Japanese Animation I : Gems of Japanese Silent Animation, tributes to Yasuji Murata, Junichi Kouchi

Tomu Uchida: Kanimanji engi / [The Tale of Crab Temple] (JP 1924).

Viewed at Teatro Verdi, Le Giornate del Cinema Muto, Pordenone, e-subtitles in English and Italian, grand piano (gong, bell, triangle, accordeon): Mie Yanashita, 3 Oct 2011.

NAMAKURA GATANA [La spada smussata / A Blunt Sword] (Kobayashi Shokai, JP 1917) D, anim: Junichi Kouchi; 35 mm, tinted, 91 ft, 2’ (16 fps); from: National Film Center, Tokyo. One Japanese intertitle.
Alexander Jacoby, Johan Nordström (GCM Catalogue): "Junichi Kouchi (1886-1970) was one of the first three professional Japanese animated filmmakers. Along with fellow pioneer Oten Shimokawa (1892-1973), he worked for the satirical magazine Tokyo Puck. Both directors made their debuts in 1917, with Shimokawa’s Mukuzo Imokawa the Janitor (Imokawa Mukuzo, Genkanban no maki), apparently released in January of that year, long considered to be the first Japanese animated film (it is probably accurate to call it the first made for public screening). Kouchi’s debut A Blunt Sword (Namakura gatana), also sometimes known by the alternative titles of Hekonai Hanawa: Famous Swords (Hanawa Hekonai meito no maki) and Trying Out the Sword (Tameshi-giri), followed in June, and has happily survived. It is a comic short about a samurai with a blunt sword ironically bested by his intended victim. Whereas Shimokawa’s film used chalk on a blackboard, Kouchi used cut-out and silhouette animation, and his technique was widely considered superior to that of his contemporaries. Kouchi went on to direct political cartoons, including the extant Ethicizing Politics (Eiga enzetsu: Seiji no rinrika: Goto Shinpei, 1927), for Home Minister Shinpei Goto, who was substantially responsible for the reconstruction of Tokyo after the Great Kanto Earthquake of 1923. Kouchi continued to work in animation until 1930, when he made his last film, Chopped Snake (Chongire hebi). Along with Seitaro Kitayama’s Taro Urashima (see below), A Blunt Sword was rediscovered in July 2007, when film historian Natsuki Matsumoto bought a 35 mm nitrate print at an antique fair in Osaka. The films had been stored in well-ventilated paper containers, which had helped to prevent them from deteriorating. This digitally restored print of A Blunt Sword was tinted in yellow, using a traditional tinting technique." – Alexander Jacoby, Johan Nordström
AA:  The habit of switching from drawing to silhouette is already in use. A humoristic samurai animation.

Seitaro Kitayama
URASHIMA TARO [Taro Urashima] (Nikkatsu, JP 1918) D, anim: Seitaro Kitayama; 35 mm, 96 ft, 2’ (16 fps); from: National Film Center, Tokyo. No intertitles.
"The fisherman Taro Urashima is the hero of a celebrated Japanese folk-story. He saves a turtle from mistreatment by children, and subsequently learns that the turtle was in fact the daughter of the Emperor of the Sea. He is invited to visit the grateful Emperor’s undersea domain, where he meets the princess, but decides after a few days to return home. He is sent back with a box which the princess tells him never to open. On reaching his native village, he finds that 300 years have passed while he has been away. He opens the box, only to be turned abruptly into an old man, since the box contained his old age. Seitaro Kitayama’s film, rediscovered by Natsuki Matsumoto alongside A Blunt Sword, was the earliest animated version of the story. The print, digitally restored from the 35 mm nitrate original, was tinted in pink using a traditional tinting technique. Seitaro Kitayama (1888-1945) was a watercolour artist before beginning to work on animated films, again in 1917, when his debut, Monkey Crab Battle (Saru kani gassen), was released. Jasper Sharp comments that he was significant because of “the diversity of his output: advertising films, animated sequences for live action films, political propaganda and later educational films intended for the classroom”. He directed about 30 animations, initially favouring the technique of drawing moving figures over paper backgrounds, though he later used cut-out animation too. In 1921, he founded Japan’s first animation studio, Kitayama Eiga Seisaku-sho. After the Great Kanto Earthquake, he moved away from animation, working primarily on newsreels and documentaries. But he was credited as animator on Circle (En, 1932), an educational film exploring geometry." Alexander Jacoby, Johan Nordström
AA: Simple animation with switches to silhouette. A charming fairy-tale.

Tomu Uchida
* KANIMANJI ENGI [Il racconto del tempio dei granchi / The Tale of Crab Temple] (Asahi Kinema Gomei-sha, JP 1924) D, anim: Hidehiko Okuda, Tomu Uchida, Hakuzan Kimura; 35 mm, 983 ft, 11’ (24 fps); from: National Film Center, Tokyo. Japanese intertitles, with English subtitles.
"This charming animation is a religious fable focusing on a girl who builds a Buddhist temple in order to give thanks to the crabs that saved her from a snake in human form. It is most notable historically for the participation as one of its three directors of Tomu Uchida (1898-1970), who would become one of Japan’s outstanding commercial filmmakers during the following four and a half decades, working in a variety of genres, from literary adaptation to social satire, but most notably on period films such as Bloody Spear at Mount Fuji (Chiyari Fuji, 1955). His Policeman (Keisatsukan, 1933) was screened at Pordenone in 2001. Co-director Hakuzan Kimura, whose dates are unknown, studied animation at Kitayama Eiga Seisaku-sho, and went on to work mainly for Asahi Kinema. The most notorious moment of his career occurred in 1932, when he made the independently produced Summer Boat (Suzumi-bune), a pornographic animation reminiscent of the sexually explicit ukiyo-e paintings known as shunga. In consequence, he was arrested, and the film was confiscated by the police." – Alexander Jacoby, Johan Nordström
AA: A masterpiece. A sensitive, lyrical touch in drawings that switch into silhouettes. The father promises his daughter to a snake if the snake lets go of a frog. But the daughter is saved first with a Buddhist scripture roll and then with a swarm of crabs. There are radiant inserts of pure abstraction and kaleidoscopic figures (like with Harry Smith). *

Sanae Yamamoto
* UBASUTEYAMA (Tokyo Manga Club, JP 1925) D, anim: Sanae Yamamoto; 35 mm, 1,070 ft, 16’ (18 fps); from: National Film Center, Tokyo. Japanese intertitles, with English subtitles.
"The term ubasate (or obasute) refers to a legendary Japanese custom whereby the elderly or ailing were abandoned on a mountain to die. The folk-tale of Ubasuteyama (or Obasuteyama), the “mountain of abandonment”, is widely known in Japan in various versions, one of which forms the basis of this film, made to promote respect for the elderly. The film celebrates the wisdom of an old woman who saves her country. In later years, the legend of abandonment became the basis of Shichiro Fukazawa’s novel The Ballad of Narayama, which was to be adapted for live-action film by Keisuke Kinoshita in 1958 and by Shohei Imamura in 1983. Both films are acknowledged masterpieces of Japanese cinema. Director Sanae Yamamoto (1898-1981), who had trained with pioneering animator Seitaro Kitayama, also retold Aesop’s fable of the Tortoise and the Hare in another extant silent anime. During the prewar years, he worked for the Japanese government, producing over a dozen animations at the behest of various ministries. He was later to became a founder and head of Japan’s first major animation studio, Toei Doga, responsible for such classics as Japan’s first feature-length animated cartoon in colour, Legend of the White Serpent (Hakujaden, 1958)." – Alexander Jacoby, Johan Nordström
AA: A masterpiece with an original approach to animation: drawings, paintings, and the intertitle design grow into a whole. The old mother's wisdom is instrumental in helping solve the riddles (how to pull a thread through the crooked path in the crystal, how to tell the mare from the foal which look identical). *

Director unknown
CHAPPURIN TO KUGAN [Chaplin e Coogan / Chaplin and Coogan] (?, JP, ca. 1921-25?) D, anim: ?; 35 mm, 940 ft, 16’ (16 fps); from: National Film Center, Tokyo. Japanese intertitles, with English subtitles.
"Little is known about this mysterious film, whose director and exact date remain unknown; indeed, since the title card is missing, even the real title is unknown, and the designation Chaplin and Coogan is a tentative one. The film was made some time during the 1920s, evidently after Chaplin made The Kid (1921), in which he played opposite child star Jackie Coogan. Chaplin, as Joseph Anderson and Donald Richie have commented, “is the personification of the Japanese comic ideal”, and it is no surprise that tribute should have been paid to him by Japanese theatre and film. City Lights (1931) was adapted months after its release for the Japanese stage as Komori no Yasu-san, with a sumo bout substituted for the boxing match; while Torajiro Saito, a prolific director of comedy shorts, made Chaplin, Why Do You Cry? (Chappurin yo naze naku ka), about a Japanese sandwich-man who dresses like Chaplin’s Little Tramp, in 1932. In the same year, Chaplin made his first visit to Japan, and narrowly escaped death when his host, Japanese Prime Minister Tsuyoshi Inukai, was assassinated while the comedian attended a sumo match in the company of Inukai’s son." Alexander Jacoby, Johan Nordström
AA: Submarine imagery is recurrent in early anime, also here. An underwater movie is being shot. There are metacinematic dimensions here, including the appearance of Charles Chaplin, and the production of swordplay movies.

Akira Iwasaki
SANBIKI NO KOGUMA-SAN [I tre orsetti / Three Little Bears] (Fujin no Tomo-sha, JP 1931) D, anim: Akira Iwasaki; 35 mm, 828 ft, 12’ (18 fps); from: National Film Center, Tokyo. Japanese intertitles, with English subtitles.
"This amusing animation, which in Akira Tochigi’s words “celebrates the playfulness of enfants terribles à la Jean Vigo”, is based on a story by Kazuko Murayama, the wife of the avant-garde artist and playwright Tomoyoshi Murayama. Murayama was a noted left-winger, who devised versions of Robin Hood and Don Quixote informed by Marxist philosophy. His left-wing sentiments were shared by the uncredited director of this animation, Akira Iwasaki (1903-81), who, during the late 1920s and early 1930s was one of the leading members of the Proletarian Film League of Japan (Prokino), an organization responsible for newsreels and documentaries, along with some fiction and animated films, that was finally suppressed under the terms of the notorious Peace Preservation Law. Iwasaki himself, who was also a noted film critic, would go on to be arrested in 1940 for his opposition to the 1939 Film Law, which cemented state control over the industry." – Alexander Jacoby, Johan Nordström
AA: Disney's Laugh-o-Grams with the three little bears have just been shown in Pordenone, and here is a Japanese interpretation with some similarities (not imitation). The modernized fairy-tale is a springboard for absurd inventions and adventures via train, through the world of snow (snow white bears), via zeppelin, and through the chimney (soot black bears).

Omaggio a / Tribute to Yasuji Murata
"Yasuji Murata (1896-1966) was one of the most distinguished Japanese animators of the silent era. His work, based mainly on scripts by Chuzo Aochi, drew on both Western and Japanese folk-tales, but also tackled themes such as sport. He worked initially for Yokohama Sinema Shokai (the Yokohama Cinema Company), where he was given the task of creating intertitles, a function he performed both for educational films and for imported American animations. The latter, in particular those produced by Bray Studios, became one of his models, along with the Japanese cartoons directed by Sanae Yamamoto (see above). His debut, in 1927, was a remake of Seitaro Kitayama’s own debut, Monkey Crab Battle, and he went on to make Animal Olympics (Dobutsu Orinpikku taikai) in 1928, inspired by the Amsterdam Games that took place that year. He specialized in cut-out animation, and The Queen of the Moon Palace (Tsuki no miya no ojosama, 1934) demonstrated his mastery of that technique. In addition, Murata was a technical innovator, collaborating on the invention of a motor-driven shooting table for animation which permitted increases in shooting speeds and adjustments to uneven exposure speeds. Murata left Yokohama Sinema in 1937, but continued to work thereafter on educational and promotional films. His career in filmmaking stretched into the 1960s." Alexander Jacoby, Johan Nordström

* KOBUTORI [Il bernaccolo rimosso / His Snatched-Off Lump] (Yokohama Sinema Shokai, JP 1929) D, anim: Yasuji Murata; 35 mm, 938 ft, 14’ (18 fps); from: National Film Center, Tokyo. Japanese intertitles, with English subtitles.
"This funny and at times poetic morality tale is arguably one of the finest surviving Japanese silent animated films. Its subject is drawn from legend: an old man dances with the tengu (bird-like goblins) in the hope of having a lump removed from his face [in the movie it's otherwise: the goblins believe that the lump is especially valuable for the old man and keep it as a pledge - AA]. Jasper Sharp has praised the film’s “fine, intricate line drawings”, and indeed, the film’s creation of milieu is admirable: the imagery of pouring rain, parting clouds and moonlight has a touch of the atmospheric loveliness that Hayao Miyazaki was to bring to his depictions of nature." Alexander Jacoby, Johan Nordström
AA: A masterpiece. There is a beautiful touch in the pen and the paintbrush. After nightfall the old man with a lump in his face visits the camp of the beaked goblins. The goblins take away his lump as a pawn. Next day, another old man with a lump wants to have the same treatment... *

FUTATSU NO SEKAI [Due mondi / Two Worlds] (Yokohama Sinema Shokai, JP 1929) D, anim: Yasuji Murata; 35 mm, 988 ft, 15’ (18 fps); from: National Film Center, Tokyo. Japanese intertitles, with English subtitles.
"Aesop’s fables, with their animal characters and brief, pointed narratives conveying clear moral messages, constitute ideal material for animated shorts. In the United States, Paul Terry’s Aesop’s Fables straddled the silent and early sound eras, running from 1921 to 1933. Japanese animators too seized on the Greek writer’s sardonic stories, which had been known in Japan since the late 16th century, when they were introduced to the country by Portuguese missionaries. Sanae Yamamoto, the director of Ubasuteyama, had realized a version of the story of the Tortoise and the Hare entitled Kyoiku otogi manga: Usagi to kame in 1924. Two Worlds is a version of another of Aesop’s best-known fables, The Ant and the Grasshopper, contrasting the industrious ant with the idle grasshopper, and concluding that “He who sings in summer will cry in winter”. This tale, or its retelling by the French fabulist La Fontaine, also formed the basis for animations by George Méliès, Ladislas Starewitch, and Lotte Reiniger." Alexander Jacoby, Johan Nordström
AA: An original visualization of the story of the Grasshopper and the Ant. "Summer fun leads to winter misery". The butterfly, the ants, and the grasshopper are interestingly designed.

OIRA NO YAKYU [La nostra partita di baseball / Our Baseball Game] (Yokohama Sinema Shokai, JP 1930) D, anim: Yasuji Murata; 35 mm, 900 ft, 13’ (18 fps); from: National Film Center, Tokyo. Japanese intertitles, with English subtitles.
"Baseball was one of the many aspects of Western culture imported to Japan in the modernizing Meiji Period (1868-1912), with the country’s first baseball team being established in 1878. By the 1930s the game had achieved widespread popularity, staking a claim to become Japan’s national sport. This film depicts a baseball game between a team of badgers and a team of rabbits, which ends in disaster. It was distributed as part of the Yokohama Cinema Company’s Athena Film Library, which consisted of films intended as part of a touring national education film programme." – Alexander Jacoby, Johan Nordström
AA: Highly stylized and inventive. The baseball has to be retrieved from a frog's belly where it has already started to be digested, turning into a limp cordon.

Alexander Jacoby, Johan Nordström: The Birth of Anime: Pioneers of Japanese Animation (GCM introduction)

Alexander Jacoby, Johan Nordström (GCM Catalogue): "In the past quarter-century, Japanese animation has emerged as a leading international art form. The touching, and often environmentally conscious, fables of Hayao Miyazaki and his colleagues at Studio Ghibli, coupled with the generally dystopian visions of Katsuhiro Otomo and Mamoru Oshii, have been widely distributed and widely praised. International audiences embraced films such as Otomo’s Akira at a time when relatively few modern live-action Japanese films were seen in the West. At home, anime triumphed commercially, largely beating out live-action competitors: in 1997, Miyazaki’s Princess Mononoke became the most successful film in history at the Japanese box office, a record then surpassed by James Cameron’s Titanic, until the director reclaimed this honour with Spirited Away in 2001."

"However, the international discovery of Japanese animation was not as sudden as it seemed. Japan’s first colour feature-length animation, Tale of the White Serpent (Hakujaden, 1958), had achieved foreign distribution, winning a commercial release in the United States in 1961, and Japanese television cartoons such as Astro Boy (Tetsuwan Atomu) and Heidi, Girl of the Alps (Heidi, Arupusu no shojo) were dubbed for international release. Even before that, Japanese animation had enjoyed isolated screenings in the West: in the 1950s, in the first years of widespread distribution for Japanese films in Europe and North America, Noburo Ofuji’s animations won recognition at European film festivals, while as early as the 1930s, the avant-garde cartoons of Shigeji Ogino were acclaimed in Budapest."

"But even these isolated screenings left almost unknown a tradition of Japanese silent animation which had been developing since the early years of the 20th century. The actual date of the first Japanese animation is unclear. In 2005, a fascinating brief hand-drawn animated fragment, only seconds long, was rediscovered in Kyoto. It depicts a boy in sailor costume writing the words “katsudo shashin” (“motion pictures”) on a blackboard, and is thought to date from the last years of the Meiji Era (1868-1912). This film was not commercially screened, but by the middle of the Taisho Period (1912-26), inspired by the examples both of American cartoons and of European filmmakers such as the French “father of animation” Émile Cohl, a number of pioneering Japanese animators, in particular Oten Shimokawa, Junichi Kouchi, and Seitaro Kitayama, had begun to work with techniques ranging from chalk on slate to cut-out animation to silhouettes. Cut-out animation found its first master in the talented Yasuji Murata, several of whose works are featured in this series. Later, the American technique of cel animation was imported to Japan. The first Japanese animator to make use of the imported technique was Kenzo Masaoka, whose Monkey Island was shown at Pordenone in 2005.""

"These two programmes exemplify the variety and invention of early Japanese animation, from its earliest pioneers to such major artists as Murata, Ofuji, and Ogino, to each of whom tribute will be paid in the form of a selection of several surviving films. Their subject matter ranges from legend and folklore to sport to pure abstraction, a breadth of theme and style that testifies to the early vitality of Japanese animation. In an age when anime has achieved international fame, it is timely to glance back at its roots in Japan’s silent cinema."

"This retrospective has been organized with the support of the National Film Center, The National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo, which has provided the prints and arranged their subtitling. We would like to express our profound gratitude to the head of that institution, Hisashi Okajima, and to NFC curators Akira Tochigi and Fumiaki Itakura, who jointly selected the films to be screened in these programmes. In addition, Akira Tochigi provided much of the information that forms the basis of the following notes." – Alexander Jacoby, Johan Nordström

Chyortovo koleso / [The Devil’s Wheel] – The Lost Fragments

Grigori Kozintsev & Leonid Trauberg: Чёртово колесо / Chyortovo koleso / The Devil’s Wheel (SU 1926).

Чёртово колесо (Leningradkino, SU 1926) (fragments) D: Grigori Kozintsev, Leonid Trauberg; DP: Andrei Moskvin; 35 mm, ca 200 m, ca 11' (16 fps), col. (tinted); from: Gosfilmofond of Russia. Russian intertitles. Viewed at Teatro Verdi, Le Giornate del Cinema Muto, Pordenone, e-subtitles in English and Italian, grand piano: Donald Sosin, 3 Oct 2011.

Peter Bagrov (GCM Catalogue): "The truncated and incomplete film which we now see is not what its directors intended. The Devil’s Wheel was FEKS’ first “grownup” work. Having finally got their hands on a full-length feature and a real budget, Kozintsev and Trauberg set out to demonstrate their maximum potential, with a sophisticated picture involving a complex and tangled plot. A criminal melodrama was combined with a spy story. The action jumped back and forth between Soviet Russia and bourgeois Europe. In fact the whole film was based on contrasts – in narrative, acting, and graphic solutions."

"However, a few months after its release the film was re-edited for censorship reasons. The original film was almost two hours long, while the existing version runs barely an hour. The spy story disappeared completely. The scene of the fight in the restaurant, of which the directors were particularly proud, is lost, as are all the western street episodes with elegant sets by Yevgeni Yenei, the acting of renowned avant-garde vaudeville players Aleksandr Kostomolotsky and Arnold, and much more. The whole construction of the film suffered: the contrast principle was ruined."

"Since the film depot at Detskoe Selo, where the negatives of Leningrad films were stored, was burned down during World War II, there was little hope of finding any primary source nitrate material for FEKS’ pictures. But in 1999 Sergei Gelver, archivist of the St. Petersburg Documentary Film Studio, rescued several reels of unidentified nitrate film which were condemned to be destroyed for fire safety reasons. A decade later it was established that among this material were about 200 metres of unknown footage of The Devil’s Wheel. Here are fragments of episodes long believed lost: a scene in the antique shop (with Liudmila Semyonova’s expressive close-ups), the Norwegian courtroom and side streets built in the studio by Yenei, and even the beginning of the restaurant fight scene – in which the dancer is played by Trauberg’s wife Vera Lande. Fragments of some of the well-known episodes are also rewarding: most appear to be outtakes, and are seen in pristine first-generation state. But what makes this material especially attractive is the tinting, since the number of surviving Soviet tinted films is negligible, and include no works by FEKS."

"So what is this precious material? Were these sequences left out during editing? Or re-editing? Or were they shots excluded from the export version? On one hand there are outtakes, on the other, intertitles and tinting. Most likely what we have is tinting tests. In any case, these 200 metres of newly discovered footage significantly expand our conception of FEKS’ first full-length film." – Peter Bagrov

AA: Not less exciting than the main feature film itself. The colour world includes yellow tinting and sepia toning.

Chyortovo koleso / The Devil's Wheel

Grigori Kozintsev & Leonid Trauberg: Чёртово колесо / The Devil's Wheel (SU 1926). Source: https://www.kinopoisk.ru/picture/2909091/

Grigori Kozintsev & Leonid Trauberg: Чёртово колесо / The Devil's Wheel (SU 1926). Source: https://www.kinopoisk.ru/picture/2909091/

Чёртово колесо (Moryak s “Avrorii”) [La ruota del diavolo / Il marinaio dell’ “Aurora” / The Sailor from the “Aurora”]
    (Leningradkino, SU 1926) D: Grigori Kozintsev, Leonid Trauberg; SC: Adrian Piotrovsky; DP: Andrei Moskvin; AD: Yevgeni Yenei; ass D: Mikhail Geraltovsky, Sergey Shklyarevsky, Boris Shpis, Vladimir Shmidtgof;
    cast: Pyotr Sobolievsky (Vanya Shorin), Liudmila Semyonova (Valya), Sergei Gerasimov (Question Man), Emil Gal (Koko, a variety performer), Antonio Tserep (owner of the bar), Nikolai Gorodnichev (house manager), Vera Lande (dancer), Sergei Martinson (conductor-violinist), Yevgeni Kumeiko, Pavel Berezin, Andrei Kostrichkin (raiders), Yanina Zheimo, Tatyana Ventsel (girls from the gang), Viktor Plotnikov (member of the Salvation Army), Aleksandr Kostomolotsky (antiquarian / drum player), Arnold Arnold (editor), Aleksei Kapler (Norwegian hooligan / piano player);
    orig.: 2650 m (7 rl.); 35 mm, 1147 m (rl. 3 + 6 missing), 50' (20 fps);
    from: Österreichisches Filmmuseum / Austrian Film Museum, Wien. Russian intertitles.
    Viewed at Teatro Verdi, Le Giornate del Cinema Muto, Pordenone, e-subtitles in English and Italian, grand piano: Donald Sosin, 3 Oct 2011.

David Robinson (GCM Catalogue): "In 1921 Lenin’s New Economic Policy set out to ameliorate the new Soviet Union’s disastrous economic situation by introducing a monetarist system. This made possible importation of films, particularly from the USA and Germany – with Chaplin, Pickford, Fairbanks, Stroheim, Baby Peggy, and the German director Richard Oswald particular favourites with the Russian public. Inevitably there was a painful conflict between the “bourgeois” world that was shown on the screen and the new Soviet artists’ passion to celebrate machines and speed and the new era. In the cinema however the NEP era was abruptly cut short in August 1923 when all private film firms were liquidated to give way to a state monopoly of production and distribution."

"The first FEKS scenario, by Kozintsev and Trauberg, was accepted by Sevzapkino – surprisingly, since this was one of the more conservative of the state units, having inherited a wardrobe and tradition of historical costume pictures. “Our first scenario, The Adventures of Oktyabrina, was a sort of propaganda film-poster; the influence of the propaganda plays and the Rosta windows shows clearly in every moment of the film. … All [the] characters seemed directly descended from the propaganda lorry which entertained the population at the May Day parade. It was all rather disconnected, but galloped along on the screen, full of dizzying abridgements of the story and shock cuts. And when the narrative got stuck, letters would appear on the screen: dancing about in the manner of cartoon films, they would group themselves into words, forming slogans that were then familiar.” (Grigori Kozintsev)"

"Nothing has survived from this, or from the second FEKS film, the 2-reel Michki protiv Yudenicha (The Mishkas against Yudenich), the adventures of two namesakes, a boy and a bear, frustrating the detested White General Yudenich. The film was evidently inspired by – or parodied – Ivan Perestiani’s popular success, the Georgian-made Red Imps, and was done in the full spirit of Eccentricism, with a dizzying range of camera tricks and a circus ring as Yudenich’s headquarters. Five of the seven reels of the first FEKS feature film survive, however. The script of The Devil’s Wheel, still titled The Sailor of the “Aurora”, was offered to them by the recently appointed director of Leningradkino, Adrian Piotrovsky (1898-1939), whose own first script it was. (Some filmographies credit the original story to Veniamin Alexandrovich Kaverin, but in an irritable exchange of correspondence in Kino, each author at the time denied any connection with the other’s work.) Piotrovsky described the film as the “isolated example of the future Soviet melodrama”; and it does mark the arrival of this new element in the work of the Eccentrics. The exposure to recent Hollywood production during the NEP period had shifted official cultural policy to the admission that melodrama was not a method to be scorned. Lunacharsky himself declared, “Our films must not be less seductive or less attracting than those of the bourgeoisie. The melodrama form, treated in an adequate way, is certainly the best that there is in the cinema.”"

"The story centres on Vanya Shorin, a sailor from the Aurora – the ship that launched the salvoes that marked the start of the October Revolution. On shore leave and strolling with shipmates in the park of the House of the People in Petrograd, he meets a young girl, Valya. They linger over the delights of the fairground – the Russian Mountains [roller-coaster], the Devil’s Wheel – and when finally Vanya takes Valya home at dawn her father beats her. Vanya decides to stay with her, while his friends vainly search for him in the streets of the city to prevent him deserting. The young couple find themselves in the Petrograd underworld, and fall into the hands of one of the gangster bands that preyed on the city during the Civil War and NEP eras. Finally however, Vanya is able to expose the band and its chief – a stage magician called “The Question Man” – to the police. He returns to his ship and the judgement of his comrades."

"As well as the new element of melodrama, FEKS had been deeply influenced by Eisenstein’s Strike: Kozintsev told his group, “All that we’re doing is childish nonsense: we must see Strike again and again, until we can understand it and adopt its power for our own.” This did not mean that the principles and practice of Eccentricism were abandoned. The fairground attractions, the fireworks, the ghostly collapsing ruin that houses the gang, the acrobats and gymnasts, bizarre characters like Martinson’s eccentric violinist and Gerasimov’s “Question Man” remain true to their belief in the shock of the strange. “The clash between the realistic material and the eccentric treatment by the FEKS seems to have increased the force of the film. All disparate elements were pulled together by the dramatic, expressive, Germanic photography of their new cameraman, Andrei Moskvin, who was to identify himself with the whole film career of Kozintsev and Trauberg.” (Jay Leyda, Kino)"

"The film is a non-stop onslaught of images; and the persistence throughout of hectic music must have been a thrilling challenge to cinema pianists like the teenage Shostakovich, who, Trauberg maintained, had actually accompanied this film in Leningrad. Liudmila Semyonova, with her touch of Louise Brooks, was to remain with FEKS, though this was to be her only leading roe for them. She is however the central female figure in Room’s Bed and Sofa and Ermler’s Fragment of an Empire." – David Robinson

AA: As the earliest surviving Kozintsev - Trauberg feature film The Devil's Wheel is more an exciting collection of evidence of the FEKS aesthetics than a really successful work of art. David Robinson describes the central FEKS attributes above. The Devil's Wheel was so fundamentally truncated that it is impossible to review because the directors' vision did not survive the changes. The print has low contrast.

Novyi Vavilon / [New Babylon] – Raisa Garshnek screen test

(Sovkino, Leningrad, SU) (screen test, 1927) D: Grigori Kozintsev; DP: Andrei Moskvin; cast: Raisa Garshnek (Louise Poirier); 35 mm, ca 20 m, ca 1' (16 fps); from: Gosfilmofond of Russia. No intertitles. Viewed at Teatro Verdi, Le Giornate del Cinema Muto, Pordenone, grand piano: Donald Sosin, 3 Oct 2011.

Peter Bagrov (GCM Catalogue): "New Babylon was to establish Yelena Kuzmina as one of the most brilliant and in-demand actresses of the Soviet screen, yet the directors had given her the part rather unwillingly. One of FEKS’ youngest pupils, by 1927, when work began on New Babylon, she had not yet proved herself in any way. She was at first allowed to rehearse the main part of Louise Poirier only as an educational task, playing with the actors already approved – Sobolievsky, Kostrichkin, Zheimo. When the first screen tests were made in the summer of 1927, Kozintsev and Trauberg included Kuzmina among them, but at that point approved the candidature of Liudmila Semyonova, the splendid actress they had discovered for The Devil’s Wheel and who had just finished making Room’s Bed and Sofa."

"Yet they were daunted by Semyonova’s mature (and typical Russian) appearance. Arriving in Paris in February 1928, and meeting French filmmakers, they realized that they needed a heroine (as Trauberg recalled) “of the Nadia Sibirskaïa type”. Nevertheless, on their return – not without the influence of Andrei Moskvin, who enjoyed working with “difficult” faces – they finally consented to the choice of Kuzmina."

"Before that, though, Sergei Bartenev, an assistant director on New Babylon, had spotted a 17-year-old employee of the Sovkino laboratories, Raisa Garshnek, at one of the studio screenings. The screen tests were still in full swing, and Kuzmina recalled in her memoirs how wounded she was to meet a rival at the wardrobe – “a beautiful girl with big radiant eyes”."

"Garshnek’s appearance was quite French. But she was not an actress, and clearly could not have undertaken such a major psychological role in a historical drama. So she was only given a bit part. She recalls: “We had to sit and wait for hours until the director was finished with the previous episodes. My turn never came that day. And the next day I didn’t come myself. I remember that evening: I stayed home and wept. I was facing a great dilemma. Either I continue my work and have a firm piece of bread, or I become an actress: today they offer me something, and tomorrow they don’t, and I’ll have to sit the whole evening and watch others being filmed. Times were hard, it was difficult to get a job… And that was the end of my acting career.”"

"Raisa Garshnek returned to the laboratory, where she continued working till the last days of silent film, and in the 1930s she became a sound engineer. All these years she kept the little reel with her screen test for New Babylon, and only a few months ago, now 101, she handed it over to Gosfilmofond. As far as is known this is the only surviving screen test from the Soviet silent cinema."

"This footage is not of purely archaeological interest. New Babylon may be the most famous of Kozintsev and Trauberg’s pictures, but it certainly is not the most typical. After all, FEKS was an actors’ workshop, and New Babylon is their only film that belonged to the typage-montage school rather than the actors’ one. It is believed that the directors arrived at this new stage gradually – under the influence of The End of St. Petersburg and The General Line. Thus, initially all the personages had names and more-or-less complicated characters (Kuzmina was Louise Poirier; Zheimo, her sister Therese; Sobolievsky, Jean). Later they turned into symbols (The Shop-girl, The Modiste, The Soldier). This revolution happened – so it was generally thought – near the editing stage."

"However, the fact that as early as 1927, just setting to work on New Babylon (and long before the release of the aforementioned Pudovkin and Eisenstein films), Kozintsev and Trauberg considered offering the main part to a non-professional, a typage, permits us to take a totally different view of acting at FEKS." – Peter Bagrov

AA: An important piece of evidence of Kozintsev-Trauberg film-making in the 1920s. Expressions in medium shot. The reel has been very well preserved.

[Raisa Garshnek interview 2011]

Viewed at Teatro Verdi, Le Giornate del Cinema Muto, Pordenone, e-subtitles in English and Italian, 3 Oct 2011. Video.

Raisa Garshnek (101) had been interviewed by Peter Bagrov a week and a half ago in Saint Petersburg. She had a good job as a film cleaner at the Lenfilm studios in the 1920s, when she was screen tested for the New Babylon. Among her jobs was film colouring, and she is the one who hand painted the red flag in Battleship Potyomkin. Andrei Moskvin was the number one cinematographer. He lit very well and supervised the hair style and costume design, too. Raisa Garshnek kept her screen test, herself, in Leningrad, and it is now the only surviving Soviet silent screen test.

The Corrick Collection, Vol. 5, Prog. 1 (Pordenone 2011)

Mésaventures de chasse (FR 1906). The hunter catches the rabbit at the store. My screenshot from YouTube.

Viewed at Teatro Verdi, Le Giornate del Cinema Muto, Pordenone, e-subtitles in English and Italian, grand piano: Philip C. Carli, 3 Oct 2011. Total duration 72'50"

TORPEDO ATTACK ON H.M.S. “DREADNOUGHT” (Charles Urban Trading Co., GB 1907) D: Charles Urban; 35 mm, 183 ft, 3'03" (16 fps); from: National Film and Sound Archive, Canberra (Corrick Collection #3). No intertitles.
Leslie Anne Lewis (GCM Catalogue): "The Charles Urban Trading Company’s advertisements touted their films taken during a visit of the Colonial Premiers to Portsmouth as “a sight that, for grandeur and special effect, will live in memory forever.” Torpedo Attack on H.M.S. “Dreadnought” is the second film in the series and captures a mock-attack on the premier submarine of the British Navy. This fragment comprises just over half of the original film and features a parade of partially-submerged submarines and destroyers launching torpedoes into netting rigged alongside the Dreadnought. A Corrick reviewer in Ceylon noted, “The evolutions of warships, including destroyers, torpedo-boats, and submarines – the latter with only the conning tower visible – afforded an object-lesson as to the means by which Britain’s naval supremacy is maintained.”"
"This is the third and final of Urban’s films documenting the Portsmouth Naval Exercises to screen at the Giornate as part of the Corrick Collection programs, following Naval Attack on Portsmouth in 2007 and Visit of the Colonial Premiers to Portsmouth in 2009." LESLIE ANNE LEWIS
AA: Non-fiction, a basic record on the British navy, reflecting imperial might, with magnificent explosions.

VOYAGE EN SUISSE – L’ENGADINE (A Trip Through Switzerland - Engadin Valley) (Pathé, FR 1905) D: ?; 35 mm, 247 ft, 4'07" (16 fps), col. (tinted); from: National Film and Sound Archive, Canberra (Corrick Collection #122). Main title in English, no intertitles.
"This scenic proto-travelogue is a filmic attempt to replicate the experience of travelling the route between Chamonix and Mont Blanc by train. The train rocks back and forth as it takes the viewer along Switzerland’s Engadin Valley, and includes shots from both the front and back of the train as it takes the viewer through tunnels and alongside snowy mountains and steep ravines." – LESLIE ANNE LEWIS
AA: Non-fiction, a phantom ride, a single dolly shot forward with the train engine as the dolly. It is winter, the landscapes are beautiful and constantly changing, tunnels are passed.

SPORTS D’HIVER: 1. LE TOBOGAN (Tobogganing) (Pathé, FR 1905) D: ?; 35 mm, 186 ft, 3'03" (16 fps), col. (tinted); from: National Film and Sound Archive, Canberra (Corrick Collection #107). Main title in English, no intertitles.
"The daring skeleton-sledding racers along the now-legendary Cresta Run at St. Moritz took their lives into their own hands as they attempted to race the dangerous, icy course – the first of its kind – travelling at speeds of 40-50 miles per hour while lying face-down on a low-riding sled. Included are views of the speedometer device used by officials as each rider completes the course, spectators standing just feet from the flying sleds and a few points in which riders lose control while negotiating hairpin turns."
"One of only four deaths on the Cresta Run occurred just two years later while Pathé was filming another film on the same subject after the popularity of this title. Shooting had to be stopped when British Army Captain Henry Pennell slipped off his sled mid-run into hardpacked snow and rocks, suffering a broken spine and internal injuries that led to his death."
"The course is shown from start to finish, beginning at the lodge at St. Moritz. As the rules of the track dictated that only one tobogganer was allowed on the track at a time, scenes at each turn were edited so that the men follow each other in quick succession." – LESLIE ANNE LEWIS
AA: Non-fiction. The movie catches the speed and the danger of the tobogganing on the Cresta Run very effectively.

CONCOURS DE SKIS (Ski Running) (Pathé, FR 1905) D: ?; 35 mm, 123 ft, 2'03" (16 fps), col. (tinted); from: National Film and Sound Archive, Canberra (Corrick Collection #107). Main title in English, no intertitles.
"This title and the one that follows (Sports d’hiver: Le Tobogan) were filmed at Switzerland’s St. Moritz resort in the Engadin Valley. Included here are long shots of men and women coasting (and occasionally tumbling) down the slopes in small groups, followed by a number of skiers launching themselves off a small ski-jump as onlookers stand nearby." – LESLIE ANNE LEWIS
AA: Non-fiction. Playful winter sports, coasting, slalom, falling down.

[SAILOR AND COP IN CARPET] (?, ca. 1904?) D: ?; 35 mm, 222 ft, 3'42" (16 fps); from:
National Film and Sound Archive, Canberra (Corrick Collection #101). No intertitles.
"This unidentified fragment begins with a run-in between a sailor and a policeman. After evading the cop, the sailor comes across a maid beating a carpet hung over a clothesline. As they socialize, the policeman sneaks up and hides behind the carpet. When the couple discover the cop, they beat the carpet (and the cop) until the line breaks." – LESLIE ANNE LEWIS
AA: Farce. Broad proceedings: immediately the sailor gets to kiss the woman, voluminous dust clouds emerge from the huge mat being beaten, the sneaking cop gets his share as he tries to hid inside the carpet.

LE COUP DE VENT (The Stormy Winds Do Blow) (Gaumont, FR 1906) D: Étienne Arnaud?; SC: Louis Feuillade; cast: Roméo Bosetti?; 35 mm, 272 ft, 4'32" (16 fps), col. (tinted); from: National Film and Sound Archive, Canberra (Corrick Collection #100). Main title in English, no intertitles.
"A gust of wind leads a man on a merry chase through the city, leaving a trail of destruction in his wake as he pursues his errant hat. This was the first of Louis Feuillade’s films at Gaumont; he was hired as the studio’s principal writer after Alice Guy viewed the film. However, just who directed the film is a bit of a question – some sources cite this as the first film directed by Étienne Arnaud, while Feuillade later claimed to have directed it himself." – LESLIE ANNE LEWIS
AA: Farce. A clownish man chases his hat through the city, episodes involving chalice, the wagon of a crane, a hill of charcoal, a tram, a fountain with a staircase, a sewer, and a rooftop.

ON THE WESTERN FRONTIER (Edison, US 1909) D: Edwin S. Porter; 35 mm, 989 ft, 16'29" (16 fps), col. (tinted); from: National Film and Sound Archive, Canberra (Corrick Collection #126). English intertitles.
"The New York Daily Mirror’s April 1909 review of this dramatic Western might best be described as damning the film with faint praise: “Elaborate studio settings are shown in this picture, and there is some fairly good outdoor horsemanship. There is also a story that we can manage to make out, although it lacks plausibility in a number of parts, chiefly when we are asked to believe that a girl of short statue [sic] could pass herself off as the tall orderly who is being held prisoner by her father. Later the girl’s brother … disguises himself in the same sergeant’s uniform and successfully passes the guard and eludes arrest. However the picture is some improvement over recent Edison issues, and as such we welcome it.”" – LESLIE ANNE LEWIS
AA: A Western. There is a Mexican standoff at the Lone Coin saloon. The plot gets complicated twixt love and duty as the girl spikes a drink at her place, discovers her brother's guilt, and there is a series of masquerades. An interesting Edwin S. Porter film that I don't remember seeing. It was not included in the Edison dvd collection five years ago. A beautiful print in colour.

ÉCHAPPÉ DE SA CAGE (Escape from the Cage) (Pathé, FR 1906) D: ?; 35 mm, 296 ft, 4'56" (16 fps), col. (tinted); from: National Film and Sound Archive, Canberra (Corrick Collection #44). Main title in English, no intertitles.
"Though cast in the pattern of innumerable chase films, Échappé de sa cage gives the formula a twist, here following the adventures of a rogue monkey. As in the tradition of animal-centric films that bank on man’s amusement at seeing animals behave like humans (such as seen in last year’s Corrick Collection film Le Singe Adam II, 1909, featuring a similarly anthropomorphized monkey), Échappé de sa cage depicts the chaos at a circus following an ape’s untimely escape. After frightening the audience and successfully eluding its trainer, the animal is finally undone after settling in at a café and imbibing a number of cocktails abandoned by the terrified patrons." – LESLIE ANNE LEWIS
AA: A farce. A human actor performs as the escaped monkey who wreaks havoc in the city. The monkey thrashes everything, harasses the policeman in the park, gets chased into a tree, eats cones. Ok print.

[DIGNITARIES ARRIVE AT EQUESTRIAN EVENT] (?, ca. 1907) (fragment) D: ?; 35 mm, 35 ft, 35" (16 fps); from: National Film and Sound Archive, Canberra (Corrick Collection #85). No intertitles.
"A fragment of non-fiction footage documenting the arrival of dignitaries at an equestrian event. The long-shot taken from above shows the carriage making a turn and disappearing into a large tent. This may be part of a film that was frequently mentioned in reviews and advertisements starting in 1907, His Majesty the King at the International Horse Show." – LESLIE ANNE LEWIS
AA: Non-fiction, a basic record.

ELEPHANTS WORKING IN A BURMESE FOREST (Corrick, AU 1908) D: ?; 35 mm, 383 ft, 6'23" (16 fps), col. (tinted); from: National Film and Sound Archive, Canberra (Corrick Collection #134). Main title in English, no intertitles.
"Shot during their tour of Southeast Asia, the Corricks aggressively promoted this film taken during a visit to a teak forest near Rangoon: “A triumph in animated photography: A BURMESE FOREST. This Wonderful Moving Picture was taken in the midst of an almost impenetrable jungle, showing methods of clearing the vegetation, chopping the immense trees, transporting logs by teams of elephants. Intensely interesting. The series of pictures was taken at great expense, and brings vividly before our patrons wonderful phases of life in a different quarter of the globe.”
The Corrick Catalogue compiled by Leonard Corrick’s son John to accompany the films upon their deposit at the NFSA relates this (somewhat graphic) family legend recounting the film’s first screening. Apocryphal or not, the tale highlights the occasional peril of screening films soon after shooting without careful review, a habit common to many itinerant filmmakers: “The usual procedure was to film local scenery during the day, process and have ready to screen as part of the film segment of Leonard’s Beautiful Pictures. This gave little or no time for previewing; on the first night this film was screened, the audience burst into laughter and on investigation, it was realized that the elephant’s trunk was not the only part of his anatomy swinging freely. Needless to say, this section of the film was cut out before the next screening.” (Corrick Collection Catalogue #134) The shot referred to does not exist in this copy or in the NFSA’s collection. This is one of two very similar films in the Corrick Collection; the other, Éléphants au travail aux Indes, follows in this program." LESLIE ANNE LEWIS
AA: Non-fiction, impressive about the giant logs and the power of the elephants. 

ÉLÉPHANTS AU TRAVAIL AUX INDES (Working Elephants) (Pathé, FR 1903) D: ?; 35 mm, 102 ft, 1'42" (16 fps), col. (tinted); from: National Film and Sound Archive, Canberra (Corrick Collection #128). Main title in English, no intertitles.
"Éléphants au travail aux Indes is one of two very similar films in the Corrick Collection, the other being Elephants Working in a Burmese Forest (produced by the Corricks themselves while on tour in the region). At some point before entering the NFSA’s collection the two films were intercut. There is some indication from contemporary reviews recounting the sequence of images in the film that this might have been done by the Corricks themselves, interspersing the Pathé footage with their own. However, as Leonard Corrick’s children were fond of using the family films in shows held in a make-shift backyard theatre for neighborhood kids, they could have made any number of changes. Both films depict elephants hard at work, moving logs and performing other back-breaking labor under the watchful eyes of their handlers, “showing elephants at work…from forest to wharf, an amazing demonstration of enormous strength united to profound sagacity.” (The Ceylon Independent, 3 October 1907)." LESLIE ANNE LEWIS
AA: Non-fiction, like continuing directly from the above, althought the country has changed. Enormous logs are removed.

THE FAKIR AND THE FOOTPADS (R. W. Paul, GB 1906) D: J. H. Martin?; 35 mm, 281 ft, 4'41" (16 fps), col. (tinted); from: National Film and Sound Archive, Canberra (Corrick Collection #40). Main title in English, no intertitles.
"Camera effects are used to enhance the fantastic elements of this R.W. Paul trick film. Two ruffians find themselves taking an unexpected journey after stealing a magic top hat from a mysterious (and mischievous) gentleman. This is one of three R.W. Paul-produced films in the Corrick Collection, along with The Hand of the Artist (1906) and The Doctored Beer, or How the Copper was Copped (1906)." – LESLIE ANNE LEWIS
AA: Comedy-féerie. The fakir gets the table to disappear, and disappears himself. Two villains rob the fakir but the magic hat turns against them (a chicken's leg turns into a chicken, a wine bottle turns into a fountain), and the villains are darted into the orbit. - A footpad = a thief on foot who robs travellers on the road.

PERSONAL (Biograph, US 1904) D: Wallace McCutcheon; DP: G. W. Bitzer; 35 mm, 374 ft, 6'14" (16 fps); from: National Film and Sound Archive, Canberra (Corrick Collection #92). No intertitles.
"Wallace McCutcheon’s much-lauded film – in which a man quickly comes to regret placing a personal ad to find a wife – was imitated by many, including Biograph’s studio rival Edison, which quickly released the ponderously titled How a French Nobleman Got a Wife Through the ‘New York Herald’ Personal Columns. Personal was one of several McCutcheon “chase” films that capitalize on the premise of a gaggle of misbehaving young women involved in a chase with one or more hapless men; two others from the same year – Down on the Farm and A Winter Straw Ride – are also part of the Corrick Collection." LESLIE ANNE LEWIS
AA: Farce. Was this the original version of a favourite comedy plot, the most famous version of which is Buster Keaton's Seven Chances? This one is boring, as is the Edison version.

MÉSAVENTURES DE CHASSE (Shooting Expedition Accident) (Pathé, FR 1906) D: ?; 35 mm, 362 ft, 6'02" (16 fps), col. (tinted); from: National Film and Sound Archive, Canberra (Corrick Collection #103). Main title in English, no intertitles.
"The comedic misadventures of an unfortunate hunter end with a vision of the man’s head mounted on a wall in the fashion of a hunting trophy – complete with antlers. Unwilling to go home empty-handed after an unsuccessful day of hunting, a man purchases a hare in a shop and heads home on the train. While he sleeps, the woman sitting beside him steals the animal and substitutes an old fur stole. After he arrives home, the hunter’s suspicious wife quickly jumps to the wrong conclusion when she finds another woman’s clothing in her husband’s bag." – LESLIE ANNE LEWIS
AA: Farce. The inept hunter has difficulty retrieving the bird he's shot from the tree branch. A rascally boy steals his catch. The frustrated hunter buys a rabbit from the store, but even it is stolen from him on a train by a woman who leaves her muff instead. At home the wife is furious although she has been dallying with her lover during the hunter's trip. Finally it is the hunter-husband's horned head that is displayed on the living room wall. Not so great.

Leslie Anne Lewis: The Corrick Collection 2011 (the fifth installment) (the GCM introduction)

GCM Catalogue: "“The Marvellous Corrick Family of Entertainers … furnish a unique illustration of heredity and consanguinity, being singularly and collectively specially gifted with the same artistic abilities, distinctly superior to any similar organization; their bill of fare surpasses anything hitherto submitted for the approval of the great amusementloving publica.” (Melbourne Punch, 1902)."

"With the exception of a two-year international tour that took the Corricks, a family of “Vocalists, Instrumentalists, Bellringers, National Dancers, Humorists and Biographic Artists” from Australia to England via the South Pacific, Asia, and Europe, the life of a touring vaudevillestyle company could be rather mundane and repetitive – a fact attested to in correspondence found in the Corrick Collection of films and related materials held at the National Film and Sound Archive of Australia and the Queen Victoria Museum in Launceston, Tasmania. The family’s routine generally followed the same pattern for months on end: arriving in town with all of the equipment needed for their 2-3 hour show, they would unload and set up for their performance, play that night and for the next few nights, then pack up and move on to the next town – a process repeated almost without break from 1901-1914, sometimes as often as five times a week. In a 1906 letter to a friend, son Leonard (the family projectionist) describes this selfcontained troupe’s elaborate set-up:"

"“We have all got today off, a treat we very seldom get, as since we got our electric light plant things have been pretty busy what with filing and screwing, altering one thing and another, going Sunday as well as the rest of the week. Everywhere we go now we light the stage with 40 thirty-two candle power incandescent lamps, and we hang two big arc lamps (5000 CA. P.) on the front of the hall on the flagpole or… the highest place I can get to fix them, and in the country the people nearly go mad with excitement, they come riding into the town thinking the place is on fire. Some men the other night saw the glare from seven miles out of town, and came riding in to see what was the matter, and of course did not go back again until they had had a good ‘bobs’ worth at the ‘Corricks’, … We show the pictures by electric light too, and show a thirty foot picture where it’s possible. We have a man now who … looks after it while working at night, so that I only have to lay the wires on in the hall, fix up the lamps, Biograph and the engine too when it goes bung, which is not very often (thank goodness).” Though considered to be of “great educational value,” the constant travel was nonetheless difficult for the family. While most of the children were older and could handle the strain of touring, for the first several years the family was forced to split up, leaving the youngest girls Elsie and Jessie (ages 8 and 10) at home in New Zealand. In the same 1906 letter, Leonard writes: “We had Elsie & Jessie over from Wellington for three months travelling all through Victoria with us, and you may be sure we all had a great old time. They got back about three weeks ago, and of course [there was] a bit of a crying match when they left…[but] Dad bought them two nice bicycles when they left, now they are cutting a great dash riding to school.”"

"This fifth installment in the Corrick Collection series reflects the wide variety of films featured in the Corricks’ original programmes. Highlights include the 1906 Olympic Games in Athens, the last of Charles Urban’s 1907 series depicting the Portsmouth Naval Exercises, R.W. Paul’s trick film The Fakir and the Footpads, a steeplechase at Auteuil, tobogganing at St. Moritz, and a very determined woman wielding a very large knife."

"All of the Pathé films this year date from 1905-1906 and were likely acquired in a batch from a source in Australia – many of the titles start to appear in Corrick advertisements and reviews around the same time. While many of the collection’s films are complete or close to it, some now exist only as fragments. Although a few of these short pieces have yet to be identified, they still provide valuable information regarding the wide range of films the family included in their programs. Four unidentified fragments are included in this year’s programs; any information from the Giornate audience helping to identify these fragments would be much appreciated." – LESLIE ANNE LEWIS

The Indian Woman's Pluck

(De Indiaanische min) (Hepworth, GB 1912) D: Frank Wilson; SC: Muriel Alleyne; cast: Ruby Belasco; 35 mm, 266 m, 14' (16 fps), col. (tinted); from: EYE Film Institute Netherlands, Amsterdam (Desmet Collection). Nederlandse tussentitels. Viewed at Teatro Verdi, Le Giornate del Cinema Muto, Pordenone, e-subtitles in English and Italian, grand piano: Philip C. Carli, 3 Oct 2011.

David Robinson (GCM Catalogue): "The Lancashire-born Ruby Belasco (1867-1936) was a regular member of the Hepworth company, generally cast in mature character roles, and sometimes “ethnic” parts, as in this early role. Seven years after his 1905 success, Rescued by Rover, we find Hepworth still making dramas about kidnapped children – in this the baby is snatched by a resentful dismissed workman, who conveniently leaves a blood-trail for the brave Indian Ayah to follow. The print comes from EYE’s Jean Desmet Collection." – DAVID ROBINSON

AA: Interestingly, the most effective feature of this movie is the kidnapper's very realistic performance of agony as he has cut his hand during the kidnapping process. The Indian maid is herself under suspicion, but it is she who saves the day single-handedly. A beautiful print, a beautiful color world.

The Soldier's Courtship

Robert W. Paul: The Soldier's Courtship (GB 1896) starring Fred Storey (soldier) and Ellen Daws (lady). IMDb: "A woman sitting on a bench is approached by a soldier. Momentarily, she refuses his advances, but in no time at all, they are kissing each other passionately." Photo: IMDb.

(Paul’s Animatograph Works, GB 1896) D, DP: Robert W. Paul; supv: Alfred Moul; cast: Fred Storey, Julie Seale, Ellen Daws [later Ellen Paul]; filmed: 4.1896 (on the roof of the Alhambra Theatre, Leicester Square, London); orig.: 80 ft; 35 mm, 73 ft, 1'18" (15 fps); from: Cineteca Nazionale – Centro Sperimentale di Cinematografia, Roma. No intertitles. Viewed at Teatro Verdi, Le Giornate del Cinema Muto, Pordenone, grand piano: Philip C. Carli, 3 Oct 2011.

Ian Christie (GCM Catalogue): "Newly discovered in the Cineteca Nazionale of Rome, after long being considered definitively lost, The Soldier’s Courtship restores a vital missing link in the early history of “animated photography”. Hitherto known only from an abbreviated version marketed as a Filoscope flip-book by Henry Short, this was the first fictional subject to be produced for screening (as distinct from showing in the Kinetoscope) in Britain. Robert Paul’s Animatograph had been a successful attraction on the programme of the Alhambra music hall in Leicester Square, London, since 21 March 1896, competing with the Lumière Cinématographe at the nearby Empire. After a month, the Alhambra’s manager, Alfred Moul, “wisely foresaw the need for adding interest to wonder and staged on the [Alhambra] roof a comic scene called The Soldier’s Courtship, the 80 ft film of which caused great merriment”, as Paul later recalled. The choice of subject was no doubt prompted by Moul’s theatrical experience. John Poole’s play A Soldier’s Courtship opened at the Drury Lane Theatre in 1833, and became a popular addition to the “Adelphi screamers”, named after the London theatre which specialized in these vehicles for inventive comic actors to deliver the lively physical action that made them a vital part of the Victorian theatre (an 1834 playbill records The Soldier’s Courtship featured between The Wedding Gown and My Neighbour’s Wife Tit for Tat in Bridgnorth, Shropshire). In another account of how Paul came to make the film, he recalled Moul suggesting “that I should make a short comedy in order to put a few laughs into the programme of scenic and interest films I was showing”."

"The cast of three principals – soldier, fiancée, and intruder – were all drawn from the company currently appearing in the ballet Bluebeard at the Alhambra, which also supplied the woodland setting, park bench, and some extra actors “to appear as people strolling in the park”. Fred Storey, the amorous soldier, had made his name in Augustus Harris’s Drury Lane pantomimes, and was now a leading dancer in the spectacular ballets for which the Alhambra was noted. The object of his affections, Julie Seale, was also a dancer at the Alhambra. But perhaps most intriguing is the presence of another dancer, playing the busybody who intrudes on the courting couple. Ellen Daws, or “Dawn”, as she was known on stage, would become Robert Paul’s wife in August of the following year, and it is tempting to speculate that this may be how they met, especially in the near-total absence of information about Paul’s personal life."

"According to a later account by Leslie Wood (who seems to have known Paul personally), Moul directed the actors on the roof of the Alhambra, while Paul operated the camera. Using a city-centre rooftop as a studio was soon to become common: in New York in the following year the first Vitagraph films were shot on the roof of the Morse building, while Vincent and Paley filmed their counterfeit Oberammergau Passion Play on top of the Grand Central Palace. Such locations ensured that unwanted urban background and interference by passers-by were eliminated, and the rooftop ensured maximum available daylight, without intrusive shadows, which suited the first cameras and their slow film stock. Being on top of a theatre also gave Newly discovered in the Cineteca Nazionale of Rome, after long being considered definitively lost, The Soldier’s Courtship restores a vital missing link in the early history of “animated photography”."

"Hitherto known only from an abbreviated version marketed as a Filoscope flip-book by Henry Short, this was the first fictional subject to be produced for screening (as distinct from showing in the Kinetoscope) in Britain. Robert Paul’s Animatograph had been a successful attraction on the programme of the Alhambra music hall in Leicester Square, London, since 21 March 1896, competing with the Lumière Cinématographe at the nearby Empire. After a month, the Alhambra’s manager, Alfred Moul, “wisely foresaw the need for adding interest to wonder and staged on the Alhambra] roof a comic scene called The Soldier’s Courtship, the 80 ft film of which caused great merriment”, as Paul later recalled. The choice of subject was no doubt prompted by Moul’s theatrical experience. John Poole’s play A Soldier’s Courtship opened at the Drury Lane Theatre in 1833, and became a popular addition to the “Adelphi screamers”, named after the London theatre which specialized in these vehicles for inventive comic actors to deliver the lively physical action that made them a vital part of the Victorian theatre (an 1834 playbill records The Soldier’s Courtship featured between The Wedding Gown and My Neighbour’s Wife Tit for Tat in Bridgnorth, Shropshire). In another account of how Paul came to make the film, he recalled Moul suggesting “that I should make a short comedy in order to put a few laughs into the programme of scenic and interest films I was showing”."

"The cast of three principals – soldier, fiancée, and intruder – were all drawn from the company currently appearing in the ballet Bluebeard at the Alhambra, which also supplied the woodland setting, park bench, and some extra actors “to appear as people strolling in the park”."

"Fred Storey, the amorous soldier, had made his name in Augustus Harris’s Drury Lane pantomimes, and was now a leading dancer in the spectacular ballets for which the Alhambra was noted. The object of his affections, Julie Seale, was also a dancer at the Alhambra. But perhaps most intriguing is the presence of another dancer, playing the busybody who intrudes on the courting couple. Ellen Daws, or “Dawn”, as she was known on stage, would become Robert Paul’s wife in August of the following year, and it is tempting to speculate that this may be how they met, especially in the near-total absence of information about Paul’s personal life."

"According to a later account by Leslie Wood (who seems to have known Paul personally), Moul directed the actors on the roof of the Alhambra, while Paul operated the camera. Using a city-centre rooftop as a studio was soon to become common: in New York in the following year the first Vitagraph films were shot on the roof of the Morse building, while Vincent and Paley filmed their counterfeit Oberammergau Passion Play on top of the Grand Central Palace. Such locations ensured that unwanted urban background and interference by passers-by were eliminated, and the rooftop ensured maximum available daylight, without intrusive shadows, which suited the first cameras and their slow film stock. Being on top of a theatre also gave easy access to its store of props and costumes."

"The film apparently proved popular, and was only eclipsed by Paul’s Prince’s Derby, which showed the Prince of Wales’s horse Persimmon winning the Derby in June of the same year. The Era welcomed “the element of humour” introduced into the Animatograph programme, and reviewed the film in mock-heroic terms: “Mars and Venus (a befeathered Harriet) are interrupted in their ‘billing and cooing’ by a lady of mature years, who insists on making a third on the seat occupied by the lovers”. A mark of the subject’s popularity – and also of how fast audience expectations were changing – was Paul’s decision to re-stage it in the rural setting of Muswell Hill, where he was building a new studio in 1898. This version, entitled Courtship: Tommy Atkins in the Park, belongs to a group of some 40 films made during an extraordinary burst of invention by Paul, many of which have romantic or erotic themes, including the ground-breaking Come Along, Do! in two scenes." – IAN CHRISTIE

The restoration

Irela Núñez: "Previously titled in our archive Bacio movimentato in pubblico (“Animated kiss in public”), the film was only recently identified, thanks to its tiny perforations over the black film edges – a technical characteristic which Paul declared his own “lab stamp” (Catalogue of Paul’s Animatograph & Films, London, ca. 1901). As mentioned by John Barnes in The Beginnings of the Cinema in England, two fragments of the film survive elsewhere: a few frames from a contemporary print in the Kodak Collection at the National Media Museum in Bradford, and an excerpt of under 200 frames – less than a sixth of the whole film – printed on paper for Henry W. Short’s “flipbook” device, the Filoscope, held by both the Barnes Collection and the Bill Douglas Centre at the University of Exeter. An introductory descriptive page in the Filoscope version indicates the remarkable importance assigned to this film from the very beginning. According to the film historian Amândio Videira Santos (Para a História do Cinema em Portugal, Lisbon, Cinemateca Portuguesa, 1990), contemporary screenings of the film in Lisbon were accompanied with the sound of kisses and of someone being brusquely thrown to the ground."

"A measure of the success The Soldier’s Courtship must have enjoyed is evinced by the print in our archive: more than 100 years ago, wear and tear on the negative already required extensive manual retouching to conceal the defects."

"The film’s condition made duplication difficult: besides brittleness and the unusually small size of the perforations, the film base was laterally shrunken by 3-4% and very warped, which prevented uniform focus and risk-free transport. Added to this was detachment of the emulsion, which finally determined that the restoration had to be carried out digitally, without any prior chemical treatment, to prevent any further damage to the film."

"Determined as far as possible to restore the film to its original state, we posted our concerns on AMIA-L, the Association of Moving Image Archivists’ e-mail discussion Listserv. This produced a variety of excellent suggestions, using both analogue and digital methods, from the best specialists in the film restoration community. Among these was a proposal by Hendrik Teltau, head of preservation and restoration at OMNIMAGO, a film and television lab in Germany, who wanted to experiment with the possibilities and problems of restoring such an old and precious film using a very interesting scanner his lab had recently acquired. Developed by DigitalFilmTechnology, the SCANITY has a curved gate that seemed suited to match our film’s convexity, while its focus is attained by means of infrared light."

"A pinless driving system prevents friction and wear on the film, the perforations being scanned in parallel to regulate the registration of the frames. These factors, along with Mr. Teltau and OMNIMAGO’s clockwork efficiency, convinced us to try digital restoration. A first stabilization and cleaning was achieved with Digital Vision’s PhoenixFinish DVO. As the film was scanned at more than 2K, there was enough space to stabilize or reposition frames without loss of resolution. Thereafter we proceeded with Diamant software, establishing a typology of the element’s defects in order to treat them in a coherent way, respecting the film’s age and production conditions."

"This was followed by further stabilization and cleaning, including some of the old, poor retouching, which had only distracted our attention from the story. Other flaws like lacunae and deformation due to camera and duplication instability were respected – although they seemed to be present only in the print, and not in the camera negative that had been used to produce the Filoscope flipbook. We also decided to respect the lack of focus, the important manual retouching of the negative’s lacunae, and the missing frames, though we were at last able to incorporate the frames preserved by the National Media Museum in Bradford that were missing in our print. Finally, the restored files were recorded back onto 35 mm film." – IRELA NÚÑEZ

AA: A farce of passion, a scene on a park bench. There is more passion in this early film than in typical British films in decades to come. The kiss between the soldier and the maid is more ardent than the one between May Irwin and John Rice, and it is also hotter than anything in the contemporary Lumière films. Quite a discovery, then. One can imagine the dedication and expertise needed to this wonderful restoration. 2K scan, Omnimato, 2011.

Amerikanka / [The Jobbing Press]

Leo Esakya: ამერიკანკა / Американка / Amerikanka (Georgia SSR, SU 1930). Photo: Internet Movie Database. At the time of blogging, this photo was the only one circulating in the internet.

Американка / ამერიკანკა / [L’americana]
    (Sakhkinmretstvi / Goskinprom Gruzii, Georgia SSR, SU 1930)
    D: Leo Esakya; SC: Giorgi Mdivani, Viktor Shklovsky, Giorgi Sturua; DP: Mikhail Gal’per, Sergei Zabozlaev; AD: Aleksei Utkin, Shalva Mamaladze; ass. D: Dimitri Abashidze, I. Shioshvili;
    cast: Zagaria Berishvili (grocery owner), Arkadi Khintibidze (printer), Aleksandr Gromov (printer), Giorgi Mdivani (printer)
    Unreleased in Finland.
    [announced: 35 mm, 2099 m, 76’ (24 fps); from: Gosfilmofond of Russia].
    A video screening due to unreceived film print. Russian intertitles.
    Viewed at Teatro Verdi, Le Giornate del Cinema Muto, Pordenone, with e-subtitles in English and Italian, grand piano: John Sweeney, 3 Oct 2011.

Sergei Kapterev (GCM Catalogue): "Amerikanka is one those archival surprises which still await film scholars and film fans. Lately neglected – maybe because it belongs to the genre of the “revolutionary-historical” film, which, with few notable exceptions such as The Battleship Potemkin, has been shunned as part of the discarded Soviet ideology – this film is much more than a half-forgotten monument to a bygone era. It is a stylistically original piece of filmmaking which invites a thorough study and holds more than one delight."

"Subtitled “Episodes from the History of an Underground Printing House of the Bolshevik Central Committee,” Amerikanka tells the story of an underground print shop which operated in Moscow, with the help of Transcaucasian operatives, during the first Russian revolution. The historical grocery-cum-printing house seen in Amerikanka can still be visited in Moscow: after a period of closure caused by post-Soviet fatigue, it has been reopened as a museum. Amerikanka’s screenplay was written by Giorgi Mdivani, who, 50 years later, would write another screenplay based on the same events; Giorgi Sturua, one of the organizers of the underground print shop; and Viktor Shklovsky, a luminary of early Soviet film theory, criticism, and screenwriting, who participated in the revivification of the much criticized Georgian Studios as literary consultant. The film’s director, Leo Esakya, belonged to the younger generation of Georgian film workers whose beliefs and tastes had been formed in the Soviet period. He was trained as a painter and a poet and maintained close contacts with the Left Front of the Arts (Levyi front iskusstv, LEF). Starting in cinema as a screenwriter, in 1928 Esakya directed his first film, On the Back of a Holt Tractor, in which he tackled the complexities of Soviet agricultural policy, using LEF’s model of cinema grounded in actual facts, newspaper material as the basis for the narrative, and nonprofessional actors. LEF’s theories can also be traced in the quasi-documentary stylistic elements of Amerikanka. However, in Esakiya’s second film documentary pretensions are effectively blended with the experiments of metaphoric cinema and conventions of popular entertainment. The symbolic hero of the film is the jobbing press – a small, cost-effective printing machine known in early-20th-century Russia as “Amerikanka” (“American Lady”). Its appearance in the title of the film stresses the significance of the systematic use of inanimate objects for the advancement of the film’s ideological, historical, and dramatic narratives."

"Objects – newspapers, leaflets, signboards, typewriters, printing presses – are singled out and magnified for emphatic and symbolic purposes. They fill the frame, form their own narrative patterns, determine the rhythm, and become substitutes for intertitles. At the same time, they are consistently integrated into the narrative. This device reflected Viktor Shklovsky’s conviction that filmmaking should not be defeated by “things” – as it was defeated in the “baroque” sequences of Eisenstein’s October."

"The art direction by Aleksei Utkin, the past collaborator of Yevgeni Bauer and an expert in historical styles, and the debutant Shalva Mamaladze, as well as the expertise of the veteran of Georgian cinematography Sergei Zabozlaev and Mikhail Gal’per, who would later work in documentary cinema, helped to shape Amerikanka into an ingeniously conceived, meticulously crafted, and, in some respects, unique cinematic work." – Sergei Kapterev

AA: A fascinating, visually striking film still made in the spirit of the heroic age of Soviet revolutionary cinema. There are exciting montage sequences, satirical passages (the personal ads montage), a lot of suspense in the story of the underground work of the rebels (the permanent fear of being revealed), and interesting moments of police detective work (soil analysis to discover where the underground press might be). The final image is of the miniature model of the actual house where the underground press was located. It may now become possible to watch these films soberly after 20 years of the demise of the Soviet Union. Amerikanka and Park Row might be a memorable double bill. Too bad about this movie being screened on video.

The Four Musicians of Bremen (Disney 1922)

(Laugh-O-gram, US 1922) Reissue: Four Jazz Boys (1929) D: Walt Disney; anim: Walt Disney, Rudolf Ising, et al.; DP: Red Lyon; filmed: ca. 4-5.1922, 3241 Troost Ave., Kansas City; dist: Pictorial Clubs Inca. of New York (non-theatrical, regional circuit); 35 mm, 765 ft, 9'16" (22 fps); from: The Walt Disney Company. English intertitles. Viewed at Teatro Verdi, Le Giornate del Cinema Muto, Pordenone, with e-subtitles in Italian, grand piano: John Sweeney, 3 Oct 2011.

Russell Merritt & J.B. Kaufman (GCM Catalogue): "The leap from Little Red Riding Hood to The Four Musicians of Bremen is remarkable. Put into production almost immediately after his first Laugh-O-gram, Four Musicians puts on display what Disney has learned in the course of only a few weeks. The comic routines are more inventive, the action better staged, and the quality of the backgrounds dramatically improved. Disney is learning how to set up his gags and then build on them, rather than simply string them along one after the other. Disney was sufficiently proud of Four Musicians that when he created his Laugh-O-gram Corporation in May 1922, he listed this film – but not Little Red Riding Hood – as the company’s sole cartoon asset."

"At the same time he put Four Musicians into production, Disney was gaining important practice with novelty reels of jokes and commentaries called Lafflets, in part to diversify his product, but also to break in his growing staff. Apparently none of the Lafflets survive, but based on descriptions, they help explain the attention given to the gags and enriched backgrounds as Disney rotated his men into the senior projects."

"To see how he has improved, we might consider what has happened to the chase scene. The one in Little Red Riding Hood was nothing more than an airplane flying above the villain’s car, catching it in a hook, and dumping it in a pond. In Four Musicians, the chase has been given a simple but effective structure. An underwater pursuit of a smart-aleck fish leads our hungry cat to a grinning swordfish, ready to dice the cat up with his sharpened sword-bill. The tables turned, the fish now chases the swimming cat, goosing it up to the riverbank, where the cat rejoins its friends. The chase expands. Outnumbered four to one, the single-minded swordfish calculates, and then races after all four of them, first into a hollow tree where the four are shot out of a branch like a cannon, then up a sapling where, thinking themselves safe on a branch, the Four emit a collective laugh. Pause. The shark thinks, then diligently razors his way through the tree. Laughter turns to panic as the Four tumble out of the tree over a cliff … and on to the next phase of their adventure."

"Although limited by his ongoing reliance on cycles and repeat actions, Disney has already started to insert personality bits for comic effect – giving the swordfish a fixed expression of grim determination, letting him pause to furrow his brow and think; setting up his encounter with the Four by introducing him as the merry swordsman sharpening his blade on a grindstone and gaily dicing a fish."

"Disney also develops his feel for dance and syncopation. What gets the cat into trouble is his clever idea of luring a jazz-crazy fish onto land with the music of the Musicians, and then braining it with a plank of wood. This is the closest the Bremen musicians ever get to perform, but the cat’s attempts to pound the dancing fish and the fish’s syncopated twists, spins, and leaps give the cartoon its most playful, prankish moment."

"Four Musicians still shows the limitations of the beginner. To audiences unfamiliar with the original Grimm Brothers story, the descent into the robbers’ hideout and the subsequent battle comes as a bolt from the blue, disconnected with anything that has come before. In Disney’s hands, the robbers have become an Austrian gangster army, complete with Tyrolean caps, a cannon, and black masks. To complete the Teutonic connection, the extended sequence of the cat flying around on a cannonball is vaguely reminiscent of Baron Münchhausen’s most famous exploit, but the final moment – the cat losing most of its nine lives – is pure Disney, an early version of one of his favorite gags." Russell Merritt & J.B. Kaufman

AA: Revisited Disney's early animation where he risks going deeper into fantasy territory, into the absurd, defying laws of gravity and nature. It is fascinating to observe Disney's passion for dance, music and rhythm even in his early silents. Even the fish is dancing, even on dry ground. I would see in this Disney's Orphic connection. Music can reach even beyond. There are a lot of swordfish gags: the swordfish is introduced at the knife-sharpener's, and it is able to cut a tree with its sword. In the final gag the cat loses eight of his lives as little white cat angels, but its one life remains.

SpilimBrass play Chaplin: The Adventurer, Easy Street (composer: Mark Hamlyn)

Charles Chaplin: The Adventurer (US 1917). Charles Chaplin and Frank J. Coleman.

Viewed at Teatro Verdi, Le Giornate del Cinema Muto, Pordenone, English intertitles, with e-subtitles in Italian, 2 Oct 2011.

Antonello Mazzucco (GCM Catalogue): "Our “Chaplin film concert” project was born in 2009, with the aim of bringing Chaplin’s shorts – lesser-known to the general public than his features – into the concert hall. For the musicians of SpilimBrass, playing live for a film, without a conductor, is always a challenge: the music needs to be synchronized with each scene and the movements of the actor himself. Coming from a classical background, we are used to watching a conductor, guiding us in each tiny rallentando and accelerando. Even the thought of playing without a conductor seemed inconceivable. Eighteen months have passed from the first rehearsal to the first performance, and our satisfaction has been immeasurable. The thing that has most enthused us is that the more we have played these accompaniments, the more we discovered new nuances and musical effects. During the concerts we were the first to get excited. The group commissioned the music from Mark Hamlyn, who has sought to reproduce melodies in the style of Hollywood in the 1920s. His scores have then been inspected by Timothy Brock. As performers, we have sought to imitate the style and the sound of that era, trying to achieve the most historically authentic performance possible." – ANTONELLO MAZZUCCO

Musical accompaniment: SpilimBrass (Andrea Corsini, corno/horn; Antonello Mazzucco, trombone; Fabiano Cudiz, tromba/trumpet; Mario Barsotti, tuba; Mirco Bellucco, tromba/trumpet).

EASY STREET (La strada della paura) (Lone Star Film Corp.; dist. Mutual, US 1917) D, prod., SC: Charles Chaplin; DP: Roland Totheroh; AD: George (Scotty) Cleethorpe; cast: Charles Chaplin (Vagabond recruited to Police Force), Edna Purviance (Missionary), Eric Campbell (Scourge of Easy Street), Albert Austin (Clergyman; Policeman), Henry Bergman (Anarchist), Loyal Underwood (Small but Fecund Father; Policeman), Janet Miller Sully (His Wife; Mission Visitor), Charlotte Mineau (Ungrateful Woman), Tom Wood (Chief of Police), Frank J. Coleman (Policeman), John Rand (Mission Visitor; Policeman), William Gillespie (Drug Addict), Erich von Stroheim, Jr. (Baby); orig.: 1757 ft; DVD, 24'; from: SpilimBrass; Lobster Films. English intertitles.

"In February 1916 Chaplin entered into a contract with the Mutual Film Corporation. To capitalize the Chaplin contract, Mutual floated the Lone Star Film Corporation. His salary of $10,000 a week with a bonus of $150,000 on signing was unprecedented, either in motion pictures or any other American industry. Even more satisfying to Chaplin, the contract provided him with the independence of his own studio, aptly named the Lone Star Studio. In later life he looked back on the 18 months that followed, during which he produced 12 tworeel films of consistent quality, as “the happiest period of my life”. The last four films of this period – Easy Street, The Cure, The Immigrant, and The Adventurer – are among his masterworks. The street of the title has very much the look of Chaplin’s boyhood South London – and it is significant that one of the slum streets he knew there was called Hard Street. Built at a cost of $10,000, this was the first of the T-junction street sets that were to prove his ideal theatre, with its arrested vista, the cross-bar of the “T” leading to the grimier mysteries on either side. The story is a comic parody of Victorian “reformation” melodramas. The vagrant Charlie wanders into a mission, where he is moved – less by the hymn-singing than by the charms of missionary Edna – to turn over a new leaf and join the police force. He is assigned to the perilous beat of Easy Street, terrorized by the Herculean Eric Campbell, who is finally no match for Charlie’s ingenuity and luck – or Chaplin’s inexhaustible comic invention." – DAVID ROBINSON

THE ADVENTURER (L’evaso) (Lone Star Film Corp.; dist. Mutual, US 1917) D, prod., SC: Charles Chaplin; DP: Roland Totheroh; AD: George (Scotty) Cleethorpe; cast: Charles Chaplin (Escaped Convict), Edna Purviance (A Girl), Henry Bergman (Her Father; A Docker), Marta Golden (Her Mother), Eric Campbell (Her Suitor), Albert Austin (Butler), Toraichi Kono (chauffeur), John Rand (Guest), Frank J. Coleman (Fat Warder), Loyal Underwood (Small Guest), May White (Stout Lady), Janet Miller Sully, Monta Bell; orig.: 1845 ft; DVD, 24'; from: SpilimBrass; Lobster Films. English intertitles.

"The Adventurer had the longest production period of any Chaplin picture up to that time – four months. The outtakes from the film survive, to reveal how Chaplin’s films were then still constructed as shooting proceeded. In this case he began with 200 takes on location on the Santa Monica-Malibu coast – a series of complex and beautiful variations as Charlie, in prison stripes, attempts to elude the pursuit of a troupe of prison warders. Returning to the studio he built an elaborate setting of a rich house on two levels, and shot 300 takes of an apparently unrelated sequence of a party at which Charlie, now in elegant evening dress, flirts with the daughter of the house, Edna, under the angry eyes of her jealous suitor, Eric Campbell. He left to the end the problem of tying up these two apparently disparate elements to make a coherent film. This he achieved by devising the sequence on the jetty where the escaped convict Charlie rescues Edna – and less enthusiastically, her mother – from drowning. Thus he found the perfect excuse to convey Charlie – no longer identifiable as an escaped convict since he has lost his prison uniform – as a guest to the rich house. The car that drives him was Chaplin’s own Locomobile, and the handsome young chauffeur is Kono, Chaplin’s personal chauffeur and confidant. The Adventurer was to be the last screen appearance of Eric Campbell, who has taken his place in screen history as Chaplin’s ideal heavy opponent. On 20 December 1917 he was killed instantly when the car he was driving collided with another vehicle at the corner of Wilshire Boulevard and Vermont Avenue. Belying his looks, he was only 37." – DAVID ROBINSON

AA: I enjoyed the new music by Mark Hamlyn played by SpilimBrass, but I am also a great fan of Carl Davis's compositions to Chaplin's Mutual shorts. A brass band is an excellent choice for these films. I saw all of The Adventurer but of Easy Street just the beginning.

Striking a New Note schoolchildren's cinema concert: The Electric House

Viewed at Teatro Verdi, Le Giornate del Cinema Muto, Pordenone, didascalie italiane, e-subtitles in English, 2 Oct 2011.

Scuola Media Centro Storico di Pordenone
Direzione/Conductor: Maria Luisa Sogaro
Pianoforte: Andrea Del Zotto
Glockenspiel soprano/Soprano glockenspiel: Irene Cannizarro
Glockenspiel contralto/Alto glockenspiel: Marco Bortoletto
Flauto traverso/Transverse flute: Andrea Magris
Clarinetto/Clarinet: Brando Reini
Sax contralto/Alto sax: Stefano Panontin
Flauti dolci/Recorders: Beatrice Basaldella, Beatrice Bove, Matteo Magris, Tommaso Piccolo, Claudio Romano, Margherita Romano.
Metallofono contralto/Alto metallophone: Andrea Basso
Metallofono basso/Bass metallophone: Alberto Antoniolli
Rumoristi/Sound effects: Nicole Arcanà, Teresa Mutuale, Nadia Perosa, Giulia Virgillito, Giovanna Zanuttini.
Scuola Media Centro Storico - Coro/Chorus
Direzione/Conductor: Patrizia Avon
Coristi/Chorus: Ecaterina Barbu, Carlotta Basso, Cristina Brescan, Chiara Cormio, Alessia Di Rosa, Rimma Fomenko, Gamal El Din Hana, Daria Ianni, Alessia Mattiuzzi, Christele Muhigirwa, Giovanna Oyeh, Kwabena Owusu Hansah, Ilaria Palmeri, Alessia Perosa, Andrea Polo Perruchin, Benedetta Raffin, Yesenia Restrepo Garcia, Francesca Roitero, Margherita Romano, Francesca Simoni, Angela Tardio

THE ELECTRIC HOUSE (Saltarello e l’Electric-Hôtel / La casa elettrica) (Buster Keaton Productions, Inca. , US 1922) D+SC: Buster Keaton, Eddie Cline; DP: Elgin Lessley; tech. dir: Fred Gabourie; P: Joseph m Schenck; cast: Buster Keaton, Joe Roberts, Virginia Fox, Joe Keaton, Myra Keaton, Louise Keaton, Freeman Wood; DVD, 22'31"; from: Cinemazero, Pordenone. Didascalie in italiano.

David Robinson (GCM Catalogue): "The Electric House was one of Keaton’s last 2-reel shorts before embarking definitively on feature production: only The Balloonatic and The Love Nest were still to come before The Three Ages. He had in fact begun the film 18 months and eight films earlier, but abandoned it when he broke his ankle on the comedy escalator created for the film. In the interim, he had moved to a new studio, and engaged a brilliant technical director, Fred Gabourie, who created a new set for the film, while retaining the original story."

"Buster is given the wrong diploma by his correspondence college, and to his mild surprise finds himself officially qualified as an electrical engineer. He is commissioned to equip an all electric house; and on completion demonstrates to its happy owners the escalators, mechanized bookcase and pool table, dinner table railways, washingup machines and automated swimming pool. When the house-owner invites his friends to view it, the machinery is sabotaged by Buster’s nefarious rival, the rightful owner of the diploma. The washing-up machine hurls the crockery around; the escalator works its own malice, hurling the unsuspecting into the swimming pool; and all the rest of the machinery joins in the attack. Thrown out by his employer and spurned by the employer’s beautiful daughter, Buster decides on suicide, ties a stone to his neck, and hurls himself into the swimming pool, which capriciously empties and fills around him (an effective use of accelerated motion, a device otherwise rare in Keaton films). Finally Buster is carried down the drain and out through the Los Angeles sewer into the sea." – DAVID ROBINSON

AA: Revisited Keaton's late short masterpiece with a rousing live music accompaniment by Pordenone schoolchildren. There was a prologue of their chorus singing Irving Berlin's "Always". These music events are my favourites and they might be a model for everybody who arranges silent cinema events. I have liked the previous concerts with their more ambitious compositions a little more and would have preferred less sound effects, but anyway this was a precious moment. I may remember the song performance always.