Petite Simone / [Little Simone] (2014 preservation EYE / Haghefilm)

Julien Clément? (FR 1918), cast: Julien Clément (Jean Balincourt), Simone Genevois (Simone), ? (Suzanna), ? (Yvonne Fougères), prod: Jycé?, dist: Ciné-Location Éclipse?, 35 mm, 772 m, 37′ (18 fps), col. (tinted, Desmet process); titles: NLD., source: EYE Filmmuseum, Amsterdam (Van Rossum Collection), Preserved from nitrate in 2014 at Haghefilm.
    Le Giornate del Cinema Muto, Pordenone: Grande Guerra 100.
    Grand piano: Neil Brand.
    Teatro Verdi, e-subtitles in English and Italian, 4 Oct 2017

Jay Weissberg (GCM 2017): "Petite Simone could be part of the Desmet “For a Better Vision” programme just as easily as “The Effects of War,” since it’s the story of a soldier who returns home after being blinded in battle. In his case, the cause was a bomb, but for many others, it was gas that left them either temporarily or permanently blinded. The problem was already serious enough in 1915 for special hospitals to be set up in London and Florence, among other places; that same year in France, André Dreux published Nos soldats aveugles, a treatise on the physical and psychological treatment of blinded soldiers. Representations of blind soldiers became ubiquitous throughout the period, even before John Singer Sargent’s 1919 masterpiece Gassed; less difficult to digest than images of mutilated bodies yet still potent in their ability to generate compassion, they also became ripe with metaphor, conveying the notion of young men being blindly led to the slaughter."

"In the film, shot in Nice, wealthy Jean Balincourt (Julien Clément) is engaged to Yvonne Fougères, though judging by the fright she takes when looking out on a promontory over the Mediterranean, it’s clear she has a weak character. Just before Jean joins his regiment, Suzanna, a young widow, and her five-year-old daughter Simone (Simone Genevois, overly precious for modern viewers) arrive at his father’s villa with a letter of introduction and a request for employment. She’s hired as a housekeeper and Jean goes off to war, but returns home blind. Yvonne’s father writes a letter saying it’s best the couple not marry, whereupon a despairing Jean heads to the cliffs to kill himself (statistics for soldier suicides are impossible to accurately compile, but the numbers had to have been legion). Little Simone intervenes, and Suzanna’s adoration ensures that Jean will find love, notwithstanding his handicap."

"In the 1 July 1918 issue of Le Film, the distribution company Ciné-Location Éclipse placed a full-page advertisement announcing the first film of Simone Genevois (1912-1995). In truth she’d been acting on screen since at least the year before, but it’s likely Éclipse was heralding a series with “la petite,” of which Petite Simone is probably the first, followed by La Tisane, released at the end of July, and Le Rêve de Simone, in cinemas in early September. These latter two titles were produced by Jycé, a company we know nothing about, but Julien Clément is said to have directed and performed in La Tisane, which suggests he may also have acted in both capacities here. Aside from film work and an association with the Odéon theatre in Paris, Clément was the author in 1916 of a 32-page booklet, Poèmes de Guerre, consisting of verses he wrote and read to hospitalized soldiers." Jay Weissberg

AA: So comprehensively discussed by Jay Weissberg above that there is little to add. The presence of the little child (Simone Genevois) brings joy to the family after Jean (Julien Clément) has been blinded on the battlefield. In fact Simone becomes the center of attention with her adventures with an escaped rabbit. Simone also becomes the walking companion of the depressed Jean, and (like the little son in The Crowd) she draws the desperate man from the point of suicide. "Life has no meaning for me anymore". "In the dark night the child was the sunshine". This is the earliest film I have seen with Simone Genevois whom I know from some of the greatest French classics such as La Maison de mystère and Napoléon vu par Abel Gance, and most of all from her leading role in La merveilleuse vie de Jeanne d'Arc, fille de Lorraine, shot simultaneously with Carl Th. Dreyer's movie, in a completely different approach. Good visual quality in a tinted and toned print.

Rééducation des mutilés: aux champs / [Rehabilitation of Invalids: at Farms]

Image not from the movie. Exposition 14-18 » La rééducation des mutilés. 1914/1918 Médecine au champ d'honneur - Université de Montpellier. Le mutilé était laissé libre de choisir la prothèse qu'il désirait en tenant compte toutefois des conseils du chef du centre appareillage.

(FR 1917-18), photog: Louis Chaix, Alphonse Gibory, prod: Service Cinématographique de l’Armée (SCA); Service Photographique et Cinématographique de l’Armée (SPCA), 35 mm, 294 m, 18’21” (14 fps); titles: FRA, source: Établissement de Communication et de Production Audiovisuelle de la Défense (ECPAD), Paris.
    Le Giornate del Cinema Muto, Pordenone: Grande Guerra 100.
    Grand piano: Neil Brand.
    Teatro Verdi, e-subtitles in English and Italian, 4 Oct 2017.

Jay Weissberg (GCM 2017): "There are many films from World War I showing former combatants with severe war injuries being fitted with prosthetic devices and trained for occupations that will make them as independent as possible. None of this footage is easy to watch. I’ve often wondered if audiences of the time were so used to seeing men with amputations in their daily lives that the elements that disturb us today were less distressing then. Some of these films were screened in regular cinemas, such as Rééducation des mutilés de guerre belges in May 1917, praised by Hebdo-Film for showing rehabilitation efforts by the Belgian government for men who had “gloriously lost” their limbs during the fighting. The feature following this sobering actuality was Youth’s Endearing Charms, starring Mary Miles Minter; check your irony at the door."

"The number of French soldiers with amputated limbs due to war injuries is impossible to calculate, with figures ranging from 70,000 to one million. They formed such a significant segment of former fighters that at least as early as 1916, newspapers and magazines appeared geared to these men and their concerns: Journal des Mutilés, Réformés et Blessés de la Guerre (1916-1944; with various title changes, including Blessés to Victimes); Le Mutilé de l’Algérie (1916-1938); Le Mutilé de la Vienne (1920-1922); La France Mutilée (1920-26); etc. Articles were filled with policy questions, health issues, discussions of prosthetics, even book reviews, with much space devoted to re-training. In the last year of the war, it was estimated that 60% of the wounded were from the agricultural sector (Journal des Mutilés, Réformés et Victimes de la Guerre, 9 February 1918), which put an enormous strain on the nation’s already decimated food resources. Fitting these ex-soldiers with artificial limbs and teaching them how to cultivate the land again was therefore of vital interest to the government."

"Rééducation des mutilés: aux champs shows men being given new prosthetics and engaging in farm activities (as well as apiculture) in the area around Lyon. Worth noting is the presence of a field worker and his embroiderer wife, clearly chosen to convey the idea of a happy and productive family life notwithstanding amputated limbs (the couple appear in other compilations). Filmed by Louis Chaix (later a frequent collaborator of Jacques de Baroncelli) and Alphonse Gibory (who worked on La Femme française pendant la guerre), the footage was created to encourage wounded farmers and their families that life could be “normal,” and discourage them from abandoning agriculture precisely when it was most needed. An extraordinary article in the Journal des Mutilés, Réformés et Victimes de la Guerre (28 September 1918) by R. Freytag, director of the journal Ciné-Commercial, details his frustration that his lobbying for the use of film to reassure and educate wounded farmers had yet to be acted upon. This idea was reinforced two months later in Le Film (19 November 1918): “viewing such films would do much towards returning to the fields many of our glorious wounded comrades.”" Jay Weissberg

AA: Non-fiction. While women joined the workforce in high spirits, men mutilated on the battleground were equipped with prosthetic limbs in order to continue their work. This film documents in detail how to use the saw and the rake, how to make hay, harness a horse, carry water, and give water to a bull when you have lost your limbs. And even more elementally, how to eat, how to drink. The wife helps to shave. But even harvesters can be operated with prosthetic limbs, and fields plown with bulls; also beekeeping is possible. A good visual quality in the print.

[Frauenarbeit im ersten Weltkrieg] / [Women's Work in the First World War]

Image not from the movie. Women producing soap (1917). Photo: Süddeutsche Zeitung.

[Il lavoro femminile durante la prima guerra mondiale], ? (DE 1917), photog: ?, prod: ?. DCP, 15′; no intertitles, source: Landesfilmsammlung Baden-Württemberg.
    Le Giornate del Cinema Muto, Pordenone: Grande Guerra 100.
    Grand piano: Neil Brand.
    Teatro Verdi, no intertitles, 4 Oct 2017

Jay Weissberg (GCM 2017): "There’s a surprising degree of visual whimsy in the footage retrospectively titled Frauenarbeit im Ersten Weltkrieg, far more than in La Femme française pendant la guerre. The opening shot plays like comedy, as three women carrying ladders walk towards the camera, their gait more reminiscent of slapstick than propaganda. Their uniforms identify them as employees of the gas company, and they’re cleaning and servicing lamp posts. Many of the women in this strictly urban compilation film have a delightfully self-conscious manner as they set about their tasks before the camera, whether washing down train cars or cleaning windows. Also seen are women train engineers, telegram messengers, and, unusually, women shoveling coal. The range of employment is heterogenous and the tone upbeat."

"In truth the presence of women in the German workforce was less stable than in France or, especially, Great Britain. Employment opportunities expanded in areas where the war effort demanded extra bodies, and decreased in sectors where women had traditionally found work, such as textile factories. Although farms were largely now worked by women throughout the year, rotating groups of soldiers were granted leave during harvest time, and the government encouraged the use of prisoners of war and foreign nationals on occupied territory over female laborers. Things changed somewhat in January 1917, when the Prussian Ministry of War appointed Marie-Elisabeth Lüders as the head of the newly instituted Frauenarbeitszentrale (Women’s Central Work Office), tasked with the mission of increasing the number of women in the workforce, especially in industry. By 1918, 600,000 women were working in munitions, and the total number of women employed by mid-sized to large factories increased by over 700,000 between 1913 and the Armistice. Nursing, traditionally thought of as a female occupation, also expanded, with approximately 1.1 million nurses registered by the war’s end. Layoffs when peace was declared were swift, and the role of women in the upheavals during the German Revolution of 1918-19 can be unquestionably linked to the haphazard taste of independence of the war years, combined with the significant privations they suffered." Jay Weissberg

AA: Non-fiction. There is little to add to Jay Weissberg's remarks above. The great spirit of the women is a notable feature. Visually, there is a special atmosphere as the Gasgesellschaft women seem to be working in a thick fog.

Comment j'ai mangé du pain K.K. / [How I Ate K.K. Bread] (2014 Gaumont digital transfer in 2K)

Comment j'ai mangé du pain K.K. (FR 1915). Photo: Gaumont Pathé Archives.

?, (FR 1915), cast: Marie Dorly, Édouard Grisollet, prod: Gaumont, DCP, 15’20”; titles: FRA, source: Gaumont Pathé Archives, Saint-Ouen, Paris.
    Le Giornate del Cinema Muto, Pordenone: Grande Guerra 100.
    Grand piano: Neil Brand.
    Teatro Verdi, e-subtitles in English and Italian, 4 Oct 2017

Pierre Philippe (GCM 2017): "It’s considered a basic truth that the seismic events of August 1914 were a sort of death blow for French film production. However, the facts are more nuanced. While it is true that the departure for the front of studio staff, filmmakers, technicians, and actors put a stop to the copious ongoing production of films for several weeks, the needs of the public and the desire to affirm the nation’s vitality and disseminate government propaganda very soon gave renewed life to popular spectacle, which was, and remains, the cinema."

"The images of this patriotic cinema sought to be reassuring and designed for everyone. The reality of the War was generally treated as a backdrop for updating some tried and true recipes that had already proven successful. The romances of yesteryear remained in the forefront, even if they now blossomed between gravely injured men and winsome nurses."

"Most wartime productions consisted of dramas highlighting the solidarity between various social classes equally afflicted by the harsh realities of the period, but hard times only put a slight dent in the production of farces that the public still clamoured for. Admittedly, Jean Durand’s famous comedy company at Gaumont, “Les Pouics”, found themselves enlisted, but movie theatres continued to require a steady supply of such entertainment."

"Comment j’ai mangé du pain K.K. is an archetypal example of anti-German propaganda, and stands on its own as pure comedy. Opening his morning newspaper, a middle-class Parisian reads the recipe for K.K. bread, the German Kartoffelkriegsbrot made from potato flour, whose sound and substance – when pronounced, K.K. is the equivalent of “caca,” or “poop” – would have horrified any self-respecting Frenchman. Convinced of its nutritional values, the man asks his baker to make him a loaf. Though sceptical, the artisan complies and delivers the bread, whereupon our bold gourmet is struck down by atrocious stomach pains. To console him, the baker brings him a loaf of good French bread that very evening."

"Far more effectively than other ostensibly serious titles, a film such as this functions as an appealing record, and is often more illuminating than pure documentary actualities, which in any event were generally pieced together." Pierre Philippe

AA: Comedy, war propaganda of the nicest kind: make them laugh. German wartime bread such as "Kriegs-Kartoffel-Brot": quelle horreur.

Sammelt Knochen! / [Collect Bones!]

Sammelt Knochen! (DE 1918). Photo: Lobster Films, Paris.

[Raccogliete le ossa!], ? (DE 1918), prod: Bild- und Filmamt (BUFA), Berlin, DCP, 405 m, 12′ (16 fps), tinted; titles: GER., subt. FRA, source: Lobster Films, Paris.
    Le Giornate del Cinema Muto, Pordenone: Grande Guerra 100.
    Grand piano: Neil Brand.
    Teatro Verdi, e-subtitles in English and Italian, 4 Oct 2017.

Jay Weissberg (GCM 2017): "Convincing the German and Austrian public that processed bone scraps were a palatable source of margarine must have been an uphill battle, but one that the German Supreme Army Command’s cinema propaganda wing, the Bild- und Filmamt, undertook with humor and verve. No doubt it was the only way. Sammelt Knochen!, roughly translated as “Collect Bones!,” opens with a fictional scenario in a well-to-do home. The maid is about to throw out the family’s leftover bones from their substantial meal (they truly must have been wealthy to afford such a repast in 1918), but the cook stops her and explains that the scraps must be saved for the bone collector. A young man arrives in the kitchen, picks up the offerings, and then the documentary element begins, as we’re told about all the wonderful things ROHAG – Chemische Rohproduktion-HandelsgmbH – can do with the bones."

"The number of by-products are both impressive and stomach-churning. After being sorted and ground down into either bone meal or fat, the substances are turned into everything from glycerin for softening feminine hands to animal feed, machine grease, candles and, most disturbingly, margarine. Over 11,000 substitute foodstuffs were approved in the war years, leading English-born Evelyn, Princess Blücher, to write in her 1916 Berlin diary, “I don’t believe that Germany will ever be starved out, but she will be poisoned out first with these substitutes!”"

"The princess was optimistic – food riots had already begun in the autumn of 1915, and rationing had become a deeply unsatisfying and poorly organized part of life for all but the most privileged. Agricultural production had fallen precipitously with so many men at the front, and even the labor of hundreds of thousands of prisoners of war couldn’t ensure that the land yielded sufficient amounts. It’s estimated that 763,000 people died in Germany during the War from malnutrition and its effects, which puts the bone-collecting idea into proper perspective. The government-run operation was instituted in spring 1917 and was also in place in Austria-Hungary by that summer, as testified by a poster in the Wienbibliothek. Though the practice ended when the guns went quiet, collecting bones to be recycled into various by-products returned in Germany during World War II."

"The print was discovered in 2002 in an old cinema in Buffalo, New York, whose owner during the 1910s was of German origin. He also owned a mining plant in town, whose workers were largely German nationals; unfortunately we don’t know how or when he obtained the film." Jay Weissberg

AA: Non-fiction. An amazing and revealing wartime public information bulletin on the dozens of uses of bones. Inventively made with animation inserts.

Luca Comerio 3 - Prog. 1

Sixième bataille de l'Isonzo (IT 1916), D: Luca Comerio. Photo: Archives françaises du film du CNC, Bois d’Arcy.

Le Giornate del Cinema Muto, Pordenone.
    Grand piano: Mauro Colombis.
    Teatro Verdi, e-subtitles in English and Italian, 3 Oct 2017.

Sergio M. Grmek Germani (GCM 2017):
Never Praise the Day before Night: Wars and the Post-War Period in the Work of Luca Comerio

"In the 1940 LUCE newsreel item about the death of Luca Comerio, shown at the Giornate last year in the second part of our three-year programme devoted to the film-maker, the pompous but never sincerely moved voice of the commentator describes him as a “humble but courageous cameraman” – an apparent tribute which nevertheless displays all the belittling to which Comerio has been subjected. He was certainly a great cameraman (and before that a photographer of still pictures which already suggested movement), but he was also and always a film-maker, a total director. It was not until Mario Bava (a comparison by no means unjustified if we consider Bava’s documentary work) that there appeared in Italian cinema a similar ability to translate the role of a cameraman into that of a director, even before he officially declared himself to be one."

"Yet those four words uttered by the LUCE newsreel’s voiceover commentary reflect many other misconceptions about Comerio. They fix him in the universe (which is by contrast a fluid one) of the documentary, of films of the real, whereas a present-day viewing of his fictional work – not only comic – reveals a strong mise-en-scène, able to augment documentaries with reconstructed scenes. These add the truth of fiction to the (always suspect) truth of documented reality, and at the same time endow his fiction films with a transparency, with their flagrant presences, which make them among the most original and free in Italian silent cinema."

"In those words, “humble but courageous”, also lurks a double falsehood. Comerio was certainly capable of real modesty (it is no coincidence that he was not celebrated as a film-maker either by the critics or officialdom), but certainly not in the sense, as the words would imply, that he was at the service of the powers-that-be (as a royal photographer, or a sole chronicler of colonial wars and the Great War…), and so he was called “courageous” not because of any real risks entailed by his work shooting with a camera, but in the sense of a campaign medal awarded to a soldier who must accept his destiny even though he has no love for war or death."

"Cinema teaches us, however, that from every falsehood the truth will out. This is shown in a seminal book by Milanese journalist Paolo Valera (1850-1926) on the Milan uprising put down in 1898 by General Bava-Beccaris, who ordered troops to fire on civilians, for which he was disgracefully rewarded by the King of Italy, provoking oaths of anarchist vendetta. For Comerio – then a photographer, not yet a film-maker – this revolt was his first “set”. It was an episode fiercely denounced at the time by Valera, along with Anna Kulischov and other socialists and anarchists (which rightly caused leading Italian Communist Amadeo Bordiga to say that before fascism Francesco Crispi and Bava-Beccaris had not been any less brutal), and also later in the two editions of Valera’s book (La sanguinosa settimana del Maggio ’98 [The Bloody Week of May ’98], 1907, and Le terribili giornate del maggio ’98 [The Terrible Days of May ’98], 1913). No film historian who has written about Comerio has mentioned this book, and its revealing chapter “The Photographer of the Barricades”, in which an intransigent Valera reproached Comerio for placing himself at the service of the authorities, but also pointed out that, talking about how he took his pictures of civil war, risking his own personal safety, Comerio admitted quite frankly: “I was always cap-in-hand, and the only language I used was that of the servant, even when I had Bava-Beccaris’s safe-conduct pass in my pocket.” The same was true of his documenting of the colonial wars in Africa and the war in Europe that became the First World War. Comerio could accept a safe-conduct pass from Luigi Cadorna [Chief of Staff of the Italian Army] or any other commander, but he knew he also had to be a servant in a deeper sense – seeking glimmers of truth in the scenes he had to film."

"The aim of the third part of our tribute is to complete the presentation of this great director. In the first year we concentrated on some of his masterful footage from the First World War. In the second we attempted to reconstruct his artistic development by emphasizing the presence of various “pre-wars” presaging the full-scale conflict to come. This year, besides some necessary additions of footage of the Italo-Turkish War (1912) and the First World War, we focus on the post-war period, a particularly difficult time for Comerio, the inter-war years between the end of the First World War and the beginning of the Second, which he did not live to see. While his film chronicles of D’Annunzio’s exploits in Fiume are currently not available for projection, there is abundant, as well as original, evidence of the attention he devoted to the rise of Fascism, and its exploitation of the myth of the fighting man and the rhetoric of death, stemming from the Great War."

"In this year’s two-part programme, however, our aim is to confirm Comerio’s merits as a total film-maker, so each programme opens with a visually inventive film outside the realm of political history. Il baco da seta (The Silkworm; 1909), anticipates the subject matter of Roberto Omegna, and Jean Painlevé in France, while Il carnevale di Nizza (1913) is a prelude to the great Jean Vigo’s À propos de Nice (1930). Each programme concludes with a comic film from 1914, just before Italy entered the First World War, featuring characters created by Edoardo Ferravilla (1846-1915), a widely loved although regional comic actor and playwright of Milanese dialect theatre. The remarkable thing about these comedy films, precious records of one of the greatest theatres Italy has ever produced, is that they are not confined to “filmed theatre”, but liberally underscore Comerio’s rapport with history and the characters of politics. In La class di asen a portrait of the King of Italy dominating the background acts as an extension within the scene of a figure that features in his other films. In Tecoppa & C. the parody of spiritualism becomes a mocking summoning back to life of all the dead in the historical events characterized in the war footage shot by Comerio."

"Comerio’s films are striking in their profound piety; be they records of the 1909 Messina earthquake (shown last year) or the battlefields of war, their dead – even when the propagandists who commissioned them wished to play down the number of “our” dead or celebrate the number of enemy casualties – are for Comerio above all ordinary victims of tragic events. It was hardly coincidental that in 1962 when Cecilia Mangini, Lino Del Fra, and Lino Miccichè made All’armi siam fascisti! they found in Comerio’s films the most hard-eyed representation of Italian colonialism: the tracking shot of hanged Libyans they edited into their picture goes beyond any servile role of a film-maker towards the commissioners of a film – it serves only the freedom of the gaze, and thus becomes a true document, one of the most revealing in what was a radically anti-Fascist film."

"To this day, among the repertoire of sequences documenting the First World War, some of Comerio’s footage retains a supreme iconic force. This year we are finally able to screen La sixième bataille de l’Isonzo, a film we wanted to show two years ago, but which was wrongly labelled in the archives as Les Annales de la guerre no. 8 and has now been correctly identified. This film about the capture of Gorizia contains some images which would encapsulate any war, such as soldiers entering a town and coming across a funeral procession, with an intersection of movement that makes the sequence a masterpiece, confirming what critic Roberto Turigliatto said last year when he saw Comerio’s film on the Messina earthquake: “here every shot becomes a masterpiece”. This comment astutely expresses the idea of how in Comerio’s work, photography is always the source of mise-en-scène, a concentration of thought, image, and feeling that is among the highest in cinema."

"Last year we borrowed the title of one of Comerio’s films, Dalla pietà all’amore/Compassion and Love, to describe the entire programme. It indicates movement, as do some of his other titles: Dal Polo all’Equatore (rediscovered and remade by Yervant Gianikian and Angela Ricci Lucchi in 1987) and Dal Grappa al mare, whose digital restoration by Rome’s Cineteca Nazionale has reinstated its proper title (it had been mistakenly catalogued as Cimiteri degli eroi). From some of these examples it is clear that work on Comerio’s cinema is still in its early stages, even though when the Cineteca Italiana was founded in Milan a discovery made by Luigi Comencini revealed the splendour of a film we screened last year, L’avventura galante di un provinciale (1908), and now the same archive has found and is restoring Piero Mazzarella’s collection of films featuring Edoardo Ferravilla. The Cineteca Italiana also holds the great comedy film that we presented last year under its German title, Man soll den Tag nicht vor Abend loben. We have now identified it under its original 1912 Italian title, which we are using as the title of this year’s programme, because it seems to sum up the uncertainty with which historical events can presage new wars: Non si deve mai lodare il giorno prima della notte / Never Praise the Day before Night."

"We are particularly happy that our three Comerio programmes have contained contributions and restorations from all of Italy’s FIAF archives: Rome, Milan, Bologna (with its precious work on Kinemacolor), Gemona, and Turin (source of the reconstruction of Captain F.E. Kleinschmidt’s Arctic Hunt – which Comerio did not direct, but acquired and edited footage from it into his Dal Polo all’Equatore), as well as the archives of LUCE, the AIRSC, the Associazione Hommelette, and the Fondazione dei Caduti di Rovereto. The scope of contributions to our programmes has been further broadened by items found in foreign archives and collections – evidence of how Comerio stood as one of Italian cinema’s greatest international representatives, effectively exploding the nationalistic myths which led Italy into the First World War."

"Several excellent studies on Comerio exist, notably Aldo Bernardini’s filmographies; the pioneering Luca Comerio fotografo e cineasta, published by Electa in 1979; Moltiplicare l’istante, published by Il Castoro in 2007; Luca Comerio. Milanese. Fotografo, pioniere e padre del cinema italiano, the homage by Paolo Pillitteri and Davide Mengacci published by Spirali in 2011; and the recent researches by Maria Assunta Pimpinelli, all of which open Comerio’s universe to numerous philological and aesthetic questions, to which we have attempted to make a contribution in this three-year review, pursuing some insights which bear further examination."

"This third part of our journey (which we could call “From Comerio to Comerio”, with the same planetary perspective as his Dal Polo all’Equatore [From the Pole to the Equator]) also encounters what we might call the most “losing” moment of Comerio’s film career: when the Fascist regime consolidated its grip on power by centralizing the records of various military archives and documentary production in LUCE, it mistreated Comerio, rejecting his attempts to place himself “at its service”. Out of this emerged feature-length pieces such as Dal Grappa al mare, containing beautiful images easily attributable to this supreme film-maker (e.g., the country cemetery with two old women, one kneeling, the other approaching the wooden crosses, while a disturbing little girl passes across the background, obviously discovering here the rituals of death), but submerged in a construction that deprived Comerio of his own signature intertitles, substituting instead rhetorical lines from Carducci on Trieste, D’Annunzio on Fiume, and Giuseppe Ellero on Gorizia, Caporetto, and Udine, “the capital of the war”. In short, we are closer here to  LUCE’s pompous Gloria by Omegna, than the collective Gloria. Apoteosi del soldato ignoto, an “apotheosis of the unknown soldier” in which the ferocity of death is removed from propaganda, or the pioneer female director Elvira Giallanella’s fable Umanità (1920) and the writer Chino Ermacora’s “piccola patria” (“little country”). In 1940, the year of Comerio’s death, another great director, Ferdinando Maria Poggioli, made a new version of Addio giovinezza! (whose title can also be read as Addio, “Giovinezza” – Farewell, “Youth”), a reference to the Italian Fascist national hymn, which was also the title of a fine film Comerio made in 1922, and included in this programme, about a rally with Mussolini in Milan. Though one of his most “servile” films, its gaze is free; perhaps indeed it is the only film in which Mussolini, the man who makes history, even if with the determination to force himself upon others, appears to us a perplexed and mysterious enigma." Sergio M. Grmek Germani

IL BACO DA SETA (Der Seidenwurm) / [The Silk Worm] (IT 1909), 35 mm, 151 m, 8′ (16 fps); titles: GER, source: BFI National Archive, London.
    AA: A sober nature documentary, a scientific record on the silk worm. Bad visual quality in high contrast.

LA GUERRA ITALO-TURCA / [The Italian-Turkish War] (IT 1912) Fragment of an episode from the series, 35 mm, 61 m, 3′ (16 fps); titles: ITA, source: Fondazione CSC – Cineteca Nazionale, Roma.
    AA: Non-fiction. Epic footage of big guns and cavalry charges.

La gloriosa battaglia del 12 marzo (IT 1912), Luca Comerio. Photo: Fondazione CSC – Cineteca Nazionale, Roma.

LA GLORIOSA BATTAGLIA DEL 12 MARZO: A BENGASI NELL’OASI DELLE DUE PALME / [The Glorious Battle of March the 12th: Benghazi in the Oasis of Two Palms] (IT 1912), followed by a fragment [Costruzione delle trincee / The Construction of Trenches] (IT 1912), DCP (restored from 35 mm), 11′; titles: ITA, source: Fondazione CSC – Cineteca Nazionale, Roma.
    AA: Non-fiction shot in the Benghazi Redoubt with a palm as a look-out point. Good visual quality with impressive long shots, partly damaged. The fragment Costruzione delle trincee: 2017 restoration. Trenches levelled to the ground, preparation of mines, views from the trenches to the shores of Tripoli, with Ain-Zara minaret, a mediocre visual quality.

THE VICTORIOUS BATTLE FOR THE CONQUEST OF MERGHEB, AFRICA (IT 1912), DCP (from 16 mm), 4′; titles: ENG, source: La Cineteca del Friuli, Gemona.
    AA: The Red Cross tends to the wounded. The return of the cavalry to the conquered position. A zeppelin and a pile of corpses. A cavalry charge, the fleeing enemy, the stronghold of Mergheb, Eritrian ascars. Visual quality: from 16 mm.

LA VITA DEI NOSTRI: ASCARI ERITREI IN LIBIA (IT 1912), DCP (restored from 35 mm, Kinemacolor), 9′; titles: ITA, source: Cineteca di Bologna.
    AA: Restored in 2017 in 4K in Kinecolor. Men at work, walls are erected, a mobile camera, soldiers at sport exercises. Visual quality weak but intriguing.

Plotoni nuotatori della 3ª divisione cavalleria comandata da S.A.R. il conte di Torino (IT 1912), Luca Comerio. Photo: Fondazione Cineteca di Bologna.

Plotoni nuotatori della 3ª divisione cavalleria comandata da S.A.R. il conte di Torino (IT 1912), Luca Comerio. Photo: Fondazione Cineteca di Bologna.

PLOTONI NUOTATORI DELLA 3ª DIVISIONE CAVALLERIA COMANDATA DA S.A.R. IL CONTE DI TORINO (IT 1912), DCP (restored from 35 mm, Kinemacolor), 9′; titles: ITA, source: Cineteca di Bologna.
    AA: Restored in 2016 in 4K in Kinemacolor. Horses haul pontoons.

Sixième bataille de l'Isonzo (IT 1916), Luca Comerio. Photo: Archives françaises du film du CNC, Bois d’Arcy.

Sixième bataille de l'Isonzo (IT 1916), Luca Comerio. Photo: Archives françaises du film du CNC, Bois d’Arcy.

Sixième bataille de l'Isonzo (IT 1916), Luca Comerio. Photo: Archives françaises du film du CNC, Bois d’Arcy.

SIXIÈME BATAILLE DE L’ISONZO (IT 1916), French version of La battaglia di Gorizia (IT 1916), 35 mm, 170 m, 9′ (18 fps); titles: FRA, source: Archives françaises du film du CNC, Bois d’Arcy.
    AA: Title on screen: La Guerre de la montagne. Establishing shots on mountain bridges and ruins after battles. Shells are inserted, shooting angles set to the infernal valley. A response to the enemy artillery. The images are often much less informative than the intertitles. A pan on the Isonzo. The troops attack Gorizia. City war. The cavalry enters the city. The count of Turin guards the city. Bread and blankets to the prisoners. Good visual quality.

Resistere! (IT 1918), Luca Comerio. Photo: Cineteca Italiana, Milano.

RESISTERE! (IT 1918), DCP, 9′; titles: ITA, source: Cineteca Italiana, Milano.
    AA: The cavalry enters the city. A tank rolls over trenches. A flag is waving. A propaganda montage. Superimposed visions. Marching troops. Defending the borders God gave us. Enlist! Resist! Air force. Eugenio Chiesa. A film de montage. A huge cannon. A cavalry charge. A mountain range. Impressive footage on war at sea. Impressive tinting and toning.

"Giovinezza, giovinezza, primavera di bellezza!" L'adunata dei fascisti Lombardi a Milano (marzo 1922) (IT 1922), Luca Comerio. In the center: Benito Mussolini. Photo: Cineteca Italiana, Milano.

“GIOVINEZZA, GIOVINEZZA, PRIMAVERA DI BELLEZZA!” L’ADUNATA DEI FASCISTI LOMBARDI A MILANO (MARZO 1922) / ["Youth, Youth, Springtime of Beauty!" The Assembly of Lombardian Fascists in Milano (March 1922)] (IT 1922), DCP, 13′; titles: ITA, source: Cineteca Italiana, Milano.
    AA: Fascinating documentary footage on Benito Mussolini in the year 1922 when he became Prime Minister of Italy. The march of the black shirts. A noi! Youth, youth, springtime of beauty! A Fascist parade movie. Even children make Fascist greetings. Fascio Milanese. Mussolini gives a speech from a balcony. A big parade. The visual quality is good in the beginning, often not so good.

VISITA DI S.M. IL RE VITTORIO EMANUELE III ALLO STABILIMENTO PIRELLI ALLA BICOCCA. 20 GIUGNO 1927 (IT 1927), DCP, 17′; titles: ITA, source: Cineteca Italiana, Milano.
    AA: The King of Italy visits the Pirelli factory at Bicocca. A high angle shot of the magnificent industrial area. The Pirellis welcome the King who arrives by car. The purification of rubber. The production of tyres, electric power cord and telephone wires. Huge cable reels. Electricity tests. Electronic conductiors. Submarine cables. The Bicocca Castle. Medals of merit to 12 workers. A huge crowd.

La class di Asen (IT 1914), Luca Comerio. Photo: Cineteca Italiana, Milano.

LA CLASS DI ASEN (IT 1914), DCP (restored from 35 mm), 16′; titles: ITA. source: Cineteca Italiana, Milano.
    AA: Fiction, poem intertitles in dialect, a school farce that takes place during the final exams. A bit wearisome.

Pamir, krisha mira / Pamir, Roof of the World

Pamir, krisha mira (SU 1927), D: Vladimir Yerofeyev. Photo: RGAKFD, Krasnogorsk.

Памир, крыша мира / [Pamir, il tetto del mondo]. SU 1927, dir, ed: Vladimir Yerofeyev, photog: Vasilii Beliayev, prod: Sovkino. DCP (from 35 mm, 2008 m), 71′; titles: RUS. Source: RGAKFD, Krasnogorsk.
    Le Giornate del Cinema Muto, Pordenone.
    Grand piano and violin: Günter Buchwald.
    Teatro Verdi, e-subtitles in English and Italian, 3 Oct 2017.

Oksana Sarkisova (GCM 2017): "Film-maker Vladimir Yerofeyev (1898-1940) was a pioneer of expedition cinema in the Soviet Union, advocating for increased attention and investment in edifying non-fiction films made to win the interest of broad audiences. Pamir. Roof of the World, 1927, is his second feature film, and the first resulting from an expedition (his debut that same year, Za poliarnym krugom [Beyond the Arctic Circle] was a co-edited compilation film). In summer 1927, a trek to the mountainous Pamir region, known as the “Roof of the World”, in present-day Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan, was organized by the Sovkino studio in co-operation with the Geological Committee. Yerofeyev worked with prominent geologist Dmitrii Nalivkin and ethnographer Mikhail Andreyev; both scholars had extensively researched the area and contributed to the planning for the crew’s journey."

"The film opens with an animated map presenting the itinerary. Starting off in Moscow, the symbolic center of the new empire, it leads through Samara and Orenburg to Tashkent, Osh, and further on to the Pamir Mountains of Central Asia. Following a tracking shot from the moving train, the crew is shown arriving in Osh, in present-day Kyrgyzstan, the expedition’s base, where where the camera records fragments of town life: a picturesque bazaar, veiled women in the streets, and the expedition’s crew, horses, and camels, along with their heavy loads. After leaving Osh, the crew crosses the Taldyk Pass, and makes its first stop in the Alay Valley. Subsequent segments feature different elements of the trek, including crossing mountain rivers, traversing snowy passes, and descending into valleys in bloom, emphasizing the expedition’s progress. In the Alay Valley the camera records the practices of the Kyrgyz nomads – constructing a tent, keeping goats, sheep, and horses, making dairy products, and working a traditional one-shuttle weaver’s loom. The community is presented as traditional and self-sufficient. The film avoids picturing the Kyrgyz nomads as “dependent” or “primitive”, but shows them as masters of their space and a community connected to the outside world."

"Further on towards the border with India, the crew and the audience observe spectacular mountain panoramas. Leaving the plateau, the group enters a Tajik village at the foot of the Pamirs. Compressing different elements of community life into a single episode, the film introduces summer herding practices, when the women take the cattle up to summer pastures while the men stay behind to look after the household. Yerofeyev also zooms in on religious customs: the Tajiks of Western Pamir belong to the Ismailian sect and worship a “living god”, the Aga Khan, whom we see in a photo wearing a fancy European-style suit. The film’s matter-of-fact attitude to presenting religious beliefs stands in contrast to the mainstream Soviet pattern of straightforward derogatory representations of religion. The scenes of religious practices are tendentiously followed by images of unconscious opium-smokers. The narrative contrasts the “prejudices” with the “new shoots” of the time – pioneers marching with a drum, women without veils, a new school where a teacher holds a lesson, and indeed a low-angle shot of a bust of Lenin. Overcoming the snowy paths by driving their horses to the tune of a local guide’s flute, the crew finally enters Dushanbe, the capital of Soviet Tajikistan, after having covered 2,000 kilometres."

"The observations of city life include men in robes, donkeys on the streets, and local craftsmen in the bazaar. The crew boards the plane to return to Moscow, where the record of their journey across a rich region is pieced together. The final result demonstrates the interaction of various cultures not yet fully streamlined to the requirements of the uniformed all-Soviet world."

"Breaking the established convention of the invisibility of the traveller, Yerofeyev himself makes a cameo appearance towards the end of the film, energetically shaking hands with a local merchant. For all its brevity, the appearance of the director encapsulates the ambiguity of the relationship between the film-maker and his subjects." Oksana Sarkisova

AA: A documentary record of a stunning expedition, Pamir is also a distinguished mountain film: the Pamir mountains are among the highest in the world, to the northwest from the Himalayas, to the north from the Karakoram and Hindu Kush. The itinerary is illustrated as animation.

Via the Caspian Sea, the Aral Sea, and Tashkent we reach the ancient city of Osh in the Ferghana Valley. The expedition is big. Horses carry heavy loads. The trek proceeds higher and higher. We enter the Taldyk Pass.

We meet Kirghiz nomads. A dairy farm is the basis of their existence. Cheese is produced from sheep milk. Kumis is being produced and consumed. Fur is processed, carpets are rolled, weaving is going on. There is a mobile medical center. Trachoma and syphilis are among the diseases treated. Children's eyes are cured.

Magnificent snow-capped mountain tops are sighted. The caravan reaches the Alay valley. Kyzylart is the last stand before the route to "the top of the world". There is a sacred site above. We are near the border to Afghanistan, India (today Pakistan), and China. Pamir is "the knot of the worlds", the greatest mountain range to the north of Hindu Kush. (Hindu Kush in our times ominously known as the hideaway of the Taliban and Al Qaeda).

We observe immense glaciers and moraines. An incessant strong wind grows into a whirlwind. Over the centuries, the wind has created whimsical shapes in the rock. The caravan proceeds in the barren landscape. There are snow fields that have not melted in decades. (I wonder how it is today). We observe firns.

We reach Karakul Lake (Black Lake), 4100 meters above the sea level. We observe ancient remains. There is 1000 year old ice. (Again, I wonder how it fares today). We enter the Zor-Tash-Kul Ridge. Faces need to be covered with vaselin. Extremes of temperature are met. A Sovkino tent is being erected. There is a "film on film" element. Hazards of film-making include the fact that liquids turn to ice at night. In the thin air water boils at a lower temperature. Geological research is being conducted. Iron ore is detected. There are flowers on the Pamir. A kitchen is set up. The camp is covered with snow. The dog catches marmots. One must wear masks and glasses for protection.

There are people living on the Pamir. We visit a village (aul) and observe a yak (kutas), a source of food, with a broad chest and thick fur. The yak is also a means of transportation. A yurta is smoky, cold and cirty. There are many children in the village, few elderly. All chores are done by women. Men prefer to do nothing. Occasionally they go hunting. The muftuk rifles are antediluvian, made in China. It takes at least ten minutes to prepare the rifle for use. A mountain goat is shot. Blood is smeared on the rifle. Ancestors are honoured. The graveyard is the richest place in the village.

Murghab is the center of commerce with China. There is a Kashgarian restaurant and a health resort with boiling sulphuric springs and hot springs spas.

The caravan's journey continues towards Hindu Kush, the Indian (today Pakistanian) border, in Western Pamir. From perennial snow we come to wild rivers. Liangar is the first Tajik village. Yarn is being wound, music is being played. We come to Pyandzh (today Dusti), to ancient Tajik villages. The Tajik have cleverly cultivated every piece of land. They bring soil from the river bank and spread it over stones. There is an irrigation system. Before spring the Tajik feed on grass. Later, there is mulberry season. Dried berries are ground into flour. Women work at summer pastures up in the mountains. Butter is churned. Men stay at villages doing women's chores. Carpets (palas) are woven. Prospectors look for gold in ravines. Gold is being panned off through sieves with sheepskin. When men come together their hands never stop moving for a minute.

There is a sect worshipping Aga Khan as a living god, his representation the Ishan. There is a prayer at the holy place, Mazora.

Opium is smuggled from Afghanistan. There is an open air school. The children already know Lenin. There is a statue of Lenin.

The Panj River (here the Pyandzh River) is magnificent. Villagers navigate it with gupsare: sheepskin boats inflated with air. It is always very dangerous to cross the river. The caravan continues along the bank of the Panj River. The waterfalls are wild. There are ancient drawings on the rocks. The Slepus fortress is legendary. Footpaths are made of wicker. The mountain paths are perilous. The suspension bridges are shaky. Liangar. The harvest is already ripe. With special handcarts outsized bales are carried, to be ground with a bunch of brushwood. Hay on sleighs. Tambourines (dafi) at the harvest feast. Children are at play, a fashionable lady, a game of marmut is played, men wrestle. There is a partridge fight, a traditional game of chui, and a dance of boys to the music of traditional instruments, also a dance of horse and rider, a comical dance of an old man and a young girl (both interpreted by men). The old man is passionate, the young girl is disinterested. In the end the young girl gives in. There is even a dance of a fox and a marmot, and a hunting dance with a simulated rifle.

Getting down from the Pamir is no less difficult than climbing it. Footpaths are flooded. There is no road. Camels save the day after reloading. There is a strong current in the river. It is negotiated on a raft. Step ladders are perilous. Horses swim. In the district the scourge is the goitre, caused by the river, its water is dangerous for health. Again difficult passages are ahead: Odudi Pass is breathtaking. The landscapes are astounding. The descent is extremely steep. The expedition lands under a waterfall. The pass can only be crossed on foot. The flute is played to time the movement. The peak of the pass is 4,2 kilometers above sea level. There are huge snow plains. We see a glacier in an extreme long shot. We pass through the gorge.

We reach Dushanbe, the capital of Tajikistan, after a voyage of 2000 kilometers. Melons and grapes are ripe at the market. A horse is suffering from skin damage and vermin.

At the airport we board a Junkers air plane.

There are issues of low contrast in the DCP of this film shot in extremely demanding circumstances.

Bukhara

Bukhara (SU 1927), D: Yelizabeta Svilova. Photo: RGAKFD, Krasnogorsk.

Бухара. SU 1927. D: Yelizaveta Svilova, ed: Yelizaveta Svilova, photog: Yakov Tolchan, prod: Sovkino. DCP (from 35 mm, 325 m), 12′; titles: RUS. Source: RGAKFD, Krasnogorsk.
    Le Giornate del Cinema Muto, Pordenone.
    Grand piano: Günter Buchwald.
    Teatro Verdi, e-subtitles in English and Italian, 3 Oct 2017.

Oksana Sarkisova (GCM 2017): "Tungusi and Bukhara were made from material originally shot for Dziga Vertov’s A Sixth Part of the World (Shestaia chast mira, 1926). Vertov’s film was financed by Gostorg, the state foreign trade monopoly in the Soviet Union, which commissioned a film to promote its image and popularize its activities during the New Economic Policy (NEP) years. It also hoped to gain credibility from Vertov’s concept of capturing “life as it is” on film. The trade monopoly offered a generous budget, enough to finance ten expeditions to remote parts of the Soviet Union, and shoot approximately 26,000 metres of footage. Vertov intended to use Gostorg’s money to make a series of films that would launch a powerful new visual protocol for portraying the Soviet Union. With this aim, he engaged a large team of cameramen, including Ivan Beliakov, Samuil Benderskii, Nikolai Konstantinov, Aleksandr Lemberg, Nikolai Strukov, Yakov Tolchan, and Petr Zotov to shoot footage across the Soviet Union."

"The surplus footage that remained after the completion of A Sixth Part of the World was also used in related kulturfilms, such as Furs (Pushnina) and Flax (Len), both by Ilya Kopalin, Fishing (Rybolovstvo; possibly also known as Malorossiisk), by Mikhail Kaufman, and Gut Production (Proizvodstvo kishok), by Yelizaveta Svilova, as well as in a number of ethnographic and scenic films."

"Tungusi is a short ethnographic sketch that “zooms in” on the Evenki minority in Northeast Siberia (a region which until 1931 was referred to as “The Tungus”). The film introduces its anonymous protagonists in medium close-ups, as “types” of men, women, and children; this is followed by showing us different kinds of habitat, the construction of a tent, and cooking, hunting, and trading activities. The collective Evenki (Tungus) portrait highlights the people’s regular interaction with state traders; it includes a visit to the state co-operative and features a hunter trading furs for manufactured goods. Originally shot to emphasize the extension of the Gostorg network, the film presents the new trading “contact zone” as mutually beneficial, emphasizes regular interaction with the state traders, and foregrounds the state agency Gostorg as the agent of modernity."

"Bukhara was another film edited by Vertov’s colleague and wife Yelizaveta Svilova from surplus footage. This time she used material filmed in Uzbekistan in Central Asia by Yakov Tolchan, to construct a short scenic film which sensitively portrays this bustling ancient city, with its vivid streets, canals, mosques, cotton fields, and bazaars. In this account references to Gostorg are completely absent; the film builds on the tradition of early travelogues, combining established orientalist references with scenes of modern change."

"Both films were envisaged as part of a Soviet kino-atlas, and were released with the aim of familiarizing audiences with the ethnographic and cultural diversity of their country. While the representation of the multinational and resource-rich Soviet Union became a standard cinema trope, the concept and scale of Vertov’s grand project was harshly criticized by the Sovkino studio management. Despite the production of a number of films from the Gostorg-financed footage, Sovkino accused Vertov of inefficient planning and misuse of funds, and fired him." Oksana Sarkisova

AA: This contribution to the Soviet kino-atlas is crammed with observations. Starting from a crowd at worship by a mosque next to a minaret it shows processes of irrigation via water flagons necessary for cotton cultivation. Camels and donkeys are the vehicles of transportation for cotton sacks. We are in the legendary land of Astrakhan sheep and Karakul sheep and visit a market for Astrakhan fur coats, skins, hides, and leather. Even the recycling of sheeps' intestines is detailed. Little lambs are for sale, as well, at the Karakul bazaar. Weavers loom, silk is dyed, horses are shoed, children are at play.

Details of daily life include steaming tea, shashlik shafts, water pipes being smoked, a scalp massage at the barber's, and white yoghurt consumed as delicacy. Elements of life here may still be like they were in antiquity.

The DCP is in low contrast and heavily duped, yet providing an intriguing and rewarding experience.

Schatten / Warning Shadows

Schatten (DE 1923). D: Arthur Robison. Ruth Weyher, Gustav von Wangenheim. Photo: Cineteca Italiana, Milano.

Schatten: eine nächtliche Halluzination / Varjoja / Skuggor / Schatten: une hallucination nocturne – Le Montreur d’ombres. DE 1923. D: Arthur Robison, story, des, cost: Albin Grau, scen: Rudolf Schneider, Artur Robison, photog: Fritz Arno Wagner, cast: Fritz Kortner (the man), Ruth Weyher (the woman), Gustav von Wangenheim (the youth), Alexander Granach (ombromane / the traveling shadow player), Eugen Rex, Max Gülstorff, Ferdinand von Alten (gentlemen), Fritz Rasp, Karl Platen (servants), Lilly Harder (lady’s maid), prod: Pan-Film GmbH, Berlin, for Deutsch-Amerikanische Film-Union AG (Dafu), Berlin, filmed: 5.1923, Lixie-Atelier, Berlin-Weißensee, censor date: 19.7.1923 (B.07460, 1721 m), première: 16.10.1923, U.T. Nollendorfplatz, Berlin.
    35 mm, 1926 m, 93′ (18 fps), tinted; main title: FRA; no intertitles.
    Source: Cineteca Italiana, Milano.
    Le Giornate del Cinema Muto, Pordenone: Cineteca Italiana 70.
    Music: Daan van den Hurk, Frank Bockius.
    Teatro Verdi, no intertitles, 2 Oct 2017.

Anton Kaes (GCM 2017): "Artur Robison’s 1923 film Schatten: Eine nächtliche Halluzination (Warning Shadows: Nocturnal Hallucinations) offers bold insights into the status and function of cinema itself. What was film and what could it do? Schatten makes good on the promise of silent cinema to tell a story by means of images alone. Foregoing explanatory title cards, the film explores the interplay of light and shadow and focuses on the very possibilities of cinematic expression. The film’s preoccupation with shadows as ghostly doubles galvanizes the realm of imagination, illusion, and dark fantasy; it sheds light on a hidden and repressed reality that “shadows” the tangible one. Although an everyday phenomenon, shadows nevertheless evince a sense of uncanny mystery that dates back to Plato’s allegory of the cave. For Maxim Gorky in 1895, the movies represented no less than the “kingdom of shadows.”"

"Schatten experiments with the effects achieved by projection, not only in the technical sense but also in its Freudian meaning, in which repressed thoughts and cravings are “projected” to the outside world. It is indicative that the film’s fictional characters are reduced to typified figures (the credits identify them as Man, Woman, Youth, and Traveling Entertainer) who act like marionettes. Although Schatten was not the first feature film without intertitles, moviegoers struggled to make sense of the story and characters. The film even triggered a debate about the need for titles, in which the director argued that written words (as remnants of an older medium) merely intrude in what the visuals (lighting design, décor, acting, and camera) were supposed to convey. Only films without titles were deemed to be pure film art; words, he claimed, disturb the atmosphere and mystique of mute images that speak another language. Nonetheless, in 1928, explanatory intertitles were added as a concession to the general public."

"Coming on the heels of The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1920) and Nosferatu (1922), Schatten, which premiered on 16 October 1923, appears as a latecomer to German Expressionism. It is no less radical than its more famous predecessors. It shares with Caligari a plot that hinges on the medium’s inherent illusionism and deception. Less reliant on distorted sets, Schatten compulsively manipulates light and shadow to propel the story and draw attention to the ability of film to bring out hidden desires. Schatten shares with Nosferatu the intermingling of horror with melodrama, as well as a Freudian probing of the unconscious by way of shadows and mirrors, which produced infinite play with doubles. Schatten is also indebted to German Romanticism, where the loss of one’s shadow means a loss of one’s self – a motif that also animated The Student of Prague, the first German art film, from 1913."

"In Schatten, we experience two forerunners of cinema folded into one – the Chinese shadow play from antiquity (revived in the 1920s by the silhouette films of Lotte Reiniger) and the magic lantern shows popular since the 18th century. The shadow player in Schatten is presented as a traveling showman, in the tradition of the fairground entrepreneurs of early cinema. What was most radical (and confusing to the original audiences) is the conceit that the hypnotized spectators would enter the shadow play’s phantasmagorical realm and have their alter egos – their shadows – act out their innermost fantasies. Not unlike the play within the play in Hamlet, the shadow play within the film (i.e., the ultimate shadow play) leads the audience to confront and recognize their repressed wishes and perversions."

"Schatten is based on an idea by set designer and professed occultist Albin Grau, who had produced Nosferatu for Prana-Film a year earlier. Shortly after Prana’s bankruptcy, Grau started Pan-Film, one of the many small production companies competing with Ufa. His wish to make another film with Murnau in the supernatural style of Nosferatu was thwarted, because the director was already under contract to Ufa. Grau then approached Artur Robison (1883-1935), a Chicago-born screenwriter and director whose German family had moved back to Germany in 1895. After briefly practicing medicine, Robison joined the film industry and became known for Nächte des Grauens (Nights of Horror, 1916) with Emil Jannings and Werner Krauss. More importantly for the visual design of Schatten was Albin Grau’s choice of Nosferatu’s cinematographer, Fritz Arno Wagner, who ranks today as one of the most brilliant cameramen of Weimar cinema. In addition, several actors from Nosferatu joined the production: Gustav von Wangenheim as the forlorn young lover and Alexander Granach as the traveling shadow player. The jealous husband is played by the famous stage and film actor Fritz Kortner, who had worked with Max Reinhardt and starred in more than 40 films before 1923. Schatten was the film debut of Ruth Weyher, who would reprise the role of a young wife in G. W. Pabst’s psychoanalytic film Secrets of a Soul (1926)."

"The acting style in Schatten is highly theatrical and owes much to the Expressionist emphasis on overacting over naturalness, following the dictum: “Reality is there, why replicate it on screen?” The film’s calculated manipulation of artificial lighting underscores the willed stylization of the performance. This stress on theatricality highlights the medium as a machine to project the unrestrained inner world outward. Visible but possessing no materiality of their own, shadows depend on light to exist and constitute an uncanny double of the visible world, not unlike the spectral images of film."

"In the tradition of so-called “Aufklärungsfilme” (sex education films) from 1919-20, Schatten invokes a sexually charged atmosphere of aristocratic decadence and depravity, including, in the phantasmagorical scene, bondage, implied gang rape, and murder (represented as shadow play). Looking back, film critic Lotte Eisner, author of The Haunted Screen, called the film one of the most overtly erotic films ever. Not unlike Secrets of a Soul, Schatten is framed as a lesson in overcoming a psychological disorder (impotence in the former, jealousy in the latter). While in Secrets psychoanalysis provides the cure, in Schatten it is the hallucinatory shadow play – a perfect double for the immersive cinematic experience – that leads to a happy ending." Anton Kaes

AA: It was a revelation to finally see a print this good from this Weimar classic. I have seen it and we have screened Schatten only in low contrast prints which fail to convey the impact of this purely visual film. This print is from Cineteca Italiana in Milan, but the opening credits state that the sources are La Cinémathèque française and The Museum of Modern Art. There are no intertitles, but the art credits in the beginning are in French.

Arthur Robison kept directing strong silent films until the very end (Looping the Loop, The Informer), and he made solid sound films, too (including the last film adaptation of Der Student von Prag), but in this screening I'm finally convinced that he was at his best in Schatten. (Robison's Der Student von Prag and Frank Wysbar's Fährmann Maria are considered the last achievements relevant to the Weimar cinema's heritage of the fantastique).

Strengths include: a genuine sense of the fantastique, an irresistible dream mode, a talent in mounting a dream stage, a sense of wonder, a sense of the macabre (Alexander Granach as le montreur d'ombres), a powerful yet refined sensuality, an overheated and unrealistic atmosphere.

In a hypnotical fashion the ombromane invites his audience, our surrogates, into a collective nightmare. Projecting at first his ombres chinoises he invites the actual shadows of his viewers to take over the dream stage. The nightmares are not innocent: sexual violence and murder are imminent. Fritz Kortner as The Man breaks a mirror. The action has taken place on a screen of the unconscious. The ombromane conjures the living shadows back to their owners again. We return to the Chinese shadows, but a disturbing feeling lingers and an ultimate sense of mystery remains.

The screening of Schatten did not belong to the Canon Revisited series of the Festival, but for me this viewing confirmed the status of this powerful movie as one of the great Weimar films. The mysterious ombromane deserves a place besides the ominous hypnotists Dr. Caligari and Dr. Mabuse, and perhaps the Devil himself as incarnated as Scapinelli in Der Student von Prag, although in Robison's sound adaptation he is called Dr. Carpis. In Der Student von Prag as in Schatten people are caught in the spell of a magnetic mastermind and must inevitably confront their evil doubles.

The live music performance of Daan van den Hurk and Frank Bockius was enchanting.

Speaking of music I cannot resist a digression to Robison's final film, his adaptation of Der Student von Prag. I do not know how it is elsewhere but in Finland the theme song of that film, "Warum?" by Theo Mackeben, sung by the coloratura Miliza Korjus, became a big hit, still continuously played on the radio. The lyrics are by Goethe, from a private poem of his to Charlotte von Stein, published only after both were dead. It is a poem of unrequited love but it also conveys something of a general sense of mystery so potently understood by Robison in his films.

The Reckless Age (2017 restoration in 4K by NBCUniversal)

The Reckless Age (US 1924), D: Harry Pollard, with John Steppling, Ruth Dwyer, Reginald Denny. Photo: Bison Archives / Marc Wanamaker.

The Reckless Age (US 1924), D: Harry Pollard, with Ruth Dwyer, Reginald Denny. Photo: Le Giornate del Cinema Muto (2017).

(L’età frenetica), (US 1924), D: Harry Pollard, scen: Rex Taylor, [Edward T. Lowe, Jr.?], from the novel by Earl Derr Biggers (1914), titles: Tom Miranda, photog: William Fildew, cast: Reginald Denny (Dick Minot), Ruth Dwyer (Cecilia Meyrick), John Steppling (Spencer Meyrick), May Wallace (aunt Mary), William Austin (Lord Allan Harrowby), Tom McGuire (Martin Wall), Fred Malatesta (Manuel Gonzalez), Henry A. Barrows (John Thacker), Frederick Vroom (Owen Jephson), William E. Lawrence (John Paddock), Dorothy Revier (Gabrielle Rose), Bertram Johns (Duke of Lismore), Fay Tincher (Duchess of Lismore), Hayden Stevenson (Henry Trimmer), Frank Leigh (Jenkins), prod: Universal Pictures, dist: Universal-Jewel, rel: 17.8.1924.
    The film was not released in Finland.
    DCP, 4K (from 35 mm, orig. 6954 ft), 70′; titles: ENG, source: NBCUniversal, Restored: 2017.
    Le Giornate del Cinema Muto, Pordenone.
    Music: Donald Sosin, Frank Bockius.
    Teatro Verdi, with e-subtitles in Italian, 2 Oct 2017.

Marc Wanamaker, Kimberly Pucci (GCM 2017): "The Reckless Age is a comedy-drama based on the novel Love Insurance by Earl Derr Biggers, best known as the author of the “Charlie Chan” stories. First serialized in a number of U.S. newspapers in February 1914, the novel appeared in book form later that year, when Klaw & Erlanger purchased the theatrical rights and assigned A. E. Thomas to adapt the story for the stage. Nothing came of this venture, but in 1919 Paramount produced the first film version (now lost), Love Insurance, and in the same year See-Saw, a musical also based on the Biggers novel, opened on Broadway to positive reviews. The story revolves around Dick Minot, an insurance agent assigned to protect a $100,000 policy taken out by Lord Harrowby, engaged to heiress Cynthia Meyrick. Harrowby needs money quickly, and the insurance policy is there just in case the marriage falls through before he gets to the altar. Minot is meant to ensure the wedding takes place, but he meets Cynthia on the train and the two fall for each other."

"This most charming romantic comedy was shot at Universal City and on location at Los Olivos, California, and at the Beverly Hills Hotel. Production was announced at least as early as October 1923, with Eddie Cline earmarked as director, but the star, Reginald Denny, was injured in a car accident that month and the film wasn’t begun until January, by which time Cline had been replaced by Harry Pollard, who had brought Denny to fame as heavyweight boxing champion Kane “Kid Roberts” Halliday in their pugilist series of two-reelers, The Leather Pushers. Following the success of these 24 shorts, Pollard and Denny went on to work together in several Universal features, including race-car classic Sporting Youth, before filming The Reckless Age (both in 1924), and then smash hits Oh Doctor!, I’ll Show You the Town, and California Straight Ahead (all in 1925)."

"One of the more exciting sequences in the film is the automobile and train race through the Santa Ynez Valley, culminating in one of Hollywood’s most daring stunts, when the train and automobile almost collide at a crossing. For “Railroads in Films” historians, the use of the now-defunct Pacific Coast Railway and Locomotive No. 106 might be the only existing footage of this historic railroad and the Los Olivos railroad station in town."

"The Beverly Hills Hotel location is also extraordinary, as there are very few examples of the hotel being used in silent films other than Harold Lloyd’s A Sailor Made Man. Both films show the exterior of the hotel in the early 1920s, but The Reckless Age shows the entire exterior of the hotel at Sunset Boulevard, the driveways, the front entrance, and various patios, verandas, and gardens (all standing in as the “Hotel de la Paix” in Florida)."

"Reginald Denny (1891-1967) was an amateur racecar driver as well as a stunt pilot and boxing champ – he certainly lived up to the “reckless” moniker by moonlighting as a daredevil pilot with the famed team of stunt flyers, The Black Cats. British-born “Reggie” had learned to fly the first military fighter planes in action when he joined the Royal Flying Corps (later the Royal Air Force) at the onset of World War I; seven years later and now a movie star, he bought a Jenny biplane along with two British Sopwith Snipes he had flown during the war. Hollywood’s top aviator club took note of Denny’s flying abilities and asked him to join as their “lucky 13th” Black Cat around the time of this film. The club would soar over the skies of Southern California performing such dangerous aerial stunts that it’s amazing Universal executive Carl Laemmle and Pollard allowed their leading man to conduct these devil-may-care feats while starring in their films, but as the Los Angeles Times stated back then about the invincible Denny: “Black cats have … nine lives, you know.”"

"Denny became one of Universal’s most popular actors of the 1920s, effortlessly blurring the line between romantic leading man and action hero. He made the successful transition from silent film star to the “talkies” and continued working steadily in movies and television until shortly before his death in 1967, while also making a name for himself as inventor of the drone and pioneer of unmanned aviation. His co-star here, Ruth Dwyer (1898-1978), never had the same success, yet she remains a recognized name thanks to her appearance opposite Buster Keaton in Seven Chances." Marc Wanamaker, Kimberly Pucci

The restoration 

Janice Simpson (GCM 2017): "In 2013 the National Film Preservation Foundation (NFPF) contacted NBCUniversal regarding a 35 mm nitrate film discovered by EYE Filmmuseum in Amsterdam among the archive’s unpreserved backlog. This Dutch-language print turned out to be a complete copy of The Reckless Age, a feature-length comedy produced by Universal in 1924, for which EYE had the only reported copy in the world. The tinted print was in remarkably fine condition, showing no nitrate decomposition but some shrinkage (1.2-1.6%)."

"Specifically, the NFPF asked Universal if the studio might be interested in funding its preservation. In 2015, when Universal initiated its Silent Film Restoration Project to honor the 100th Anniversary of Universal City, it added this title to the list and started working with NFPF’s Executive Director, who arranged to ship the film elements from EYE to the Library of Congress, and then to Universal City."

"This print, with heavy dirt, stains, and scratches, was the sole source for the 4K digital restoration. Dirt and scratches were digitally removed, the film was stabilized, and film tears, warping, and shifts were repaired. Tints were analyzed with the assistance of Jere Gulden of the Packard Humanities Institute and recreated digitally to duplicate the tinting used for the print. The film’s 181 intertitles were recreated in English over a neutral, textless background."

"Thank-yous go to EYE Filmmuseum for providing the source material; the Library of Congress and the National Film Preservation Foundation for their facilitation and assistance; and Jere Guldin (Packard Humanities Institute) for assistance with tint analysis. Restoration services provided by NBCUniversal StudioPost." Janice Simpson

AA: A funny satire on the insurance business and a romantic comedy about the battle of wits between Dick Minot (Reginald Denny) and Cecilia Meyrick (Ruth Dwyer). Ten years later this would have been perfect screwball material. The two car vs. train chase sequences are genuinely thrilling.

A brilliant digital copy with a simulation of tinting in orange.

Now We're in the Air (2017 restoration by Národní filmový archiv & San Francisco Silent Film Festival)

Now We're in the Air (US 1927). D: Frank R. Strayer. Raymond Hatton, Louise Brooks, Wallace Beery.

Now We're in the Air (US 1927). D: Frank R. Strayer. Emile Chautard, Louise Brooks. Photo: Louise Brooks Society.

Now We're in the Air (US 1927). D: Frank R. Strayer. Raymond Hatton, Louise Brooks, Wallace Beery. Photo: Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences - Margaret Herrick Library. Scene not included in the surviving fragment.

Now We're in the Air (US 1927). D: Frank R. Strayer. Louise Brooks. Portrait by Eugene Robert Richee. Photo: Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences - Margaret Herrick Library. Scene not included in the surviving fragment.

Now We're in the Air (US 1927). D: Frank R. Strayer. Louise Brooks. Portrait by Eugene Robert Richee.

Now We're in the Air (US 1927). D: Frank R. Strayer. Louise Brooks. Portrait by Eugene Robert Richee. Scene not included in the surviving fragment.

Sankareita ilmassa / Hjältar i luften / Aviatori per forza (US 1927), D: Frank R. Strayer, story: Monte Brice, Keene Thompson, scen: Tom J. Geraghty, titles: George Marion, Jr., photog: Harry Perry, [2nd camera: Alfred “Buddy” Williams, E. Burton Steene. ed: Carl Pierson.], cast: Wallace Beery (Wally), Raymond Hatton (Ray), Louise Brooks (Griselle Chelaine; Grisette Chelaine), Russell Simpson (Lord Abercrombie McTavish), Emile Chautard (M. Chelaine), Malcolm Waite (Professor Saenger), Duke Martin (Top Sergeant), [uncredited: Mattie Witting (Mme. Chelaine)], prod: Adolph Zukor, Jesse L. Lasky, Paramount, dist: Paramount, rel: 22.10.1927, copy: incompl. (orig. 5798 ft, 6 rl, ca 70′), 35 mm, 1377 ft (fragments of rl. 2, 3, 6), 23 min (20 fps); titles: ENG, source: Národní filmový archiv, Praha, & San Francisco Silent Film Festival, restored: 2017.
    Le Giornate del Cinema Muto, Pordenone, e-subtitles in Italian.
    Teatro Verdi, 2 Oct 2017.

GCM (2017): "It’s hard to imagine anyone at Paramount seriously believing that Mauritz Stiller was well-suited to direct the third World War I-themed comedy pairing of Wallace Beery and Raymond Hatton, but that’s what Film Daily reported on 26 January 1927. Unsurprisingly, the idea didn’t last long, and the following month the same trade paper announced that James Cruze would be the popular duo’s latest director instead. Louise Brooks Society founder Thomas Gladysz found evidence that William Wellman was also attached at some point, which makes quite a bit of sense, but by June the studio revealed that the director for Now We’re in the Air would be Frank R. Strayer, a considerably lesser talent than the original three choices. On this basis, the film’s loss wouldn’t generate more than passing disappointment, but there was another factor to be considered, in the form of its 21-year-old leading lady, Louise Brooks."

"Eugene Robert Richee’s playfully seductive portraits of Brooks from the film, saucily posed in a racy black tutu, made the loss even more tantalizing, and the actress’ own declaration that her favorite publicity still was a casual shot of her reading on the set, next to screenwriter Keene Thompson, added to the feeling that we were missing something special. Then came the announcement in 2016 that parts of Reels 2, 3, and 6 were discovered at the Národní filmový archiv in Prague (the cans were labeled with its Czech title, Rif a Raf, Politi), making the incomplete Now We’re in the Air footage the sole surviving element from any of the four films Brooks made in 1927. Sadly, Brooks appears in only about 5 minutes of the newly found fragments, but it’s hard to look anywhere else when she’s on screen. Though purely decorative, she exudes a timelessness, relaxed and informal, that stands out for modern audiences when contrasted with the broad-based comedy around her."

"It’s important to remember that Brooks was just in her second year making movies, and her contribution was always secondary: production files at the Margaret Herrick Library show she was paid $500 a week, which was $50 a week less than actor Malcolm Waite’s salary. On the other hand, Beery was getting $3,000, and Hatton $2,000. The main stars had already appeared in two other comedies with military backgrounds, Behind the Front and We’re in the Navy Now (both 1926 and both directed by Brooks’ husband, Eddie Sutherland), and Paramount cleverly chose to complete the armed services trilogy with an air force setting just when aviation mania was sweeping the globe following Charles Lindbergh’s transatlantic flight in May 1927. Profiting from the hoopla, advertisements hailed Beery and Hatton as “loony Lindberghs.”"

"Although Strayer (1891-1964) was a largely workmanlike director whose career highlight was a string of “Blondie” films in the late 1930s and early 40s, the cinematographer, Harry Perry, had a knack for aerial photography: in 1923 he shot The Broken Wing, and four months before Now We’re in the Air he’d finished work on Wings, together with second cameramen Alfred “Buddy” Williams and E. Burton Steene, also collaborating here (Perry and Steene later shot Hell’s Angels). Aside from Brooks’ presence, it’s these aerial moments that generate the most interest in the surviving footage, some of which, during the Armistice scene, was actually left over from Wings, no doubt used as a cost-saving measure – perhaps Paramount had blown their budget when they rented 15 planes to add to the authenticity and thrills."

"The plot is predictably silly: Beery and Hatton are Wally and Ray, a couple of bumbling cousins scheming to get their aristocratic Scottish grandfather’s inheritance by appealing to his love of aviation. Once on the Continent during the War, the two fall for twin sisters Grisette and Griselle, one raised in France, the other in Germany – Brooks plays both characters, though the surviving footage only shows Grisette, a tutu-clad carnival entertainer, and not Griselle in her peasant bodice and kerchief. Wally and Ray wind up in the U.S. air service, but get blown into enemy territory in a circus balloon, where they’re mistaken for sympathizers. The Germans think they can use them as spies so send them back across the lines, where they’re finally able to make things right after nearly being blown up. Critic Wilella Waldorf, in the New York Evening Post, was not amused: ”Mr. Beery and Mr. Hatton have been seen so often to kick each other that it has ceased exactly to be a fountain of wit.” However, Alfred Greason was far more positive in Variety, praising the aerial photography and the succession of gags, notwithstanding “an utter disregard of the finer aspects of wit and humor.”" Jay Weissberg

AA: This fragment of 23 minutes has brought film aficionados a lot of joy. Now We're in the Air is an action comedy set in WWI. In its surviving footage a spy is found at a carnival, and there is some thrilling action, perhaps a bit like Laurel and Hardy in Liberty, as Wallace Beery and Raymond Hatton are caught in a hot air balloon which takes them across enemy lines. An epic battleground scene is included. For five minutes Louise Brooks lights up the screen by her mere presence as the carnival dancer Grisette. Very watchable from scratched fragments with tinting simulated.