Multagitprop: Silent Ukrainian Animation

Prodanyi apetyt. Photo: Oleksandr Dovzhenko National Centre.

Palats mystetstv, SSSR. Photo: Oleksandr Dovzhenko National Centre.

Dniprelstan. Photo: Oleksandr Dovzhenko National Centre.

“Multagitprop”: L’animazione ucraina / Ukrainian Animation

An edited compilation programme on 2K DCP from the Oleksandr Dovzhenko National Centre with e-subtitles in English and Italian, grand piano: Donald Sosin, at Teatro Verdi (Le Giornate del Cinema Muto), Pordenone, 7 Oct 2014

Ivan Kozlenko (GCM catalogue and website): "Influenced by Constructivism, 1920s Ukrainian avant-garde animation was a field both of artistic and technological experiments, which gave birth to such wonderful discoveries as the automatic pencil, a distant forerunner of computer animation, invented by the innovative Vyacheslav Levandovskyi (1897-1962)."

"Ukrainian animation dates back to 1926, when Levandovskyi began work on the animated films Kazka pro solomyanoho bychka (The Tale of the Straw Bull, 1927) and Ukrayinizatsiya (Ukrainization, 1927), dedicated to the Bolshevik Party’s newly proclaimed policy of supporting national cultures. Both films were started at the Odessa Film Factory of VUFKU (the All-Ukrainian Photo-Cinema Directorate), but only the first one was completed there."

"The following year VUFKU established a central cartoon studio (workshop), Tsentralna Animatsiyna maysternia VUFKU, in Kyiv, headed by Levandovskyi and Volodymyr Dev’yatnin (1891-1964), his fellow pioneer of Soviet animation. The studio’s first two cartoons, Ukrainizatsiya (Ukrainization) and Kazka pro Bilku-chepurushku I Myshku-zlodyuzhku (The Tale of the Tidy Squirrel and the Thievish Mouse), both finished in 1928 after two years’ work, were banned – the first because of  “nationalistic deviation”, the second because of “kurkul (kulak) ideology tendencies”."

"In 1929 the first Soviet stop-motion film, Varennya z polunyts (Strawberry Jam) was created at VUFKU’s Kharkiv studio by B. Zeliger, D. Mukha, and H. Zlochevskyi. All of these films are now lost, but the multyplakaty (“animated posters”) on such urgent topics as disarmament, socialist construction, bureaucracy, etc., which more likely were created at the VUFKU Kyiv animation workshop in 1927-1930, have miraculously survived, and give us some idea of the potential of Ukrainian animation at that time."

"During the silent period of 1927-1931, a total of 16 animated films were made at the VUFKU studios in Kyiv, Odessa, and Kharkiv. “Animated posters” (multyplakaty/multyplikaty) were a popular comic genre (also in literature and journalism) that aimed to mock the Western or “bourgeois” way of life. Mostly anonymous, they have survived in the Tsentralnyi Derzhavnyi Kinophotophonoarkhiv imeni H. Pshenychnoho (Central State Film-Photo-Audio Archive of Ukraine, named after Hordii Pshenychyi), as episodes in the newsreels Kinotyzhden VUFKU (VUFKU Film Week, 1927-1929), Kinotyzhden (Film Week, 1929), and Kinozhurnal (Film Journal, 1929-1930), which from 1927 were shown before feature films in movie theatres."

"In 1929-30 two now-forgotten animators, Yakov(?) Roytman and M. Veitsman – definitely subjects for further research – made their student cartoons Berezhit’ Papir (Save Paper), Prohulnyk (The Absentee), and Kazka pro zahalne rozzbroyennia (The Tale of General Disarmament), in which animated images are curiously intertwined with shots from newsreels."

"Our programme also includes animated advertisements and film trailers, such as Palats Mystetstv SSSR (The USSR Palace of Art), part of the 10th issue of Kinozhurnal VUFKU (1930), and – already previewed in last year’s Giornate – the animated trailer for Dziga Vertov’s Odynadtsyatyi (The Eleventh), created by Evhen Makarov in collaboration with the director himself, and, most likely, Oleksandr Rodchenko."

"All the films are being projected as DCPs, made by the Oleksandr Dovzhenko National Film Centre from the original 35 mm archival prints held in the Tsentralnyi Derzhavnyi Kinophotophonoarkhiv imeni H. Pshenychnoho, plus one from EYE Filmmuseum (the trailer for Vertov’s The Eleventh)." – Ivan Kozlenko

DNIPRELSTAN [La centrale idrolettrica del Dnipro/Dnieper Electric Station] (Tsentralna Animatsiyna maysternia VUFKU, Kyiv – UkrSSR 1927) D, SC, AN: Evhen Makarov; DCP, 5'17" (25 fps); titles: UKR; print source: Oleksandr Dovzhenko National Film Centre, Kyiv.
    "This educational animated film gives a popular account of the construction of the Dniprobud Dam, detailing the reasons for its creation and its undoubted benefits. This great project to harness the mighty Dnieper River to generate hydroelectric power became one of the key reference points during Soviet industrialization and the First Five-Year Plan. It also became synonymous with Socialism. Or even Communism, keeping in mind Lenin’s recipe: “Communism is Soviet power plus the electrification of the whole country.”" – Stanislav Menzelevskyi
    AA: Animation by drawing and painting, with animated texts and maps, propaganda for the first five-year plan and the electrification of the USSR. Dnieper Hydroelectric Station / the former Dniprobud Dam is still the largest hydroelectric power station on the Dnieper. A celebration of the monumental project of industrialization.

PRODANYI APETYT [L’appetito venduto/The Sold Appetite] (VUFKU – UkrSSR 1927) (trailer) D, SC, AN: Evhen Makarov?; DCP, 1'58" (25 fps); titles: UKR; print source: Oleksandr Dovzhenko National Film Centre, Kyiv.
    "The Sold Appetite was an atypical film for Ukrainian commissioned cinema. Based on the political pamphlet L’Appétit vendu (1893) by the French Marxist Paul Lafargue, Nikolai Okhlopkov’s film was an anti-capitalist fable about an unemployed bus driver (played by Amvrosii Buchma, a prominent Ukrainian actor) who sells his appetite to a rich man just to allow him to consume more food. There was no place for consumerist logic in the USSR: they just had nothing to consume. Okhlopkov’s feature film is considered lost, but this animated trailer for it survives."
Stanislav Menzelevskyi
    AA: Animation by letters, cut-outs, and drawing, a satire on consumerism. It progresses from abstraction to lettrism. There are metamorphoses, and writing as animation. Stylish.

ODYNADTSYATYI, TRAILER [L’undicesimo / The Eleventh] (Tsentralna Animatsiyna maysternia VUFKU, Kyiv – UkrSSR 1928). D, SC, AN: Evhen Makarov; DCP, 2'18" (25 fps), col. (tinted); titles: UKR; print source: Oleksandr Dovzhenko National Film Centre, Kyiv.
    "The Eleventh (Odynadtsyatyi) was the first film Dziga Vertov made in Ukraine, at VUFKU, the All-Ukrainian Photo-Cinema-Directorate. Assigned to make a film intended to glorify the achievements of the First Five-Year Plan and the tenth anniversary of Socialist rule, Vertov succeeded in creating one of the supreme masterpieces in the history of documentary cinema. The animated trailer was created by Evhen Makarov in collaboration with the director himself, and, most likely, photographer and designer Oleksandr Rodchenko. The trailer was discovered in the mid-1990s by the Dutch film researcher, poster collector, and authority Martijn Le Coultre, the president of the International Poster Gallery in The Hague, among some of Vertov’s personal belongings sold by his heirs to an Amsterdam antiquarian. The original 35 mm nitrate film print (measuring 47 metres) is currently stored at the EYE Film Institute Netherlands." – Stanislav Menzelevskyi
    AA: Animation in colour, limited, often abstract, with matchstick men, letters, exclamation marks, opening spirals and caleidoscope figures, a trailer for Dziga Vertov's classic propaganda film for the first five-year plan. Impressive in its stark simplicity and sense of rhythm. If this isn't in collaboration with Rodchenko, it is at least worthy of him.

POZYKA NA INDUSTRIALIZATSIYU [Prestiti per l’industrializzazione/ Industrialization Loan] (Tsentralna Animatsiyna maysternia VUFKU, Kyiv – UkrSSR, 1928) D: ?; DCP, 1' (25 fps); titles: RUS; print source: Oleksandr Dovzhenko National Film Centre, Kyiv.
    "This short animated advertisement tries to persuade Soviet citizens to loan their salaries to the State. From 1927, the Soviet regime actively lobbied for government loans during the industrialization period. They were mostly long-term loans, some even lasting up to a term of 10 years." – Stanislav Menzelevskyi
    AA: Animation by cut-outs, water colour, and objects animated in stop motion, propaganda for loans. The basic image is the rolling coin.

KAZKA PRO ZAHALNE ROZZBROYENNIA [Storia del disarmo generale/A Tale of General Disarmament] (Tsentralna Animatsiyna maysternia VUFKU, Kyiv – UkrSSR 1929) D, SC, AN: M. Veitsman; DCP, 4'51" (25 fps); titles: UKR; print source: Oleksandr Dovzhenko National Film Centre, Kyiv.
    "Sharp satire of the imperialist reality and its predatory nature was a popular genre of Soviet propaganda. Exposing the hypocrisy and duplicity of the West always resonated with the Soviet public. In this “animated poster”, disarmament serves as a pacifist mask, revealing the true militaristic ambitions of the bourgeoisie." – Stanislav Menzelevskyi
    AA: Animation based on graphic poster design, with drawings, water colour, cut-outs, and letters, in limited animation, also with live action footage reduced to graphic elements, propaganda against American imperialism. The images are stark, the propaganda not subtle.

PROHULNYK [L’assenteista/The Absentee] (Tsentralna Animatsiyna maysternia VUFKU, Kyiv – UkrSSR 1929) D, SC, AN: Yakov? Roytman; DCP, 1'58" (25 fps); titles: UKR; print source: Oleksandr Dovzhenko National Film Centre, Kyiv.
    "The internal policy of the Soviet Union was primarily determined by the constant search for enemies of the State. In a detention camp you could find kulaks, bourgeois nationalists, and formalists, as well as “naturalists” (Soviet artists who were accused of the over-poeticization of nature instead of promoting the Party’s prescribed glorification of industry). This “animated poster” introduces another class enemy – the absentee. For the Soviet system, based on the sanctity of labour, an absentee was not just a social outcast, but an infernal heretic. This cartoon makes clear why not only Soviet citizens abandon him, but also class-conscious Soviet animals." – Stanislav Menzelevskyi
    AA: Animation by cut-outs of drawings, and text; propaganda against work-evaders. Pantheistic animation: even the benches and the lamp-posts reproach the absentee. The graphic design is stark.

BEREZHIT’ PAPIR [Salviamola carta / Save Paper] (Tsentralna Animatsiyna maysternia VUFKU, Kyiv – UkrSSR 1930) D, SC, AN: Yakov? Roytman; DCP, 2'52" (25 fps); titles: UKR; print source: Oleksandr Dovzhenko National Film Centre, Kyiv.
    "One of the few environmental cartoons of the early Soviet era, Save Paper sharply criticizes the inefficiency of bureaucracy. With a Kafkaesque scenario, this “animated poster” depicts the drama of an average man caught in a bureaucratic trap. The cartoon encourages people simply to reject excessive paperwork, eliminate useless bureaucrats, optimize industrial production, and use recycling technologies." – Stanislav Menzelevskyi
    AA: Animation by drawing and painting, a fable, propaganda against bureaucracy and for recycling. In the "State Control Whatever Board" the customer is bullied into a vicious circle of red tape. Spiders and mice thrive in the archives. They would be best burned. "Recycle used paper".

PALATS MYSTETSTV SSSR [Il Palazzo dell’Arte sovietico / The USSR Palace of Art] (? – RSFSR?, 1930) D, SC, AN: Nikolay Hodatayev?; DCP, 2'32" (25 fps); titles: UKR; print source: Oleksandr Dovzhenko National Film Centre, Kyiv.
    "It is thought that the animated film Palats Mystetstv SSSR (The USSR Palace of Art), part of the 10th issue of the newsreel Kinozhurnal VUFKU (1930), was probably produced by Russian animators from Nikolay Hodatayev’s circle (this attribution is by Peter Bagrov and Georgiy Borodin). The film depicts the psychedelic spectacle of a group of animated musical instruments, theatrical costumes, and other attributes of art rushing at full speed into a new Palace of Art. As art in the USSR was never an autonomous sphere, such a Soviet project for a dedicated aesthetic space was not just for a superstructure – it went beyond that, creating a new, utopian dimension of Soviet reality." – Stanislav Menzelevskyi
    AA: Animation by drawing and inking and some stop motion, a celebration of the Soviet Palace of Art. The scenes of the animated symbols of all the arts are inspired. There is an inspiration of the experimental cinema in this movie. A great ending to the show.

Kінець

AA: An excellent, well edited and introduced compilation DCP. Warmly recommended for schools of art and design.

Kærlighedens Styrke / The Power of Love

Tove (Clara Wieth), director Saxild (Axel Strøm), Gunnar (Carlo Wieth). Click to enlarge

KÆRLIGHEDENS STYRKE (Kærlighedens Magt / Gennem de Mange til En) (Nordisk – DK 1911) (IT: La forza dell’amore; US: The Power of Love) D: August Blom; SC: Alfred Kjerulf; DP: Axel Graatkjær (Sørensen); C: Axel Strøm (director Saxild), Carlo Wieth (Gunnar, his son), Clara Wieth Pontoppidan (Tove, employee in Saxild’s office), Otto Lagoni, Ella La Cour, Zanny Petersen, Svend Bille, Frederik Buch, Julie Henriksen, Carl Lauritzen, Ella Sprange, Aage Lorentzen, Lauritz Olsen; rel: 13.11.1911; orig. l: 757 m; 35 mm, 633 m, 31' (18 fps), col. (tinted, toned, & stencil-colour); titles: ITA, missing main title.
    AIRSC 50. With e-subtitles in English and Italian, grand piano: Philip C. Carli, Stephen Horne at Teatro Verdi (Le Giornate del Cinema Muto), Pordenone, 6 Oct 2014

Federico Striuli (GCM Catalogue and website): "Gunnar, son of the strict businessman Saxild, doesn’t like to study, preferring to spend his time with his friends in nightclubs. In order to put his son on the right track, Saxild hires him in his office, where young Gunnar meets the employee Tove. The two young people are attracted to each other, but this is spoiled one evening when Gunnar gets drunk on his way to meet her and ends up being fired by his father. Trying to redeem himself, the young man, temporarily given shelter by Tove, finds work with a rescue corps. There he receives news that a train on which Tove was travelling has been derailed. Fortunately Tove recovers, and there also is a general reconciliation with his own relatives."
    "Kærlighedens styrke was a notable production for Nordisk, made with a good cast and a first-rate director. Thanks to the film’s high production values, the story is believable and rich in nuances, marked by a realism that goes beyond the lyricism that might otherwise have been used to tell the story. In conclusion, this is an interesting production, considering its visual and narrative qualities.
The print: In 1986, in the book Schiave bianche allo specchio (published by the Giornate), in a chapter about August Blom, historian Ron Mottram wrote: “As for Kærlighedens styrke (The Power of Love) we have only the Library of Congress paper print.… It is hard to make an informed judgement … because the photographic quality of the 16 mm print made from the original paper print is very poor and the shots are not in the proper order.” Today the FIAF database reports the same paper print and its corresponding 16 mm copies (negative and positive) at the Library of Congress, as well as material with unspecified formats (possibly fragments) in the possession of the Academy Film Archive and the Danish Film Institute. It is thus with a justified pride that a totally different version is able to be shown at the Giornate this year. The AIRSC’s print, as a matter of fact, unlike the majority of the films it holds, actually comes from external acquisitions, in this case from two positive colored nitrate reels with Italian intertitles. As the film’s original printed programme testifies, this copy is pretty much complete, with only a few frames missing in the finale. The bright and wide-ranging colours are well-reproduced, and the overall quality of the image is very good. It should be noted that a single Italian intertitle comes almost certainly from another film." – Federico Striuli

AA: A drama. A delightful Nordisk discovery, August Blom at his best. There is an appealing sense of humour in this picture.
    At this festival we have been seeing several real-life couples in leading roles, and this film adds Clara Wieth Pontoppidan and Carlo Wieth to the list. "The power of love" is real. The plot is but a contrivance.
    The most impressive sequences include Gunnar's period as a drunk, leading him to jail, and the epic train disaster in Roskilde, where Gunnar, now in the rescue corps, gets a chance to redeem himself.
    Visual quality: from worn sources, yet this print offers a rare opportunity to deduce the original beauty of a Nordisk production in colour. For once, not the sober Desmet tinting simulation, but the true charm of toning, tinting and stencil colour. The colour impressions are so fascinating that it changes my conception of the Nordisk look. I will carry the memory of this screening and try to project it into other Nordisk productions.

AIRSC 50 (Associazione Italiana per le Ricerche di Storia del Cinema)

Il cane di San Bernardo. Photo: Davide Turconi Collection, George Eastman House, Rochester, NY. Click to enlarge all the photos in this set.

AIRSC 50
With e-subtitles in English and Italian, grand piano: Philip C. Carli, Stephen Horne at Teatro Verdi (Le Giornate del Cinema Muto), Pordenone, 6 Oct 2014

Federico Striuli: "The Associazione Italiana per le Ricerche di Storia del Cinema (Italian Association for Research on Cinema History), known by its abbreviation AIRSC, was founded on 8 September 1964, reflecting the increasing interest in the history of cinema within the circle around the Venice International Film Festival, whose director at the time, Luigi Chiarini, became the Association’s godfather. Its members included an entire generation of scholars, some of whom pioneered the teaching of Film Studies in universities. Since its inception the Association has been supported by membership fees and government funding, and essentially based its work on the voluntary contributions of its members. Despite this, over the last 50 years it has made an invaluable contribution to the establishment of the methodology and contents of research into cinema history and the enhancement and promotion of film as cultural and historical heritage."

"As part of its promotion of studies on silent films, over the years the AIRSC has organized reviews, meetings, and conferences, contributing to the foundation in 1982 of the Pordenone Silent Film Festival, the first and most rigorous international event devoted to the beginnings of the cinema, which for many years was directed by Davide Turconi, the doyen of Italian cinema history. The Association has built up a significant body of studies and research materials, of which pride of place goes to the biannual journal Immagine: Note di storia del cinema. The AIRSC is supported by the Cinema Directorate of the Italian Ministry for Cultural Affairs and Tourism."

"The AIRSC film library was started in the early 1960s, when Davide Turconi had a chance to visit the collection of the Swiss Jesuit Josef Joye in Zurich. Some of the films in the collection, made between 1905 and 1915, were in an advanced state of decay, but most were salvaged by making duplicates. Of those in the worst condition only a few frames could be recovered. Most of the AIRSC copies consist of fiction films, while the whole of the Joye Collection was subsequently acquired by the British Film Institute. The films, to which other titles have since been added, are now kept in the Cineteca Nazionale in Rome, which has assisted in their identification and inventory listing."

"This celebration of 50 years of the AIRSC presents a programme of 12 films, of which 10 are from the Joye Collection and two (Firulì ha vinto alla lotteria and Kærlighedens Styrke) from different sources. Invaluable cooperation has been provided by the Cineteca Nazionale (where our heartfelt thanks go to film curator Emiliano Morreale and to Mario Musumeci, Franca Farina, and Irela Nuñez) in assisting us and in working on the films selected from those not kept in the Joye Collection at the British Film Institute." – Federico Striuli

All films are from the Collezione Cineteca AIRSC, Cineteca Nazionale, Roma.

The Joye film numbers and titles are from the 1942 catalogue of the Joye Collection.

THE VACUUM CLEANER NIGHTMARE (The Vacuum Cleaner) (Charles Urban Trading Company – GB 1906) Joye n. 830, Der Staubsauger [L’aspirapolvere / The Vacuum Cleaner]
D: Walter R. Booth; orig. l: 275 ft (84 m); DCP (from 35 mm, 68 m), 3'20" (transferred at 18 fps); no titles, missing main title.
    "By using clever and surprising special effects, Walter Robert Booth depicts all the power of a vacuum cleaner, which, between the reality and dreams of a lodger, is able to suck up people, who come out looking better. Although not every source attributes this title unequivocally to Booth, there are several clues suggesting it actually is a work by this too-often underestimated “English Méliès”. The first are the film’s production date and company. It was in 1906 that the director and magician from Worcester, who had entered the world of cinema in 1899 as one of Robert W. Paul’s associates, began to be employed by Charles Urban, and built his own outdoor studio in the back garden of Neville Lodge, Woodlands, Isleworth, London. Here, with his cameraman F. Harold Bastick, he made dozens of trick films. The Vacuum Cleaner Nightmare was thus in all likelihood one of the first films made by Booth for Urban, and also one of the most successful of his whole career." – Federico Striuli
    AA: This comedy brings to mind Frank Tashlin and Jerry Lewis in Who's Minding the Store. The world is being sucked into the vacuum cleaner. But here more than that: the bum emerges a gentleman having gone through the process. Low contrast.

Le Talisman de la concierge. Photo: Davide Turconi Collection, George Eastman House, Rochester, NY

LE TALISMAN DE LA CONCIERGE (Gaumont – FR 1908) (DE: Der Zauberwedel) Joye n. 886, Zauberwedel [Il piumino magico / The Magic Duster] D: ?; orig. l: 107 m.; DCP (from 35 mm, 89 m.), 4'13" (transferred at 18 fps); no titles, missing main title.
    "A concierge helps an old woman who is bothered and bullied by a group of street kids. When they get to her house, the poor woman turns out to be a good fairy, who gives the concierge a magic wand in the shape of a feather duster so she can do her housework more quickly. However, the concierge abuses the use of the instrument, and starts to lose sight of her tasks and to over-indulge in alcohol. The fairy returns and takes back her magic wand. A trick film made by Gaumont during what was quite a rich period for this genre of production, Le Talisman de la concierge is different, for its strong criticism, with a fantasy angle, of laziness and alcoholism." – Federico Striuli
    AA: This fairy-tale has affinities with The Sorcerer's Apprentice. The wonder broom changes the concierge's life, but wasting her life the concierge loses all. The storytelling is coarse. Low contrast, weak visual quality.

TOTO S’AMUSE (Pathé – FR 1907) (DE: Fritzchen amüsiert sich; US: Tommy at Play) Joye n. 840, Fritzchen amüsiert sich / Fritz amüsiert sich [Fritz si diverte / Fritz Has Fun] D: ?; rel: 15.2.1907; orig. l: 75 m.; DCP (from 35 mm, 67 m.), 3'20" (transferred at 18 fps); no titles, missing main title.
    "Toto s’amuse was the first of a relatively long-lasting series of films made by Pathé for four years, starting in early 1907, that featured the adventures of the mischievous Toto. As in many comedies of that period, the young protagonist is totally unresponsive to discipline, and his natural talent for cruel pranks prevails, with destructive consequences. The scene with the blind beggar is particularly funny. In German-speaking countries Toto was known as “Fritzchen” or “Fritz”." – Federico Striuli
    AA: A comedy. The destruction principle embodied in an early instance of a Dennis the Menace style enfant terrible. A comedy of cruelty. Low contrast, weak visual quality.

L’ENCRIER PERFECTIONNÉ (Pathé – FR 1910) (US: New-Style Inkwell) Joye n. 894, Das Patenttintenfass [Il calamaio brevettato / The Patented Inkwell] D, SC: Camille de Morlhon; orig. l: 95 m.; 35 mm, 85 m., 4'11" (18 fps); titles: GER, missing main title.
    "The pupil Holz (Dubois in the original French version) gives his teacher a new kind of inkwell as a present. The teacher ends up getting dirty while a student (perhaps the same Holz) watches everything from a half-open door. Shortly afterwards, the boy gets hold of the “dangerous”
object, which is used with such mercilessness and spontaneity that nobody is spared (starting with the caretaker of the building and two lovers, and ending with his friends and a professor, who finally punishes him). L’Encrier perfectionné is a comedy authored by Camille de Morlhon, who at that time had been a director for Pathé for over two years; he was an important name at the studio for historical films as well." – Federico Striuli
    AA: A comedy. "The wonderful patented inkwell" becomes a source of mayhem as another terrible kid gets hold of it. The innocent gets to suffer as revenge hits the wrong person. A love meeting is ruined. There are scenes of cruel bullying, chaos at the school classroom. Enjoyable visual quality.

Une maison en réparation. Photo: Davide Turconi Collection, George Eastman House, Rochester, NY

UNE MAISON EN RÉPARATIONS (Pathé – FR 1909) (US: Repairing the House) Joye n. 888, Das renovierte Haus [La casa ristrutturata / The Renovated House] D: Louis Z. Rollini?; rel: 26.11.1909; orig. l: 130 m.; 35 mm, 102 m., 4'56" (18 fps); titles: GER, missing main title.
    "The Wagners (called the Durands in the original French version), obliged to stay in their house in the country because of lengthy building works at their primary residence, write to the construction manager König to ask if their townhouse is ready yet. Based on his answer, they return, only to find themselves surrounded by painters and carpenters, with construction decidedly still very much in progress. Eventually (although the last shot is slightly incomplete in this copy) the Wagners confront König. Une maison en réparations is a comedy focused clearly on the theme of destruction. It also features a strong portrayal of the conflict between the middle class and the workers; the gags are supported by the humorous depiction of the Wagners, here mistreated and neglected symbols of the upper class. The entry in the AIRSC Catalogue suggests that the director may have been Louis Z. Rollini, Ferdinand Zecca’s brother, who at that time was also an associate of Lucien Nonguet, Roméo Bosetti, and Max Linder (particularly as a scriptwriter)." – Federico Striuli
    AA: A comedy. A funny sense of rhythm in a comedy of destruction. The film is about an ascent to the residence which decidedly is not yet ready to be moved in. There is a sense of magnificence in the demolition theme, like in the films of Laurel & Hardy. A memorable scene is the room full of planer splinters upon which the family stumbles. The sepia toning is pleasant.

TANDPINENS KVALER (Tandpine) [Un doloroso mal di denti / The Painful Toothache] (Nordisk – DK 1906) Joye n. 852 / X 124, Ohne Zahnarzt gehts auch [Si può fare a meno del dentista / Without a Dentist It Works Too] D: Viggo Larsen?; DP: Axel Graatkjær (Sørensen)?; rel: 31.10.1906; orig. l: 120 m.; 35 mm, 103 m., 5'10" (18 fps); no titles, missing main title.
    "In this amusing comedy a man is tormented by an irritating toothache which has caused his face to swell. Aggravated by his wife’s advice and her mere presence, he manages to sedate himself with alcohol. But this is only a stopgap measure, providing temporary relief before the final intervention. With a good pace and funny gags, Tandpinens Kvaler mixes the protagonist’s irritability with the actions of a sometimes unfairly mistreated wife. In addition to being one of the very first films by Nordisk (it was released one week before the official birth of the production company), it is possible that it was a collaboration by director Viggo Larsen and cinematographer Axel Graatkjær, both of whom were beginning their careers, and would be associates for the following four years." – Federico Striuli
    AA: A comedy. It is exciting to see such an early film by Nordisk. It is a brutal and violent farce. The story resembles the Finn Erkki Karu's much later Kun isällä on hammassärky / When Dad Has Toothache, especially in the role played by alcohol as the painkiller.

WILLIE WISE AND HIS MOTOR BOAT (Edison – US 1911) (DE: Der unerfahrener Motorbootführer) Joye n. 993, (Der) Unerfahrener Motorbootführer [Pilota di barca a motore inesperto / (The) Inexperienced Motor Boat Driver] D: Ashley Miller; C: William Wadsworth (Willie Wise), Darwin Karr (Willie’s rival), Ethel Browning (Willie’s girl); rel: 11.11.1911; orig. l: 198 m.; incomplete, 35 mm, 152 m., 7'10" (18 fps); titles and main title: GER.
    "Young Willie Wise must deal with a rival for the attentions of a beautiful girl. The turning point comes when Willie buys a motor boat, which, however, he doesn’t know how to run. Despite the instructions of the previous owner, which he doesn’t pay attention to, he invites the girl on board. With the help of a young boy, Willie manages to start the engine, but doesn’t know how to stop it. It is unclear whether in the final part, missing in this copy, Willie manages to defeat his rival or not. By using special effects (stop-motion, playing the film backwards, or speeding it up), the film’s director, Ashley Miller (who began working for Edison two years previously), presents a classic plot in an original way. However, the loss of at least one important scene and the film’s finale does not permit a total assessment of this comedy." Federico Striuli
    AA: A comedy. Willie Wise fails to impress his girlfriend with his motorboat which he does not know to operate. A little boy helps him, and in the final scene of this print the rival, who has a sailboat, comes to the rescue. Toned.

UN ATLETA DI NUOVO GENERE (Atleta di nuovo tipo) (Cines – IT 1909) (DE: Ein Athlet neuer Art / Ein neuer Athlet; US: A New Kind of Athlete; FR: Un athlète de nouveau genre) Joye n. 892, Athlet neuer Art [Atleta di nuovo tipo / Athlete of a New Kind] D: ?; C: Giuseppe Gambardella (the fat man); orig. l: 83 m.; 35 mm, 73 m., 3'32" (18 fps); no titles, missing main title.
    "A circus family tries to make ends meet by begging in a quite unconvincing way. They decide to steal some bread, but are caught. The stout head of the family escapes from the guards by hitting them with his belly, and during the chase the group of pursuers becomes increasingly numerous. Un atleta di nuovo genere (also known as Atleta di nuovo tipo) was one of the very first films of actor Giuseppe Gambardella (here uncredited), who joined Cines in 1909, and in the following years would play the character Checco (“Stout”) in the Tontolini, Lea, Cocò, and other series. The film also features a clever use of some simple special effects. Several years later, on 5 March 1915, the circulation authorization granted by public security authorities was revoked (possibly because of the scenes depicting the guards being hit). Thanks to Angelo Draicchio." – Federico Striuli
    AA: A comedy. The main comic concept here is the circus man's deft use of his belly as a weapon. Visual quality: a slightly duped look. Toned sepia.

FIRULÌ HA VINTO ALLA LOTTERIA (Firulì ha guadagnato la lotteria / Firulì ha vinto al lotto) (Ambrosio – IT 1911) (GB: Tiny Tom’s Lottery Prize; FR: Firoulot a gagné à la loterie; DE: Peppi hat in der Lotterie gewonen) D: ?; C: Maria Bay (Firulì), Filippo Costamagna?, Gigetta Morano?; orig. l: 120 m.; 35 mm, 70 m., 3'28" (18 fps); no titles, missing main title.
    "Rummaging through some rubbish, the young Firulì finds a winning lottery ticket. The boy loses no time and starts to behave like a true nobleman, ending up courting another man’s woman and challenging him to a duel. Created in 1911 and still active in 1914, the character of Firulì (performed by the young girl Maria Bay) was probably meant to be Ambrosio’s answer to the French Bebé series. This copy comes from a nitrate positive held by the AIRSC. It is missing some frames in the last shot (in which Firulì is not satisfied with defeating his opponent, but attacks the witnesses to the duel as well). French words can be glimpsed in this version (e.g., on the lottery ticket or in a newspaper)." – Federico Striuli
    AA:A child comedy in the style of the French child comedy series such as those with Willy Sanders for Éclair.

Il cane di San Bernardo. Photo: Davide Turconi Collection, George Eastman House, Rochester, NY

IL CANE DI SAN BERNARDO (I cani del San Bernardo) (Carlo Rossi & C. / Itala – IT 1907)
(DE, main title on print: Die bernhardiner Hunde) Joye n. 166, Bernardiners Hunde / Bernhardinerhunde / Saint Bernards Hunde [I cani del San Bernardo / St. Bernard Dogs] D: ?; orig. l: 240 m.; 35 mm, 189 m., 9'10" (18 fps); no titles (flash main title: GER).
    "A husband throws his wife out of the house, and she is forced to wander through snow-covered mountains. Exhausted, she collapses in the snow, but is luckily found by two St. Bernard dogs. The woman is brought to a monastery, and, with the help of a monk, her husband forgives her. Il cane di San Bernardo is a 19th-century style drama guilty of some florid acting, but, on the other hand, it has a particular visual quality, especially in its shots of the Alps and the attention given to the rescue dogs and the lifesavers. The film was made by Carlo Rossi & Co., but was quite soon reissued by Itala when it took over Rossi." – Federico Striuli
    AA: A drama of a marital inferno. Like Federico Striuli states above, there is a distinction in the visual quality.

Napo Torriano. Photo: Davide Turconi Collection, George Eastman House, Rochester, NY

Napo Torriano. Photo: Davide Turconi Collection, George Eastman House, Rochester, NY

NAPO TORRIANO (Napo Torriani) (Milano Films – IT 1910) (FR: Napo Torriano, le prisonnier du château Baradello) Joye n. 124, Napo Toriano / Napo Toriani D: Giuseppe De Liguoro; SC: conte Pier Gaetano Venino; C: Giuseppe De Liguoro (Napo Torriano), membri dell’aristocrazia milanese/members of the aristocracy of Milan; rel: 6.1911; orig. l: 250 m.; 35 mm, 186 m., 8'58" (18 fps); no titles, missing main title.
    "In 1277, Napoleone della Torre (Napo Torriano), a Guelph, dares to tear up a letter from the Ghibelline Ottone Visconti, a supporter of the opposing Rusconi family. The advancing troops are spied by a woman. A siege begins, and it ends with the imprisonment of Napo Torriano. He is kept in an iron cage outside the tower until his death. In the end, only two old men and two children tenderly lay flowers on his grave."
    "Napo Torriano started from an idea of Count Pier Gaetano Venino, the managing director of the new company Milano Films. A big production for Milano, Napo Torriano very soon stood out for the spectacular nature of its battle scenes (actually quite striking), for the resources made available for its making (400 extras and 50 horses), and for its historical accuracy (particularly the interiors, shot in real castles in the Lombardy region). The film was widely shown in Milan, and was an important example of the upper classes’ attention to the new cinematographic art. They also had a personal interest: in actual fact, apart from Napo Torriano (played by the director Giuseppe De Liguoro, himself of high birth), the other characters and the supporting roles were performed by members of the aristocracy of Milan." – Federico Striuli
    AA: Historical epic, tragedy. A striking and remarkable exercise in the historical epic. The siege of the castle is magnificent, the costumes and the paraphernalia feel real, there is tragic grandeur in the finale.

KÆRLIGHEDENS STYRKE (Kærlighedens Magt / Gennem de Mange til En) (Nordisk – DK 1911) (IT: La forza dell’amore; US: The Power of Love) D: August Blom; SC: Alfred Kjerulf; DP: Axel Graatkjær (Sørensen); C: Axel Strøm (director Saxild), Carlo Wieth (Gunnar, his son), Clara Wieth Pontoppidan (Tove, employee in Saxild’s office), Otto Lagoni, Ella La Cour, Zanny Petersen, Svend Bille, Frederik Buch, Julie Henriksen, Carl Lauritzen, Ella Sprange, Aage Lorentzen, Lauritz Olsen; rel: 13.11.1911; orig. l: 757 m; 35 mm, 633 m, 31' (18 fps), col. (tinted, toned, & stencil-colour); titles: ITA, missing main title.
    "Gunnar, son of the strict businessman Saxild, doesn’t like to study, preferring to spend his time with his friends in nightclubs. In order to put his son on the right track, Saxild hires him in his office, where young Gunnar meets the employee Tove. The two young people are attracted to each other, but this is spoiled one evening when Gunnar gets drunk on his way to meet her and ends up being fired by his father. Trying to redeem himself, the young man, temporarily given shelter by Tove, finds work with a rescue corps. There he receives news that a train on which Tove was travelling has been derailed. Fortunately Tove recovers, and there also is a general reconciliation with his own relatives."
    "Kærlighedens styrke was a notable production for Nordisk, made with a good cast and a first-rate director. Thanks to the film’s high production values, the story is believable and rich in nuances, marked by a realism that goes beyond the lyricism that might otherwise have been used to tell the story. In conclusion, this is an interesting production, considering its visual and narrative qualities.
The print: In 1986, in the book Schiave bianche allo specchio (published by the Giornate), in a chapter about August Blom, historian Ron Mottram wrote: “As for Kærlighedens styrke (The Power of Love) we have only the Library of Congress paper print.… It is hard to make an informed judgement … because the photographic quality of the 16 mm print made from the original paper print is very poor and the shots are not in the proper order.” Today the FIAF database reports the same paper print and its corresponding 16 mm copies (negative and positive) at the Library of Congress, as well as material with unspecified formats (possibly fragments) in the possession of the Academy Film Archive and the Danish Film Institute. It is thus with a justified pride that a totally different version is able to be shown at the Giornate this year. The AIRSC’s print, as a matter of fact, unlike the majority of the films it holds, actually comes from external acquisitions, in this case from two positive colored nitrate reels with Italian intertitles. As the film’s original printed programme testifies, this copy is pretty much complete, with only a few frames missing in the finale. The bright and wide-ranging colours are well-reproduced, and the overall quality of the image is very good. It should be noted that a single Italian intertitle comes almost certainly from another film." – Federico Striuli
    AA: See separate note.

AA: From difficult sources, a fascinating treasure collection presenting us a cross-section of early cinema.

Treasures from the Tsubouchi Memorial Theatre Museum, Waseda University, Prog. 1: Jidaigeki

Asagao nikki. Photo: Waseda University, Tokyo. Click to enlarge.

Cinema giapponese / Early Japanese Cinema
Tesori della collezione filmica del Museo del Teatro dell’Università di Waseda
Treasures from the Tsubouchi Memorial Theatre Museum, Waseda University
Prog. 1: Jidaigeki
Programme notes by Hiroshi Komatsu

With e-subtitles in English and Italian, grand piano: Eri Kozaki, at Teatro Verdi (Le Giornate del Cinema Muto), Pordenone, 6 Oct 2014

ASAGAO NIKKI [Il diario di un convolvolo / The Diary of a Morning Glory] (M. Pathe, Tokyo – JP 1909) D: ?; C: Kasen Nakamura, Utae Nakamura; rel: 15.6.1909; 35 mm, 477 ft, 8' (16 fps); no titles; print source: Theatre Museum, Waseda University.
    "The original story of Asagao Nikki was written by Shiba Shiso in the early 19th century, and was soon transformed into a Kabuki play. The Joruri (Bunraku puppet theatre) version of this was premiered in 1832 under the title Sho Utsushi Asagao Banashi. It is still in the Bunraku puppet repertory."
    "Miyuki, a young girl, and her fiancé Asojiro are separated by a disturbance in their hometown. Running away from home, Miyuki becomes blind with tears of sorrow. Singing a song about a morning glory that she learned from her fiancé, she wanders, ever searching for Asojiro. She at last encounters him at the inn of Shimada, but Asojiro has changed his name and she cannot recognize him because she is blind. She later realizes the situation, and becoming half mad, goes after him, reaching the banks of the Ooi River."
    "The two most famous scenes of the play, those at the inn and the Ooi River, were adapted for the film. The decomposition of the original nitrate print was so severe that Act 2 of the film could not be salvaged at all in the early 1980s. Kasen Nakamura (1881-1942), a famous player of female Kabuki roles, appears as Miyuki, with her sister Utae Nakamura." – Hiroshi Komatsu
    AA: Extremely low contrast, like graphic art very lightly drawn. Impossible to understand without reading the programme note. At times, the right side of the image vanishes completely, and at times there is no image at all. What I could gather is the sorrow at the instrument. Plan-séquence.

Sakurada chizome no yuki. Photo: Waseda University, Tokyo. Click to enlarge.

SAKURADA CHIZOME NO YUKI [Neve macchiata di sangue presso la Porta Sakurada / Snow Stained with Blood at the Sakurada Gate] (Yoshizawa Co., Tokyo – JP 1909) (fragments) D: ?; C: Nobuchika Nakano Troupe; rel: 13.7.1909; 35 mm, 192 ft, 3'12" (16 fps); no titles; print source: Theatre Museum, Waseda University.
    "The original novella by Shizuka Kikutei that served as the source of this film was published in 1886. It was soon adapted into the Kodan oral storytelling tradition, by which it spread widely as a popular story. The plot concerns an actual historical incident that took place in 1860, when Grand Duke Ii was assassinated by a group of samurai at the Sakurada Gate in Edo (now Tokyo). In July 1909, as part of the celebrations to mark the 50th anniversary of the opening of the port of Yokohama, a statue of Grand Duke Ii (who had signed treaties opening up Japanese trade with the West) was unveiled. This film was made by the Yoshizawa Company as part of the commemorations.
Shizuka Kikutei’s novella had 11 chapters, which were condensed into 7 acts for the film. The surviving fragments contain parts of Acts 4 and 5. According to the Yoshizawa catalogue of 1910, the total original length was 740 ft., of which only a small portion exists today."
    "The actors appearing in the film were from the troupe of Nobuchika Nakano (1866-1932), who had a contract with Yoshizawa at the time. It is interesting to see actors specializing in the Shinpa (New School) acting style playing their roles in the Kyugeki (Old School) manner. As a result, we are witnessing a completely different acting style from the prevailing Kabuki norm." – Hiroshi Komatsu
    AA: In plan-séquence, in long takes and long shots. Plot only possible to understand from the programme note. Some twelve fighters in an epic battle scene in the snow.

Matsuo shimoyashiki. Photo: Waseda University, Tokyo. Click to enlarge.

MATSUO SHIMOYASHIKI [La residenza di Matsuo / Matsuo’s Residence] (Yoshizawa Co., Tokyo – JP 1910) D: ?; rel: 4.7.1910; 35 mm, 641 ft., 11' (16 fps); no titles; print source: Theatre Museum, Waseda University.
    "Sugawara Denju Tenarai Kagami, the famous Kabuki and Bunraku (puppet theatre) play, premiered in 1746. Matsuo Shimoyashiki was based on this play; however, it was not included in this first version. The play Matsuo Shimoyashiki was written more than 100 years after the first performance of Sugawara Denju, as a lateral story to be included just prior to Temple School scene of Act 4."
    "The story concerns Matsuo-maru’s agony concerning his debt of gratitude to Kan Shojo, who is now exiled, and Shihei, who is now his master. Shihei’s messenger comes to ask Matsuo-maru to cut off the head of Kan Shojo’s son. But Matsuo-maru hands over his own son Kotaro in order to save Kan Shojo’s son." – Hiroshi Komatsu
    AA: A filmed stage performance. A fascinating pantomime.

Kamiya jihei. Photo: Waseda University, Tokyo. Click to enlarge.

KAMIYA JIHEI [Jihei, il mercante di carta / Jihei, the Paper Dealer] (M. Pathe, Tokyo – JP 1911) D: ?; rel: 9.1911; 35 mm, 718 ft., 12' (16 fps); no titles; print source: Theatre Museum, Waseda University.
    "Kamiya Jihei is a screen adaptation of one of the most famous Joruri (Bunraku puppet theatre scripts) written by Monzaemon Chikamatsu, The Love Suicides at Amijima (Shinju Ten no Amijima). Premiered in January 1721, it was later adapted into a Kabuki play."
    "Jihei, a paper dealer in Osaka, gets to know a courtesan, Koharu, and they fall in love. Jihei’s wife Osan learns of the affair and writes a letter to Koharu, asking her to give him up. In consideration for his wife, Koharu breaks up with Jihei by making up a lie. Osan finds out that Koharu is thinking of killing herself and tries to save her. However, after Osan is forcibly brought back to her parents’ house, Jihei and Koharu commit suicide together at a temple in Amijima."
    "This M. Pathe film was released in September 1911, but was re-released in 1912 as a Nikkatsu film owing to a shortage of films available for theatrical release." – Hiroshi Komatsu
    AA: The action is impossible to understand without reading the programme note. Long shot, long take, plan-séquence, no camera movement. From watching the film I only understand it is a drama of a woman and a man.

Kamiramon taika - chizome no matoi. Photo: Waseda University, Tokyo. Click to enlarge.

KAMINARIMON TAIKA – CHIZOME NO MATOI [Il grande incendio presso la Porta Kaminarimon – L’insegna dei pompieri insanguinata / The Big Fire at the Kaminarimon Gate – The Blood-Stained Firemen’s Standard] (Nikkatsu, Kyoto – JP 1916) D: ?; C: Matsunosuke Onoe, Kijyaku Otani, Kitsuraku Arashi; rel: 4.1916; 35 mm, 2004 ft., 34' (16 fps); titles: JAP; print source: Theatre Museum, Waseda University.
    "Matsunosuke Onoe (1875-1926) played in more than 1,000 films from 1909 to 1926. He was, without any doubt, the most famous star in early Japanese film history. Everybody knew him, and children imitated his acting for fun. Although he appeared in so many films, unfortunately most of them do not survive. He worked in Nikkatsu’s Kyoto studio, and most of his films before 1921 were supervised by the director Shozo Makino. Although it is not certain if this film was actually directed by Makino, it displays the typical storytelling and acting style of Matsunosuke’s films: the story is borrowed not from a Kabuki play, but from Kodan (a genre of popular oral storytelling), and his method of acting is extremely stylized and artificial, which makes him appear almost unrealistic.
    The story echoes a famous Japanese saying, “Fights and fires are Edo’s flowers”. This refers to the fact that the fireman was a hero in the Edo period, and that different groups of firemen were often fighting one another. The fighting prowess of a young man, Senta (played by Matsunosuke Onoe), is discovered by Genshichi, the head of the Yogumi firemen’s group. When a fire breaks out at the Kaminarimon Gate, Senta and his companions rush to the scene, where they encounter the rival group Tachibana-gumi. A fight begins between the two groups, during which the Yo-gumi standard borne by Senta is broken. The head of this standard – the honorable symbol of the firemen’s group – is taken away by the Tachibana-gumi. After several incidents, Senta is falsely accused, and is sent to Miyakejima Island as a prisoner. Escaping from the island, he exacts his revenge upon the Tachibana-gumi." – Hiroshi Komatsu
    AA:  The richest and the most fascinating film in this programme. The English explanations help make sense of the story. From an extremely battered source, screened at high speed, it resembles puppet theatre or animation at times. Memorable images include a nightmare at the prison cell, the escape via a rope from a cliff, a fight at the shore, the boat by the sea, the battle of the clans, the furious rooftop finale. The composition is often striking.

These are some of the greatest treasures of early Japanese film heritage. To watch them is an endurance test, a study exercise where a lot of reading is required besides viewing. To make better sense these films should be studied several times. Due to the circumstances of the print sources there can be no evaluation of the visual quality as only the composition and the rhythm can be appreciated.

Synthetic Sin (2014 preservation Cineteca Italiana / Milan and Warner Bros.)

William A. Seiter: Synthetic Sin (US 1929) starring Colleen Moore (Betty)-

Pieni syntinen (L’albergo delle sorprese).
    (First National Pictures – US 1929) D: William A. Seiter; pres: John McCormick; SC: continuity by Tom J. Geraghty, based on the play by Frederick & Fanny Hatton (1927); titles: Tom Reed; DP: Sidney Hickox, Alvin Knechtel; ED: Terry Morse, Al Hall; AD: Max Parker; cost: Max Rée; song: “Betty”, by Nathaniel Shilkret (mus.) & Harold Christy (lyrics);
    C: Colleen Moore (Betty), Antonio Moreno (Donald), Edythe Chapman (Mrs. Fairfax), Kathryn McGuire (Margery), Gertrude Howard (Cassie), Gertrude Astor (Sheila), Raymond Turner (Sam), Montague Love (Brandy), Ben Hendricks, Jr. (Frank), Phil Sleeman (Tony), Jack Byron (Tony’s henchman), Fred Warren, Jay Eaton, Stanley Blystone, Art Rowlands, Dick Gordon, Julanne Johnston, Hazel Howell (members of Frank’s gang);
    orig. l: 7035 ft; DCP (from 35 mm), 70' (24 fps), sd. (Vitaphone; last reel only); titles: ENG (subt. ITA); print source: Cineteca Italiana, Milano / Warner Bros., Burbank, CA.
    Restored by Warner Bros. at L’Immagine Ritrovata di Bologna. Musical advice for this performance: Ron Hutchinson, Rodney Sauer. Special thanks to Ned Price, Warner Bros., & Ron Hutchinson, The Vitaphone Project.
    With subtitles in Italian on the DCP, grand piano: Donald Sosin with his band, at Teatro Verdi (Le Giornate del Cinema Muto), Pordenone, 6 Oct 2014

David Robinson (GCM catalogue and website): "The name and former fame of Colleen Moore have been all but eclipsed in film history by those of her successors and rivals – Clara Bow, Louise Brooks, Joan Crawford. Yet it was Colleen who popularized bobbed hair before Brooks; and definitively styled the flapper of the Roaring Twenties. True, the name and concept had figured on the screen since 1920, when Olive Thomas starred in Frances Marion’s The Flapper. Yet it was Colleen’s Flaming Youth (1923) that was conclusively to define the era and the generation: Scott Fitzgerald wrote, “I was the spark that lit up Flaming Youth, Colleen Moore was the torch. What little things we are to have caused all that trouble.”"

"This historic injustice is all the result of archival mishap. Flaming Youth has vanished, except for a frustrating fragment, along with most of the films of her artistic maturity: only four of her First National silents survive, in varying states – among them the enchanting Orchids and Ermine, rediscovered by Kevin Brownlow, and screened by the Giornate in 2002. A survivor of her sound films is William K. Howard’s The Power and the Glory, a proto-Citizen Kane which Kevin Brownlow regards as amazing."

"She herself valued her work, guarded the nitrate reels, and in 1944 deposited them with the Museum of Modern Art Film Department, trusting that they would safeguard them in the way that they had conserved the work of Griffith and Fairbanks. In the 1950s she went back, only to discover that the First National films had gone. What had happened in between has produced a complex web of evasive myth and individual blame, too late and still too contentious to exhume. So Colleen has remained unseen and forgotten, demonstrating that film history is shaped by archives and what they have succeeded in preserving. History can be reshaped, however, and Warner Bros., in quest of their own heritage, have happily discovered two Colleen titles in the Cineteca Italiana of Milan: the first of these, her last silent, Why Be Good?, was premiered in July 2014 by the Cinema Ritrovato festival in Bologna. Ned Price, Chief Preservation Officer at Warner Brothers, explains:"

"“For decades, Why be Good? and Synthetic Sin were thought to be lost films. They were rediscovered through the perseverance of film historian Joseph Yranski and Ron Hutchinson of the Vitaphone Project. The search began many years ago when Joseph interviewed Colleen Moore, who told him that a copy of the film survived in an Italian film archive. Ron Hutchinson was able to find the 16" Vitaphone discs containing the soundtrack of Why Be Good?, and the task of locating the missing picture began. Gian Luca Farinelli of the Cineteca di Bologna contacted Matteo Pavesi of Cineteca Italiana di Milano, who graciously allowed access to the 35mm nitrate dupe negatives for the restoration of both pictures at L’Immagine Ritrovata, Bologna, in conjunction with Warner Bros.”"

"So a little of Colleen Moore returns to the screen and to history. She was born Kathleen Morrison in 1899 (though she preferred 1902) in Port Huron, Michigan. She claimed to have worked as an extra at the Essanay Studios in Chicago, near her then home, before her uncle Walter Howey, managing editor of Hearst’s Chicago Examiner and the supposed original of Walter Burns in The Front Page, arranged a screen test with D.W. Griffith, who owed him a favour. Given a contract with Triangle-Fine Arts, she made her first film, The Bad Boy, starring Robert Harron, in 1917. By the time of her third film she was already getting enthusiastic attention from the press, and was in wide demand. In the next five years she worked for Universal, Selig, Fox (where she acted with Tom Mix), Famous-Players-Lasky (with John Gilbert), and Cosmopolitan. Seeking to develop her gift for comedy, she signed with the Christie Comedy Studios, from which Marshall Neilan next wooed her away. Neilan also introduced her to the publicist John McCormick, whom she married and who thereafter managed her career with outstanding skill and success, establishing her as a major star at First National, for whom her first release was Flaming Youth. The rivals came up fast behind – the most formidable of them Clara Bow, whom Colleen failed to top with The Perfect Flapper. But Colleen had many more strings to her bow: she was a personality, not a type, and was equal to dramatic roles in So Big or Lilac Time as well as sophisticated comedy. Between 1923 and 1929 she made twenty films, without a failure."

"In 1929 she withdrew from pictures, after two experiments with talkies. Four subsequent films with dialogue in 1933-34 (the last one saw her as Hester Prynne in The Scarlet Letter) were unsuccessful. Thereafter she devoted herself to three further marriages, to establishing a television company with King Vidor, and becoming a successful real-estate broker and partner in Merrill Lynch. The titles of her two books reflect her ranging enthusiasms: Silent Star: Colleen Moore Talks About Her Hollywood (1968) and How Women Can Make Money in the Stock Market (1969)."

"Synthetic Sin was adapted from the 1927 stage success by Frederic (1879-1946) and Fanny (c.1870-1939) Hatton – Chicago drama critics who became prolific writers both for stage and film. Initially there were plans to change the title to the more discreet Baby Face, but fortunately the original was maintained, appropriate as it is to Colleen’s screen persona and unique attraction for her 20s audience. Yes, she was the perfect flapper – dancing, drinking (“Never thinking, Of tomorrow”). She rolled her stockings, made up her face, bobbed her hair, wore short skirts, petted and flirted, and gave as good as she got. She was post-war. She took risks. But Colleen never fell. However wild and reckless things may have appeared, her virtue remained unassailable. She wanted to be bad, but was constitutionally incapable of it: as Film Spectator said of Synthetic Sin, “Colleen is a girl who tries to sin but doesn’t know how”."

"The story of Synthetic Sin fits the pattern. Donald Anthony, a successful playwright, returns to his home small-town, Magnolia Gap, Virginia. There he proposes to the talented Betty Fairfax, and gives her the lead in his forthcoming play. When the play flops, Donald tells Betty that she is too unsophisticated for the role, so she decides to stay in New York and learn to be wicked. Her neighbours conveniently are four gangsters, who throw Donald out when he comes to visit. Subsequently there is a gunfight: a gangster is killed and Donald rescues Betty, but all are arrested in a police raid. The chastened Betty decides to retire from the stage and devote herself to Donald."

"As for every Moore film, the best supporting talent was recruited. William Seiter was to remain one of the most adept and prolific comedy directors until the 1950s, when he became a successful television pioneer. Though past 40, Antonio Moreno was still one of Hollywood’s most glamorous leading men. The star title writer Tom Reed was borrowed from Universal. There is no specific script credit for the adaptation: “continuity” is attributed to Tom Geraghty, who had written for Sidney Drew and Douglas Fairbanks. Although Vitaphone was well established and talkies familiar, the sound came in for special critical praise: “There is a beautiful musical accompaniment by a famous orchestra and exciting sound effects” (Photoplay). It was still worthy of particular notice that the film was advertised by “an audible trailer”. (Only the final Vitaphone disc now survives: Warner Classics plan to recreate the missing sound from the original cue sheets.)"

"In the event, the film did not get great notices, though Colleen did, unanimously. Film Spectator reflected the general view: “Synthetic Sin contains a remarkable performance by Colleen Moore and some rather good little touches by William Seiter, but they don’t keep it from being inane and silly. The whole thing is based on the faulty premise that a motion picture can be good even if it has a fool for a heroine.” Photoplay acknowledged “some mystery and much keen comedy”, but added, “After such a beautiful production as Lilac Time and such an amusing yarn as O.K. Colleen Moore’s latest effort falls flat”. Exhibitors’ Herald concluded, “Colleen Moore is the only actress in pictures that could make a satisfactory entertainment out of this story”."

"She did; and Synthetic Sin found its audience, even though it was playing against A Woman of Affairs, Queen Kelly, The Broadway Melody, The Canary Murder Case, The Case of Lena Smith, My Man, and a minor flu epidemic. The manager of the First National Theatre in Albany “played up the fact that the picture carried an appeal to the flappers of Albany and vicinity and as a result his audiences, which were of capacity, were made up largely of young girls”."

"The film made sufficient mark to be recalled four years later by Film Daily (20 December 1933) – though only to reassure filmgoers of the Production Code era that the days of flappers and flaming youth, the Roaring Twenties, were ended forever: “Above all clean stories with wholesome humor will find favor with the public. The cynical, sophisticated screenplay whose characters are unreal, Synthetic Sinners is passé. The public’s taste turns to the real problems and actual struggles of regular people who live clean lives.” Times change."

"If her screen creation has been largely destroyed and forgotten, Colleen Moore has left her own distinctive heritage. Her famed doll’s house (the eighth she furnished), an elaborate fairy castle, is seen by one and a half million visitors a year at the Chicago Museum of Science and Industry. In 1965 she befriended a 22-year-old graphic designer,"

"Michael Kutza, who had the quixotic dream of creating a film festival. By now the queen of Chicago society, Colleen with King Vidor took him to the major European festivals and introduced him to everyone who mattered, thus enabling him to launch his festival to immediate success. This year the Chicago International Film Festival, still directed by Kutza, and held concurrently with the Giornate, dedicates its 50th edition to Colleen Moore, celebrating the festival as her final, enduring gift to cinema." – David Robinson

AA: Colleen Moore is being rediscovered this year. Last summer in Bologna we saw Why Be Good?, and now in Pordenone we have Synthetic Sin, both thanks to Cineteca Italiana (Milan) working with Warner Bros. Of Why Be Good? I saw only the beginning because of an overlap with what was for me the most important film of the festival, Croix de bois.

Colleen Moore is a brilliant comedienne here in the direction of William A. Seiter. Synthetic Sin is a marvellous meta-film, a heartfelt laughter at the "sin" business of the Jazz Age.

Having failed spectacularly in her debut role as a woman of experience in a theatre performance in a little town Betty (Colleen Moore) goes to New York with her black maid. "I want to suffer and sin right now", Betty declares. "I'm making sin a household word". The main source of the comedy is Betty's implausible attempt to experience sin as "a slave of desire and a puppet of passion".

Synthetic Sin is a satire and a parody of the Roaring Twenties. The project turns complicated in the latter part of the story when real gangsters are involved. At first Betty thinks it's all a play, and her attitude makes them look ridiculous. Real blood starts being shed during the final ten minutes. The film-makers have a hard time coming to terms with this turn, and the final development seems slightly slick and callous. And although Betty has proved a brilliant actress, she finally declares that the only part she is now going to play is that of Mrs. Donald Anthony. The film thus pulls the rug under the modern, independent jazz girl phenomenon.

David Robinson's programme note (copied above) is my favourite of this festival.

Donald Sosin and his band provided the perfect jazz age live score to the film. It should be recorded and made available on a soundtrack. The final minutes include footage from the original lost soundtrack, complete with the theme song "Betty".

A beautiful job of restoration.

Le Giornate del Cinema Muto: Collegium Dialogue 2: The Dawn of Technicolor

L’alba del Technicolor / The Dawn of Technicolor
An extensively illustrated presentation by James Layton and David Pierce recounting the technical, economic, and marketing story of the first 15 years of Technicolor's history.
The Auditorium of Regione FVG (Via Roma 2) (Le Giornate del Cinema Muto), Pordenone, 6 Oct 2014

James Layton, David Pierce, Sarah Street, Joshua Yumibe (GCM catalogue and website): "Technicolor is a name long synonymous with color motion pictures. The company celebrates its centenary next year, and the occasion will be marked by a series of events coordinated by George Eastman House. Best known for its motion picture film and photography collections, Eastman House is also the caretaker of the Technicolor Corporate Archive and other important collections of film, technology, and documentation related to the development of color films. In Spring 2015, George Eastman House will publish a new book inspired by the wealth of documentation in these collections. James Layton and David Pierce’s The Dawn of Technicolor, 1915-1935 explores the company’s activities throughout its two-color period, through the people, the technology, and the films. This program draws upon the discoveries made during the extensive research for the book."

"To expand upon and contextualize Technicolor’s early years, for the purposes of this program we have partnered with the British-based research project Colour in the 1920s: Cinema and Its Intermedial Contexts, coordinated by Professor Sarah Street (Bristol University) and Dr. Joshua Yumibe (University of St. Andrews). This allows us to cast a wider net, touching upon the overall prevalence of color in silent cinema, and detailing the diversity of color processes used both in the United States and Europe."

"Understanding the context of the 1920s is vital not only for the history of Technicolor but also for the chromatic transformations that cinema underwent during this period. Previously in the years of early cinema, color was a vital aspect of the moving image, particularly through the manually applied coloring processes of tinting, toning, stenciling, and hand-coloring. However, the First World War disrupted colorant production. Germany had dominated international aniline trade up to that time, but following the break-up of Germany’s chemical patents as part of war reparations the development and use of color surged internationally in the 1920s. In the art, advertising, architecture, and cinema of the Jazz Age, cultural fascination with color was lively and ranged across media and disciplines. Surrounding motion pictures, the variety of colors available for consumer goods, buildings, magazines, neon advertisements, and theatrical performances created an exciting, chromatically rich visual culture."

"To explore cinema’s progress in this colorful era, we are presenting alongside the Technicolor screenings two programs focused on other color technologies and techniques developed in the 1920s. In this material, the diversity and beauty of color cinema is profiled and analyzed through shorts, advertisements, animation, experimental works, and the feature The Glorious Adventure (1922). These screenings present recently preserved and rarely screened films in order to re-examine color’s prevalence and importance in 1920s filmmaking and to show how these innovations related to the greater chromatic culture surrounding the cinema."

"The processes featured in our programs represent both photographic (such as Kelley Color, Prizma Color, Multicolor, Kodachrome, and the systems of Audibert and Keller-Dorian) and applied color (including Handschiegl, stenciling, hand-coloring, tinting, and toning). Drawing on previous work on the physiology of color perception, the first program, “Colorful Sensations,” explores experiments with color and the exploitation of its spectacular nature and sensorial power. The second program, “Colorful Adventures,” builds on these themes while focusing on the use of color to produce sensational images of the exotic, encompassing both the faraway and the past as uncharted territories. In mapping these colorful views, the first two programs delineate the competitive and flourishing media environment faced by Technicolor as it refined and developed its processes, style, and studio connections throughout the decade."

"Today the name of Technicolor is most associated with classics made during the height of the Hollywood studio era – color masterpieces such as Gone With the Wind (1939), The Wizard of Oz (1939), and Singin’ in the Rain (1952). These films were made using the company’s three-color process, first introduced in Walt Disney’s Flowers and Trees in 1932. Achieving this cinematic milestone, however, required close to 20 years of hard work and sustained investment, and many false starts."

"The four modules dedicated to Technicolor offer a chronological narrative through the company’s early years. Four features are presented, each marking an important technical or business breakthrough for Technicolor. The features are accompanied by rarely-screened shorts, excerpts, and trailers that shed further light on the range of filmmakers working in Technicolor. The films display the diversity of approaches and uses of color in the 1920s, and reflect the output of a company in the process of changing its complicated technology from cemented prints to dye-transfer. A 90-minute illustrated lecture in the Auditorium della Regione will supplement the film programs and provide further context."

"From its incorporation in 1915, Technicolor’s enterprising President, Herbert T. Kalmus, led the company with a fierce desire to succeed. Despite numerous technical hurdles, he carried Technicolor through repeated business setbacks during its formative years and secured the much-needed financing to take its technology from prototype to commercial reality. During that period, the company was transformed from a small group of Boston engineers into a multimillion-dollar business."

"The key to the success of any color process was the ability to produce quality images at an affordable price and achieve mass production. Huge investment was required upfront to build the necessary camera and printing equipment for Technicolor’s proprietary processes, but the financial returns proved a long time coming. After the release of the self-produced The Toll of the Sea to much fanfare in 1922, Technicolor had to attract other clients. New relationships were built from the ground up, and studio executives had to be convinced of color’s value. Wary of its cost and production limitations, they first used color in short inserts in black & white feature films, such as M-G-M’s ambitious Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ (1925). But color was not always used creatively, and the studios had to be taught how to effectively incorporate color from the earliest production stages."

"Disappointingly, after more producers began to experiment with color, Technicolor’s big contracts in the mid-1920s with Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, Famous Players-Lasky, and Douglas Fairbanks failed to lead to a sustained increase in business. The company struggled throughout much of the decade, unable to obtain its first year of profit until 1929, when the combination of color and sound proved irresistible to audiences. Close to 200 inserts, features, and shorts were made using Technicolor’s twocolor process before sound arrived. During this time, Technicolor laid its foundations, improved its technology and expertise, and developed many of the standards and procedures that were to lead to its most celebrated and productive period beginning in the 1930s with its three-color process." James Layton, David Pierce, Sarah Street, Joshua Yumibe

AA: James Layton and David Pierce have prepared a wonderful illustrated lecture to accompany the publication of their eagerly awaited book The Dawn of Technicolor, forthcoming from The George Eastman House. The presentation was so packed with exciting information that it is hard to sum up. Film clips included The Black Pirate test with Mary Pickford (1926) and Lights of Old Broadway (1925). My only complaint is that this version of the lecture was too short. I understand there be a fuller version at London Film Festival.

The White Raven

Ethel Barrymore in The White Raven. Photo: George Eastman House, Rochester, NY. Click to enlarge.

THE WHITE RAVEN (Rolfe Photoplays, Inc., dist: Metro Pictures Corp., US 1917) D: George D. Baker; P: B. A. Rolfe; SC: George D. Baker; story: Charles A. Logue; DP: Arthur Martinelli; C: Ethel Barrymore (Nan Baldwin), William B. Davidson (“The Stranger”), Walter Hitchcock (John Blaisdell), George A. Wright (Arthur Smithson), Viola A. Fortescue (Mrs. Smithson), Herbert Pattee (“Bill” Baldwin), Mario Majeroni (opera impresario), Phil Sanford (dance hall proprietor), Ethel Dayton (Sylvia Blaisdell), Ned Finlay (miner); filmed: 1916; première: 14.1.1917 (Rialto Theatre, New York); rel: 15.1.1917; orig. l: 5 rl.; DCP (from 16 mm, 2219 ft), 82' (transferred at 18 fps); titles: ENG; source: George Eastman House, Rochester, NY.
    With e-subtitles in Italian, grand piano: Philip C. Carli at Teatro Verdi (Le Giornate del Cinema Muto), Pordenone, 6 Oct 2014

Philip C. Carli (GCM catalogue and website): "The White Raven is an out-and-out sensation piece, based on an original story by future Universal story editor Charles A. Logue, but very stylishly scripted and briskly directed by George D. Baker. As a measure of Ethel’s stature on screen as well as the stage, the film premiered on 14 January  1917 at the one-year old Rialto Theatre at Broadway and 42nd Street, New York’s leading cinema at the time, managed by the legendary Samuel L. “Roxy” Rothafel and boasting a 38-piece orchestra conducted by Hugo Riesenfeld. The New York Times treated the occasion as a notable event: “ETHEL BARRYMORE IN FILM. Her Beauty and Skill as an Actress Brought Out In ‘The White Raven’ … The beauty of Ethel Barrymore graced the screen of the Rialto Theatre for the first time yesterday, when a new picture called ‘The White Raven’ was shown there. For more than a year the pictures for which Miss Barrymore has posed have been exhibited in the movie houses of the highways and byways, but it was not until one of the two largest picture palaces adopted a policy of open booking that the popular actress’s shadow self could be seen in appropriate surroundings.”"

"Ethel plays Nan Baldwin, the daughter of a ruined stockbroker, who supports herself by singing in an Alaskan saloon; her dream is to escape her sordid surroundings, go to New York to become an opera singer, and take revenge on the man who ruined her father. The settings are lavish, cameraman Arthur Martinelli achieves some impressive compositions and lighting effects, and Baker moves  things along with a zest also amply evident in Ethel’s performance."

"It is tragic that this film represents the only complete record of Ethel in a romantic leading part, but it is at least an idiomatic vehicle for her, which shows how compelling she could be in strongly  drawn roles, and confirms her status as a solid motion picture actress, even at this early date, rather than simply a stage star who took a stab at films."

"The New York Times rave review especially noted this, with an added touch of lasciviousness: “Miss Barrymore is lovely to look upon, never more so than in the sketchy costume of the dance hall, and she has adapted her fine skill as an actress to the new medium. For once one regrets the silence of the cinema as in his mind’s ear he hears the star’s rich voice speaking the subtitles allotted to her.”"

"Other critics also enjoyed Ethel’s portrayal of Nan, though some reveal discomfort with her intensity. Two notices which are, unusually, by women reviewers for major trade papers show a clearly divided attitude. Motography’s fastidious Genevieve Harris called Logue’s plot “a story of the very romantic type, which is appealing,” but primly opined that “the latter part of [the main] role, that of the prima donna, fits Miss Barrymore much better than the first part, for she is not well cast as the northern singer of the mining camps. However, her charm and exceptional ability serve in general to make Nan a most likeable character.” On the other hand, the Moving Picture World’s Margaret I. MacDonald fairly revelled in all the rough-and-tumble goings-on, enthusiastically noting that the story “presents unusually tense dramatic situations in a theme of wide human appeal. … The character of the feminine lead played by Ethel Barrymore, in pleasing contrast to the big majority of screen plays, presents a quality of almost masculine strength, a determination to follow the paths of virtue born of knowledge rather than ignorance, and a sense of honor and womanly tenderness, all of which has an appeal and influence for good.” Of Baker’s direction, she added, “the picture is staged in a pleasingly daring manner that is strongly realistic and savors of good red blood.”"

"George D. Baker (1868-1933) had been a newspaperman and cartoonist before joining Vitagraph in 1913; he became John Bunny’s principal director, and was promoted to directing features in 1915, mostly with Vitagraph’s top stars Edith Storey and Antonio Moreno. After Vitagraph’s reorganization in 1916 he went to Metro, where he was named head of production in 1919, eventually becoming Viola Dana’s main director before making his last film (a Metro-Goldwyn production) in 1924. He seems to have been equally adept at melodramas and social comedies, as his output is pretty evenly divided between the two genres, but very few of his films (which were highly regarded at the time) now survive." – Philip C. Carli

AA:  I confess I was not in a perfect mood for The White Raven, and as the screening started late I missed the ending which overlapped with James Layton and David Pierce's The Dawn of Technicolor presentation.

There is a lack of inspiration in George D. Baker's approach as a director, and I find it impossible to relate to this kind of a revenge story.

But The White Raven is worth seeing because of Ethel Barrymore. She is not glamorous, and there is still in this film a "The Road to Hollywood" sense of not fitting with the later norms of stardom, genre, and glamour. Ethel Barrymore's charisma and authority derived from the stage, not from Hollywood ideas of star beauty.

Her physiognomy makes her more credible as a saloon singer in Alaska than most other actresses. One can instinctively believe that she can survive anywhere.

Pan (1922)

Hjalmar Fries-Schwenzen (Lieutenant Glahn), Gerd Egede-Nissen (Edvarda). Photo: Nasjonalbiblioteket, Oslo. Click to enlarge.

[Not released in Finland] (Harald Schwenzen, Kommunernes Filmscentral - NO 1922) D: Harald Schwenzen; SC: Harald Schwenzen, based on the novel by Knut Hamsun (1894); DP: Johan Ankerstjerne, Thorleif Tønsberg; C: Hjalmar Fries-Schwenzen (Lieutenant Glahn), Gerd Egede-Nissen (Edvarda), Lillebil Ibsen (Eva), Hans Bille, Rolf Christensen, Harald Schwenzen, Falhi; 35 mm, 2170 m, 105' (18 fps), col. (tinted); titles: NOR (subt. ENG); print source: Nasjonalbiblioteket, Oslo.
    Digitally restored at Arri in 2012.
    With e-subtitles in Italian, grand piano: Mauro Colombis, at Teatro Verdi (Le Giornate del Cinema Muto), Pordenone, 5 Oct 2014

Bent Kvalvik (GCM catalogue and website): "Norwegian feature-film production in the 1920s was infrequent. It could hardly be considered a major industry at the time; there were very few full-length movies being made annually, and very few trained and experienced filmmakers working in our country. It was therefore quite a sensation when someone suddenly had the nerve to go ahead with a film adaptation of Knut Hamsun’s famous 1894 novel Pan, which by then was already a national literary classic, and widely appreciated abroad. The film was well-timed; Hamsun had recently received the Nobel Prize (1920), and was naturally then one of Norway’s biggest heroes."

"A talented young actor from Norway’s National Theatre in Oslo, Harald Schwenzen, wrote the script and directed the film. The project apparently was a labour of love for him – it was his first film as a director, and he never made another. The rest of his career he concentrated on acting, on both stage and screen. He cast his own brother, the actor Hjalmar Fries-Schwenzen, in the male leading role of Lieutenant Glahn, and he himself played Glahn’s hunting companion in the film’s epilogue. One could almost imagine the two brothers planning it all back in their nursery!"

"Kommunernes Filmscentral (Norwegian Municipalities’ Film Central) – primarily a corporation for the distribution of films, but for some years also credited as a production company – supported the project. Probably the most daring idea was the plan to shoot the epilogue on location in Algeria. Never before had a Norwegian film crew travelled so far. Harald Schwenzen himself related the adventure in an interview many years later, published in the Norwegian newspaper Morgenposten (27 February 1945): “We were three of us travelling down to Algeria, my brother Hjalmar, the photographer Tønsberg, and myself, all of us packed for summer holidays, furnished with passports and other suitable things. From Algiers, we travelled further on the governor’s recommendation, with safe passage by bus or camel, 500 km down south, through the stone desert and into the sand desert to an oasis, where no Norwegians had ever set foot before; there were only some Arabs and Frenchmen there. And very hot it was – oh my! – 45 degrees in the shade! And in that heat we were to work from 4 in the morning until 8 in the evening, with a dinner break of two hours. The Frenchmen said we were mad to go on working in this heat, and even the Arabs were sceptical. When we arrived at the oasis we were met with a huge disappointment, and I feared that the whole journey had been in vain: they told us that Arab women were never allowed to leave their houses. And we needed an Arab girl for one of the leading roles, of the Arab girl Maggie, Lieutenant Glahn’s sweetheart. But helped by the powerful French prefect we made contact with a young Arab girl, who was absolutely thrilled to get out of her imprisonment, when she learned that it was properly allowed. And she was a real find! Yes, Falhi, a slim and charming creature, an 18-year-old Nature Girl. She appeared to have a natural talent, gracious like a gazelle and extraordinarily flexible. We stayed on there the whole summer, and it was a wonderful time. We were shooting the epilogue of Pan, and it was really great fun to make a Norwegian film in Africa for the very first time.”"

"This filming in Africa was done during the Summer of 1921. The main portion of the film was not shot until the following year, in Melbu, in the Vesteraalen archipelago, northern Norway. Two young actresses were hired for the main female leads, Gerd Egede-Nissen as Edvarda and Lillebil Ibsen as Eva. They both had already played great film roles abroad, but had never appeared in a Norwegian film before."

"When the film premiered in the Autumn of 1922, it was anticipated with both excitement and scepticism, but the critics were mostly enthusiastic, in some cases even amazed. The newspapers generally lavished praise on the film: “The images of Nordland in this film are probably the most beautiful ever seen in a movie. And what is more, in an excellent way one has succeeded in placing the characters effectively against the surroundings. The strange sentiments of the characters in Pan, which can only be understood with Nature as a background, never seemed unnatural on the screen. This is probably the film’s greatest triumph.”"

"Another review observed: “The daring step to put the novel Pan on film has succeeded beyond all expectations, due to the film company’s wisdom of casting first-class actors in the leads, and first-class photography. Edvarda is played by Gerd Egede-Nissen. An achievement like this is rarely seen on the screen. Here comes Hamsun’s Edvarda, walking right out of the book, messy and erratic, but intense, lively, and lovely.”"

"Though warmly received upon its release, the silent film Pan gathered dust in the film archives for many decades afterwards. Whenever it was shown in recent years, it was a reprinting of an old nitrate print, which was unable to recapture the film’s original picture quality, and in which, sadly, half of the film’s epilogue was missing. Happily we were able to reconstitute this when restoring the film in 2012, making use partly of the film’s camera negative (great portions of which were intact) and partly of a safety dupe print made in the early 1960s. There were no original intertitles in the restored footage, so we reconstructed them, modelling their style after the titles in the old print, and gathering the text information from the Swedish censorship report. All earlier safety prints had been produced in black & white. For the new print, we followed indications in the original material and chose to reconstruct the tinting. The film was restored digitally, at Arri Film and TV Production in Munich."

"Let Harald Schwenzen have the last word. As he wrote in the film’s original programme brochure: “The task we have given ourselves is to make a beautiful and artistic picturization of this, perhaps Knut Hamsun’s strangest story. Outwardly, there is no strong plot in Pan which could possibly tempt us, but the book is, with its powerful beauty and lyricism, so rich in atmosphere, so characteristic and strong in its human descriptions, that it offers both the director and the actors a very special artistic task. If we have succeeded, through our images, together with excerpts of Hamsun’s text, to give life to these people and this atmosphere, as in the book, then we have fulfilled the great task we set for ourselves.”"

"Harald Schwenzen (1895-1954) was one of Norway’s leading stage actors at the National Theatre, Oslo, for nearly four decades, from his debut there in 1918 until his death. In the early years he played attractive roles like Ibsen’s Peer Gynt and Schiller’s Don Carlos, Orsino in Twelfth Night, and Sebastian in The Tempest. He also occasionally directed plays, and moved over to darker character roles in later years. He had his first film role in Sweden, working for Victor Sjöström in Mästerman (1920), and after his sole director/actor achievement in Pan (1922), he returned to Sweden in Elis Ellis’ Två konungar (1925) and Gustaf Molander’s Till Østerland (1926; screened at Pordenone in 1998). His last silent film part was back in Norway, in George Schnéevoigt’s Laila (1929; shown at Pordenone in 2008). During World War II Schwenzen worked actively in the Resistance against the Nazi Occupation forces, and in 1944 was sent to the Sachsenhausen concentration camp. Although largely forgotten today, Harald Schwenzen deserves to be remembered, as both a dignified artist and a brave man." – Bent Kvalvik

AA: The sense of the grandeur of the nature of Nordland is the great strength of this first film adaptation of Pan. The achievement of Harald Schwenzen and his cinematographers Johan Ankerstjerne and Thorleif Tønsberg is very high in this aspect. They are equal to the task of the title of the novel and the film Pan - this is a pantheistic story, and this is a pantheistic movie, about the divine of the nature, about the divine in the existence.

Harald Schwenzen's movie belongs to the greatest tradition of classic Nordic cinema, which started with Victor Sjöström's Terje Vigen. The landscape is the soulscape. The character is reflected in the landscape.

There is also an obvious affinity with Mauritz Stiller's The Song of the Scarlet Flower. Both Knut Hamsun's Ltn. Glahn and Johannes Linnankoski's Olavi are mysterious wanderers. Their affairs with women are central to the story. (Later Jarl Kulle got to play both Olavi and Ltn. Glahn).

Hjalmar Fries-Schwenzen is a charismatic Ltn. Glahn. Gerd Egede-Nissen gives a psychologically refined performance as Edvarda. Lillebil Ibsen is memorable as the unfortunate Eva. (In a later film adaptation, Kort är sommaren, directed by Bjarne Henning-Jensen, Edvarda and Eva were played by Liv Ullmann and Bibi Andersson - before Ullmann had met Bergman).

Knut Hamsun in the period of writing Pan was under the influence of Friedrich Nietzsche like his contemporary August Strindberg, and I have always had a hard time relating to the misogyny and the racism of that heritage. In this movie those traits are at their most blatant in the African epilogue which for me is a demonstration of cultural imperialism and exploitation.

Hamsun has been criticized for his Nazi sympathies but I think they were a logical continuation of his Weltanschauung since youth. There are touches of the Übermensch in Ltn. Glahn.

But Hamsun is a great artist, therefore able to transcend his own limitations, and with an insight in the complexity of life. His characters are deeply unique, mysterious, tragic, and unsettling. Hamsun has no agenda.

I was impressed by Pan, but not convinced.

The excellent digital reconstruction and restoration has made an important Nordic movie available again.