doch er lässt nicht locker und intrigiert gemeinsam mit einem gewissen Graf von Hohenau, einem Freund des Barons, der wiederum einst von Ilka abgewiesen wurde, um Baron Ilfingen zu desavouieren.
Hohenau und Hopkins setzen Ilfingen dem Verdacht aus, ein Falschspieler zu sein, um ihn von Ilka wegzubringen. Doch der Schwindel fliegt dank Lydia und Ilka auf. Die beiden Männer werden wegen ihrer Untat verhaftet. Lydia startet daraufhin einen erneuten Versuch, Ilka loszuwerden. Diesmal scheucht die Dompteuse ihr Krokodil auf die Konkurrentin, deren Schlange jedoch diesen Anschlag vereitelt.
Eine versunkene Welt / [A Vanished World]
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| Alexander Korda: Eine versunkene Welt / [A Vanished World] (AT 1922). |
Eine versunkene Welt (Die Tragödie eines verschollenen Fürstensohnes) [A Sunken World] [The film was not released in Finland].
AT 1922. PC: Sascha-Filmindustrie. P: Alexander Kolowrat;
D+SC: Alexander Korda, based on the novel Serpolette by Ludwig Biro; DP: Hans Theyer; ED: Karl Hartl; AD: Alexander Ferenczy, Emil Stepanek, Max H. Joll; COST: Lambert Hofer Sr.;
CAST: Alberto Capozzi (Duke Peter), Karl Baumgartner (Grand Duke), Olga Lewinsky (Duchess Maria Christina), Maria Palma [Maria Corda] (Anny Lind), Harry Loon (Adjutant Ridarsky), Max Devrient (Bartel, servant), Michael Varkonyi [Victor Varconi] (Sailor Vannoni), Julius Szöreghi, Paul Lukács [Lukas], Tibi Lubinszky.
1715 m, 69’ (22 fps); from: Filmarchiv Austria (Vienna). Czech intertitles.
E-subtitles in English + Italian, grand piano: Philip Carli. Viewed at Teatro Verdi, Pordenone, 6 Oct 2009.
David Robinson (from the GCM Catalogue): "The months following the end of the First World War saw a euphoric welcome of a new democracy in old Europe. The Republic of Austria was declared on 12 November 1918. The Hungarian Socialist Republic of Councils was proclaimed on 21 March 1919. The constitution of the new German Republic was adopted on 11 August 1919."
"The film, with its uncompromising title, Eine versunkene Welt (A Sunken World), was adapted from a novel, Serpolette, by Lajos (in Austria, Ludwig) Biró, a constant collaborator of Korda who wrote most of his films from 1920 until An Ideal Husband (1947)."
"Book and film however are both closely based on the true story of Archduke Johan Salvator (1852-1890), son of the Grand Duke of Tuscany and one of the most colourful and controversial personalities of the House of Habsburg. In 1889, piqued at not getting promotion in the army, he abdicated his title and rights, assumed the name of Johann Orth, and bought a merchant ship, the St. Margaret. On 12 July 1890 Orth and his crew embarked from Mar del Plata bound for Valparaiso with a cargo of nitrate. In the night of 20-21 July the ship hit a hurricane and sank. Orth’s death was officially declared in 1911, though there are claims that he reappeared as “Hugo Kohler” and died in Kristiansand, Norway, in 1945. (His story was the subject of a 1932 film, Willi Wolff’s Das Geheimnis um Johann Orth.)
The protagonist of Korda’s film, Duke Peter, also rebels against the court, its opposition to his democratic ideals, and its refusal to recognize his lover, Anny, a cabaret singer (the real Archduke married a ballet dancer, Ludmilla Strubel, who died with him on the St. Margaret). Peter embarks on his ship, taking Anny with him and giving his crew democratic rights in the running of the vessel. The result is chaotic indiscipline, and Anny is willingly seduced by a handsome sailor. The Duke takes a shocking and fatal step…"
The protagonist of Korda’s film, Duke Peter, also rebels against the court, its opposition to his democratic ideals, and its refusal to recognize his lover, Anny, a cabaret singer (the real Archduke married a ballet dancer, Ludmilla Strubel, who died with him on the St. Margaret). Peter embarks on his ship, taking Anny with him and giving his crew democratic rights in the running of the vessel. The result is chaotic indiscipline, and Anny is willingly seduced by a handsome sailor. The Duke takes a shocking and fatal step…"
"To play Duke Peter, Korda chose (for no very clear reason) Alberto Capozzi (1886-1945), who seems to have made no other film outside his native Italy in his prolific career. The rest of the principal actors are old Hungarian colleagues. Anny is played by Korda’s wife, the former Farkas Antonia, under the name Maria Palma: this was her first film in Vienna, but she was to star in all Korda’s subsequent Austrian films as Maria Corda. Even today the erotic aura created about the seducer, with subtle details like his off-the-shoulder shirt, is startling. He is played by Michael Varkonyi (1891-1956), who in Hungary had been Várkonyi Mihály and in 1924 was to become Victor Varconi, when he made the début of a long Hollywood career, partnering Leatrice Joy in Triumph (1924). Another future Hollywood star, Paul Lukacs [Lukas] (Lukács Pál, 1891-1971), appears briefly, as well as two less-remembered artists, the juvenile Tibi Lubinszky (1909-1956) and Julius Szöreghi. A particularly surprising piece of casting, in the role of the Duke’s servant, is Max Devrient (1857-1929), reckoned one of the most important German stage actors of the late 19th century, who made only half a dozen films, in 1920-22." – David Robinson"
AA: A fine restored print based on a tinted and toned Czech version of the film. - There is an atmosphere of style, elegance, and splendour. - The story of the disillusion of the Red Prince: the dancer Anny for whom he abandons his status turns out to be a tramp. The crew to which he admits democratic rights turns the ship into chaos. - The story is interesting, the production is of high quality, and the direction is professional. - Music has a central role in the narrative (Anny is a dancer and a singer), but unfortunately the pianist missed this.
Kurotegumi Sukeroku
(The film was not released in Finland). JP 1929. PC: Shochiku Shimokamo Studio. D: Taizo Fuyushima, Eiji Furuno; DP: Kohei Sugiyama; CAST: Chojiro Hayashi (Kurotegumi Sukeroku), Kokichi Takada (Denji), Kinuko Wakamizu (Agemaki-dayu), Ryutaro Nakane (Kinokuniya Bunzaemon), Tetsu Tsuboi (Torii Shinzaemon); lg. or./orig. l. (35mm): 966 m; A restored 35mm blow-up from 16mm to 35mm by the Film Preservation Society, Tokyo, (incomplete), 314 m /16 fps/ 16 min; from: The Museum of Kyoto. E-subtitles in English + Italian, grand piano: Mie Yanashita. Presenta Mariko Goda. Viewed at Teatro Verdi, Pordenone, 6 Oct 2009. - From the GCM Catalogue: "The legendary Japanese film star Kazuo Hasegawa plays the leading role in this story as Sukeroku, a well-known hero in Kabuki. The film was released in 1929, the third year after Hasegawa’s debut under his early screen name Chojiro Hayashi.
This is quite a valuable discovery because most of Hasegawa’s films with the Shochiku Company have been lost. The young Hasegawa’s brilliant charisma is fully captured by the camerawork of Kohei Sugiyama, who is also known for his work with such directors as Teinosuke Kinugasa and Kenji Mizoguchi.
Before World War II, it was common in Japan to sell popular feature films for home projection after re-editing and reprinting them to a shorter and smaller format like 16mm or 9.5mm. The recently discovered Kurotegumi Sukeroku is such a condensed version on 16mm, sold under the “Marvel Graph” label. “Marvel Graph” was a brand name for the 16mm digest film series of Jujiya Gakkiten, a musical instrument company in Tokyo, which was licensed by major production companies like Shochiku and Makino to produce digest versions of their feature films. This Marvel Graph version survived the war, and has been kept in good condition by a family along with their home movies.
Since 2005 the Film Preservation Society (FPS) in Tokyo has undertaken its “Adopt-a-Film” project to discover long-lost Japanese silent films and look for donors to restore them on 35mm and screen them, as well as preserve them for the future. FPS issued a call for donations for Kurotegumi Sukeroku, its fifth “Adopt-a-Film” project, in 2007. The restoration was finished in January 2009, with the kind assistance of actress Kiyo Hasegawa, the daughter of the film’s star.
SYNOPSIS: Shinzaemon has been Sukeroku’s enemy ever since Sukeroku fought and defeated gangs from Shinzaemon’s group at a Kabuki theatre over Agemaki from Miuraya. Sukeroku swears that he will never draw his sword until he finds his family’s treasured blade, Tomokirimaru, so he gets insulted often by Shinzaemon’s men. Bunzaemon redeems Agemaki for Sukeroku ahead of Shinzaemon, but Sukeroku, ever the gentleman, does not accept. When Shinzaemon snatches Agemaki, it is found that he has Tomokirimaru. Sukeroku overcomes Shinzaemon in a once-in-a-lifetime fight, and saves Agemaki – Mariko Goda". - The visual quality of the print is probably as good as it gets in a blow-up from 16mm. - There is one third left of the original jidai-geki produced by Shochiku. - The final furious swordfight is breathtaking.
This is quite a valuable discovery because most of Hasegawa’s films with the Shochiku Company have been lost. The young Hasegawa’s brilliant charisma is fully captured by the camerawork of Kohei Sugiyama, who is also known for his work with such directors as Teinosuke Kinugasa and Kenji Mizoguchi.
Before World War II, it was common in Japan to sell popular feature films for home projection after re-editing and reprinting them to a shorter and smaller format like 16mm or 9.5mm. The recently discovered Kurotegumi Sukeroku is such a condensed version on 16mm, sold under the “Marvel Graph” label. “Marvel Graph” was a brand name for the 16mm digest film series of Jujiya Gakkiten, a musical instrument company in Tokyo, which was licensed by major production companies like Shochiku and Makino to produce digest versions of their feature films. This Marvel Graph version survived the war, and has been kept in good condition by a family along with their home movies.
Since 2005 the Film Preservation Society (FPS) in Tokyo has undertaken its “Adopt-a-Film” project to discover long-lost Japanese silent films and look for donors to restore them on 35mm and screen them, as well as preserve them for the future. FPS issued a call for donations for Kurotegumi Sukeroku, its fifth “Adopt-a-Film” project, in 2007. The restoration was finished in January 2009, with the kind assistance of actress Kiyo Hasegawa, the daughter of the film’s star.
SYNOPSIS: Shinzaemon has been Sukeroku’s enemy ever since Sukeroku fought and defeated gangs from Shinzaemon’s group at a Kabuki theatre over Agemaki from Miuraya. Sukeroku swears that he will never draw his sword until he finds his family’s treasured blade, Tomokirimaru, so he gets insulted often by Shinzaemon’s men. Bunzaemon redeems Agemaki for Sukeroku ahead of Shinzaemon, but Sukeroku, ever the gentleman, does not accept. When Shinzaemon snatches Agemaki, it is found that he has Tomokirimaru. Sukeroku overcomes Shinzaemon in a once-in-a-lifetime fight, and saves Agemaki – Mariko Goda". - The visual quality of the print is probably as good as it gets in a blow-up from 16mm. - There is one third left of the original jidai-geki produced by Shochiku. - The final furious swordfight is breathtaking.
Carmen (Feyder 1926)
Carmen. FR 1926. PC: Films Albatros. P: Alexandre Kaminka. D: Jacques Feyder; asst: Marcel Silver, Charles Barrois; SC: Jacques Feyder, - based on the tale by Prosper Mérimée (1847); DP: Maurice Desfassiaux, Paul Parguel, Roger Forster; ED: Jacques Feyder, Henriette Caire; AD: Lazare Meerson; COST: Vassili Choukaeff (executed by Maison Édouard Souplet), Jeanne Lanvin (Raquel Meller’s costumes); make-up: Nicolas Maltzeff; filmed: Sevilla, Córdoba, Ronda, Bayonne, Nice, Studio des Réservoirs (Joinville), Studio Montreuil; CAST: Raquel Meller (Carmen), Louis Lerch (Don José), Gaston Modot (García, "the one-eyed"), Victor Vina (Le Dancaïre), Charles Barrois (Lillas Pastia), Andrée Canti (mother of Don José), Jean Murat (Lieutenant), Guerrero de Xandoval (Lucas, the picador), Raymond Guérin-Catelain (Duc d’El Chorro), Georges Lampin, Luis Buñuel (smugglers); 3408 m /18 fps/ 164 min, col. (tinted); from: La Cinémathèque française. Restored in 2001. E-subtitles in English + Italian, grand piano: Touve Ratovondrahety. Viewed at Teatro Verdi, Pordenone, 5 Oct 2009.
From the GCM Catalogue: "Carmen has inspired over a hundred screen manifestations of one kind or another, including a film of the title directed by Nikolai Larin for Ermoliev in Yalta in 1918, en route to emigration. Feyder’s version is of all the most authentic, in its fidelity both to Prosper Mérimée’s original narrative, and to his ethnographical curiosity.
Carmen was one of Albatros’ most elaborate productions and was one of the biggest national productions of the 1920s, at a time when French cinema was struggling to compete in prestige with Hollywood and Germany. François de la Bretèque (in an article on BIFI’s website) has traced the continuing excitement in the French press between Autumn 1925 and Spring 1926, as production progressed from locations in Spain and the Côte d’Azur to studio work at Montreuil and Joinville, and critics looked to Feyder for another production to emulate L’Atlantide.
Feyder’s scenario very closely follows Don José’s own account of his story and his fatal relation with the gypsy Carmen in the third chapter of Mérimée’s short novel. The principal interpolations suggested by Bizet’s opera are the use of Lillas Pastia’s tavern for two extended scenes (the place is only mentioned in passing in the novella) and Carmen’s reading of her fortune. Feyder’s own principal contribution to the story is in developing the other two men in Carmen’s life. Her gypsy "rom" is, again, only a line in the novella, but Feyder gives a central place to the dominant and sinister character of Le Borgne, magnificently interpreted by Gaston Modot, with an extraordinary scene where he writhes, half-naked and beast-like, in the gaol cell. Mérimée’s Lucas the picador, played by the ascetic-featured real-life toreador Guerrero de Xandoval, is also a fully-rounded character, who is able to perform the bullfight in the Ronda arena without doubles. His varied professional skills permit Feyder – passionate in his search for period and ethnographic authenticity – to stage the fight according to the rules of the 1830s, the period recorded by Goya as well as by Mérimée, when the toreador performed on horseback. Journalists reported that these scenes took a week to shoot, with two bulls a day.
Carmen is a role for divas (Geraldine Farrar, Theda Bara, Pola Negri, Dolores del Rio, Viviane Romance, Rita Hayworth): Feyder is quoted as saying ironically that he was "not asked to make a film of Carmen with Raquel Meller, but to do something with Raquel Meller using Carmen". Director and star did not see eye to eye on the character. In Feyder’s words, "This talented Spanish artist was perfect as Carmen but ... because of her moral principles she wanted to play only pure and kind-hearted women. I was worried because I saw the passionate and capricious gypsy becoming more and more like a dull and virtuous young girl whose love for Don José was strictly platonic. One morning, while filming in the Plaza de Toros of Ronda, Miss Meller and I began an argument about a scene where she did not want to be kissed. It was a very hot day, six hundred extras were waiting and sweating under the burning sun, so I lost my patience and yelled that it was impossible to change the story written by Mérimée. She raised her arms in a tinkling of bracelets and screamed: ‘I don’t care a fig for this M. Mérimée! Where does he live, this Mérimée? I’ll give him a call!’"
In the long run Feyder’s fears seem unfounded. Meller has irresistible erotic charisma, and the conflict between her misdemeanours and dangerous associations and her beaming good nature is potent. She is skilfully complemented by the eager, innocent, and glamorous Don José of the 23-year-old Louis Lerch (1902-1985). Apart from his appearances with Meller in Carmen and Nocturne, the Austrian-born actor’s career was confined to Germany, where his later films included Richard Eichberg’s Rutschbahn (1928), shown at the Giornate in 2007. He retired from acting at 29, and thereafter worked as a production manager. Their scenes together provide models of silent screen acting. They converse, totally comprensibly to the viewer, with practically no need of intertitles: in fact Carmen has overall astonishingly few intertitles for a film of its length and narrative complexity.
Carmen was above all the revelation of its 29-year-old designer Lazare Meerson (1897-1938), who in the next decade was to prove a fundamental influence on the French cinema of "poetic realism". Born in Warsaw, he emigrated to Germany in 1917 and enrolled in art school in Berlin two years later. Although he designed for the stage, there is no evidence for claims that he worked in the German studios before arriving in Paris in 1923 and joining Albatros the following year. On his first films he assisted Bilinsky, Kéfer, and (on the incomparable Feu Mathias Pascal) Cavalcanti, and in 1926 succeeded the departing Lochakoff as Albatros’ head scenic designer. His approach to Carmen was unprecedented for those years. In pre-production he scouted the Spanish locations with Feyder, making volumes of meticulous drawings (many now conserved in the Cinémathèque Française) of architecture and local detail, which served in matching the studio sets to the location filming. The masterpiece of reconstruction (as of camerawork) was the 80-metre set of Seville’s winding Calle Sierpes (Street of the Serpent), which serves for the 3-minute sequence of Carmen’s arrest and escape.
Among the members of the Spanish colony in Paris recruited as extras was the young Luis Buñuel, who is the smuggler who approaches Carmen’s table in the first scene in Lillas Pastia’s tavern (and can be seen in a few subsequent shots). It is nice to suppose that Carmen was the first encounter of the future director of L’Age d’Or with its star, Gaston Modot. It was a demonstration of the film’s independence from Bizet that for the premiere an orchestral score was commissioned from the young Spanish composer Ernesto Halffter(-Escriche) (1905-1989), a dedicated disciple of Manuel de Falla.
The film was restored in 2001, using an original nitrate negative acquired in 1958 by the Cinémathèque Française, and missing titles supplied in 1985 from a safety print. The tinting was replaced thanks to a tinted nitrate print deposited with the Cinémathèque Française in 1950 by the producer Alexandre Kamenka. – David Robinson."
Having seen this film and print and blogged about them not too long ago I revisited it for some 40 minutes to find out about the music of Ernesto Halffter, interpreted by Touve Ratovondrahety on the grand piano, but one could not make much sense of the original music from this performance. The print still looks great, and Raquel Meller is one of the best Carmens.
From the GCM Catalogue: "Carmen has inspired over a hundred screen manifestations of one kind or another, including a film of the title directed by Nikolai Larin for Ermoliev in Yalta in 1918, en route to emigration. Feyder’s version is of all the most authentic, in its fidelity both to Prosper Mérimée’s original narrative, and to his ethnographical curiosity.
Carmen was one of Albatros’ most elaborate productions and was one of the biggest national productions of the 1920s, at a time when French cinema was struggling to compete in prestige with Hollywood and Germany. François de la Bretèque (in an article on BIFI’s website) has traced the continuing excitement in the French press between Autumn 1925 and Spring 1926, as production progressed from locations in Spain and the Côte d’Azur to studio work at Montreuil and Joinville, and critics looked to Feyder for another production to emulate L’Atlantide.
Feyder’s scenario very closely follows Don José’s own account of his story and his fatal relation with the gypsy Carmen in the third chapter of Mérimée’s short novel. The principal interpolations suggested by Bizet’s opera are the use of Lillas Pastia’s tavern for two extended scenes (the place is only mentioned in passing in the novella) and Carmen’s reading of her fortune. Feyder’s own principal contribution to the story is in developing the other two men in Carmen’s life. Her gypsy "rom" is, again, only a line in the novella, but Feyder gives a central place to the dominant and sinister character of Le Borgne, magnificently interpreted by Gaston Modot, with an extraordinary scene where he writhes, half-naked and beast-like, in the gaol cell. Mérimée’s Lucas the picador, played by the ascetic-featured real-life toreador Guerrero de Xandoval, is also a fully-rounded character, who is able to perform the bullfight in the Ronda arena without doubles. His varied professional skills permit Feyder – passionate in his search for period and ethnographic authenticity – to stage the fight according to the rules of the 1830s, the period recorded by Goya as well as by Mérimée, when the toreador performed on horseback. Journalists reported that these scenes took a week to shoot, with two bulls a day.
Carmen is a role for divas (Geraldine Farrar, Theda Bara, Pola Negri, Dolores del Rio, Viviane Romance, Rita Hayworth): Feyder is quoted as saying ironically that he was "not asked to make a film of Carmen with Raquel Meller, but to do something with Raquel Meller using Carmen". Director and star did not see eye to eye on the character. In Feyder’s words, "This talented Spanish artist was perfect as Carmen but ... because of her moral principles she wanted to play only pure and kind-hearted women. I was worried because I saw the passionate and capricious gypsy becoming more and more like a dull and virtuous young girl whose love for Don José was strictly platonic. One morning, while filming in the Plaza de Toros of Ronda, Miss Meller and I began an argument about a scene where she did not want to be kissed. It was a very hot day, six hundred extras were waiting and sweating under the burning sun, so I lost my patience and yelled that it was impossible to change the story written by Mérimée. She raised her arms in a tinkling of bracelets and screamed: ‘I don’t care a fig for this M. Mérimée! Where does he live, this Mérimée? I’ll give him a call!’"
In the long run Feyder’s fears seem unfounded. Meller has irresistible erotic charisma, and the conflict between her misdemeanours and dangerous associations and her beaming good nature is potent. She is skilfully complemented by the eager, innocent, and glamorous Don José of the 23-year-old Louis Lerch (1902-1985). Apart from his appearances with Meller in Carmen and Nocturne, the Austrian-born actor’s career was confined to Germany, where his later films included Richard Eichberg’s Rutschbahn (1928), shown at the Giornate in 2007. He retired from acting at 29, and thereafter worked as a production manager. Their scenes together provide models of silent screen acting. They converse, totally comprensibly to the viewer, with practically no need of intertitles: in fact Carmen has overall astonishingly few intertitles for a film of its length and narrative complexity.
Carmen was above all the revelation of its 29-year-old designer Lazare Meerson (1897-1938), who in the next decade was to prove a fundamental influence on the French cinema of "poetic realism". Born in Warsaw, he emigrated to Germany in 1917 and enrolled in art school in Berlin two years later. Although he designed for the stage, there is no evidence for claims that he worked in the German studios before arriving in Paris in 1923 and joining Albatros the following year. On his first films he assisted Bilinsky, Kéfer, and (on the incomparable Feu Mathias Pascal) Cavalcanti, and in 1926 succeeded the departing Lochakoff as Albatros’ head scenic designer. His approach to Carmen was unprecedented for those years. In pre-production he scouted the Spanish locations with Feyder, making volumes of meticulous drawings (many now conserved in the Cinémathèque Française) of architecture and local detail, which served in matching the studio sets to the location filming. The masterpiece of reconstruction (as of camerawork) was the 80-metre set of Seville’s winding Calle Sierpes (Street of the Serpent), which serves for the 3-minute sequence of Carmen’s arrest and escape.
Among the members of the Spanish colony in Paris recruited as extras was the young Luis Buñuel, who is the smuggler who approaches Carmen’s table in the first scene in Lillas Pastia’s tavern (and can be seen in a few subsequent shots). It is nice to suppose that Carmen was the first encounter of the future director of L’Age d’Or with its star, Gaston Modot. It was a demonstration of the film’s independence from Bizet that for the premiere an orchestral score was commissioned from the young Spanish composer Ernesto Halffter(-Escriche) (1905-1989), a dedicated disciple of Manuel de Falla.
The film was restored in 2001, using an original nitrate negative acquired in 1958 by the Cinémathèque Française, and missing titles supplied in 1985 from a safety print. The tinting was replaced thanks to a tinted nitrate print deposited with the Cinémathèque Française in 1950 by the producer Alexandre Kamenka. – David Robinson."
Having seen this film and print and blogged about them not too long ago I revisited it for some 40 minutes to find out about the music of Ernesto Halffter, interpreted by Touve Ratovondrahety on the grand piano, but one could not make much sense of the original music from this performance. The print still looks great, and Raquel Meller is one of the best Carmens.
The Old Man in the Corner: Episode 1: The Kensington Mystery
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| Baroness Orczy: The Case of Miss Elliott (GB 1905). First edition cover from Wikipedia: The Case of Miss Elliott. |
GB 1924. PC: Stoll Film Company. D+P+SC: Hugh Croise from the short story collection The Case of Miss Elliott by Baroness Orczy (1905); DP: John J. Cox, D.P. Cooper; CAST: Rolf Leslie (Old Man), Renée Wakefield (Miss Hatley), Dorothy Harris (Mrs. William Yule), Reginald Fox (William Yule), Kate Gurney (Mrs. Yule), Donald McArdle (William Biggs), Elsa Martini (Mrs. William Biggs, aka Marie Tourneur); n.c.: Wally Bosco, Gibb McLaughlin, Alex G. Hunter; 2150 ft, 29' (DigiBeta transferred at 20 fps. No 35 mm print of this film is currently available for screening). From: BFINA. Grand piano: Stephen Horne. Viewed at Teatro Verdi, Pordenone, 5 Oct 2009.
Jay Weissberg (GCM 2009): "The expression “armchair detective” appears to have been invented to describe The Old Man in the Corner stories written by Baroness Emmuska Orczy (1865-1947). Their premise was simple and effectual, thanks in great part to the cleanliness and conciseness of Orczy’s prose: a journalist named Polly Burton (changed to Mary Hatley in the Stoll films) regularly meets with a conceited elderly man forever fiddling with a piece of string in the corner of the A.B.C. teashop. He has views on all the latest crimes, which he unravels in a singularly crotchety style that never fails to denigrate the work of Scotland Yard. Many of the mysteries are never officially solved, and the Old Man frequently expresses admiration for the cleverness of the criminals over the police detectives. In “The Mysterious Death in Percy Street” Orczy gives him a name, Bill Owen, and intriguingly hints that he murdered someone in the hazy past.
The characters first appeared in the pages of The Royal Magazine in 1901, and in book form in 1905, under the title The Case of Miss Elliott. Oddly, the tales in that first collection came from the third series of stories; the first two series were published as a single volume later in 1909 under the now commonly-used umbrella title The Old Man in the Corner. Orczy returned to the characters in 1923, and Stoll, clever marketers that they were, introduced their series in June 1924; the final volume of stories, Unravelled Knots, was published in 1925.
Some dispute the idea of Orczy inventing the “armchair detective”, noting that Sherlock Holmes’ brother Mycroft similarly solves cases without leaving his home. Certainly Orczy, living in modest circumstances with her English husband, illustrator Montague Barstow, was looking for a way to cash in on the detective craze, and set out to create a figure worlds apart from that of the active clue-sniffing Holmes (two years later she invented The Scarlet Pimpernel, and their financial worries were over). The Old Man solves mysteries entirely from a seated position, often at inquests and trials or simply from newspaper accounts, when he pits his fine-tuned reasoning against the illogic of the press and the police. He’s always fidgeting with a piece of string, his “adjunct to thought”, which alternately annoys and amuses the journalist. This armchair-style of detection spawned a whole subset within the genre, leading to such sedentary investigators as Nero Wolfe and even TV’s Ironside.
“The Kensington Mystery” derives from Orczy’s story “The Tragedy in Dartmoor Terrace”, which first appeared in The Royal Magazine in June 1904. The episode is something of an anomaly, for unlike the original story and the other films, the Old Man is seen actively hunting down clues, and in the end he tips off the police once he’s gathered the evidence. A few minor changes have also been incorporated: the Yules are more developed as characters, William Bloggs (“not a euphonious name, is it?”) becomes the amusingly insufferable goody-goody William Biggs, and, in an undoubted bid to play up the humour element, Mrs. William Biggs is turned into a French golddigger with a stereotypical accent to match. The structure of the stories however is retained throughout the series, always opening with Miss Hatley and the Old Man in the teashop discussing a case, so that the majority of the unfolding narrative takes place as a flashback. The brevity of the source material lends itself to the 2-reel format, and each episode (there were 12 in all) stands alone. Kinematograph Weekly on 3 July 1924 spelled it out for exhibitors: “Each story must be distinctly mentioned as a separate plot in itself. The central figure plays no part in the actual crime events but simply talks of them and solves them. This should be emphasised in order that the serial-loving public may come repeatedly … and that the serial-hating public shall not stay away thinking they are compelled to see every episode in order to appreciate them.”
Director/adapter Hugh Croise was new to Stoll, having started his career as a writer and actor. In one of those strange twists of fate, he’s remembered today for a film he never finished: either illness or a clash with actor/impresario Seymour Hicks prevented him from completing the 1923 short Always Tell Your Wife, so the young Alfred Hitchcock stepped in for his first completed directing assignment". – Jay Weissberg
I watched just the start of this film to get an idea what the first ever Armchair Detective was.
I watched just the start of this film to get an idea what the first ever Armchair Detective was.
Sherlock Holmes i Bondefangerklør / A Confidence Trick
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| Viggo Larsen: Sherlock Holmes i Bondefangerklør / A Confidence Trick (DK 1910). Otto Lagoni (Sherlock Holmes). |
Den stjaalne Tegnebog / Sherlock Holmes und die Bauernfänger / A Confidence Trick [US] [The Stolen Wallet].
DK 1910. PC: Nordisk. D: Viggo Larsen; CAST: Otto Lagoni (Sherlock Holmes), Axel Boesen, Rigmor Jerichau, Victor Fabian, Ellen Kornbeck (?), Ella la Cour (?), Aage Lorentzen (?); 266 m /18 fps/ 11 min; from: DFI. Deutsche Zwischentitel. E-subtitles in English + Italian, grand piano: Stephen Horne. Viewed at Teatro Verdi, Pordenone, 5 Oct 2009.
Jay Weissberg (GCM 2009): "Sherlock Holmes was first translated into Danish in 1893, with the first Danish pastiche, Carl Muusmann’s Sherlock Holmes på Marienlyst (Sherlock Holmes at Elsinore) appearing in 1906, the same year Nordisk began operations. Two years later the rising company decided to produce a series of Holmes films, possibly proposed by a Norwegian, Ingvald Aaes, with whom Nordisk’s Wilhelm Stæhr corresponded in July 1908: “in accordance with what you wrote us about Sherlock Holmes we have for the next season produced 2 different films in that vein in spite of the idea having been used several times before.” It’s probable, given the way the films were sold abroad with consecutively numbered titles, that Nordisk planned the releases as a series: Viggo Larsen directed and wrote all six while also starring as Holmes in five. Once Larsen broke with the company and moved to Germany (where he continued to direct Holmes films for Vitascope), Nordisk made a further six Holmes films through 1911, though these don’t appear to have been conceived as a series."
Most of the trade publications note Nordisk’s growing reputation for handsome photography and naturalistic acting: “If you have seen Sherlock Holmes I, you know that for excellence of photography, the Great Northern Film Company [Nordisk] cannot be excelled, you know that the acting is practically what you would expect to see at the famous ‘Comédie Française’ of Paris, and you know that the manufacturers of this film pay the greatest attention to all the details and are unsurpassed in their staging.” (Moving Picture World, 1908, reviewing Raffles Flugt fra Fœngslet under the title Sherlock Holmes II)"
"Unfortunately the director of Sherlock Holmes i Bondefangerklør is unknown [NB 3 March 2026: now it is known that the director was Viggo Larsen], though the star, Otto Lagoni (1868-1944) appeared as Holmes in two other Nordisk titles." – Jay Weissberg
AA: There was laughter in the audience as Sherlock Holmes appears immediately on the scene when it has been realized that his presence is necessary to solve the crime. This is an action movie.
Die Geliebte Roswolskys / Roswolsky's Mistress
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| Felix Basch: Die Geliebte Roswolskys / Roswolsky's Mistress (DE 1921). Asta Nielsen (Mary Verhag), Max Landa (Baron Albich). |
Roswolskyn rakastajatar / Roswolskyn lemmitty / Roswolskys älskarinna. The title of the print: Quem da mais? Romance do amor.
DE 1921. PC: Messter-Film GmbH, Berlin.
D: Felix Basch; SC: Henrik Galeen, Hans Janowitz; DP: Carl Drews; CAST: Asta Nielsen (Mary Verhag), Paul Wegener (Eugen Roswolsky), Max Landa (Baron Albich).
Orig. l: 1620 m;
Helsinki premiere: 23 Jan 1922 Civis – distributor: Ab Maxim Oy – 1569 m
Preserved: 1245 m /16 fps/ 54 min, col., Desmet colour, duplicating original tinting; from: Bundesarchiv-Filmarchiv, Berlin.
Portuguese intertitles. E-subtitles in English + Italian
Grand piano: Tama Karema.
Viewed at Teatro Verdi, Pordenone, 5 Oct 2009.
Heide Schlüpmann & Karola Gramann (GCM 2009): "The original material for Die Geliebte Roswolskys is one of the few surviving colour positives of a Nielsen film, and was given to the Bundesarchiv-Filmarchiv in 1989 by the Cinemateca Brasileira, São Paulo. It was only recently copied by Haghefilm, using the Desmet method. This project was the result of a collaborative effort between the Bundesarchiv-Filmarchiv and the Danish Film Institute."
"Photographically, the film is of top quality. Besides very beautiful tinting, it has interesting camerawork, with superimpositions, shots of details (a hairbrush, jewellery, etc.), and a striking use of mirror-shots. By contrast, the editing seems choppy, as if the film was abridged at a later date; Nielsen’s acting relies on continuity."
"In her films Nielsen frequently played the role of the celebrated artiste that she was in real life, including her decline into the abyss of old age; just as often she embodied poor girls who sought a living working in low music halls or as dance hostesses. These roles often hinted at the shadow of prostitution."
"Die Geliebte Roswolskys offers a new take on this topic. Nielsen appears as a chorus girl. The corruption of the show-business world becomes evident: whether the little dancer gets to become a soloist depends on influential men; the mere rumour that she is the mistress of a prominent man makes her a public personality, destined for fame and fortune."
"In a peripheral scene, late one evening the poor chorus girl is standing in a crowd waiting for the arrival of the star, and, like those around her, looks on in admiration as the radiant beauty gets out of a limousine on the arm of a gentleman. She herself will soon physically experience how the illusion of notoriety ends in deception, and finally theft The film does not focus on the gulfs in society, but rather adheres to the form of a “portrayal of the morals” of the better-off elements of society who abandon themselves to luxury and pleasure. This impression might of course be the result of the abridgements." Heide Schlüpmann & Karola Gramann
AA: Two worlds juxtaposed: dancing in the music hall and speculation in the stock market. There is a lively surface in this film. There is some expressionistic imagery on Wegener's office with the wireless.
The slimy tabloid journalist and the slimy music hall director get on well together. They try to speculate on an innocent kind contact between Mary Verhag and Eugen Roswolsky. There is a similarity in the situation to the story Shubun by Akira Kurosawa.
The print is so truncated that it is difficult to make sense of the natural rhythm of the performances. Yet the visual quality of the images is often fine.
[Asta Nielsen als Mannequin], Steuermann Holk (fragments, 2002 preservation Bundesarchiv-Filmarchi)
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| Ludwig Wolff: Steuermann Holk (DE 1920). Isabella Bouflon (Asta Nielsen) takes boxing lessons from a Black champion (actor n.c.). Frame enlargement from MUBI. |
Presentano: Heide Schlüpmann, Karola Gramann. Grand piano: Tama Karema. Teatro Verdi, Pordenone, 5 Oct 2009. - From the GCM Catalogue: "Of the more than 70 films in which Nielsen starred, only about half have been preserved, often in fragmentary form. In recent years there have been several efforts to improve this state of affairs. For example, in 2005 Thomas Christensen of the Danish Film Institute initiated a worldwide FIAF search for material. This effort unfortunately turned out not to be very successful, as it proved that scarcely any negatives are available and that the existing positive copies are often of poor quality. Also in 2005, the Kinothek Asta Nielsen – which was founded in Frankfurt-on-Main in 2000 – started to work on a project with the aim of realizing a retrospective of its namesake that would be as complete as possible. Their initiative provided the impulse for restoration work by various German and international archives. In addition, there came the unexpected discovery of a tinted and toned nitrate print of Nielsen’s Hamlet by the Deutsches Filminstitut (DIF) / Deutsches Filmmuseum, Frankfurt-on-Main. Finally, in 2007 the Kinothek Asta Nielsen held a retrospective in conjunction with an international symposium in Frankfurt-on-Main. A 2-volume edition on Asta Nielsen was published by Filmarchiv Austria in Summer 2009.
The feature film Die Geliebte Roswolskys, the unidentified document Asta Nielsen als Mannequin, and the fragment of Steuermann Holk being screened at the Giornate have only recently been restored, and this marks their first public showing in an international context. These lucky finds show how every rediscovery brings to light yet another facet of Asta Nielsen’s outstanding contribution to silent cinema. – Heide Schlüpmann, Karola Gramann".[Asta Nielsen als Mannequin]
DE ca 1915. 137 m /16 fps/ ca 8 min; from: Bundesarchiv-Filmarchiv, Berlin. No intertitles.
From the GCM Catalogue: "There is no indication of when this short film was made. To judge by the clothes Nielsen is wearing, however, it must have been in the 1910s.
Asta Nielsen had great control over all the creative aspects of her films, especially in the 1910s, and paid special attention to the wardrobe of her characters. She chose the fabrics and cuts to correspond to the respective milieu of the protagonists, and also with the eye of the camera in mind. At the time, clothes which neither impeded nor disguised the body, but instead enabled it to move freely, were only produced by avant-garde fashion designers, such as Paul Poiret or Coco Chanel.
In this film, Nielsen plays the role of a mannequin, using her body as a clotheshorse. She makes a striking entrance on a flight of stairs (stairs often appear in Nielsen films), which serve as a stage on which to present sumptuous gowns and precious accessories. An outdoor shot shows Nielsen wearing an extravagant hat, posing in front of a Wilhelminian building in Berlin. – Heide Schlüpmann, Karola Gramann". - A beautiful fragment. Simple and elegant clothes, I agree with Heide Schlüpmann and Karola Gramann that there is a Coco Chanel connection.
Steuermann Holk (fragment)
Perämies Holk / Styrman Holk. DE 1920. PC: Maxim-Film-Ges. Ebner and Co., Berlin. D: Ludwig Wolff; SC: Thomas Hall, based on the novel by Kurt Küchler; DP: Julius Balting; AD: Rochus Gliese; CAST: Asta Nielsen (Isabella Bouflon), Paul Wegener (Helmsman Holk); orig. l: 1822 m; 41 m /18 fps/ 4 min; print: Bundesarchiv-Filmarchiv, Berlin. Deutsche Zwischentitel. From the GCM Catalogue: "Sadly, this brief fragment is all that is known to survive of the marine melodrama Steuermann Holk, which may well have had sea scenes as breathtakingly poetic as those in Das Haus am Meer (1924). Unlike that later film, however, here Nielsen obviously has a more interesting role than that of a devoted fisherman’s wife. Her leading man, Paul Wegener, was an esteemed colleague and friend, with whom she was in contact until his death.
This short fragment is impressive in that it shows the protagonist (Nielsen) taking a boxing lesson – what is more, with a black champion (the name of the actor is not known). Wegener steps between them, his pistol drawn. Struggle and love, aggression and desire – the source of tension in all Nielsen films – are condensed here in one scene.
A nitrate element of the fragment arrived at the Bundesarchiv-Filmarchiv in 2002 from Kinemathek Hamburg, and was copied by ABC and TaunusFilm Kopierwerk, Wiesbaden, in 2005. – Heide Schlüpmann, Karola Gramann." - Wegener catches Nielsen in the act of boxing with a black athlete and makes a violent scene.
Le Chant de l'amour triomphant (1986 restoration La Cinémathèque française / Renée Lichtig)
 |
| Viatcheslav Tourjansky: Le Chant de l'amour triomphant (FR 1923) |
[The film was not released in Finland].
FR 1923. PC: Films Albatros. D+SC: Viatcheslav Tourjansky; based on the short story Песнь торжествующей любви by Ivan Turgenev (1881); DP: Joseph-Louis Mundwiller, Fédote Bourgassoff; AD: Alexandre Lochakoff, César Lacca, Vassili Choukaeff; cost. [of principals]: Vassili Choukaeff, made by Maison Édouard Souplet; tech. dir: Michel Feldman; filmed: Nîmes (Jardin de la Fontaine), Aigues-Mortes, Studio Montreuil, [Studio des Réservoirs (Joinville)?];
CAST: Nathalie Kovanko (Valeria), Jean Angelo (Muzio), Rolla Norman (Fabio), Nicolas Koline (Antonio), Jean d’Yd (Hindu servant), Basile Kourotchkine (Brahma), Paul Ollivier (Duke of Ferrara)
1943 m /18 fps/ 93 min.
From: La Cinémathèque française, reconstitué by them in 1986 (Renée Lichtig), print made in 1990.
From: La Cinémathèque française, reconstitué by them in 1986 (Renée Lichtig), print made in 1990.
E-subtitles in English + Italian.
Grand piano: John Sweeney.
Viewed at Teatro Verdi, Pordenone, 5 Oct 2009.
David Robinson in the GCM Catalogue: "Ivan Turgenev’s short story "The Song of Love Triumphant" first appeared, dedicated to the memory of Gustave Flaubert, in 1881. A 1915 screen adaptation by Yevgenii Bauer, which gave Vera Kholodnaya one of her first and best major roles, is lost, but the changes of character names in that version suggests that Bauer transposed the story from the original location of 16th-century Ferrara to a more recent Russia. The Albatros version, on the contrary, observes the company’s customary fidelity to the setting, plot-line, and detail of the literary original. Le Chant de l’amour triomphant was Albatros’ only adaptation from a classical Russian author: its tale of 16th-century Ferrara invaded by Eastern mysticism and eroticism chimed admirably with 1920s’ tastes for "orientalism"."
"The film was restored in 1986 by Renée Lichtig, from an original nitrate copy acquired by the Cinémathèque française in its early years. The restoration consisted of printing preservation elements and printing on colour stock. The copy projected was made in 1990." – David Robinson
AA: A haunting love triangle. For Fabio, Valerie is a saint, for Muzio, a sensual woman. The Hindu love song awakens the mutual desire between Valerie and Muzio, and they meet as sleepwalkers in the nocturnal garden. This film belongs to those that are based on the idea of the power of music, but in the live music performance that concept was ignored. This film would be a great choice for a special event with Russian-Oriental themes such as by Rimsky-Korsakov.
David Robinson in the GCM Catalogue: "Ivan Turgenev’s short story "The Song of Love Triumphant" first appeared, dedicated to the memory of Gustave Flaubert, in 1881. A 1915 screen adaptation by Yevgenii Bauer, which gave Vera Kholodnaya one of her first and best major roles, is lost, but the changes of character names in that version suggests that Bauer transposed the story from the original location of 16th-century Ferrara to a more recent Russia. The Albatros version, on the contrary, observes the company’s customary fidelity to the setting, plot-line, and detail of the literary original. Le Chant de l’amour triomphant was Albatros’ only adaptation from a classical Russian author: its tale of 16th-century Ferrara invaded by Eastern mysticism and eroticism chimed admirably with 1920s’ tastes for "orientalism"."
"So closely is the story followed that the intertitles are practically all taken directly from Turgenev’s text – even to the equivocal phrase "Oh, how happy the youth for whom that pure maiden bud, still enfolded in its petals, will one day open into full flower!" – though the Albatros title-writers have inserted the unequivocal words "intact and virginal" after "petals". Turgenev’s conceit of introducing his story, "This is what I read in an old manuscript", and closing it, "At this word the manuscript ended", is echoed by giving the film’s opening and closing intertitles the appearance of manuscript fragments, though the main body of the titles are elegantly and unusually presented within a stylized Gothic arch design.
The common plot of story and film involves two young nobles of Ferrara, Fabio, a painter, and Muzio, a musician. Bosom friends, both are in love with Valeria, but agree that whichever she chooses, the other will submit totally to his fate. Valeria chooses Fabio, and Muzio, true to his word, departs for the East. After five years of bliss for the young couple, Muzio returns in company with a mute Hindu servant (Malay in the original) and steeped in oriental magic and mysticism. Valeria is strangely disturbed by his presence and particularly the eerie "Song of Love Triumphant" he plays on an exotic stringed instrument…"
The common plot of story and film involves two young nobles of Ferrara, Fabio, a painter, and Muzio, a musician. Bosom friends, both are in love with Valeria, but agree that whichever she chooses, the other will submit totally to his fate. Valeria chooses Fabio, and Muzio, true to his word, departs for the East. After five years of bliss for the young couple, Muzio returns in company with a mute Hindu servant (Malay in the original) and steeped in oriental magic and mysticism. Valeria is strangely disturbed by his presence and particularly the eerie "Song of Love Triumphant" he plays on an exotic stringed instrument…"
"Tourjansky’s principal addition to the plot is to introduce some needed comic relief in the person of Fabio’s steward Antonio, who in the original story only figures briefly at the end. Antonio, now a clumsy, meddlesome but faithful retainer, is enthusiastically played by Nicolas Koline; and adds a new plot-element and climax to the film, in the scenes where he incites the lower orders of Ferrara to violent action against the "sorcerer" Muzio."
"Tourjansky’s most fundamental contribution however is to reinforce the powerful erotic element more discreetly indicated by Turgenev. The common dream of Valeria and Muzio is much as described by Turgenev: "this curtain slowly glided, moved aside ... and in came Muzio. He bowed, opened his arms, laughed.... His fierce arms enfolded Valeria’s waist; his parched lips burned her all over.... She fell backwards on the cushions." Tourjansky’s most remarkable sequence, however, is Muzio’s performance of "The Song of Love Triumphant" for Fabio and Valeria: the image cuts between Valeria’s face, first wondering, then ravenous, close-ups of Muzio playing his exotic string instrument, with its arched bow, and a couple passionately making love, moment by moment becoming more naked. In the final shots the naked man metamorphoses into Muzio himself. It is a sequence of eroticism which it would be hard to parallel in commercial cinema of the 1920s."
"Critics of the time regularly praised the film as a "poem", and it is interesting to find Cinéa (1 November 1923) positively enthusiastic because the film departs from current fashions of frantic editing (except, of course, in such scenes as that just described): "The abuse of ultra-hectic action (…) too often obliges us to take part in this prodigious gluttony of the screen, of which Abel Gance has recently shown us the cruel reality. The screen [today] demands an ever-growing number of images, hurled on the white screen with varied rhythms, but with a constant tendency to acceleration. The spectator gets accustomed to being gorged (…) The orchestra of images [in Le Chant de l’amour triomphant], grave and slow, will not carry us to paroxysms of rhythm. It is there only to describe, to relate. The film which is unfolded for us, is a great visual recital… the silence comes to life, grows, always charged with ideas, dreams and visual realizations….""
"These visual realizations were the work of Alexandre Lochakoff and his team, which included the designer Choukaeff, who would subsequently create the costumes for Carmen. The jungles of India and a Renaissance Italy that sometimes reflects a 1920s chic on the eve of Art Deco were recreated in the narrow Montreuil studio, though the Duke’s reception may have been filmed in the Studio des Réservoirs in Joinville, which Albatros used for its more ambitious sets, such as the Drury Lane reconstitution in Kean. For the exteriors of the city walls, and the gardens of Ferrara, the unit went on location to Nîmes and Aigues-Mortes. Even in parks, the Albatros designers found the elaborate stairways which feature so constantly in their interiors. A charming detail of design is the illustrated cast titles at the opening of the film. At the left of the screen an aggressive Cubist abstract panel is drawn back to reveal the actor in day-dress; at the right a traditional curtain in a Renaissance arch draws back to reveal him in character."
"The film was restored in 1986 by Renée Lichtig, from an original nitrate copy acquired by the Cinémathèque française in its early years. The restoration consisted of printing preservation elements and printing on colour stock. The copy projected was made in 1990." – David Robinson
AA: A haunting love triangle. For Fabio, Valerie is a saint, for Muzio, a sensual woman. The Hindu love song awakens the mutual desire between Valerie and Muzio, and they meet as sleepwalkers in the nocturnal garden. This film belongs to those that are based on the idea of the power of music, but in the live music performance that concept was ignored. This film would be a great choice for a special event with Russian-Oriental themes such as by Rimsky-Korsakov.
Monday, October 05, 2009
The Ten Commandments (1923)
In the presence of Leatrice Gilbert Fountain, daughter of Leatrice Joy.
Kymmenen käskyä / Kymmenet käskyt. US 1923. PC: Famous Players-Lasky Corp. / Paramount. D+P: Cecil B. DeMille; SC: Jeanie Macpherson - many of the intertitles in the first section are direct quotes from Exodus; DP: Bert Glennon, Peverell Marley, Archibald Stout, J.F. Westerberg, [Edward S. Curtis, Ray Rennahan (col.)]; AD: Paul Iribe, Francis McComas; tech. D: Roy Pomeroy; ED: Anne Bauchens; ass. D: Cullen Tate; cast (Prologue): Theodore Roberts (Moses, The Lawgiver), Charles de Roche (Ramses, The Magnificent), Estelle Taylor (Miriam, The Sister of Moses), Julia Faye (The Wife of Pharaoh), Terrence Moore (The Son of Pharaoh), James Neill (Aaron, Brother of Moses), Lawson Butt (Dathan, The Discontented), Clarence Burton (The Taskmaster), Noble Johnson (The Bronze Man); (Modern Story): Rod La Rocque (Dan McTavish), Richard Dix (John McTavish), Edythe Chapman (Mrs. Martha McTavish), Leatrice Joy (Mary Leigh), Nita Naldi (Sally Lung, a Eurasian), Robert Edeson (Redding, an Inspector), Charles Ogle (The Doctor), Agnes Ayres (The Outcast); 12,072 ft /20 fps/ 159 min, col. (printed on colour stock, reproducing original tinted sequences and Handschiegl effects with the Desmet process); print: GEH. Restored in 2002 by GEH. Restoration funded by the National Endowment for the Arts, The Film Foundation, and the George Eastman House Preservation Fund. E-subtitles in Italian, grand piano: Donald Sosin, viewed at Teatro Verdi, Pordenone, 5 Oct 2009. - From the GCM Catalogue: "Some canonical American silent films grow in interest over the decades (say, The Crowd or The General). Some films widely admired at release do the reverse (say, Civilization or The Birth of a Nation). Others – and Cecil B. DeMille’s The Ten Commandments turns out to be a fascinating example – keep their appeal by turning it inside out.
DeMille’s long film holds two distinct shorter ones within it. A grandiose Biblical epic is followed by a modest family melodrama. The New York Times review (22 December 1923) expressed starkly a widespread initial response to the film’s bifurcated structure: “Two men might have directed this feature.” The dramatization of parts of the Book of Exodus was “obviously directed by a genius,” but “the strain on Mr. DeMille told,” and much of the contemporary story, about a pious mother and her two sons, was “extremely tedious”. For the first generation of U.S. film historians – including Terry Ramsaye in the 1920s and Lewis Jacobs in the 1930s – the interest of the film still lay entirely in its opening spectacle, because the cost prefigured the lavish ways of new Hollywood. (At $1,476,000, The Ten Commandments was probably the most expensive movie yet produced.) The remainder of the film merited little comment.
It may be, however, that something has happened to the film – or rather to our experience of it – in recent years, and its re-evaluation parallels what we’ve witnessed together over the last decade at the Giornate through the full body of D.W. Griffith’s work. The Griffith films most praised at release – the historical reenactments and Biblical adaptations – have come to feel ponderous and mildly laughable when set beside many Griffith films that were initially dismissed as little more than routine dramatizations of contemporary life. What is distinctive about The Ten Commandments is that it contains both film types within its two-and-a-half hour length.
In the 1960s Kevin Brownlow noted gently in The Parade’s Gone By that the Biblical prologue of the film was “cinematically uninventive”. The first four and a half reels – about the Israelites under Egypt’s Pharaoh, with the vengeful Old Testament God on their side – remain intermittently compelling, notably in the special effect of the Red Sea parting, the two-color Technicolor sequences, and the cast of thousands chased by Ramses’ chariots across the desert. If DeMille had little more inspiration about how to incorporate his massive set into the storyline than did Griffith in Intolerance, DeMille had a better sense for the enlivening human detail. After the Exodus, each of the ten emblazoned Commandments bursts forth sparkling like a Hollywood marquee (appropriate no doubt in Grauman’s new Egyptian Theatre on Hollywood Boulevard, a year old when the film premiered there on 4 December 1923). However, the hyperactive worship of the Golden Calf by awkwardly choreographed Israelite sinners brings the film’s pace to a crawl. Even on set, DeMille sensed the scene veering toward the ludicrous. A journalist reported the director’s words to extras playing the worshippers: “I would like to remark that if any one of you feels humorous, laugh now. If any one of you laughs after I say ‘Camera,’ I will do my best to extract the humor from the situation.”
There’s a defensive tone right from the film’s first intertitle, arguing against anybody’s assumption that what we’re about to see might be in any way “OLD FASHIONED”. The film was publicized, after all, as originating from the will of the people. In October 1922 DeMille initiated a nationwide newspaper contest to find the subject for his next Paramount film (“put it in three or four words if you wish”) and, among the 30,000 entries, a certain F.C. Nelson of Lansing, Michigan, was credited with the primary inspiration: “You cannot break the Ten Commandments – they will break you.” Nelson and seven others who had also suggested an idea based on the Ten Commandments divided the large $8,400 award.
But one also suspects another motivation from Paramount. That studio was home to ALL the central figures in Hollywood’s three fresh scandals: Fatty Arbuckle (tried twice for manslaughter, in 1921 and 1922), director William Desmond Taylor (murdered in 1922), and clean-cut star Wallace Reid (dead of a drug overdose in January 1923). If Hollywood was such a sin hotbed that Will Hays had to resign from the President’s Cabinet in 1922 to set the place straight, then Paramount was demonstrably the sin capital. The Ten Commandments could put the studio right – if not with God, at least with His people on earth. It’s not entirely DeMille’s fault if a whiff of the PR propaganda purpose still clings to his Old Testament images.
But 50 minutes into the film, just as we resign ourselves to cinematic life under Moses’ grim theocracy, The Ten Commandments leaps into life by shifting to (of all unholy places) San Francisco. For viewers now, the contemporary story, running the length of a full feature, reveals pleasures that undercut presumptions of DeMille’s ponderousness. Look especially at the subtly played round-robin emotions and touching character comedy in the scene where the two sons work out their romantic rivalry for the homeless young woman. The misunderstanding about which of the two is proposing is staged with complex 3-shots, deft cutting on glances, and inventive use of a doorway set. Or look at the high-flying dynamism of the literally breathtaking sequence atop the half-built church, which will soon be collapsing, earthquake or no. (DeMille beat Hitchcock in finding vertigo through San Francisco locations.) What the contemporary part of the film melodramatizes for us now is the central cultural battle of 1920s America – pitting the modernizing “Jazz Age” against religious revivalism. (Evangelist Aimee Semple McPherson matched DeMille’s budget with her $1,500,000 Angeles Temple, opened earlier in 1923; its electrically illuminated cross was easily visible from the Hollywood Hills.) In the film this cultural battle gets heated when the fundamentalist mother smashes her son’s dance record, “I’ve Got Those Sunday Blues”.
With relatively understated power the contemporary half of The Ten Commandments argues for a philosophical shift toward a more forgiving New Testament morality (under which Paramount’s sinning employees would presumably not be so harshly damned). The visual inventiveness of the contemporary story is deftly sustained by scriptwriter Jeanie Macpherson’s arch modern wit. Give her credit for one of the most memorable intertitles in all silent film, spoken by the good brother to the bad: “Laugh at the Ten Commandments all you want, Danny – but they pack an awful wallop!” – Scott Simmon
The restoration: The Technicolor Motion Picture Corporation of Boston, still trying to market its relatively new product, approached DeMille with an irresistible offer to shoot scenes for the movie at no charge. Ray Rennahan shot two-colour footage of the liberation of the Hebrews from Egypt and their trek across the desert. If DeMille wasn’t satisfied with the results, they would be turned over to the director for destruction. Complementing these scenes and highlighting the remarkable special effects, over 2,000 individual frames featured Handschiegl process coloring. First developed by Max Handschiegl and Alvin Wyckoff for DeMille’s Joan the Woman (1917), a select area of each frame could be individually colored through a complex dye-transfer system. The process was used almost exclusively for Famous Players-Lasky productions until Wyckoff left the studio in 1923. In The Ten Commandments the process was used to best effect in the orange coloring of the “wall of fire” sequence and the blue sea-walls during the parting of the Red Sea.
The main source for this restoration is Cecil B. DeMille’s personal 35mm nitrate print of The Ten Commandments. It came to George Eastman House as part of the DeMille collection, a unique assemblage of his films spanning almost all of the director’s entire silent oeuvre. DeMille kept one print of every one of his features. These were gradually donated to the Archive following his death in 1959. This print features the original tinting throughout, several toned sequences, and the Handschiegl process shots. The Technicolor scenes however, are not present.
In 2002, as part of an ongoing initiative to restore the color back to DeMille’s silent films, George Eastman House began work on the project. Tinting was matched and reproduced by the Desmet process. Reel 8 of DeMille’s personal copy was incomplete due to nitrate decomposition. This was replaced with material held at the Library of Congress. Tinting records were used to restore the color tints to this reel from an original screenplay held in the Cecil B. DeMille Archives at Brigham Young University in Utah. Under the supervision of Johan Prijs, Studio Cine in Rome developed a new system to recreate the Handschiegl coloring. Modern rotoscoping techniques were used to create masks before Desmet flashing colored the designated area. Now, thanks to this restoration, audiences can enjoy the film colorfully tinted and with Handschiegl effects, in a version unseen since its original release. – James Layton." - I revisited the Biblical section only of the famous film which I have seen recently in its entirety. - Paolo Cherchi Usai introduced this as probably the best print that we are ever likely to see. - Impressive to see the colour effects as detailed above. - But the Biblical section itself is curious because of the antiquated quality of its performances, which look like early cinema from the first decade of the 20th century, before Griffith. Certainly Cecil B. DeMille already in his first film, The Squaw Man (1914), was more advanced as a director of actors than here. Not to speak of The Ten Commandments (1956), which is superior in every aspect to the Biblical part of this film.
Kymmenen käskyä / Kymmenet käskyt. US 1923. PC: Famous Players-Lasky Corp. / Paramount. D+P: Cecil B. DeMille; SC: Jeanie Macpherson - many of the intertitles in the first section are direct quotes from Exodus; DP: Bert Glennon, Peverell Marley, Archibald Stout, J.F. Westerberg, [Edward S. Curtis, Ray Rennahan (col.)]; AD: Paul Iribe, Francis McComas; tech. D: Roy Pomeroy; ED: Anne Bauchens; ass. D: Cullen Tate; cast (Prologue): Theodore Roberts (Moses, The Lawgiver), Charles de Roche (Ramses, The Magnificent), Estelle Taylor (Miriam, The Sister of Moses), Julia Faye (The Wife of Pharaoh), Terrence Moore (The Son of Pharaoh), James Neill (Aaron, Brother of Moses), Lawson Butt (Dathan, The Discontented), Clarence Burton (The Taskmaster), Noble Johnson (The Bronze Man); (Modern Story): Rod La Rocque (Dan McTavish), Richard Dix (John McTavish), Edythe Chapman (Mrs. Martha McTavish), Leatrice Joy (Mary Leigh), Nita Naldi (Sally Lung, a Eurasian), Robert Edeson (Redding, an Inspector), Charles Ogle (The Doctor), Agnes Ayres (The Outcast); 12,072 ft /20 fps/ 159 min, col. (printed on colour stock, reproducing original tinted sequences and Handschiegl effects with the Desmet process); print: GEH. Restored in 2002 by GEH. Restoration funded by the National Endowment for the Arts, The Film Foundation, and the George Eastman House Preservation Fund. E-subtitles in Italian, grand piano: Donald Sosin, viewed at Teatro Verdi, Pordenone, 5 Oct 2009. - From the GCM Catalogue: "Some canonical American silent films grow in interest over the decades (say, The Crowd or The General). Some films widely admired at release do the reverse (say, Civilization or The Birth of a Nation). Others – and Cecil B. DeMille’s The Ten Commandments turns out to be a fascinating example – keep their appeal by turning it inside out.
DeMille’s long film holds two distinct shorter ones within it. A grandiose Biblical epic is followed by a modest family melodrama. The New York Times review (22 December 1923) expressed starkly a widespread initial response to the film’s bifurcated structure: “Two men might have directed this feature.” The dramatization of parts of the Book of Exodus was “obviously directed by a genius,” but “the strain on Mr. DeMille told,” and much of the contemporary story, about a pious mother and her two sons, was “extremely tedious”. For the first generation of U.S. film historians – including Terry Ramsaye in the 1920s and Lewis Jacobs in the 1930s – the interest of the film still lay entirely in its opening spectacle, because the cost prefigured the lavish ways of new Hollywood. (At $1,476,000, The Ten Commandments was probably the most expensive movie yet produced.) The remainder of the film merited little comment.
It may be, however, that something has happened to the film – or rather to our experience of it – in recent years, and its re-evaluation parallels what we’ve witnessed together over the last decade at the Giornate through the full body of D.W. Griffith’s work. The Griffith films most praised at release – the historical reenactments and Biblical adaptations – have come to feel ponderous and mildly laughable when set beside many Griffith films that were initially dismissed as little more than routine dramatizations of contemporary life. What is distinctive about The Ten Commandments is that it contains both film types within its two-and-a-half hour length.
In the 1960s Kevin Brownlow noted gently in The Parade’s Gone By that the Biblical prologue of the film was “cinematically uninventive”. The first four and a half reels – about the Israelites under Egypt’s Pharaoh, with the vengeful Old Testament God on their side – remain intermittently compelling, notably in the special effect of the Red Sea parting, the two-color Technicolor sequences, and the cast of thousands chased by Ramses’ chariots across the desert. If DeMille had little more inspiration about how to incorporate his massive set into the storyline than did Griffith in Intolerance, DeMille had a better sense for the enlivening human detail. After the Exodus, each of the ten emblazoned Commandments bursts forth sparkling like a Hollywood marquee (appropriate no doubt in Grauman’s new Egyptian Theatre on Hollywood Boulevard, a year old when the film premiered there on 4 December 1923). However, the hyperactive worship of the Golden Calf by awkwardly choreographed Israelite sinners brings the film’s pace to a crawl. Even on set, DeMille sensed the scene veering toward the ludicrous. A journalist reported the director’s words to extras playing the worshippers: “I would like to remark that if any one of you feels humorous, laugh now. If any one of you laughs after I say ‘Camera,’ I will do my best to extract the humor from the situation.”
There’s a defensive tone right from the film’s first intertitle, arguing against anybody’s assumption that what we’re about to see might be in any way “OLD FASHIONED”. The film was publicized, after all, as originating from the will of the people. In October 1922 DeMille initiated a nationwide newspaper contest to find the subject for his next Paramount film (“put it in three or four words if you wish”) and, among the 30,000 entries, a certain F.C. Nelson of Lansing, Michigan, was credited with the primary inspiration: “You cannot break the Ten Commandments – they will break you.” Nelson and seven others who had also suggested an idea based on the Ten Commandments divided the large $8,400 award.
But one also suspects another motivation from Paramount. That studio was home to ALL the central figures in Hollywood’s three fresh scandals: Fatty Arbuckle (tried twice for manslaughter, in 1921 and 1922), director William Desmond Taylor (murdered in 1922), and clean-cut star Wallace Reid (dead of a drug overdose in January 1923). If Hollywood was such a sin hotbed that Will Hays had to resign from the President’s Cabinet in 1922 to set the place straight, then Paramount was demonstrably the sin capital. The Ten Commandments could put the studio right – if not with God, at least with His people on earth. It’s not entirely DeMille’s fault if a whiff of the PR propaganda purpose still clings to his Old Testament images.
But 50 minutes into the film, just as we resign ourselves to cinematic life under Moses’ grim theocracy, The Ten Commandments leaps into life by shifting to (of all unholy places) San Francisco. For viewers now, the contemporary story, running the length of a full feature, reveals pleasures that undercut presumptions of DeMille’s ponderousness. Look especially at the subtly played round-robin emotions and touching character comedy in the scene where the two sons work out their romantic rivalry for the homeless young woman. The misunderstanding about which of the two is proposing is staged with complex 3-shots, deft cutting on glances, and inventive use of a doorway set. Or look at the high-flying dynamism of the literally breathtaking sequence atop the half-built church, which will soon be collapsing, earthquake or no. (DeMille beat Hitchcock in finding vertigo through San Francisco locations.) What the contemporary part of the film melodramatizes for us now is the central cultural battle of 1920s America – pitting the modernizing “Jazz Age” against religious revivalism. (Evangelist Aimee Semple McPherson matched DeMille’s budget with her $1,500,000 Angeles Temple, opened earlier in 1923; its electrically illuminated cross was easily visible from the Hollywood Hills.) In the film this cultural battle gets heated when the fundamentalist mother smashes her son’s dance record, “I’ve Got Those Sunday Blues”.
With relatively understated power the contemporary half of The Ten Commandments argues for a philosophical shift toward a more forgiving New Testament morality (under which Paramount’s sinning employees would presumably not be so harshly damned). The visual inventiveness of the contemporary story is deftly sustained by scriptwriter Jeanie Macpherson’s arch modern wit. Give her credit for one of the most memorable intertitles in all silent film, spoken by the good brother to the bad: “Laugh at the Ten Commandments all you want, Danny – but they pack an awful wallop!” – Scott Simmon
The restoration: The Technicolor Motion Picture Corporation of Boston, still trying to market its relatively new product, approached DeMille with an irresistible offer to shoot scenes for the movie at no charge. Ray Rennahan shot two-colour footage of the liberation of the Hebrews from Egypt and their trek across the desert. If DeMille wasn’t satisfied with the results, they would be turned over to the director for destruction. Complementing these scenes and highlighting the remarkable special effects, over 2,000 individual frames featured Handschiegl process coloring. First developed by Max Handschiegl and Alvin Wyckoff for DeMille’s Joan the Woman (1917), a select area of each frame could be individually colored through a complex dye-transfer system. The process was used almost exclusively for Famous Players-Lasky productions until Wyckoff left the studio in 1923. In The Ten Commandments the process was used to best effect in the orange coloring of the “wall of fire” sequence and the blue sea-walls during the parting of the Red Sea.
The main source for this restoration is Cecil B. DeMille’s personal 35mm nitrate print of The Ten Commandments. It came to George Eastman House as part of the DeMille collection, a unique assemblage of his films spanning almost all of the director’s entire silent oeuvre. DeMille kept one print of every one of his features. These were gradually donated to the Archive following his death in 1959. This print features the original tinting throughout, several toned sequences, and the Handschiegl process shots. The Technicolor scenes however, are not present.
In 2002, as part of an ongoing initiative to restore the color back to DeMille’s silent films, George Eastman House began work on the project. Tinting was matched and reproduced by the Desmet process. Reel 8 of DeMille’s personal copy was incomplete due to nitrate decomposition. This was replaced with material held at the Library of Congress. Tinting records were used to restore the color tints to this reel from an original screenplay held in the Cecil B. DeMille Archives at Brigham Young University in Utah. Under the supervision of Johan Prijs, Studio Cine in Rome developed a new system to recreate the Handschiegl coloring. Modern rotoscoping techniques were used to create masks before Desmet flashing colored the designated area. Now, thanks to this restoration, audiences can enjoy the film colorfully tinted and with Handschiegl effects, in a version unseen since its original release. – James Layton." - I revisited the Biblical section only of the famous film which I have seen recently in its entirety. - Paolo Cherchi Usai introduced this as probably the best print that we are ever likely to see. - Impressive to see the colour effects as detailed above. - But the Biblical section itself is curious because of the antiquated quality of its performances, which look like early cinema from the first decade of the 20th century, before Griffith. Certainly Cecil B. DeMille already in his first film, The Squaw Man (1914), was more advanced as a director of actors than here. Not to speak of The Ten Commandments (1956), which is superior in every aspect to the Biblical part of this film.
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