Film concert Shen nu / The Goddess (2K digital restoration China Film Archive 2014) (Mauri Saarikoski, Marko Puro)

Ruan Lingyu and Li Keng in Shen nu / The Goddess

神女 / Shénnǚ / Shennü / [Jumalatar] / [Gudinnan]. CN 1934. PC: Lianhua Film Company [United Photoplay Service]. P: Tian Minwei. D+SC: Wu Yonggang. DP: Weilie Hong – silent – b&w – 1,37:1. Production manager: Lo Ming-yau. C: Ruan Lingyu (The Goddess), Zhang Zhizhi (Zhang), Li Keng (the son), Tian Jian, Li Junpan, Tang Huaiqiu. Studio: Lianhua Film Company (Shanghai). The film was not theatrically released in Finland - MEKU 13.8.2015 – K7 – [Le Giornate del Cinema Muto 1995: /24 fps/ 77 min] – [Turner Classic Movies: 73 min] – CFA 2014: 82 min
    Digitally restored edition (2014, 2K DCP): Zhongguo Dianying Ziliaoguan / China Film Archive (CFA).
    2K DCP with Chinese / English intertitles from CFA viewed at Cinema Orion, Helsinki (Helsinki Festival, Focus on China), 23 Aug 2015
    Film concert with Mauri Saarikoski (violin) and Marko Puro (piano).

Revisited the Ruan Lingyu masterpieced directed by Wu Yonggang.

There is Griffithian simplicity and starkness in the story and the conception. The story could be a regular melodrama but the approach has an artistic grandeur worthy of a Griffith, a Sjöström, and a Borzage.

The single mother who can only support her son via prostitution. Escaping the police she lands into the grip of the pimp Zhang who uses the son to blackmail her.

The son is bullied on the playground and at school. Mean neighbours spread gossip about the mother. Yet the son never loses his spirit. At a school festival he is the joy of all with his poignant song about poverty.

The gossips want the boy evicted from school. In a memorable scene the headmaster has a look at the class. He has to visit the mother about the situation, firmly set to expel the son. But having met the mother, "I cannot dismiss a boy with a mother like you". When he loses against all other teachers he adopts the son himself.

Meanwhile Zhang has discovered mother's money stash with which she has financed her son's school fees. Zhang uses it all to gambling and drinking. There is a final confrontation, and the mother hits Zhang with a bottle, accidentally killing him. She is sentenced to 12 years in prison.

Ruan Lingyu and Wu Yonggang's approach to this high melodrama is sober. It is a tragedy of injustice and dignity. It is a drama about maternal love, an universal story about a via dolorosa. There is a pregnant sense of mise-en-scène. There are effective montages of night life.

The digital restoration has been carefully conducted from partly low-contrast, soft and worn source materials.

In the live music Mauri Saarikoski and Marko Puro excelled again (they have previously brought us a Kreutzer Sonata concert and two Russian film concerts). As it proved impossible to organize an authentic Chinese film concert they presented an inspired Western hommage to the dignity of the Chinese spirit, based on Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov, Eugene Goossens, Ernest Pingoud, Béla Bartók, Fritz Kreisler, Gustav Mahler (Das Lied von der Erde), Giacomo Puccini, Maurice Ravel, and the traditional Chinese song, "A Maiden's Lament".

OUR PROGRAM NOTE BASED ON PAOLO CHERCHI USAI, AND MAURI SAARIKOSKI AND MARKO PURO

Yihe yuan / Summer Palace

颐和园 / Summerpalace [the on-screen translated title] / Une jeunesse chinoise. CN/FR © 2006 Laurel Films, Dream Factory, Rosem Films, Fantasy Pictures. EX: Liu Weixing. P: Fang Li, Nai An, Sylvain Bursztejn. D: Lou Ye. SC: Lou Ye, Mei Feng, Yingli Ma. DP: Hua Qing – 1:1.66. AD: Liu Weixin. Cost: Lu Yue. M: Peymen Yazdanian. ED: Lou Ye, Zeng Jian. S: Fu Kang. M: Peyman Yazdanian. C: Hao Lei (Yu Hong), Guo Xiaodong (Zhou Wei), Hu Ling (Li Ti), Zhang Xianmin (Ruo Gu). The film was not theatrically released in Finland - MEKU 2015 - K16 - 140 min
    A 35 mm print from Cineme with Dutch subtitles and e-subtitles in Finnish by Otto Pietinen viewed at Cinema Orion, Helsinki (Helsinki Festival / Lou Ye), 19 Aug 2015

The title of the film refers to the Summer Palace in Beijing (颐和园 / Yiheyuan), an UNESCO World Heritage site, "a masterpiece of Chinese landscape garden design. The natural landscape of hills and open water is combined with artificial features such as pavilions, halls, palaces, temples and bridges to form a harmonious ensemble of outstanding aesthetic value" (UNESCO).

My personal favourite of the five Lou Ye films we screened in our retrospective. A large ensemble piece, an engrossing generation testimony focusing on the year 1989 at Tiananmen Square. In the tragic turning-point the company of students is split all over the world, and we follow their destinies over 15 years.

Summer Palace belongs to the key works of Chinese cinema, and to key testimonies of the cinema about world-historical turning-points. It is an inside story; we feel privileged to have such a passionate look from the inside.

A strong libido is a hallmark of Lou Ye's cinema, and nowhere more than here. Summer Palace belongs to the most open statements about high sexuality in the student life in the world cinema. It is here an expression of an irrepressible life force. Lou Ye's is a cinema of desire, about insatiable lust, its consummation depicted in many extended full frontal views.

Summer Palace is a film that needs to be seen more than once. The cast of characters is so large that it is hard to keep count of everything during a single viewing.

Lou Ye is not a master of the mise-en-scène. His approach is naturalistic and spontaneous, fiction set up as if it were non-fiction. Lou Ye is not interested in beautiful images; scenes may be ugly, seemingly shot in available light. Steadicam is a favourite device of the cinematographer.

The print is complete and good, and I feel it does justice to the visual concept of the director and the cinematographer.

OUR PROGRAMME NOTE BY PASI NYYSSÖNEN BEYOND THE JUMP BREAK

Suzhou he / Suzhou River

苏州河 / Su zhou he [the way the Chinese title is transcribed in the opening credits] / Suzhou [Finnish name] / Suzhou [Swedish name in Finland]. CN/DE © 2000 Lou Ye / Dream Factory / Essential Filmproduktion. PC: Essential Filmproduktion GmbH, ZDF, Arte. EX: Yongling Wu. P: Nai An, Philippe Bober. D+SC: Lou Ye. DP: Yu Wang. ED: Karl Riedl. AD: Zhuoyi Li. M: Jörg Lemberg. S: Peijun Zu, Kang Fu, Martin Steyer. Makeup: Xuemin Wang. C: Zhou Xun (Meimei / Moudan), Jia Hongsheng (Mardar), Zhongkai Hua (Lao B.), Anlian Uao (boss), Nai An (Xiao Hong). Helsinki premiere: 6.10.2000 Kino Engel, imported by Cinema Mondo with Finnish / Swedish subtitles by Outi Kainulainen / Jens Carp – VET 101895 – K12 – 2260 m / 83 min
    A KAVI print deposited by Cinema Mondo viewed at Cinema Orion, Helsinki (Lou Ye, Helsinki Festival), 18 Aug 2015

A grungy vision of life and passion in the turbulence of a rapidly changing country along Suzhou River not too far from Shanghai.

Zhou Xun stars in a dual role as two different women, Meimei and Moudan, and Jia Hongsheng is Mardar, a man obsessed with finding a woman from his past.

Suzhou River has been linked with Vertigo, but rather it belongs to a long continuum of stories of men obsessed with lost love ideals, also including early films such as Yevgeni Bauer's Gryozhy / Daydreams (1915). Unlike Vertigo, Suzhou River is not a Liebestod tragedy, and it is not about the death drive. Unlike some reviewers claim the film is not Hitchcockian. Rather it might resemble the Boileau-Narcejac novel D'entre les morts which takes place during the French Occupation and afterwards: in a society in turmoil people lose their loved ones, identities are unstable, and even names are changed.

I fail to be compelled by Suzhou River. The actors are not very engaging, the cinematography is not exciting, the music fails to move. Yet Suzhou River is not an indifferent achievement. Lou Ye has a true and original vision about a country in a vortex of change where people are uprooted and at loss. Traditional morality has lost its authority, and the law can be powerless. Crime and violence can flourish. There is little love; commercial sex business and drug trade are spreading. Anything goes but there is a general sense of meaninglessness, restlessness, soullessness, drifting without a purpose.

To the strengths of the movie belongs the semi-documentary approch of the cinematography. It is often handheld and subjective which can turn into a mannerism.

Visual quality of the print: the colour is good and the print is complete and in a good condition.

OUR PROGRAMME NOTE BY JARI SEDERGREN BEYOND THE JUMP BREAK

Nebraska

Alexander Payne: Nebraska (US 2013) starring Will Forte (David Grant) and Bruce Dern (Woody Grant).

Nebraska / Nebraska.
    US © 2013 Paramount Pictures. PC: Bona Fide Productions – (in association with) FilmNation Entertainment / Blue Lake Media Fund / Echo Lake Entertainment – Paramount Vantage (presents). P: Albert Berger, Ron Yerxa.
    D: Alexander Payne. SC: Bob Nelson. DP: Phedon Papamichael – Gemini 4:4:4 – kamerat: Arri Alexa M, Arri Alexa Plus 4:3 – Panavision 2,35:1 – digital intermediate 2K – b&w – release: 35 mm and D-Cinema. PD: J. Dennis Washington. AD: Sandy Veneziano. SD: Fontaine Beauchamp Hebb. Cost: Wendy Chuck. Makeup: Robin Fredriksz. Hair: Waldo Sanchez. M: Mark Orton. S: Frank Gaeta – Datasat – Dolby Digital. ED: Kevin Tent. Casting: John Jackson.
    C: Bruce Dern (Woody Grant), Will Forte (David Grant), June Squibb (Kate Grant), Bob Odenkirk (Ross Grant), Stacy Keach (Ed Pegram), Mary Louise Wilson (aunt Martha), Rance Howard (uncle Ray), Tim Driscoll (Bart), Devin Ratray (Cole), Angela McEwan (Peg Nagy).
    Loc: Nebraska, Montana, Wyoming, South Dakota (Mount Rushmore National Memorial).
    Helsinki premiere: 28.2.2014 Kino Engel, Kinopalatsi, released by: Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures Finland, only in 2K DCP with Finnish / Swedish subtitles – MEKU 25.2.2014 – K7 – 115 min
    2K DCP from Park Circus viewed at Cinema Orion, Helsinki (Alexander Payne), 15 Aug 2015.

AA: Like The Descendants, Nebraska is a road movie and a family saga. The token plot is a about taking a demented father to collect his million dollars from a mass mailing company in Lincoln. The actual subject is the son's journey of discovery into an unknown family history.

The father, Woody Grant (Bruce Dern) is an alcoholic. During the key stop of the journey at Woody's home town Hawthorne the driver, the son David (Will Forte) learns something about his dad's background. Dad had fought in Korea and had been shot down. After that he transformed, and the drinking got bad. (Thus even Nebraska can be counted into what Anton Kaes has called shell-shock cinema). Woody has always been a nice and timid guy, used by others; finally he left Hawthorne. Before that the soft Woody had married the tough Kate (June Squibb). David learns to see even his mother in a new light. A revealing turning-point is a scene at Woody's family grave.

The main source of comedy is that the poor relatives at Hawthorne start to believe in Woody's being a millionaire, although David insists on every occasion that he is nothing of the kind. Everybody is already expecting to get his share. Here mom's tough manners sum it up pretty well: "You can all just go fuck yourselves".

The most poignant sequence is the visit to Woody's old homestead. "My dad built this place. I got whipped down here. The barn is still standing".

Nebraska is about waking up from illusions, but it is also about true family affection developing between father and son. In the final sequence David fulfills dad's dream about a pick-up truck and a compressor and leads the inhabitants of Hawthorne to believe that dad has actually become rich.

Where in The Descendants we were treated to lush and lavish colour views of an unknown Hawaii never before seen on film, Nebraska is visually the exact opposite: an arid black-and-white journey through the four states of Nebraska, Montana, Wyoming, and South Dakota. Phedon Papamichael's cinematography is visually of the highest order, and each shot could be hanged on the wall.

Alexander Payne's strong documentary impulse is on display also here. The arid, anti-glamourous views are quietly unsettling.

There are no little children. The grown-up children are gaining weight while sitting glued in front of the television all day.

Nebraska is Alexander Payne's first film that has been shot digitally. The visual quality is ultra sharp. There is a sense of natures mortes in a literal way. The fine texture is on display. Although shot in wide open spaces, there is no sense of air. The digital quality here emphasises a sense of apathy and death.

It is a sign of the times that although Nebraska was released in Finland last year with a high profile, it is no longer accessible in Finland, and we had to book the DCP from England without subtitles. Movies, except Finnish ones, now usually disappear totally from the theatrical distribution in our country after a half a year after the premiere.

BEYOND THE JUMP BREAK OUR PROGRAM NOTE BASED ON TREVOR JOHNSTON

Jag är Ingrid / Ingrid Bergman: In Her Own Words

Ingrid Bergman - omin sanoin. SE 2015. PC: Mantaray Film. P: Stina Gardell. Assoc. P: Anna Weitz. D: Stig Björkman. SC: Stig Björkman, Stina Gardell, Dominika Daubenbüchel. DP: Malin Korkeasalo. DP Super 8: Eva Dahlgren. M: Michael Nyman. Song: "Filmen om oss" (Eva Dahlgren). ED: Dominika Daubenbüchel. S: Mario Adamson. Head of Archive: Frida Neema Järnbert. Research: Jonas Goldmann. Voice of Ingrid Bergman in quotes: Alicia Vikander. Feat: Isabella Rossellini, Ingrid Rossellini, Roberto Rossellini [Jr.], Pia Lindström, Fiorella Mariani, Liv Ullmann, Sigourney Weaver, Jeanine Basinger. Languages: English, Italian, French, Swedish. 114 min
    Ingrid Bergman – In Her Own Words is produced by Stina Gardell/Mantaray Film in coproduction with  ZDF in collaboration with ARTE, Jonas Gardell Produktion, Spellbound Capital and  Filminvestering in Örebro through Filmregion Stockholm-Mälardalen, SVT, Chimney Pot, Henrik Johnsson, Annica och Bo Uddenäs, YLE and NTR with support by Swedish Film Institute, Creative Europe, Nordisk Film & TV Fond  and The Swedish Arts Grants Committee.    Excerpts from Ingrid Bergman’s private footage / Wesleyan University Cinema Archives
    Swedish premiere 28 Aug 2015.
    Espoo Ciné screening in the presence of Stig Björkman 29 Aug 2015 (Ingrid Bergman's centenary birthday).
    Atlantic Film Finland 2K DCP with Finnish / Swedish subtitles by Samuli Kauppi / Mikaela Palmberg, press screening at Cinema Orion, Helsinki (Ingrid Bergman) 13 Aug 2015

We are celebrating the centenary of Ingrid Bergman, and having read some Ingrid Bergman biographies in the summer, and most importantly, her autobiography Mitt liv / My Story (see here and here) it was a great pleasure to see Jag är Ingrid, directed by the master Stig Björkman, so faithful to the spirit of its subject that the film is a brilliant and perfect parallel work to Bergman's memoirs.

Yet this is not a film adaptation of those memoirs but based on Ingrid Bergman's own extensive archives. She apparently kept everything. She wrote letters, she kept a diary, and she was always photographing and filming in narrow gauge formats. Made in full collaboration with Bergman's four children this is an authorized and confidential film biography, a work of high independent value.

We see little previously known footage. Instead, there is a wealth of private footage and photograph material, plus interview footage made for the movie. Based on Bergman's writings it is told in the first person singular.

This is a story of a confident international star who, however, said that she was a sad child, very lonely, inventing characters. It was also sad for her to be an only child, which is why she wanted several of her own. Combining career and motherhood was not a problem for her. Life was there to be lived in full. And yet, "Jag tillhör denna låtsasvärld av film och teater" / "I belong to this make-believe world of film and theatre".

"Nobody is a prophet in her own land. The criticism at home was worse than anywhere else." On the other hand, "I don't want any roots".

Alfred Hitchcock found that Bergman took film more seriously than life and taught her to lighten up. My two favourite clips here are Alfred Hitchcock interviewing Bergman at Heathrow and Cary Grant's humoristic Academy Award acceptance speech for Ingrid for Anastasia. Isabella Rossellini comments on how Jean Renoir taught Bergman about film in general. She also remarks that Bergman "didn't like to work with father". Like in all the books, also here the episode of Autumn Sonata has a very special value as a late turning-point where Ingrid for the first time saw how others saw her on set.

Of the private life one of the most moving episodes here as in the biographies are Bergman's devotion to Isabella when she had scoliosis as a child.

The film is multi-lingual, and we hear Bergman speaking Swedish, English, French, German, and Italian.

In the age of laserdiscs, dvd's, blu-rays and classic movie channels there is a wealth of fine biographical documentaries on films and film-makers. Jag är Ingrid rises to the league of the very best of them. An indispensable source and achievement for lovers and students of Ingrid Bergman.

The visual quality is often high considering that this is a compilation film from many different sources.

It was a great pleasure to meet Stig Björkman visiting Espoo and Helsinki on Ingrid Bergman's birthday, incorporating the best kind of film historical understanding in Sweden, keeping its noble heritage of cinematic excellence. I look forward to more from him.

PRESS BOOK INFORMATION BEYOND THE JUMP BREAK

Mielensäpahoittaja / The Grump

Kverulanten.  FI 2014. PC: Solar Films Inc. Oy. P: Markus Selin, Jukka Helle. D: Dome Karukoski. SC: Dome Karukoski, Tuomas Kyrö - based on characters created by Tuomas Kyrö. DP: Pini Hellstedt - all digital - colour - 2,35:1. AD: Betsy Ångerman-Engström. SFX: Konsta Mannerheimo, Raine Toikkanen. Cost: Anna Vilppunen. Makeup: Kata Launonen. M: Hilmar Örn Hilmarsson. ED: Harri Ylönen. S: Tuomas Klaavo.
    C: Antti Litja (Mielensäpahoittaja), Petra Frey (Emäntä), Mari Perankoski (Miniä), Iikka Forss (Poika), Viktor Drevitski (Sergei), Bruno A. Puolakainen (Tarasenko), Alina Tomnikov (Ljudmila), Janne Reinikainen (Tohtori Kiminkinen), Timo Lavikainen (taksinkuljettaja), Kari Ketonen (Sakke Intonen), Mikko Neuvonen (Stinde), Nelly Hristova (kaupan kassa), Sulevi Peltola (potilas Helminen), Matti Rönkä (uutistenlukija), Hanna Karlsson (Mia, lapsenlapsi), Ronja Porthan (Melissa, lapsenlapsi), Lenita Susi (Mirkku, lapsenlapsi),  Rosa Autio (kahvilan myyjä), Emilia Suoperä (kahvilan myyjä), Maria Loikala (hampurilaisravintolan myyjä), Sirkka Rautiainen (parkkipirkko), Minna Koskela (naapuri), Jukka Helle (postinjakaja), Evgenia Podymalkina (ravintolan esiintyjä), Mihail Vasiljev (ravintolan esiintyjä), Atso Akkanen (tarjoilija), Jonni Karvosenoja (Mielensäpahoittaja lapsena), Ville-Veikko Niemelä (Mielensäpahoittaja nuorena), Mikko Marttala (Mielensäpahoittaja keski-ikäisenä).
    Helsinki premiere: 5.9.2014, distributed by: Oy Nordisk Film Ab – MEKU 2014 – S – 104 min
    A 2K DCP from Nordisk Film Finland viewed at Cinema Orion, Helsinki (Antti Litja), 5 Aug 2015

The official synopsis: "The Grump is a man from the past. A man who knows that everything used to be better in the old days. Pretty much everything that's been done after 1953 has managed to ruin The Grump's day. Our story unfolds as The Grump takes a fall from his basement steps, hurting his ankle. He has to spend a weekend in Helsinki to attend physiotherapy. The Grump doesn't like this for four reasons: 1) He has to take a taxi. 2) He can't take daily care of his wife, an Alzheimer patient. 3) He is unable to drive, which means he might have to sit in a car with a female driver. 4) He has to spend time with his family. The daughter-in-law is a career woman, not keen to spend time with The Grump when he comes to the city, either. Her boss has given her the task to look after Russian businessmen supposed to close a major deal over the weekend. It doesn't make her any happier when The Grump decides to help with the deal. Then The Grump has to face his useless son to become the father he never was...  " (Solar Films)

Our tribute to the talented Finnish New Wave actor Antti Litja ended with his recent hit film The Grump, based on a popular character created by the writer Tuomas Kyrö and already impersonated previously by Antti Litja in other media, originally and memorably on the radio.

The story has affinities with the classics of Leo McCarey (Make Way for Tomorrow) and Yasujiro Ozu (Tokyo Story), but in this comedy the generation clash is more merciless and extreme. The 80+ The Grump is a figure of the past and a target of comedy, but while we laugh at him we realize that he is also an embodiment of the future shock, the extreme change that has happened during a lifetime in Finland and elsewhere. It is a story of modernization and urbanization, universally relevant.

I was also thinking about another New Wave actor, Jack Nicholson, and his performance in About Schmidt. Also he plays a character who plans to spend his retirement days with his wife. His wife dies; The Grump's wife has Alzheimer's disease. "In old age we were supposed to have time for each other". "I was expecting us to live together to the end".

The obvious and well-known comedy catchphrases of Tuomas Kyrö's The Grump stories are repeated quickly in the beginning. The audience would be expecting them anyway. But the film gets deeper. It is about how gender roles have changed profoundly in one generation. It is about a basic naive trust in the neighbour that The Grump still has but for which he gets abused in the city.

The Grump stories are a parody of the "it was all better in the past", "the good old days" mentality. The original Finnish title Mielensäpahoittaja is difficult to translate. It means someone whose dominant character is to take offense. The recurrent phrase in the stories is "kyllä minä niin mieleni pahoitin... ", "I was so offended by... ", followed by a remark about a major or trivial change in life, such as Finnish success in sports, a changed anchorman in the newscast, or new technology in banks. "The first one is always the best", finds the Grump.

A major recurrent figure in the contemporary Finnish cinema of the last decades is The Harridan. This time it is Mari Perankoski's turn to impersonate her. Her husband, the grump's son, is a wimp. The characters start as caricatures but grow in complexity, thanks to the talent of the writer-screenwriter, the director Dome Karukoski, and the actors. There is something Molièrian or Balzacian in the way in which the characters are introduced by a single dominant trait, and in the way a richness of life is revealed in them.

A great performance by Antti Litja.

Visual quality: no problem with the digital quality in interiors, urban scenes, and shots of people; nature footage fails to convince (especially the colour), and the manipulated flashbacks look tricky.

BEYOND THE JUMP BREAK OUR PROGRAMME NOTE BY JOONA HAUTANIEMI:

Zezowate szczęście / Bad Luck / Cross-Eyed Luck

Poster design: Roman Cieślewicz. Galeria Grafiki i Plakatu. Click to enlarge.

Kierosilmäinen onni / Lyckan är en räv / Olycksfågeln (SE). PL 1959. PC: Zespół Filmowy Kamera / Studio Filmowe Kadr. P: Wilhelm Hollender. D: Andrzej Munk. SC: Jerzy Stefan Stawiński. DP: Jerzy Lipman, Krzysztof Winiewicz. AD: Jan Grandys. M: Jan Krenz. Song: "Kriegsgefangenenpost" (M: Andrzej Markowski, L: Andrzej Nowicki), perf. Slawa Przybylska. ED: Jadwiga Zajiček. C: Bogumił Kobiela (Jan Piszczyk), Maria Ciesielska (Basia), Helena Dąbrowska (Wychówna), Barbara Kwiatkowska (Jola), Krystyna Karkowska (Wrona-Wrońska, Joli), Barbara Połomska (Zosia), Irena Stalończyk (Irena Kropaczyńska), Tadeuz Bartosik (Wąsik), Henryk. Bąk (director), Aleksander Dzwonkowski, Tadeusz. Janczar, Stanisław Jaworski, Andrzej Krasicki (Witold Kropaczyński), Wojciech Lityński, Kazimierz. Opaliński, Jerzy Pichelski, Adam Pawlikowski, Wojciech Siemion (Józef Kacpersk), Jan Tadeusz Stanisławski. Helsinki premiere: 2.11.1962 Astra, released by: Suomi-Filmi – VET 62862 – S – 3100 m / 114 min
    A vintage KAVI print (deposit from Suomi-Filmi) with Finnish / Swedish subtitles viewed at Cinema Orion (Pawlikowski's Poland), Helsinki, 4 Aug 2015

Revisited an irreverent satire set in the bitterest and the most tragic decades of Polish history - from the late 1930s till approximately the present day when the film was made, based on the text of Andrzej Munk's trusted screenwriter Jerzy Stefan Stawiński.

A point of comparison might be commedia all'italiana with its utter anti-heroism in accounts of Fascism and WWII.

But Bad Luck is more absurd and grotesque. There are aspects in the beginning that bring to mind Polanski and the Theatre of the Absurd. The grotesque dimension harks back to the extreme exaggeration of the French and Italian farces of the early cinema, such as André Deed / Cretinetti. Besides, there is trick photography and time lapse imagery.

Bad Luck is a daring and ambitious film, made with devotion. The overdone style is difficult, the tempo often breathless.

The trouble for me here is the casting. In commedia dell'italiana there was usually a splendid cast of master comedians who would attack the grimmest story with a healthy appetite. I was even thinking what Charles Chaplin might have done with this. I failed to relate to the talented Bogumił Kobiela in this role, and the film started to drag for me, but with a different casting it might have worked better.

There is much to like. A favourite of mine is the sequence where a young Slawa Przybylska sings "Kriegsgefangenenpost". It can be found on YouTube.

The visual quality of the vintage print is uneven. There are good passages from which one can judge how it all should look like, but often it is fair, not brilliant.

BEYOND THE JUMP BREAK: OUR PROGRAMME NOTE BASED ON MARKKU TUULI

Au hasard Balthazar / Balthazar

Robert Bresson: Au hasard Balthazar (FR/SE 1966). Balthazar and Marie (Anne Wiazemsky). 

Balthazar / Balthazar (Swedish name in Finland) / Min vän Balthazar (Swedish name in Sweden).
    FR/SE 1966. PC: Argos Films / P.A.R.C. Film / Athos Films / Svenska Filminstitutet / Svensk Filmindustri. P: Mag Bodard.
    D+SC: Robert Bresson. DP: Ghislain Cloquet – black and white – 1,66:1. AD: Pierre Charbonnier. M: Franz Schubert: Klaviersonate Nr. 20 (D. 959), A-Dur, Andantino in fis-Moll, perf. Jean-Noël Barbier. Add. M: Jean Wiener. ED: Raymond Lamy. S: Antoine Archimbaud, Jacques Carrère.
    C: Anne Wiazemsky (Marie), François Lafarge (Gérard), Philippe Asselin (le maître d'école, Marie's father), Nathalie Joyaut (Marie's mother), Walter Green (Jacques), Jean-Claude Guilbert (the vagabond Arnold), Marie-Claire Frémont (la boulangère), François Sullerot (le boulanger), Jean-Joël Barbier (le doyen), Jean Rémignard (notary), Pierre Klossowsky (grain merchant), Jacques Sorbets (le capitaine de gendarmerie), Tord Paag (Louis), Rémy Brozeck (Marcel), Mylène Weyergans (nurse), Guy Renault, Myléne Weyergans, Gilles Sandier, Guy Bréjac (veterinarian), Sven Frostenson, Roger Fjellstrom (blousons noirs). A body double for Anne Wiazemsky appears in the nude scene.
    Loc: 21.7.1965 – 28.2.1966 Versailles region: Guyancourt village; Swiss Alps stand for the Pyrenees (bad weather prevented shooting on the actual location).

    Festival premiere: 15 May 1966 Cannes.

    French premiere: 25 May 1966.
    Helsinki premiere: 15.9.1967 [the old] Orion, released by: Suomi-Filmi with Finnish / Swedish subtitles – telecast: 27.2.1978 MTV1 – VET 75177 – K16 – 2625 m / 95 min
    The title of the film: "Au hasard Balthazar est la devise des comtes des Baux-de-Provence qu se disaient descendants du roi mage Balthazar" (L'Avant-Scène Cinéma, Janvier/février 1992). It is also a wordplay [o a.zaʁ bal.ta.zaʁ].
    A KAVI print (a vintage Suomi-Filmi deposit) screened at Cinema Orion, Helsinki (Robert Bresson), 4 August 2015

Revisited Au hasard Balthazar, a turning-point in Robert Bresson's oeuvre. After a series of films about a quest for grace, Balthazar opens to a world where grace is hard to find.

Balthazar is about the fall from grace.

Balthazar is connected to Bresson's following film, Mouchette, and also to his final films, Le Diable, probablement, and L'Argent. They are about a world and a generation that seem to have lost spirituality. But Bresson's look is deeply spiritual.

Bresson's view on the external forms of the Church is reserved. Gérard sings piously in the Church choir, but he is a young man without a conscience. On his dying bed Marie's desillusioned father turns his back on the priest. Yet Balthazar is rich in religious imagery.

The account of reality in Balthazar is broader and richer than in Bresson's previous films which were much more tightly focused on the protagonist. Like L'Argent, Balthazar is a Querschnitt film. In L'Argent, money is "connecting people". In Balthazar it is the donkey.

The donkey's way is followed in seven stages: the birth and the happy childhood, the boulangerie, the vagabond, the circus, the mill, the contraband, and the death by the stray gunshot by the border guard. They are like the seven stages of life by Shakespeare, and perhaps channeling the Stations of the Cross.

We are judged by the way by which we treat the weakest. Balthazar is tortured by fire at his tail. He is beaten. He is let freeze in the winter. At old age, he is forced to operate a heavy millstone. He is carrying smuggler's goods when the border patrol shoots him.

On the other hand, there is the brief happy childhood. Balthazar is caressed by Marie. He is saved from execution by Arnold who takes him to a health spa and revives him. He becomes "the sharpest brain of the century" at the circus where he solves difficult mathematical problems. (Shades of "the ingenious horse" in The Man Without Qualities). Towards the end he plays a notable role in a holy procession.

The parallel story is about Marie. Of the loss of the happiness of childhood she never recovers. Her father sacrifices everything to a property he does not own, turning from teacher to farmer, and is disappointed bitterly, fatally, lethally. Marie is estranged from her childhood boyfriend of the rich owner family. Instead, she is drawn to the company of the amoral and criminal Gérard, a man without a conscience. Marie is corrupted and demoralized.

Besides the several episodes, there are several continuities to reckon with: Balthazar's story, Marie's story, the story of the land, and so on.

It all makes sense, but there is a lot to digest, and instead of telling the story like in a classic novel, Bresson presents it in an elliptical way, with sharp cuts. A favourite device in Balthazar is that one thing is being foreseen, and in the next shot we see the opposite taking place.

Balthazar is a film that needs to be revisited. One of the best films ever made, it has always moved me deeply. It was a long time in the making. It is simple and sharp and full of mysteries.

The vintage print is complete, the visual quality uneven. In the beginning the image quality is less than perfect. (Can the first reel have been reduplicated at least partly due to wear?) Soon it becomes quite good. Ghislain Cloquet's lighting concept is refined, difficult and special, and in this print it can be appreciated. There are the regular signs of wear in the changeovers.

BEYOND THE JUMP BREAK: OUR PROGRAMME NOTE BASED ON GILLES JACOB

Citizen Ruth

Kansalainen Ruth / Citizen Ruth. US © 1996 Miramax. PC: Independent Pictures / Miramax. P: Cathy Konrad, Cary Woods. D: Alexander Payne. SC: Alexander Payne, Jim Taylor. DP: James Glennon – negative: 35 mm – 1,85:1 – colour (FotoKem) – prints: FotoKem Laboratory, Burbank (CA). PD: Jane Ann Stewart. SD: Lisa Denker. Cost: Tom McKinley. Makeup: Angela Moos. Hair: Marsha Lewis. M: Rolfe Kent. S: Harry Cohen – Dolby. ED: Kevin Tent. Casting: Lisa Beach. C: Laura Dern (Ruth Stoops), Swoosie Kurtz (Diane Siegler), Kurtwood Smith (Norm Stoney), Mary Kay Place (Gail Stoney), Kelly Preston (Rachel), M. C. Gainey (Harlan), Kenneth Mars (Dr. Charlie Rollins), David Graf (Judge Richter), Kathleen Noone (nurse Pat), Tippi Hedren (Jessica Weiss), Burt Reynolds (Blaine Gibbons), Lance Rome (Ricky, Ruth's lover), Jim Kalal (Tony Stoops), Alicia Witt (Cheryl Stoney), Diane Ladd (Ruth's mother, n.c.). Loc: Council Bluffs (Iowa), Omaha (Nebraska). Not theatrically released in Finland – tv: 6.10.2000 Yle TV1 – 2941 m / 106 min
    A Svenska Filminstitutet / Filmarkivet print of a Triangelfilm import with Swedish subtitles viewed at Cinema Orion, Helsinki (Alexander Payne), 4 August 2015

Alexander Payne's debut feature film is already a terrific accomplishment, a satire which unfolds with an assured touch in a narrative with ample potential to offend everybody. Alexander Payne and Jim Taylor immediately reach a high level of satire and wit, to be compared with Lubitsch, Wilder, and especially Sturges (The Miracle of Morgan's Creek). The constantly surprising Citizen Ruth and Election belong to the great accomplishments of American film satire.

The performances are impeccable. Laura Dern creates bravely a protagonist without glamour and without redeeming qualities.

Among my favourite sequences: - Ruth as the house-guest spends hours in the bath-tub while her foster family gets bored waiting for her to appear for dinner - the nasty teenage daughter finds in Ruth a soulmate - the son's construction set of Noah's Ark only interests Ruth for the glue.

The visual devices are interesting, including subjective views, even fly vision, straight overhead shots (the chicken dinner), and upside down views.

The film exaggerates the combat between the pro-choice and pro-life camps, but this is no facile satire of religious fundamentalism. With mothers like Ruth on the loose, the arguments for pro-choice might seem to weigh heavier. We might smile at the religious families and their constant hymn-singing, but their contribution and message seems more substantial than Ruth's rampage.
 
The print is clean and complete, the visual quality: the regular slightly duped or speed-printed look, getting better towards the later reels.

OUR PROGRAMME NOTE BASED ON ROGER EBERT BEYOND THE JUMP BREAK

Rapsodia satanica film concert (Teatro Comunale di Bologna) (2015 4K digital restoration Bologna / Lausanne)

Nino Oxilia: Rapsodia satanica (1917). Lyda Borelli as Contessa Alba d'Oltrevita.

Nino Oxilia: Rapsodia satanica (1917). Lyda Borelli as Contessa Alba d'Oltrevita.

IT 1915–1917. D: Nino Oxilia. Story: Alfa (Alberto Fassini), Fausto Maria Martini. SC: Alfa. DP: Giogio Ricci. M: Pietro Mascagni.
    C: Lyda Borelli (contessa Alba d’Oltrevita), Andrea Habay (Tristano), Ugo Bazzini (Mephisto), Giovanni Cini (Sergio), Alberto Nepoti.
    P: Cines. DCP. 45’. Tinted, toned and stencil. Italian intertitles [not with English subtitles, contrary to what was announced]. From: Fondazione Cineteca di Bologna.
    The 4K digital restoration was produced from a tinted, toned and hand-painted positive print belonging to the Cinémathèque Suisse. The original score, composed by Pietro Mascagni, allowed for the correct reconstruction of the film. The restoration was promoted by Fondazione Cineteca di Bologna and the Cinémathèque Suisse.
    Musiche originali di Pietro Mascagni eseguite dell'Orchestra del Teatro Comunale di Bologna adattate e dirette di Timothy Brock.
    Revisione della partitura a cura di Marcello Panni pubblicata da Edizioni Curci in collaboratione con il Comitato Pietro Mascagni.
    In the presence of members of the Pietro Mascagni family introduced by Gian Luca Farinelli.
    Viewed at Teatro Comunale di Bologna (Il Cinema Ritrovato) (Recovered & Restored, Cento anni fà), [no translation], original score by Pietro Mascagni, conducted by Timothy Brock and performed by the Orchestra of the Teatro Comunale di Bologna, 4 July 2015.

Il Cinema Ritrovato (catalogue and website): Giovanni Lasi: "The story of Rapsodia satanica is as agonizing and troubled as the fate of the countess Alba d’Oltrevita, played by the divine Lyda Borelli. Nino Oxilia’s masterpiece was completed in spring 1915 but was not released in theaters until 1917 due to mysterious inside disputes at Cines: that would result in a delay of almost three years in giving the world a film that was the most genuine attempt at making a total work of art for the screen. In deference to the Gesamtkunstwerk of Wagnerian fame, the film condenses pictorial quotations that range from Symbolism to the Pre-Raphaelites, literary references to the Faust tradition and Dannunzian decadence, spectacular architectural allusions to art nouveau, all embellished with original music by Pietro Mascagni."

"Rapsodia satanica, however, was not only a sophisticated and aesthetic compendium of the best artistic movements: it’ s a film in a league of its own with Nino Oxilia’s poetic sensitivity and compositional expertise and Lyda Borelli’s extraordinary performance. She expresses with her body and eyes the controversial aspects of her character, distilling the sensuality of eroticism, the raving hysteria of madness, the dark mood of death." Giovanni Lasi

Eric de Kuyper: "The restoration of Rapsodia satanica is an extreme case: its reconstruction took place slowly and by degrees under our very eyes. As if a faded rose were regenerating and one petal after another, regaining its freshness in the height of its brilliance. An unexpected miracle was slowly taking shape, progressively and irreversibly. A slow backwards decomposition, a patient re-composition. As if this masterwork did not wish to give itself to our eyes all at once. Might it have been too blinding?"

"In the beginning this copy in black and white was rather ugly... And yet it was clear that we were dealing with a splendid film. Then the music by Mascagni composed specially for Oxilia’s film was discovered. A new surprise. Then to this – was this the last stage? – the discovery of a good copy in colour!"

"Rapsodia Satanica, from the point of view of colour, places us in front of another problem, because – a unique case in the history of cinema? – the use of stencil colouring is not alternative to that of toning and imbibition, but contemporaneous. On monochrome images we thus have coloured detail [...], the result is extraordinary. Here colour fully realises the explicit ambition of the opera to be a total art." (Eric de Kuyper, Rapsodia satanica ou le frémissement des couleurs, “Cinegrafie”, n. 9, 1996)

Timothy Brock: "Pietro Mascagni invented an approach that most film composers only began to discover more than 10 years later. He wrote one of the most intricate and delicate accompaniments in the history of cinema, both sound and silent. His score goes well beyond the visual perception, but contains character studies that seem to clearly define the mostly hidden conditions of their personality. This is the gift an opera composer brings to cinema."

"There is not a visual or symbolic moment (or movement) that passes unnoticed by Mascagni, and the depth of reflection within his score, is startling. The use of inverted and doubled thematic material (the 2 brothers), mirrored intervals (Borelli’s final scene with mirrors) and pure musical leitmotif (symbiosis of the 2 butterflies and Borelli’s flight on the terrace) plays heavily in Mascagni’s designation of material. Even the reading of inter-titles was not left untouched. Every expression, dismantled shoulder and fluttering veil has it’s place in the score. The question is just a matter of finding it."

"Only when a score of this caliber is anchored to its film correctly, does the clarity of musical symbolism truly exhibit composer’s cognition, and more importantly, his intentions as an artist. The most common misconception about the score is that there is simply too much music. This view set an unfortunate precedent of making large cuts in the score in order to make the music ‘fit’ the length of the film. The reason for this misguided conclusion is quite simple. Nowhere in the full score, nor in the piano reduction, did he give any written visual synchronization indications. Nor did Mascagni give a single metronome mark. This makes for intensive score analysis on the part of the conductor to find out where each few seconds of music should start and end, how fast or slow it should go, and for how long." (Timothy Brock) (Il Cinema Ritrovato, catalogue and website)

AA: A Symbolistic piece of Italian Divismo, star-driven: based on the unique persona of Lyda Borelli, and as this performance confirms, a music-driven silent pantomime, powerfully moving along the operatic original score by Pietro Mascagni (Cavalleria rusticana).

I knew the film and the music from a previous 1990s presentation, but this restoration and this performance felt even more powerful.

The movie is also colour-driven, and the reproductions of the beautiful tonings and tintings and original hand-colourings feel just right. Also the blues and the purples seem good (they have been difficult to convey in previous Desmet interpretations, threatening to become too dark).

The story is a female Faust variation: in search for eternal youth the Countess makes a pact with the Devil. But she loses both her lovers. Rapsodia satanica belongs to the general area of fairy-tale films, fantasy films, even horror films, although it is not a true horror film in the genre sense.

As a visual composition this collaboration of Lyda Borelli, Nino Oxilia, and Pietro Mascagni is refined and elegant.

There is an affinity with Il fauno, inspired by the poem of Stéphane Mallarmé and the composition of Claude Debussy.

L'orchestra del Teatro Comunale di Bologna (the Bologna City Opera Orchestra) played very well at a strength of 61 players. There was no translation.

A beautiful closing gala to an impressive edition of Il Cinema Ritrovato.

Good Sam

Leo McCarey: Good Sam (US 1948). Gary Cooper (Sam Clayton), Ann Sheridan (Lu Clayton).

Leo McCarey: Good Sam (US 1948). Gary Cooper (Sam Clayton).

Il buon samaritano / Pennitön paratiisissa / Panik i paradiset. 

    US 1948. P: Rainbow Productions. 

    D: Leo McCarey. Story: Leo McCarey, John Klorer. SC: Ken Englund. DP: George Barnes. ED: James McKay. AD: John B. Goodman. M: Robert Emmett Dolan. 

     C: Gary Cooper (Sam Clayton), Ann Sheridan (Lu Clayton), Ray Collins (reverendo Daniels), Edmund Lowe (H. C. Borden), Joan Lorring (Shirley Mae), Clinton Sundberg (Nelson), Minerva Urecal (Mrs. Nelson), Louise Beavers (Chloe), Ruth Roman (Ruthie), William Frawley (Tom). 

    35 mm. B&w. 115’. 

    From: UCLA Film and Television Archive per concessione di Paramount Pictures.
    Viewed at Cinema Jolly (Bologna, Il Cinema Ritrovato) (Seriously Funny. The Films of Leo McCarey), with e-subtitles in Italian, 4 July 2015.

Dave Kehr (Il Cinema Ritrovato, catalogue and website): "Good Sam is the last of McCarey’s religious films, and perhaps the most troubled. Another series of loosely linked episodes, centered on the trials and tribulations of a middle-class, suburban family of the type that was coming to define postwar America (and soon, post-war American television comedy), Good Sam has corners as grim and shadowy as Frank Capra’s nearly contemporaneous It’s a Wonderful Life, including a Christmas Eve climax that finds the saintly hero broke, drunk, and contemplating suicide."

"Said to be the closest of McCarey’s protagonists to his own personality, Sam Clayton (Gary Cooper) is a modern day Good Samaritan, who discovers that living by a code of Christian charity in the world of 1948 is to invite an endless parade of freeloaders and deadbeats to take advantage of his generosity. It’s up to his wife, Lu (Ann Sheridan, warm, womanly and practical) to keep their household functioning, up to the point where Sam gives away the down payment on the dream house she’s been yearning for. Just as the film poses an irresolvable question – is it possible to live a good life in the world as we know it? – so does the film have difficulty reaching resolution."

"McCarey shot and tested several different endings before settling on the climax as we have it – an extended, meandering sequence that involves a McCareyesque mixture of heavy drinking, group singing and stealth spirituality (in the form of a marching Salvation Army band), leading up to a definitive laughing-through-tears moment."

"NB: A substantially different, 130 minute cut of the film also exists, which gives much freer play to McCarey’s improvisational genius. Included are a magnificent sequence in which the family watches home movies and attempts a game of jacks, and a flashback in which Lu explains how she and Sam met. One can only hope that this version will someday be restored and made available for public screening." (Dave Kehr)

AA: Living as a Good Samaritan in a mercantile society can lead to extraordinary situations if the charitable person does not work within institutional norms as a priest or a monk. Good Sam has affinities with Luis Buñuel's Nazarín. It has also affinities with the contemporary Italians, Roberto Rossellini and Federico Fellini with their Franciscan interests (Francisco, giullare di Dio, La strada). Good Sam is also a film which would have interested Leo Tolstoy (his "good begets good" theme in the latter part of The Forged Note). The highly charged Catholic religious approach also brings to mind John Ford's The Fugitive.

The tale of the man who is so good to others that he is about to lose everything in his own life is fascinating. Sam lends his possessions and money to everybody, but when he is finally broke, nobody lends him. This is a fairy-tale but where Frank Capra pulled it off with his quite similar It's a Wonderful Life Leo McCarey does not quite succeed with Good Sam. It is interesting to discover a current of deep melancholy in such a feelgood narrative. There is even an undercurrent of bitterness. But still this is a film à thèse. The performances and the narrative fail to convince.

We love Leo McCarey for his high aspirations even when the end result does not work like it should. There is a lot to enjoy in Good Sam. The performances of Ann Sheridan and Gary Cooper are very agreeable in this tale of an unconventional marriage.

A fine print from UCLA.

Yek ettefagh-e sadeh / A Simple Event (2014 print from the negative by National Film Archive of Iran)

Sohrab Shahid Saless: اتفاق ساده / Yek ettefagh-e sadeh / A Simple Event (IR 1973).

Sohrab Shahid Saless: اتفاق ساده / Yek ettefagh-e sadeh / A Simple Event (IR 1973).

یک اتفاق ساده / [Un semplice evento].
    IR 1973. D: Sohrab Shahid Saless. DP: Naghi Maasoumi. ED: Kazem Rajinia. C: Mohammad Zamani, Anne Mohammad Tarikhi, Habibullah Safarian, Hedayatullah Navid, Majid Baghaie. P: Sazman-e Cinemaie Keshvar. 35 mm. 82‘. Col. Farsi version. From: National Film Archive of Iran.
    Preserved by National Film Archive of Iran in 2014 from the original 35 mm negative.
    Viewed at Cinema Lumiere - Sala Scorsese (Bologna, Il Cinema Ritrovato) (A Simple Event: the Birth of Iranian New Wave Cinema) with subtitles in Italian and English, introduced by Olaf Möller, 4 July 2015.

Ehsan Khoshbakht (Il Cinema Ritrovato, catalogue and website): "A few days in the life of a young boy living by the Caspian Sea. At school he is falling behind his classmates and almost expelled. He helps his father to fish illegally, and at home watches as his mother’s health deteriorates."

"Sohrab Shahid Saless’s debut feature was made clandestinely with the budget and crew assigned to him for a short film by the government-run Sazman-e Cinemaie Keshvar, for whom he had previously made around 20, mostly uncredited shorts. The film was shot in Bandar Shah."

"Shahid Saless, who admired Čechov, chose the location for its ‘Russian-looking’ atmosphere and the fact that it was at the end of the railroad – at a dead end, like the lives of his characters. Mohammad Zamani, who had never been to a cinema, plays the young boy and one can feel the weight of the world on his frail shoulders. Mysteriously quiet and empty, the film’s characters are apparently devoid of any feeling, yet still capable of making an enormous emotional impact on the audience."

"The numbing pace and incisive sense of reality creates a world in which the moment of the ‘simple event’ – the death of the boy’s mother – hardly moves the child or the audience; as significant, or insignificant, as the dogs barking or the crickets chirping throughout the film. Indeed the only difference between all such events in a Shahid Saless film involving death is that the latter occurs silently and without a trace."

"Born in 1944, Shahid Saless was the ultimate loner figure in Iranian cinema. He moved to Austria in 1963 where he studied theatre and cinema before relocating to Paris in 1966 to study at Le Conservatoire libre du cinéma français."

"Diagnosed with tuberculosis and an ulcer, he returned to Iran and undertook documentary work for the Ministry of Culture."

"A Simple Event, arguably one of the most influential of all Iranian New Wave films, was shown at the second Teheran International Film Festival where it won the FIPRESCI award. Shahid Saless went on to make the even bleaker Tabi‘at-e bijān (Still Life) in the same location, probably his greatest cinematic achievement. Problems with the censor forced him to give up working on a documentary and he left Iran for Germany where he made at least 13 films, mostly produced by German TV."

"Always detached and melancholic, in 1998 he moved to Chicago where he died following struggles with persisting illnesses, cancer and poverty. His long-lasting influence on Iranian cinema can be traced in filmmakers from Abbas Kiarostami to Mohammad Ali Talebi." (Ehsan Khoshbakht)

AA: The beginning of this film was delayed so much due to introductions and other obstacles that I only managed to see 29 minutes of it before having to dash to the screening of Good Sam.

Olaf Möller in his introduction told us about the Viennese studies of Sohrab Shahid Saless, his Chekhov passion, and his later German career where length was the quality in works such as Utopia (3½ hours) and Grabbes letzter Sommer (4 hrs).

My impressions from the first third of this film: it reminds me of 1950s Finnish literary modernism (Hyry, Haavikko, Meri) in its precision, austere observations, laconic and elliptic style, and sense of durée.

It also belongs to a familiar tradition of Iranian cinema: the protagonist is an alienated schoolboy. He is a stranger in the school class, a stranger at home. There is ennui during the class. The life on the other side of the window is more interesting. He is forever running. "Il court" (Claude Beylie). He delivers fish to the store at daytime. He carries water when night is already falling. The fisherman father commands him to "study, study".

There is vitality in the soundscape.

The colour is rich, full, and pleasantly saturated in this new photochemical print.

Oon shab ke baroon oomad ya hemase-ye roosta zade-ye Gorgani / The Night It Rained or the Epic of the Gorgan Village Boy (2012 digital restoration in 2K by Pishgamane Cinemaye Arya / National Film Archive of Iran)

Kamran Shirdel: حماسه روستازاده گرگانی یا اون شب که بارون اومد / Oon shab ke baroon oomad ya hemase-ye roosta zade-ye Gorgani / The Night It Rained or the Epic of the Gorgan Village Boy (IR 1967).

حماسه روستازاده گرگانی یا اون شب که بارون اومد

    IR 1967. D: Kamran Shirdel. SC: Esmaeel Noori Ala, Kamran Shirdel. DP: Naghi Maasoumi. ED: Fatemeh Dorostian. C: Nosratollah Karimi (narratore). P: Ministero della Cultura e dell’Arte dell’Iran. DCP. 40‘. B&w. Farsi version. From: National Film Archive of Iran.
    After scanning the original negative in 2K, digital restoration was done by Pishgamane Cinemaye Arya in 2012 with funding by the National Film Archive of Iran. Due to some laboratory errors in the processing stage of the film’s production, the original negative was damaged with circular corrosion. These circles were removed and a new negative was produced and approved by the film’s director.
    Viewed at Cinema Lumiere - Sala Scorsese (Bologna, Il Cinema Ritrovato) (A Simple Event: the Birth of Iranian New Wave Cinema) with subtitles in Italian and English, introduced by Ehsan Khoshbakht, 4 July 2015.

Ehsan Khoshbakht (Il Cinema Ritrovato, catalogue and website): "This satirical documentary film offers a crash course in 1960s Iran. A newspaper story of a heroic village boy who prevented a train disaster appears and spreads quickly. The incident, reported on and challenged by local officials and journalists, is soon doubted and leads ultimately to confusion, with nobody knowing exactly who has saved whom."

"Born in 1939, Shirdel is best remembered for his clandestine documentaries about impoverished people – not forgetting his remake of Breathless under the title Sobh-e Rooz-e Chaahaarom (The Morning of the Fourth Day, 1972)."

"A graduate of Centro Sperimentale di Cinematografia, his other films prior to The Night It Rained were funded and banned by the Iranian government, never shown under the Shah. This anti-authoritarian, Rashomonesque tale was also initially banned, but six years after production was deemed harmless. It was then premiered at the Tehran International Film Festival where it won the Best Short Film award." (Ehsan Khoshbakht)

AA: A witty montage film taking its inspiration from Citizen Kane and Rashomon and putting the concept of incompatible testimonies into a wild spin. The newspapers have made a big media event about the Gorgan village boy who prevented a train crash by a bridge under construction on a rainy night. All officials and railway professionals deny that anything like that happened but the boy sticks to his tale. There is a hint that the denial is a cover-up of massive corruption and ineptitude in the administration. The truth we'll never learn. Watching this delicious film I was also thinking about a movie in another style, Vadim Abdrashitov's Ostanovilsya poezd / The Train Stopped, made during the final stage of the Soviet Union.

The DCP is bright and clean.

L’Île enchantée / [The Enchanted Island]

L’Île enchantée. Click to enlarge the image below.

[Not released in Finland]. FR 1927. D+SC: Henri Roussel. DP: Maurice Velle, Paul Portier. AD: Georges Jacouty. C: Rolla Norman (Francesco Della Rocca), Jacqueline Forzane (Gisèle Rault), Jean Garat (Firmin Rault), Gaston Jacquet (Gabriel Lestrange), Renée Héribel (Chilina Leonardi), Paul Jorge (Martino Della Rocca), Roby Guichard (Pepino), Geymond Vital (Ferrari), Pierre Delmonde (Leonardi), Mario Nasthasio (Paglietti). P: Lutèce Films. 35 mm. 2394 m. 96’ a 22 f/s. Col. Intertitres français. From: CNC – Archives Françaises du Film.
    The duration of this screening was 101 min.
    Viewed at  Cinema Lumiere - Sala Officinema/Mastroianni (Bologna, Il Cinema Ritrovato) (The Velle Connection 1900-1930. Gaston, Maurice and Mary Murillo), earphone translation in Italian and English, Gabriel Thibaudeau at the grand piano, introduced by Mariann Lewinsky, 3 July 2015.

Lenny Borger (Il Cinema Ritrovato, catalogue and website): "L’Île enchantée is unlike anything else Roussel ever did, and is perhaps his best film. Having passed the innovative Jules Kruger on to Gance, Roussel renewed his collaboration with Maurice Velle, an older, now-forgotten but superb cameraman whom Roussel may have met during his acting-directing débuts at Éclair. Most atypically, it is a very physical film, a Corsican Western of sorts, full of pursuits and cliff-hanging incident, all directed with vigor. Roussel’s hero is a Corsican outlaw wanted by local gendarmes for a vendetta killing. He is also pitted against an industrialist who has built a steelworks in the region and wants to raze the outlaw’s ruined ancestral castle. The protagonist then falls in love with the industrialist’s daughter, who tragically thinks she can bring both men to see reason, but only succeeds in provoking more tragedy and permanently alienating the outlaw from society."

"Roussel shot much of the film on location in Corsica, whose wild, beautiful mountainscapes, canyons, and villages contribute to the theme of Progress vs. Tradition. Best of all, Roussel cast faultlessly: Rolla Norman, who had a second-rank film career, is like a romantic, virile figure out of Mérimée’s Colomba or Dumas."

"Jacqueline Forzane, whose career was sadly brief, is touching as a modern, idealistic professional woman confused by love and filial devotion. There is also a poignant supporting performance by Paul Jorge, who was the saintly Archbishop Myriel in Henri Fescourt’s Les Misérables (1925) and would shortly play a compassionate priest in Dreyer’s Passion of Joan of Arc - here he is the outlaw’s grandfather, who clings proudly to the ancestral hearth." (Lenny Borger)

AA: There is really nothing to add to Lenny Borger's program notes above.
    L’Île enchantée is an image-driven film. It is a tragic love story between a man of the wilderness and a woman boss of the factory. The Machine vs. Nature imagery is magnificently caught in the cinematography of Maurice Velle and Paul Portier. The powerful tonings and tintings (sepias, oranges, browns, blues, reds) have been impressively reproduced on this AFF Bois d'Arcy print. The might of the foundry is contrasted with the sublime of Corsican nature. Rolla Norman cuts an impressive figure as the rebel Francesco Della Rocca. The man of the wilderness has a function similar to the man of the West. He saves the woman of civilization, Gisèle Rault (the distinguished Jacqueline Forzane) from a literally cliffhanging situation (see the poster above). He later saves a child on its deathbed. Yet, no matter, his family is doomed, their castle is exploded, and to make matters worse, Francesco shoots old man Rault in revenge.
    There are affinities in the imagery with the Nordic lumberjack genre (the man of the wilderness, the wild nature, the might of the waterfalls).
    The poetic touch is appropriately enchanting, and the quotations from Hugo and Lamartine distil the tone of the tale. Yet in the overall approach in directing, storytelling, and performances there is something mediocre. Individual dimensions and aspects of the movie are stronger than the sum of the parts.
    A beautiful print.

You Can Change the World

You Can Change the World. Finally Bob Hope is caught via telephone, but Jack Benny gets nervous about the phone bill.

US 1950. D: Leo McCarey. C: Padre James G. Keller, Eddie ‘Rochester’ Anderson, Jack Benny, Ann Blyth, Bing Crosby, Paul Douglas, Irene Dunne, William Holden, Bob Hope, Loretta Young (se stessi). P: William Perlberg per Christopher Films. 16 mm. B&w. 27’. English version. From: UCLA Film & Television Archive.
    The duration of this screening was 33 min.
    Viewed at Cinema Lumiere - Sala Scorsese (Bologna, Il Cinema Ritrovato) (Seriously Funny. The Films of Leo McCarey), with earphone translation in Italian, 3 July 2015.

Dave Kehr (Il Cinema Ritrovato catalogue and website): "Father James G. Keller was a charismatic Catholic priest whose message of personal responsibility for social justice and of America as a nation founded on Judeo-Christian principles found surprising resonance in the early years of the Cold War, as a “compassionate conservative” response to Communism."

"The media-savvy priest attracted many followers among Hollywood’s religious community, including McCarey, who apparently saw him as a real-life version of Going My Way’s Father O’Malley."

"This intriguing 30-minute film, produced by William Perlberg (The Song of Bernadette) for Father Keller’s charity, The Christophers, was distributed without charge for television and theatrical showings, and represents McCarey’s principled response to the Red Scare: before an unlikely group of celebrities gathered in Jack Benny’s home, the good father lays out his method for achieving an America free of racial and religious prejudice, where poverty will be eliminated by individual acts of kindness (as in Good Sam) rather than a radical redistribution of wealth. McCarey had testified before the House Un-American Activities Committee in 1947, but declined to ‘name names’ on the eminently democratic grounds that, while the Communist Party was clearly a malignant agent of a foreign government, party membership was not against the law. A fascinating companion piece to McCarey’s 1952 My Son John, shown in Il Cinema Ritrovato in 2006. This is a rare, uncut print which includes Bing Crosby’s performance of the song Early American." (Dave Kehr)

AA: Leo McCarey's grandeur of spirit is unmistakable in his entire oeuvre: in the profound sense of joy of his comedies, and in the unique tact in his stories about human relationships (Make Way for Tomorrow, Love Affair). His religious films (Going My Way, The Bells of St. Mary's) are deeply spiritual in a rich register from comedy to elegy.

The sincerity in McCarey's Cold War films is unmistakable, and he went beyond the call of duty in making them. My Son John and Satan Never Sleeps are key anticommunist films which reveal an unhinged emotional foundation with which we are asked to identify. They are not far from being unintentional parodies.

Good Sam and You Can Change the World are also exhibits for a discussion about the trouble with the message movie. It is hard to believe that anyone would be convinced by them. In You Can Change the World the main spectacle is about the cast of famous stars being put ill at ease.

The film takes place at Jack Benny's house, but Benny acts like he is a stranger at his own home. This is a film of lost looks, being incredulous, and hamming one's trusted routines (Benny's "being stingy"). I was thinking about Joseph Tura playing Colonel Ehrhardt and complaining to his fellow theatrical conspirators that "I'm running out of dialogue", having had to repeat his single line "so they call me Concentration Camp Ehrhardt, ha ha ha" one time too many.

A weird experience.

The Battles of Coronel and Falkland Islands (2014 BFI National Archive digital restoration)

The Battles of Coronel and Falkland Islands. Click to enlarge the images.

Falklandin meritaistelu. GB 1927. D: Walter Summers. SC: Frank C. Bowen, John Buchan, Harry Engholm. DP: Jack Parker, Stanley Rodwell, E. E. Warneford. ED: Merritt Crawford. C: Craighall Sherry (ammiraglio Sturdee), Hans von Slock (ammiraglio von Spee). P: H. Bruce Woolfe per British Instructional Films Ltd., The British Admiralty, The Navy League. DCP. 105’. B&w. English intertitles. From: BFI – National Archive.
    Restored by BFI – National Archive in association with Deluxe Digital. Original music performed by The Band of Her Majesty’s Royal Marines. New score composed and orchestrated by Simon Dobson, commissioned by BFI and supported by Arts Council England, the Gosling Foundation, the Hartnett Conservation Trust, PRS for Music Foundation and the Charles Skey Charitable Trust. Restored with the support of Matt Spick.
    Viewed at Cinema Lumiere - Sala Officinema/Mastroianni (Bologna, Il Cinema Ritrovato) (Recovered & Restored), introduced by Bryony Dixon, simultaneous translation in Italian through headphones, 3 July 2015.

Bryony Dixon (Il Cinema Ritrovato catalogue and website): "Is The Battles of Coronel and Falkland Islands a drama or a documentary? Along the spectrum of fiction to non-fiction this feature film is placed far towards the drama end but with strong documentary credentials. It is essentially a highly accurate dramatic reconstruction of the two eponymous related naval actions in the early months of the First World War. In the first battle off Coronel in Chile, a German Admiral, Maximilian Graf von Spee, engaged a British squadron which had been sent to stop him attacking British shipping. He sank the battleships Good Hope and Monmouth with the loss of all hands (1,570 dead) including Vice Admiral Craddock. The British Admiralty, now under Winston Churchill and Admiral ‘Jackie’ Fisher, despatched two new battle cruisers Inflexible and Invincible under Rear Admiral Sturdee and engaged von Spee off the Falkland Islands."

"The film was the most ambitious of a series of battle reconstructions made by Harry Bruce Woolfe’s company, British Instructional Films. [...] The photography, composition, lighting and pacing are masterly but the film also retains a strong documentary impulse with its detailed research, and use of exteriors and real locations and some stand-ins, as St Mary’s in the Isles of Scilly doubles as Port Stanley in the Falklands. Most impressive, perhaps, to a modem audience is the use of real warships, made possible with the full co-operation of the Admiralty. The ships are the stars of the show and significantly, in the surviving print, the ships are credited, the actors are not."

"With access to the ships of the Mediterranean Fleet off Malta and to the docks at Devonport, Summers was also able to take advantage of excellent advisors and writers such as John Buchan and Harry Engholm and he even had the assistance of a young Anthony Asquith hanging around the studio anxious for his first break. There was also an excellent technical team that could handle the logistics of shooting at sea on a warship and edit complex montage sequences. The seven-minute section titled The Effort showing the preparations of the two great battleships is, to my mind, one of the best pieces of filmmaking in British cinema." (Bryony Dixon)

Ben Thompson: "The film had suffered extensive wear and tear during its 86-year history and there was severe damage in some key shots as well as some missing inserts, such as letters and telegrams, which we were lucky enough to be able to retrieve from another copy. The original materials were acquired by the BFI National Archive sometime around the late 1940s but the original nitrate negatives decomposed early on. We have worked primarily with a second generation positive copy, and some other later elements which were scanned at 4K resolution. Extensive grading and months of digital restoration with the specialist team at Deluxe were needed to represent the quality of what is a brilliantly cinematic work. We have made both a new 35 mm negative and digital masters for permanent preservation for the nation." (Ben Thompson, Il Cinema Ritrovato catalogue and website)

AA: Sometimes erroneously called a documentary The Battles of Coronel and Falkland Islands is an excellent realistic fictional reconstruction of two naval battles between Britain and Germany on the coasts of Chile and Argentine in 1914.

The First World War on European fronts was an unheard-of theatre of carnage and massacre that forever washed away notions of glory from warfare.

Nothing of the kind is on display here. When the Germans celebrate their triumph over the Brits in Valparaiso one of them suggests "eternal damnation to the British Navy". Admiral von Spee rejects this outright and suggests "a glass in honour of a gallant enemy".

An impressive big budget epic with exciting montages of battles and processes of repairing and maintaining battleships, also with a sense of humour in the painting scenes. A film of old world gallantry.

The new score is perfect for the movie, and it has even interesting moments of machine music in the style of Edmund Meisel for Battleship Potemkin.

The restoration is brilliant.

BFI Screenonline synopsis:

"The British Navy mount guard over the outposts of the Empire. In the South Pacific, Admiral Sir Charles Cradock commands the 5th Light Cruiser Squadron consisting of HMS Good Hope, Monmouth and Glasgow. The German fleet is sighted under the command of Admiral Graf von Spee, with the vessels SMS Leipzig, Nürnberg, Dresden, Gneisenau and the flagship Scharnhorst. Acting on standing orders, Cradock decides to attack the vastly superior German force but is outgunned and outclassed. During fighting Monmouth is destroyed and flagship Good Hope is also shattered by the enemy force and slowly sinks."

"In London, Lord Fisher, the first sea lord, hears of the defeat and orders a counter-attack to be carried out by the new battles cruisers Inflexible and Invincible under the command of Admiral Sir Doveton Sturdee. The ships are refitted in record time at Plymouth and proceed to the South Atlantic in pursuit. Meanwhile, Admiral von Spee is fêted by the German colony at Valparaiso in honour of his great victory. He decides to proceed to the Falkland Islands in order to seize coal supplies and destroy the wireless station at the Port Stanley. Sturdee's fleet arrive and commence re-coaling. The Islands' army volunteers prepare to defend the harbour and radio transmitter. Von Spee orders two of his ships, the Gneisenau and Leipzig, to approach the Islands to make a landing party. From Port Stanley, the enemy ships are sighted on the horizon and feverish preparations ensue. Sturdee creates fake smoke in one of the ships to give the impression that they are fully fuelled and ready for action, while he makes ready his five light cruisers."

"They weigh anchor and prepare to do battle with the enemy ships. The vessels Invincible and Inflexible together with HMS Kent, Cornwall, Glasgow and Carnarvon eventually set out in pursuit of the enemy. Realising he is outgunned, Von Spee orders Dresden, Nürnberg and Leipzig to retire. Before reaching neutral ports, they are attacked by Sturdee's fleet, resulting in the sinking of Leipzig and Nurnberg. The remaining German vessels, Scharnhorst and Gneisenau fight desperately but are slowly overpowered. Scharnhorst catches fire and prior to sinking her crew abandon ship. The Gneisenau is scuttled by her crew and her survivors with are saved by the men of Sturdee's flagship."

"In London, Admiral Fisher is brought the news of the victory." (end of synopsis)

Bryony Dixon: introduction in BFI Screenonline:

"The Battles of Coronel and the Falkland Islands was one of a series of First World War battle reconstructions made by Walter Summers at British Instructional. If not exactly propagandist, they were certainly patriotic; this film in particular was made "with the co-operation of the British Admiralty, The Navy League and an Advisory Committee"."

"The film was partly a response to a German production of the previous year, Unsere Emden (1926), representing another famous WWI naval engagement. Despite German navy support, it was a detached, detailed account of the events with a scrupulous fairness in dealing with the British enemy. In his own film, Summers was equally fair in his depiction of the Germans and their actions. Much later, Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger followed in this tradition with their own The Battle of the River Plate (1956), which describes an almost identical sequence of South Atlantic naval conflicts during WWII."

"The Battles of Coronel and the Falkland Islands is a painstaking reconstruction with necessarily dramatised sections, in which, for example, Lord Admiral Fisher is seen making his strategic response to the German action at Coronel. It was a monumental production, shot almost entirely on location on battleships supplied by the Admiralty. St Mary's in the Scilly Isles convincingly stood in for the Falklands. The few studio sequences are carefully disguised: in one sequence, a lighting effect simulates the reflection of water coming through a porthole and playing on the opposite wall."

"Meticulous naval and military detail was supplied by a litany of expert advisors and the script, by a small group headed by John Buchan, celebrated author of The 39 Steps, is pared down and well structured to build dramatic tension in what is essentially a documentary. Summers was an aficionado of the latest cinematic techniques, and some of the film's most striking moments are the montage sequences of the mechanical workings of the ships and shipyards - the inferno of the engine rooms, pumping pistons and dramatically mounting pressure gauges. These sequences may have been influenced by Abel Gance's La Roue (France, 1922), but Summers probably hadn't yet seen Battleship Potemkin (USSR, 1925) or Metropolis (Germany, 1924). Either way, Summers clearly revelled in the beauty of the form, scale and movement of the machines, and his images of them are as good as anything in any of those more celebrated films."

Bryony Dixon (BFI Screenonline)

My favourite movie about a cow and a boy

Considering that there are tens of thousands of cowboy movies it is extraordinary that only Buster Keaton has truly focused on the relationship of a cow and a boy (in Go West, 1925).

Gaav / The Cow (2014 digital restoration by Pishgamane Cinemaye Arya / National Film Archive of Iran)

گاو / Gav / La vacca / Lehmä (Yle TV1 16.5.1978). IR 1969. D: Dariush Mehrjui. Story: Azadaran-e Bayal [Gholam-Hossein Saedi]. SC: Dariush Mehrjui. DP: Fereydon Ghovanlou - 1,66:1. ED: Dariush Mehrjui. M: Hormouz Farhat. C: Ezzatolah Entezami (Mash Hassan), Mahin Shahabi (la moglie di Hassan), Ali Nassirian (Mash Islam), Jamshid Mashayekhi (Abbas), Jafar Vali (Kadkhoda). DCP. 104’. B&w. Farsi version. From: National Film Archive of Iran.
    After scanning the original negative in 2K, digital restoration was done by Pishgamane Cinemaye Arya in 2014 with funding by the National Film Archive of Iran. A new negative was produced and approved by the film’s director.
    Viewed at Cinema Lumiere - Sala Scorsese (Bologna, Il Cinema Ritrovato) (A Simple Event: the Birth of Iranian New Wave Cinema) with e-subtitles in English and earphone translation in Italian, 3 July 2015

Ehsan Khoshbakht (Il Cinema Ritrovato catalogue and website): "There are other films about men and cows (The Cow and I, for one) but unlike The Cow they can hardly be called love stories, nor are they works that so powerfully explore madness, solitude and obsession as this film does. This milestone of Iranian New Wave cinema tells the story of a poor villager (played by stage actor Ezzatolah Entezami in one of Iranian cinema’s greatest performances) whose only source of joy and livelihood is his cow, which provides milk for the village. (Not surprisingly, when the film came out, the milk was viewed by the left as symbolic of oil). One night the cow is mysteriously killed and that’s when the madness, or rather transformation, begins."

"A filmmaker who has reinvented his approach to cinema in every decade since the 1960s, Mehrjui can move from the sombre tone of a Salinger adaptation, to a hilarious comedy of sorts. From humble beginnings he went on to study philosophy at UCLA and upon his return to Iran was assigned to direct a James Bond-type thriller which had nothing to do with his authorial ambitions."

"It was his second film, The Cow, based on short stories by Marxist psychiatrist Gholam-Hossein Saedi, which served as his breakthrough. “While making The Cow I had no idea what effects it would have on the history of Iranian cinema”, says Mehrjui, “it was more a reaction on my part to the trend of the totally commercial and somehow vulgar film industry dominating that period. I always wanted to make a film in a village with rustic spaces, especially after seeing Au hasard Balthazar and Los olvidados”."

"Promptly banned from export, one of Mehrjui’s French friends smuggled a print out to the Venice Film Festival, where it was shown without subtitles and became one of the first films of the Iranian cinema given international appraisal. Poignantly wrapped in layers of religion and leftist politics (two major forces of the 1979 revolution), The Cow came under the spotlight more than a decade later, when Ayatollah Khomeini identified it as an example of good cinema, in opposition to the many ‘corrupting films’ from the Pahlavi era." (Ehsan Khoshbakht)

AA: A tale of a man so devoted to his cow, essential for the entire village, that when the cow dies, nobody dares to tell him the truth, but he guesses it anyway, and turns (mentally) into the cow himself. A tale of a society in a state of madness. A tale of backwardness and dishonesty so deep that it is hard to face. A tale of the vicious circle of lying: one lie begets another, and lying keeps getting worse. There is an important parallel motif of harassing and bullying village fools. There are three thieves, the Boulouris, constantly looking for a chance to strike at night and steal livestock.

A simple and realistic approach to a weird tale. The milieux and the weathered faces look true. There are ellipses in the narrative.

The music is interesting and original, performed on native instruments apparently.

The cinematography is stark.

The DCP is bright and clean. There was a digital freeze of some three minutes in the middle.