Lola Montez, die Tänzerin des Königs (1922) (2020 restoration by DFF Frankfurt)

Willi Wolff: Lola Montez, die Tänzerin des Königs (DE 1922) with Ellen Richter as Lola Montez. Le Giornate del Cinema Muto.

Willi Wolff: Lola Montez, die Tänzerin des Königs (DE 1922) with Ellen Richter as Lola Montez. Le Giornate del Cinema Muto.

LOLA MONTEZ, DIE TÄNZERIN DES KÖNIGS (DE 1922)
(Lola Montez, la danzatrice del re) [Lola Montez, the King’s Dancer]
regia/dir: Willi Wolff.
scen: Willi Wolff, Paul Merzbach.
photog: Arpad Viragh. scg/des: Prof. Stefan Lhotka.
cons. artistico/artistic advisor: Paul Merzbach.
prod. mgr: Max Paetz.
costruzione set/construction: Albert Alscher.
cost: Carl Töpfer, Berlin; Peter A. Becker Nachf., Berlin; A. Dieringer, München.
cast: Ellen Richter (Lola Montez), Hugo Döblin (correggitore di/Corregidor of Barcelona), Mizzi Schütz (Donna Juana, sua nipote/his niece), Arthur Bergen (Madras, zingara/a “gypsy”), Frida Richard (zingara/a “gypsy” woman), Hermann Picha (capocuoco/the head cook), Heinrich George (Don Miguel, Infante di Spagna/of Spain), Georg Alexander (Ludwig von Hirschberg, uno studente/a student), Maria Forescu (padrona di casa/landlady, Verona ), Robert Scholz (Louis Napoléon), Gustav Potz (Louis Philippe, re di Francia/King of France), Leonhard Haskel (Pillet, direttore dell’/director of the Opéra de Paris), Julius Falkenstein (Dujarrier, giornalista/a journalist), Max Gülstorff (Beauvallon, giornalista/a journalist), Emil Rameau (Baron Rothschild), Fritz Beckmann (Cerf, banchiere/a banker), Arnold Korff (Ludwig I, re di Baviera/King of Bavaria), Julia Serda (Regina/Queen Therese), Fritz Kampers (Tenente/Lieutenant Nussbaum, Adjutant), Albert Patry (ministro/Minister von Abel), Friedrich Kühne (consigliere di stato/State Councillor von Berks), Georg Baselt (Von Pechmann, il capo della polizia di Monaco/chief of the Munich police), Hans Junkermann (direttore del teatro reale/director of the royal theatre), Toni Tetzlaff (prima ballerina), Ernst Pittschau (Peisner, uno studente/a student), Hans Heinrich von Twardowski (Friedemann, uno studente/a student), Wilhelm Diegelmann (Havard, titolare dell’albergo “Al Cervo d’Oro”/manager of the hotel “The Golden Stag”), Herbert Paulmüller (Meyerhöfer, cioccolataio/chocolatier), Carl Geppert (sentinella bavarese/Bavarian sentry [Nymphenburg palace gardens]), Fritz Schulz (giovane veneziano/a young Venetian), Rudolf Meinhard-Jünger, Fritz Beckmann, Alfred Walters, Kurt von Wolowski, Martha Hoffmann, Fritz Richard, Rudolf del Zopp.
prod: Ellen Richter, Willi Wolff, Ellen Richter-Film GmbH, Berlin.
dist: Universum Film AG (Ufa), Berlin.
riprese/filmed: 1922 (studio: Jofa-Atelier, Berlin-Johannisthal; locs: España, Venezia, Verona, Paris, Bayern).
v.c./censor date: 15.12.1922.
première: 28.12.1922, Berlin (U.T. Kurfürstendamm).
copia/copy: DCP, 113′ (orig. 3096 m., 136′, 20 fps), col. (imbibito e virato/tinted & toned); did./titles: GER, subt. ENG.
fonte/source: DFF – Deutsches Filminstitut & Filmmuseum, Frankfurt.

Restauro/Restored: 2019–2020.
Digitalizzazione e restauro effettuati con il sostegno della delegazione del governo federale per la cultura e i media, BKM – Beauftragte der Bundesregierung für Kultur und Medien; dei Länder tedeschi e dell’agenzia tedesca per la promozione cinematografica, FFA – Filmförderungsanstalt. / Digitization and restoration funded by BKM – Beauftragte der Bundesregierung für Kultur und Medien (Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and the Media), the German federal states (Länder), and the FFA – Filmförderungsanstalt (Federal Film Board), within the framework of Förderprogramm Filmerbe.

Le Giornate del Cinema Muto (GCM), Pordenone. Corona emergency security: half programming, half capacity, COVID certificate required, temperature measured, hand hygiene, face masks, distancing.
    Musical interpretation: Günter Buchwald, Frank Bockius.
    Viewed at Teatro Verdi with e-subtitles in English and Italian, 4 Oct 2021.

Philipp Stiasny (GCM 2021): "From the dozens of films she made, Ellen Richter later singled out Lola Montez, die Tänzerin des Königs as her most cherished accomplishment. Indeed, the film can be seen to epitomize her work in many respects. Loosely based on the story of the infamous Irish dancer Eliza Rosanna Gilbert, who in the 1840s and 1850s became the talk of Europe’s capitals and the mistress of Bavarian King Ludwig I, Lola Montez contains all the typical ingredients of an Ellen Richter film: a dramatic story centred on a beautiful, desirable, and somewhat “exotic” outsider, lavish costumes, and a wide variety of picturesque locations. As in many of her other films, Richter here has an ideal opportunity to display her love for disguises and tongue-in-cheek humour. Deviating from the historical facts, Lola is introduced as a young Spanish “Gypsy” who becomes involuntarily embroiled in an attempt to poison the Infante of Spain (a short but splendid cameo by Heinrich George). As a result, she has to flee the country, arriving first in Italy, where she is taught how to act like a lady. Later, in Paris, she is invited to dance at the city’s prestigious opera house, becoming a worldwide sensation. She then becomes secretly involved in a revolutionary plot by Louis Napoléon, the future emperor of France. When the plot fails, Lola is once again forced to flee, this time to Munich, where she captures the attention of Ludwig I. Their ensuing affair arouses a great deal of hatred among the people and the establishment, however. In the end, Lola has no choice but to leave again, and vanishes into the night mist."

"In contrast to many of Ellen Richter’s other films, Lola Montez not only proved popular at the box office but was also positively received by the more ambitious critics, who often tended to write off her particular brand of entertainment. For example, Film-Kurier (29.12.1922) noted on the day after the premiere: “As Lola Montez, Ellen Richter was permitted to display her skills to the full: grand, amorous, seductive, beautiful, catlike, demonic, but also calmer effects emanated from her.” Fritz Olimsky, writing in Berliner Börsen-Zeitung (31.12.1922), was also full of praise: “A woman as beautiful as she is racy, at the centre of it all. Amiable, slightly trenchant humour in the plot and intertitles. (…) In addition, charming images of quite exquisite photographic quality from the most beautiful countries of Europe, from Spain, Italy, Paris, Munich. Ergo: ‘film’ in the best sense of the word. (…) In the title role, Ellen Richter delights with her charm, a beautiful woman who can do a lot more than just look beautiful. (…) The excellent, immensely film-like direction was provided by Mr. Ellen Richter, alias Dr. Willi Wolff.”"

"In the context of Richter’s œuvre, Lola Montez is situated between the end of one era and the beginning of another. In the two years preceding the release of Lola Montez, Richter had portrayed a veritable “who’s who” of famous women from European history, from Mary Tudor, Queen of England, and Marion Delorme, the famous French courtesan active during the reign of Louis XIII, to the Russian Empress Catherine the Great and Catherine Lefèbvre (née Hübscher), better known as “Madame Sans-Gêne”, who became a Duchess under Napoleon Bonaparte. These films based on historical celebrities, of which Lola Montez was the last, were, by and large, part of a trend in German cinema at the time that flourished with Ernst Lubitsch’s Madame Dubarry (Passion, 1919) and Anna Boleyn (Deception, 1920). At the same time, the episodic nature of Lola Montez mirrors the structure of the multi-part travel-and-adventure films which mark Richter’s work between 1921 and 1925. As in her films like Die Frau mit den Millionen (The Woman Worth Millions, 1922/23) and Der Flug um den Erdball (The Flight Around the World, 1924/25), the story jumps from one country to another, thereby creating ample opportunity for location shooting. Thus, the acts of travelling and making films merged into one, becoming more than just a new style for Ellen Richter and Willi Wolff. It became a new way of life." – Philipp Stiasny

The restoration 

"Lola Montez, die Tänzerin des Königs is presented in a new 4K digital restoration by DFF – Deutsches Filminstitut & Filmmuseum. Its premiere at the Giornate takes place 25 years after a first restoration attempt was shown at Bologna’s Il Cinema Ritrovato festival in July 1996. The previous restoration, spearheaded by the Cinémathèque Royale de Belgique, essentially preserved the heavily truncated and re-edited Swiss version, a vintage print of which had survived in the collections of the Cinémathèque Suisse. The availability of additional sources as well as the possibilities afforded by digital technology have now made an approximate reconstruction of the original German release version possible. The same Swiss print served as the main source element in the new restoration, with additional footage drawn from an incomplete Dutch release print held at Eye Filmmuseum. The German censorship card and a vintage plot summary helped in re-ordering the footage, despite heavy losses and discrepancies in the editing of the two prints. The titles, which don’t survive in their original design, were re-created using the censorship card and the titles in a surviving print of Richter’s previous film, Die Abenteuerin von Monte Carlo (The Adventuress from Monte Carlo, 1921), as references. Technical work was carried out by Haghefilm Digitaal."

AA: Produced by the artist couple Ellen Richter and Willi Wolff for their own film company Ellen Richter-Film GmbH, Lola Montez, die Tänzerin des Königs is an independently made star vehicle.

It elaborates on Ellen Richter's favourite theme: the outsider, the misfit, the woman bigger than life. The opening titles declare a continuity with mythic women of history who became emblems of their age, starting with Helen of Troy and Cleopatra – and leading to Lola Montez of the Biedermeier age, swimming against the current. She was both a remnant of the age before the revolution and a vanguard of the female independence of the future.

A recurrent Ellen Richter theme is persecution. "Die landesfremde Abenteuerin" must go. There are many reasons for that, but one must be an overwhelming joy of life that threatens the mediocre course of Biedermeier conformism.

All the time I was thinking about Max Ophuls's masterpiece Lola Montès and felt strongly that Ophuls must have known this film, or the similarities stem from shared source materials. Watching the student overwhelmed by Lola's femininity I remembered Oskar Werner. Observing the ageing King Ludwig I of Bavaria I saw Anton Walbrook.

The Ophuls film keeps growing in stature, its meaning enhanced in our current society of spectacle. The theme of a private life that is public has never been so ubiquitous as in the age of social media.

The Ellen Richter film has been reconstructed with dedication and perseverance from fragmentary sources. Long passages are covered by intertitles only. The experience is of conducting an exemplary scientific study of a film largely lost. Each spectator reconstructs it in his brain.

In this reconstruction, the film fails to engage me emotionally. I keep thinking that already the screenplay may have been inferior. The directorial touch feels mediocre and pedestrian. Ellen Richter, superb in Aberglaube, is very focused here, but an engrossing passion is missing.

I respect the dedication of the musicians Günter Buchwald and Frank Bockius. A reconstruction like this must be exceptionally difficult to handle.

American Aristocracy

Lloyd Ingraham: American Aristocracy (US 1916) written by Anita Loos and starring Douglas Fairbanks as Cassius Lee. Photo: Museum of Modern Art, NY.

AMERICAN ARISTOCRACY (US 1916)
(Nel mondo dei miliardi)
regia/dir: Lloyd Ingraham.
scen, did/titles: Anita Loos.
cast: Douglas Fairbanks (Cassius Lee), Jewel Carmen (Geraldine Hicks), Charles DeLima (Leander Hicks, il re degli spilloni/the Hatpin King), Albert Parker (Percy Peck), Arthur [Artie] Ortego (il “portiere misterioso”/the “mysterious porter”), Douglas Fairbanks, Jr. [strillone/newsboy].
prod: Fine Arts Film Co.
dist: Triangle Film Co.
uscita/rel: 12.11.1916.
copia/copy: 35 mm, 3491 ft (5 rl), 49 min (19 fps); did./titles: ENG.
fonte/source: George Eastman Museum, Rochester, NY.
   Le Giornate del Cinema Muto (GCM), Pordenone. Corona emergency security: half programming, half capacity, COVID certificate required, temperature measured, hand hygiene, face masks, distancing.
    Grand piano: Donald Sosin.
    Viewed at Teatro Verdi with e-subtitles in Italian, 2 Oct 2021.

Gabriel Paletz (GCM 2021): "More research is needed to show whether Loos adopted the “dash style” for Fairbanks as a consistent strategy in her scenarios for him. However, from the start of their collaboration the writer recognized that her challenge in writing a Fairbanks hero was that he “always had to be on the move.” She met this challenge by shaping the changing form of the scenario to her understanding of his star personality."

"In American Aristocracy, Loos increases the action in both speed and size. Fairbanks’s character Cassius Lee progresses from chasing butterflies to hopping guardrails and scaling the side of a mansion, piloting a racing car and hydroplane, and swimming out to board a yacht to foil the plot of a “filibuster” — the freebooting ship of his love rival — to supply gunpowder to Mexico. American sensitivity to arming Mexico would cause a rupture with Germany on the release of the Zimmermann Telegram (a secret diplomatic communication proposing a military alliance between Germany and Mexico) in March 1917, just months after the film’s release. Loos’s story anticipated the U.S. advance into World War I with a screenwriting style which was particularly suited to turning Fairbanks into Hollywood’s international action hero."

"At the same time, as the film’s title proclaims, Loos merrily satirized the pretensions of American elites. Loos lets Fairbanks leap over the stuffy snobs of “Narraport-by-the-Sea” (lampooning the society resorts of Newport and Narragansett, Rhode Island, and shot in nearby Watch Hill). Her mix of high and low language, in what were then called “subtitles” or “subcaptions,” distinguishes Fairbanks’s Cassius Lee among the “American Aristocracy” as both an entomologist and a “bug hunter.” The range of Loos’s language for the character mocks both old and new money. Lee has the pedigree – “F.F.V.” (First Families of Virginia) – and the leisure to pursue his insects. He also possesses the energies of a captain of industry, but, typical of a Fairbanks hero, he displays it in physical prowess, rather than the crass manufacturing of hatpins like the father of his love interest, or his love rival’s cunning without bravado. By the end, Cassius’s zest for action and new capacity for invention — hatpins, eureka! — unites both sets of American aristocracy."

"Loos could form tight teams with directors as well as stars. She made four films in 1916, including American Aristocracy, with actor-director Lloyd Ingraham, whose experience in the circus and roadshows must have been useful to the film." – Gabriel Paletz (GCM 2021)

AA: Douglas Fairbanks the human dynamo is let loose in a wild and crazy plot involving "American aristocracy" at a society resort, portraying a millionaire entomologist (bughunter) called Cassius Lee.

The leading lady, Geraldine Hicks (Jewel Carmen) is bored with Percy who never does anything outside business, and she promises to kiss the first man she meets.

Inevitably that man is Cassius who is in certain ways a credible double for Percy, and so he gets to "drive like a devil" in Percy's clothes and even fly a hydroplane. Geraldine, however, sees through the trick.

But because the disguise is convincing, Cassius accidentally learns about Percy's involvement in a gunpowder smuggling plot to Mexico, in alliance with Germany in WWI.

The film is predictably full of incredible and funny acrobatic stunts by the irrepressible and hyperactive Fairbanks.

It is equally full of funny satirical barbs and witticisms from the pen of Anita Loos.

The sunny action comedy keeps us smiling from the beginning to the end. Not one of the greatest, but pure fun all along.

Nasty Women, Third Edition, Prog. I (2021): Contagious Revenge

Jean Durand: Le Rembrandt de la Rue Lepic (FR 1911). Photo: La Cinémathèque française, Paris.

Edwin S. Porter, J. Searle Dawley:  Laughing Gas (US 1907) starring Bertha Regustus (Mandy Brown). Photo: Harvard Film Archive / Kino Lorber.

Nasty Women – Third Edition

Maggie Hennefeld, Laura Horak (GCM 2021): "Your favorite feminist chimney exploders have survived their endless quarantine and are now nastier than ever! After months of lockdown, who wouldn’t like to break all the dishes and erupt through the rooftop? To refresh your memory, this program burst onto the scene of the Giornate del Cinema Muto in October 2017 with five screenings, including “Catastrophe in the Kitchen,” “Catastrophe Beyond the Kitchen,” and selections from Pathé Comica’s Rosalie and Léontine series, featuring Sarah Duhamel and a still-unidentified comedienne."

"What is a “nasty woman”? Wrested from the hateful utterance of a certain former U.S. president, the term has been reclaimed as a global feminist rallying cry. It celebrates the messiness of gender and sexual difference, bodily excess, social heterogeneity, and the refusal of women to be polite or subservient. At the 2019 Giornate, a new cohort of combustive celluloid miscreants made a comeback as part of the European Slapstick Comedy program curated with Steve Massa and Ulrich Ruedel."

"We are thrilled to raise their unholy specters yet again in 2021 in anticipation of Cinema’s First Nasty Women, a 4-disc DVD/Blu-ray set that we are co-curating with Elif Rongen-Kaynakçi in partnership with the Giornate del Cinema Muto, the Women Film Pioneers Project, Carleton University, and the Festival Internacional de Cine Silente México. The collection will be released by Kino Lorber in May 2022, featuring 99 silent films about feminist protest, anarchic slapstick destruction, queer longings, and suggestive gender play. This year, we present two screenings – in the flesh – on the themes “Contagious Revenge” and “Genders of Farce.” When Nasty Women are on the move, no one is safe!" – Maggie Hennefeld, Laura Horak (GCM 2021)

Prog. 1: Contagious Revenge

THE FINISH OF MR. FRESH (US 1899)
regia/dir: ?. Based on the farce by Thomas H. Davis & Scott Marble (Butler’s Grand Opera House, Washington, D.C., 25.10.1898). photog: Frederick S. Armitage. prod: American Mutoscope & Biograph Company. riprese/filmed: 24.7.1899 (studio). copia/copy: DCP, 1’45” (orig. 157 ft); did./titles: ENG. fonte/source: Eye Filmmuseum, Amsterdam.
    THE DAIRY MAID’S REVENGE (US 1899)
regia/dir: ?. photog: Frederick S. Armitage. prod: American Mutoscope & Biograph Company. riprese/filmed: 24.7.1899 (studio). copia/copy: DCP, 1’41” (orig. 157 ft); did./titles: ENG. fonte/source: Eye Filmmuseum, Amsterdam.
    A BAD (K)NIGHT (US 1899)
regia/dir: ?. photog: Frederick S. Armitage. prod: American Mutoscope & Biograph Company. riprese/filmed: 9.6.1899 (studio). copia/copy: DCP, 2′ (orig. 215 ft); did./titles: ENG. fonte/source: Eye Filmmuseum, Amsterdam.
    AA: Both The Finish of Mr. Fresh (1899) and The Dairy Maid's Revenge (1899) were shot at 36 fps and screened at 24 fps, both in a slower and a faster version. The first movie is about churning milk and the second about a horny man approaching a milkmaid whose both hands are tied to the milkcan holder. Both get their comeuppance in a hilarious way. A Bad (K)Night is about a drunken man coming home and getting an unforgettable welcome by the harridan wife aided by a suit of armour.

LA GRÈVE DES NOURRICES (FR 1907)
regia/dir: André Heuzé. prod: Pathé Frères. copia/copy: DCP, 11’59” (orig. 190 m.); did./titles: FRA. fonte/source: Gaumont-Pathé Archives, Saint-Ouen, Paris.
    AA: A catastrophe comedy of escalation in which nurses go on strike, fighting the police, and even babies are inspired to strike. André Heuzé displays a great sense of action comedy.
 
LAUGHING GAS (US 1907)
regia/dir: Edwin S. Porter, J. Searle Dawley. cast: Bertha Regustus (Mandy Brown), Edward Boulden, Mr. Sullivan, Mr. La Montte. prod: Edison Manufacturing Company. riprese/filmed: 13-19.11. 1907. copia/copy: DCP, 6’40” (orig. 575 ft); did./titles: ENG. fonte/source: Harvard Film Archive, Cambridge, MA (controtipo da una copia del MoMA/Duped from MoMA print).
    AA: See photo above. Mandy Brown (Bertha Regustus) gets such an overdose of laughing gas visiting a "painless dentist" that the whole world cannot ignore it. Even the Moon cannot help laughing, in Méliès style.

LITTLE MORITZ ENLÈVE ROSALIE (FR 1911)
regia/dir: Henry Gambart. cast: Sarah Duhamel (Rosalie), Maurice Schwartz (Little Moritz). prod: Pathé Frères. uscita/rel: 22-28.11.1911 (Théâtre Omnia, Rouen). copia/copy: DCP, 7’55” (orig. 180 m); senza didascalie/no titles. fonte/source: Gaumont-Pathé Archives, Saint-Ouen, Paris.
    AA: A catastrophe comedy about Little Moritz and the warhorse Rosalie on a car chase in the mountains. They escape to a rooftop, and lifted by the hot air from the smokestack, Rosalie rises to the sky, carrying also Moritz and the hound dog to the clouds.

LES FEMMES COCHERS (FR 1907)
regia/dir: ?. scen: André Heuzé. prod: Pathé Frères. copia/copy: DCP, 10’08” (orig. 185 m); senza didascalie/no titles. fonte/source: Gaumont-Pathé Archives, Saint-Ouen, Paris.
    AA: Women as coachmen, whipping men, fighting each other and creating havoc at the bistro.

GISÈLE A MANQUÉ LE TRAIN (FR 1912)
regia/dir: ?. cast: Little Chrysia (Gisèle’s chaperone). prod: Lux. copia/copy: DCP, 9’06” (orig. 185 m); did./titles: FRA. fonte/source: Eye Filmmuseum, Amsterdam.
    AA: Gisèle misses the train and finds shelter in a Gypsy camp. They for their part find shelter in a castle, where all their table manners leave a lot to be desired.

LE REMBRANDT DE LA RUE LEPIC (FR 1911)
regia/dir: Jean Durand. cast: Gaston Modot, Berthe Dagmar, Ernest Bourbon. prod: Gaumont. uscita/rel: 17.3.1911. copia/copy: DCP, 5’36” (orig. 114 m); did./titles: ??. fonte/source: Gaumont-Pathé Archives, Saint-Ouen, Paris.
    AA: A fake Rembrandt causes confusion in a bistro at the Montmartre. When a nasty lady sits on it, a mirror image emerges in her underwear since the paint is still wet. Another catastrophe comedy where the world turns upside down. Jean Durand at his best in several incredible multiple action setpieces. They sometimes turn so complex that they border on the abstract. The world exists only in order to be destroyed. Jean Durand was a genius of the catastrophe comedy of the kind that was an inspiration to Dadaism and Surrealism. Regarding Gaston Modot, I may be mistaken, but I believe he appears here also as a man, with a moustache and a pointed beard.

CUNÉGONDE AIME SON MAÎTRE (FR 1912)
regia/dir: ?. cast: Little Chrysia (Cunégonde). prod: Lux. copia/copy: DCP, 6’48” (orig. 136 m); did./titles: NLD. fonte/source: Eye Filmmuseum, Amsterdam.
    AA: When the housemaid is young and pretty she inevitably attracts the attention of Monsieur, and is promptly fired by Madame. The challenge is to find the most unattractive possible maid, and here Cunegonde comes to help. But unfortunately it is now she who falls in love with Monsieur.

FATTY AND MINNIE-HE-HAW (US 1914)
(titolo di lavorazione/working title: The Squaw’s Man)
regia/dir: Roscoe “Fatty” Arbuckle. cast: Roscoe “Fatty” Arbuckle (Fatty), Princess Minnie [Minnie Devereaux] (Minnie-He-Haw), Minta Durfee [the woman on horseback], Joseph Swickard, Harry McCoy (the barroom drunk), Frank Hayes, Slim Summerville (the railroad bull), Bill Hauber, Billy Gilbert, Joe Bordeaux. prod: Mack Sennette, per/for Keystone Film Company. dist: Mutual Film Corporation. uscita/rel: 21.12.1914. copia/copy: DCP, 21’08” (orig. 35 mm, 2 rl, 2000 ft); did./titles: ENG. fonte/source: Academy Film Archive, Beverly Hills, CA (Blackhawk Films/Film Preservation Associates Collection).
    AA: This year is a Centenary memorial of Affaire Fatty Arbuckle, the great comedian who was falsely accused and whose career was destroyed, although he was twice declared innocent by courts and given an official apology. Another comedy of unrequited love, now between Fatty and Minnie the Indian Princess. Not one of Fatty's best, it is from his early, crude Keystone period, before his upgrading to Paramount and later to Comique and collaboration with Keaton.

Maggie Hennefeld, Laura Horak (GCM 2021): "There’s nothing funny about bodily contagion – unless it’s a vehicle for collective uprising and furious social rebellion. In this program, domestic workers go on strike, heterosexual romance falls apart, and the whole world explodes. Two American Mutoscope & Biograph films, The Finish of Mr. Fresh (1899) and The Dairy Maid’s Revenge (1899) celebrate women’s sweet comeuppance against the male mashers who harass them (presented at various speeds to convey each original frame). Milk is further weaponized in La Grève des nourrices (Pathé, 1907), a gender-defiling burlesque on female reproductive labor: childcare, housework, cooking, cleaning, and breastfeeding. Nursemaids go on strike and terrorize the police force. Dairy cows are enlisted as scabs to replace lactating nursemaids. The film was meant to lampoon the excesses of working-class feminism but survives today as an empowering document of women’s systematically exploited and invisible labor. Then as now, women continue to do a disproportionate share of housework and deserve fair compensation."

"The cops are also no match for Mandy (Bertha Regustus), an African-American woman whose contagious cachinnation helps desegregate the public sphere in Laughing Gas (Edison, 1907). Mandy is given nitrous oxide (i.e., laughing gas) by her dentist during a tooth extraction and transmits the euphoric effects to everyone in her path. The title of A Bad (K)night (AM&B, 1899) is a pun too calamitous to describe, as you will see. Sarah Duhamel, one of our favorite nasty comediennes, returns as Rosalie to consecrate her disastrous elopement with Little Moritz (Maurice Schwartz) in this memorable cross-over episode (one of several), Little Moritz enlève Rosalie (Pathé, 1911). Rosalie shoots up through the chimney, aerated by her ridiculous hoop skirt, and cruises through outer space, until gravity gets the better of her fantastic journey and she crashes through a rooftop. Back to the scene of apocalyptic labor, the angry wives of drunken coach drivers cause a series of traffic accidents in Les Femmes cochers (Pathé, 1907), and then unwind by smoking pipes together after an eventful workday."

"Little Chrysia, nasty woman extraordinaire, moonlights as Gisèle’s chaperone in Gisèle a manqué le train (Lux, 1912), which takes a holiday from the exhausting schedule of locomotive modernity by allowing white upper-class people to play-act as Roma travelers. Should we read this as a gesture of social alliance or ploy of colonialist tourism? The film tries to defuse its ambiguity (we might say, to have its cake and “eat the other” too) with a raucous carnivalesque dance scene finale. Speaking of the Seven Arts, painting is at least as deceptive as gender in Le Rembrandt de la rue Lepic (Gaumont, 1911), a cross-dressing comedy featuring Gaston Modot in drag. S/he wreaks total mayhem when a supposed Rembrandt original accidentally affixes itself to her/his rear. Cunégonde (Little Chrysia) falls in love with her employer’s portrait in Cunégonde aime son maître (Lux, 1912), and an equally ill-fated romance ensues in Fatty and Minnie-He-Haw (Keystone, 1914). The title characters are played by Roscoe “Fatty” Arbuckle and Minnie Devereaux (Cheyenne), an Indigenous comedienne who raised a ruckus in more than 15 films, including with Mabel Normand in Mickey (Mabel Normand Feature Film Company, 1918) and Suzanna (Mack Sennett Comedies, 1923). Though Fatty and Minnie bristles with offensive stereotypes, Devereaux’s role is “rare in the history of cinematic representations of Native American women,” according to Michelle H. Raheja (Seneca) in Reservation Reelism, because “she possesses a clear sense of sexual agency that is not predicated on the looking relations that dominate most gendered and raced viewing practices.” Her burning desire for uproarious revenge against white male colonizers is not only nasty: it is contagious." – Maggie Hennefeld, Laura Horak (GCM 2021)

AA: There are mighty surprises in this wild and crazy compilation programme, and also some films that are familiar to me.

Comedy has always been full of gender benders, and in our age of Me Too and non-binary revelations also comedies from the early cinema period can be revisited and new dimensions discovered.

This show is certainly bouleversant and deserves to be widely disseminated.

There is no specific film I would want to eliminate, but I believe that this kind of show would be at its most effective at a duration of circa one hour. There are so many short films, and so much mayhem in many of them, that a little bit less would be more.

These films are very funny, but there is surprisingly little laughter. This is a general phenomenon in contemporary silent comedy screenings. I remember days of thunderstorms of laughter in silent comedies. I think cures can be found. It is good for the health to laugh. "Laughter prolongs life" is a Finnish proverb (again, one whose wit is lost in translation).

On the other hand, although these films are comedies, they are magnificent outlets of repressed female aggression.

The digital visual quality sometimes had a video look.

Aberglaube / [Superstition] (2020 preservation by Eye Filmmuseum / The Sunrise Foundation)

Georg Jacoby: Aberglaube / [Superstition] (DE 1919) starring Ellen Richter as Militza.

  Georg Jacoby: Aberglaube / [Superstition] (DE 1919) starring Ellen Richter as Militza. and Victor Janson as Bajazzo. Photo: Eye Filmmuseum, Amsterdam

ABERGLAUBE (DE 1919)
(Bijgeloof; Superstizione) [Superstition]
regia/dir: Georg Jacoby.
scen: Georg Jacoby, Willi Wolff.
photog: Friedrich Weinmann.
cast: Ellen Richter (Militza [Melita], una zingara/a “gypsy”), Johannes Müller (un giovane sacerdote/a young priest), Frida Richard (la madre del sacerdote/the priest’s mother), Victor Janson (Bajazzo), Peggy Longard.
prod: Paul Davidson, Projektions-AG Union (PAGU), Berlin.
dist: Universum-Film AG (Ufa), Berlin.
v.c./censor date: 10.1919; 28.6.1920 (riesame/revision).
première: 10.10.1919, Berlin (U.T. Friedrichstrasse).
copia/copy: 35 mm, incompl., 973 m (orig. 1535 m [28.6.1920: 1497 m], 4 rl.), 50′ (17 fps), col. (imbibito/tinted); did./titles: NLD.
fonte/source: Eye Filmmuseum, Amsterdam.
    Proiezione gentilmente autorizzata dalla/By permission of Friedrich-Wilhelm-Murnau-Stiftung, Wiesbaden.
    Preservazione effettuata nel 2020 con il sostegno di/Preserved in 2020 with support from The Sunrise Foundation for Education and the Arts, La Jolla, California.
    Le Giornate del Cinema Muto (GCM) at Pordenone. Corona emergency security: half programming, half capacity, COVID certificate required, temperature measured, hand hygiene, face masks, distancing.
    Grand piano: John Sweeney.
    Viewed at Teatro Verdi with e-subtitles in Italian and English, 2 Oct 2021.

Philipp Stiasny (GCM 2021): "In her early film career Ellen Richter was often cast as women of foreign and sometimes non-European origin. With her jet-black hair, dark eyes, and relatively dark complexion, Richter’s appearance differed significantly from that of many other top female stars of German cinema in the 1910s and early 1920s like Henny Porten, Ossi Oswalda, and Mia May. The actress to whom Ellen Richter perhaps bears the closest resemblance is Pola Negri, who like Richter rose to fame towards the end of World War I. Both were considered “racy” and frequently cast as “exotic” (read “erotic”) types. In Richter’s case these included the daughter of an Arab cobbler, an Indian temple dancer, and a Japanese geisha. While the majority of these films today are non-existent or inaccessible, it seems reasonable to assume that they were filled with visual and narrative stereotypes. This applies equally to gender roles, as it does to the representation of “race” and “otherness”. Just as Pola Negri had done before her in Ernst Lubitsch’s Carmen (Gypsy Blood, 1918), and Asta Nielsen before that, Richter also played “gypsies” (heavily clichéd representations of Sinti and Roma women). While Carmen indulged in the image of the sexual, rebellious, unassimilable, and ultimately destructive power of the “gypsy” woman, Aberglaube is clearly aimed in a different direction. The film focuses on the prejudice against the Sinti minority, painting a picture of fear and hatred that leads directly to persecution and murder."

"The story begins in a circus. A visitor who has just fallen for the “gypsy” dancer Militza is stabbed by a jealous clown, Bajazzo (played by Victor Janson, the “Oyster King” in Lubitsch’s Die Austernprinzessin). Militza escapes to the country village of Marienhagen, finding shelter in the house of a local Catholic priest. (Judging by the landscape and architecture, the film appears to have been shot somewhere in the mostly Protestant regions of Northern Germany.) The priest also falls for Militza. When he is subsequently struck dead by a bolt of lightning one evening during Mass, his mother (Frida Richard, a regular supporting player in Richter’s films) blames Militza and has her cast out of the village. On her way to the city, Militza joins a theatrical troupe. The leader of the troupe is disappointed with the general lack of artistic talent and begs Militza to leave with him. However, since he has a wife and two small children living in poverty, Militza refuses, and instead flees on her own. Onboard a ship, she is surprised to encounter the leader of the troupe again. The ship sinks, taking the man who was so captivated by the “gypsy” with it. Militza, among the few survivors, is rescued by a nobleman who takes her to his country estate. Here she is able to recover from the traumatic events, finding peace and true love with the nobleman. As it turns out, however, her new home is located very close to Marienhagen. When the dead priest’s vengeful mother learns that Militza is now living on the estate, she kindles fear, anger, and superstition among the villagers. She even goes as far to accuse Militza of being a witch and a vampire who must be destroyed. In the end, the peasants, whipped up into an angry mob, start a riot, and Militza is stoned to death."

"Despite the fact that the surviving print is missing well over a third of the original length, the story is easy enough to follow. What makes Aberglaube so intriguing in the context of Richter’s œuvre is its social dimension. In the role of the “gypsy”, Richter appears as a woman who is marked as “different” (mainly by wearing large earrings), and by this virtue alone seems to drive all the men around her wild. Through no fault of her own, Militza becomes a scapegoat for all manner of problems and mishaps."

"One can draw parallels between the hatred, expulsion, and extermination of the “gypsy” depicted in the film with the enormous rise of anti-Semitic aggression against the Jewish community in Germany in the immediate aftermath of World War I. Indeed, the violent mob that swarms in the village street leading to the film’s climactic ending is staging its own pogrom of sorts, with lethal consequences. Perhaps, then, it is no coincidence that at the time Aberglaube was produced, a number of Jewish filmmakers – among them Ellen Richter and Willi Wolff, who contributed to the script – used fiction films to raise awareness of the historical and contemporary plight of Eastern European Jews who had been persecuted and massacred in pogroms. Aberglaube may lack the artistic refinement of Carl Theodor Dreyer’s Die Gezeichneten (1922), a love story set against the backdrop of the pogroms in Czarist Russia. Nevertheless, the similarities between the two films are striking." – Philipp Stiasny

The Preservation

GCM (2021): "Aberglaube was believed to be among the many Ellen Richter films that are lost until only recently, when an incomplete vintage Dutch release print was identified in the nitrate collection of the Eye Filmmuseum in Amsterdam in January 2020. A black & white preservation negative and a Desmetcolor print were subsequently produced via photochemical duplication techniques at Haghefilm Digitaal, with funding generously provided by the Sunrise Foundation for Education and the Arts. In addition, the duplicate negative was scanned at Eye’s Collection Centre, allowing the archive to produce a high-resolution digital version to facilitate access to the film beyond those venues capable of projecting 35 mm prints." (GCM 2021)

AA: The contrast was striking in Pordenone's Ellen Richter double bill featuring Leben um Leben and Aberglaube.

After the decidedly mediocre Leben um Leben we are treated to the new preservation of Aberglaube, which, although highly incomplete, still makes vivid sense, the flow and the excitement on display in every scene.

Aberglaube is a film full of life, and Militza, Ellen Richter's character, is so full of life than I'm reminded of the tagline of Russ Meyer's Lorna: "too much for one man".

The pagliaccio – the businessman – the priest – the artist – the aristocrat: nobody can handle Militza in the long run. She is not the conventional and stereotyped vamp. She is an incarnation of the life force too powerful for any man. She could sing like Marlene Dietrich as Lola Lola: "Männer umschwirren mich wie Motten um das Licht, und wenn sie verbrennen, ja dafür kann ich nichts".

Like Leben um Leben, also Aberglaube contains a frightening sequence of mob rule, in the latter film literally a witch hunt and vampire hunt, ending in tragedy.

The masterful cinematography has been conducted by Friedrich Weinmann, who had had his start in films for Max Reinhardt and Ernst Lubitsch and who would later sign Scherben, Die Gezeichneten, Die Weber and other masterpieces.

During his long career as a director, Georg Jacoby never rose to the A list, but his talent in dynamic composition and mise-en-scène is unmistakable. The pantomime is stylized in an enchanting way.

This valuable preservation has been conducted from highly variable elements with such conviction that it is always exciting to watch, and the many ellipses somehow never interrupt the flow of the pantomime.

Leben um Leben / [Life Upon Life] (2020 DFF – Deutsches Filminstitut & Filmmuseum restoration)

Richard Eichberg: Leben um Leben / [Life Upon Life] (DE 1916) starring Erich Kaiser-Titz (Kurt Frederich, banker at the Tomson & Frederich Bank) and Ellen Richter (Princess Carmen Metschersky). The Swedish poster image from Letterboxd.

Richard Eichberg: Leben um Leben / [Life Upon Life] (DE 1916) starring Erich Kaiser-Titz (Kurt Frederich, banker at the Tomson & Frederich Bank) and Ellen Richter (Princess Carmen Metschersky). Photo: DFF – Deutsches Filminstitut & Filmmuseum, Frankfurt

LEBEN UM LEBEN (DE 1916)
[Una vita per una vita/Life Upon Life] / Liv för liv
regia/dir: Richard Eichberg.
scen: Karl Schneider.
photog: Heinrich Gärtner.
cast: Ellen Richter (La principessa/Princess Carmen Metschersky), Erich Kaiser-Titz (Kurt Frederich, banchiere/co-proprietor of the Tomson & Frederich bank), Walter Wolff (Peter Tomson, il socio/his partner), Lu Synd (Ellen, moglie di Tomson/Peter Tomson’s wife), Louis Neher (Peppo Pastia).
prod: Richard Eichberg Mercedes-Film, Berlin.
dist: Central-Film-Vertriebs GmbH, Berlin.
riprese/filmed: 1.-2.1916.
v.c./censor date: 2.1916; 23.5.1921 (1398 m, riesame/re-examination).
première: 22.4.1916, Berlin (Union-Theater).
copia/copy: DCP, 67 min (da/from 35 mm nitr. pos., imbibito e virato/tinted & toned; 1333 m, 18 fps); did./titles: GER, subt. ENG.
fonte/source: DFF – Deutsches Filminstitut & Filmmuseum, Frankfurt/Wiesbaden.

Restauro/Restored: 2020.

Digitalizzazione e restauro effettuati con il sostegno della delegazione del governo federale per la cultura e i media, BKM – Beauftragte der Bundesregierung für Kultur und Medien; dei Länder tedeschi e dell’agenzia tedesca per la promozione cinematografica, FFA – Filmförderungsanstalt. / Digitization and restoration funded by BKM – Beauftragte der Bundesregierung für Kultur und Medien (Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and the Media), the German federal states (Länder), and the FFA – Filmförderungsanstalt (Federal Film Board), within the framework of Förderprogramm Filmerbe.

Le Giornate del Cinema Muto (GCM) at Pordenone. Corona emergency security: half programming, half capacity, COVID certificate required, temperature measured, hand hygiene, face masks, distancing.
    Grand piano: John Sweeney.
    Viewed at Teatro Verdi with e-subtitles in Italian and English, 3 Oct 2021.

Oliver Hanley (GCM 2021): "Leben um Leben is the sequel to the 1915 murder mystery Das Tagebuch Collins (Collin’s Diary). The plot of the first film (now considered lost), revolves around the diary of engineer Fred Collin, who takes his own life in despair over the murder of his fiancée. When the body is found, his friend the banker Peter Tomson is wrongfully suspected of having murdered Collin. However, as the diary later reveals, the true culprit was the covetous Spanish dancer Carmen Sorgatha (later Princess Carmen Metschersky), abetted by her former lover, the shady Peppo Pastia. The film ends with Carmen poisoning herself in prison while awaiting her sentence."

"Leben um Leben resumes the story with the honeymoon of Peter Tomson and Ellen, who earlier had played the key role in discovering Collin’s diary and clearing the name of her future husband. During their stay, they again cross paths with Carmen Metschersky, who has managed to survive her suicide attempt and was acquitted of the murder charge due to lack of sufficient evidence. Her accomplice Peppo Pastia was convicted, but later released thanks to her help. When Carmen learns that she will inherit nothing from her deceased husband’s estate, she and Peppo (posing as her uncle Pedro Costa) hatch an elaborate scheme to seduce and murder Tomson’s business partner, Kurt Frederich. However, Ellen Tomson manages to foil their machinations yet again, and the villainous pair suffer a chilling end (in the truest sense)."

"Ellen Richter was the first muse of producer-director Richard Eichberg, for whom she starred in 13 films between 1915 and 1918. Of these, only two – Leben um Leben and Das Bacchanal des Todes (The Bacchanal of Death, 1917) – are known to survive today. Eichberg was a prolific, no-nonsense filmmaker who specialized in popular subjects and genres, encompassing everything from thrillers to historical epics to musicals. According to Eichberg specialist Michael Wedel, many of the components of the director’s signature style are already in place in his early films with Ellen Richter. These include his deft handling of suspense and action, and his employment of “exotic”/”erotic” elements, as well as his penchant for elaborate, ornate set designs and dramatic lighting effects, all of which are evident in Leben um Leben. Indeed, the backlit depiction of the tragic and desperate figures of Carmen and Peppo against the freezing wintry backdrop of Krummhübel/Karpacz in present-day Poland at the climax of the film is one of the stand-out moments of Heinrich Gärtner’s critically acclaimed photography."

"Another Eichberg trademark, his expert handling of crowds, is prominent in two scenes, a spectacular fancy-dress ball and a demonstration (reportedly featuring over 1,200 extras) in front of Tomson and Frederich’s bank when the bank is forced to stop payments following a poor day on the stock market."

"Richter was the only member of the principal cast who had also appeared in Das Tagebuch Collins, and here she is clearly the star of the picture. Her character is the linchpin that holds all the elements together. Richter appears to revel in her role, and thanks to her stage training makes the best of the rather theatrical mise-en-scène. Her characterization of Carmen Metschersky as an out-and-out villainess stands in marked contrast to the morally ambiguous heroines or good-hearted evildoers Richter would later portray. The character of a fiery Spanish dancer would reappear throughout her career, notable examples being the title character in Lola Montez, die Tänzerin des Königs (Lola Montez, the King’s Dancer, 1922), and “La Bella Dolores”, the main protagonist of the now (largely) lost comedy Die schönsten Beine von Berlin (Saucy Suzanne, 1926/27)." – Oliver Hanley (GCM 2021)

The restoration 

GCM 2021: "A rare example of Richter’s early, pre-1920 film work, before she became her own producer, Leben um Leben has survived more or less intact, in the form of a vintage Swedish release print preserved in remarkable condition in the Archival Film Collections of the Swedish Film Institute. This nitrate print, tinted and toned in a variety of different colours, served as the basis for the 4K digital restoration carried out by the DFF – Deutsches Filminstitut & Filmmuseum that is premiering at this year’s Giornate. For the restored version, the Swedish titles of the source element have been replaced by reconstructed German titles based on the text of the surviving German censorship card from 23 May 1921. Technical work was carried out by ARRI Media at its facilities in Munich and Berlin."

AA: Richard Eichberg became a reliable professional for the German film industry over several decades, also in interesting vehicles for unconventional stars, like Anna May Wong and La Jana, a trend that can be seen budding already in Leben um Leben starring Ellen Richter.

Eichberg's career as a director had started the year before, and here his touch is still undeniably mediocre. He has no directorial flair, no experience in mise-en-scène, no particular hold on performances. Pantomime can be great art, but here it is just unconvincing gesticulation.

Leben um Leben has been made in early cinema mode with long takes, long shots and deep focus. There are some electrifying crowd scenes and costume balls, and a promising mob sequence, but Eichberg cannot hold the tension and the suspense.

A sympathetic detail is the Eichberg company logo based on the director's name: Eichberg means Oak Hill.

The restoration is well made. I love the refined toned passages. There is double colour in the snowscapes as the villainous couple freezes to death. Often the image has good visual quality.

John Sweeney elevated the screening with his engrossing sonorities at the grand piano of Teatro Verdi.

Film concert Lady Windermere's Fan (1925), Carl Davis, Le Giornate del Cinema Muto (2021), new digital MoMA restoration (2021)

Ernst Lubitsch directs Irene Rich in Lady Windermere's Fan (US 1925).

LE GIORNATE DEL CINEMA MUTO (GCM) 2021
OPENING NIGHT
REDISCOVERIES
Crossing Borders: Three German shorts from the DFF
[BALLONAUFSTIEG] [Balloon Ascent] (DE 1911? 1913?)
DCP, 1'26''
Pianoforte: Daan van den Hurk

SPECIAL EVENTS
LADY WINDERMERE’S FAN (US 1925)
Ernst Lubitsch; DCP, 94'
...
Music score by Carl Davis
Performed live by members of the British Psappha ensemble: Jennifer Langridge (cello), Benedict Holland (violin), Matteo Andri (piano)
Conductor: Carl Davis
Music performed by arrangement with Faber Music, London on behalf of Carl Davis
...
LADY WINDERMERE’S FAN (US 1925)
regie/dir., mont./ed: Ernst Lubitsch.
scen/adapt: Julien Josephson. Dalla pièce di/Based on the play by Oscar Wilde (St. James’s Theatre, London, 1892).
did./titles: Maude Fulton, Eric Locke. art titles: Victor Vance. photog: Charles Van Enger.  scg/des: Harold Grieve. cost: Sophie Wachner.
cast: Ronald Colman (Lord Darlington), May McAvoy (Lady Windermere), Bert Lytell (Lord Windermere), Irene Rich (Mrs. Erlynne), Edward Martindel (Lord Augustus Lorton), Mme. [Carrie] Daumery (la duchessa/The Duchess of Berwick).
asst. dir: George Hippard, Ernst Laemmle.
prod: Warner Bros. Pictures.
première: 1.12.1925 (Casa Lopez, New York).
Finnish premiere: 17.10.1927 (Punainen Mylly, Helsinki, released by: Filmikeskus Osakeyhtiö).
uscita/rel: 26.12.1925 (Warners’ Theatre, New York City).
copia/copy: DCP, 94′ (da/from 35 mm nitr. pos., 21 fps); did./titles: ENG.
fonte/source: The Museum of Modern Art, New York.
Restauro realizzato da/Restored by The Museum of Modern Art, con il sostegno finanziario di/with the financial support of Matthew & Natalie Bernstein.

Dave Kehr (GCM 2021): "Ernst Lubitsch never discussed what led to his audacious decision to adapt Oscar Wilde’s famously talky stage play Lady Windermere’s Fan as a silent film in 1925. Personally, I would like to think it was a gift to Irene Rich, the actress whose sublime performance – as the tolerant queen to a philandering king – in Lubitsch’s first American film, Rosita, effectively stole the film from its ostensible star, Mary Pickford. Rich’s Queen already possesses the qualities of Wilde’s heroic Mrs. Erlynne: discernment, discretion, an acceptance of human imperfection, and the wit and patience to deal with it."

"Whatever its origins, Lubitsch’s Lady Windermere’s Fan stands as one of the great achievements of silent film, an alignment of form and feeling that grows more impressive with each viewing. By eliminating the play’s most famous element – the endless succession of epigrams, delivered by diverse characters who all seem to have exactly the same sense of humor – Lubitsch shifts his emphasis to the thoughts behind the mask of language, as revealed through gestures, looks, postures, and the way his characters navigate spaces both domestic and public."

"In the brilliant opening sequence, Lubitsch establishes the complicated relationship between Lady Windermere (May McAvoy) and her ardent admirer, the notorious flirt Lord Darlington (Ronald Colman), moving from a balanced two-shot into an isolated close-up of their handshake, as Darlington’s grip registers a bit too warmly for Lady Windermere’s comfort. They separate, interrupted by Lord Windermere (Bert Lytell), who has just received an enigmatic note from Mrs. Erlynne (Rich). Darlington notices that Windermere is trying to hide the note from his wife, and another close-up of hands shows Darlington helpfully pushing the envelope back into Windermere’s grasp – one man of the world helping another to cover up a billet doux. After Windermere hurriedly retreats, the couple remain in awkward silence. Lubitsch cuts to an extreme long shot, for the first time revealing the extraordinary height of Harold Grieve’s stylized sets. The two retreat to separate spaces in the vast room. They are reunited in medium shot only when Darlington feels empowered to make a declaration: “Lady Windermere, I have a bit of news that might interest you.” After she joins him, he proclaims “I love you!” They separate again, this time exchanging positions in the set, in long shot. Lubitsch fades out on this sudden expansion of space, which looms like an unresolved chord over the scenes that follow."

"This is a stunning display of technique, beyond all but a few directors of the period, yet Lubitsch is careful to follow it with a sequence of perfect simplicity: Mrs. Erlynne at her desk, holding her head for a moment, then turning to look at a portrait of Lady Windermere in a society paper. From a close shot of the photo Lubitsch moves into a slightly tighter shot of Mrs. Erlynne, as a little smile of pride plays on her lips. As she looks away, the character goes inward – signaled by a microscopic shift in Irene Rich’s regard as she looks away from the paper, eyes briefly closing. A slowly exhaled breath covers the cut to a slightly wider angle, as Mrs. Erlynne pulls herself out of the past, and prepares to deal with the present. What technique there is here is purely in the service of the actor, as Lubitsch steps back and allows Rich to fill out her character, finding pride, regret, determination, and a hint of irony in one crystalline moment."

"As his admirer Alfred Hitchcock, another exponent of “pure cinema,” would do decades later in Vertigo, Lubitsch quickly exposes the big revelation that is central to the source material. Mrs. Erlynne is Lady Windermere’s mother, erased from family memory because of an affair that even Mrs. Erlynne no longer seems to remember. Again, a simple gesture completely recasts the action; only the viewer is aware of Mrs. Erlynne’s essential nobility, as she moves toward the moment of sacrifice, ready to throw away her painfully regained reputation in order to prevent her daughter from committing a mistake exactly like her own."

"Announced in June 1925, Lady Windermere’s Fan went into production in August, with Clive Brook cast as Lord Darlington. Brook was soon replaced by Ronald Colman, borrowed at great expense from Samuel Goldwyn, and principal photography began at the end of September. Filming was completed by the end of October, following a location jaunt to Toronto, for several days of filming at the Woodbine Racetrack. Lubitsch himself handled the editing, and the film premiered in New York City in December."

"Mordaunt Hall of the New York Times (28.12.1925) deplored Lubitsch’s revision of Wilde: “… he has nevertheless fashioned an entertaining picture which will probably be more popular in provincial communities – where Lubitsch is better known than Wilde – than a production that retained Wilde’s nimble wit.” But most of the critics saw a classic in the making. A typical response was William A. Johnson’s in Motion Picture News (12.12.1925): “Never before, to me at least, has the screen fairly talked – and with such a brilliancy, forcefulness and finish. Lubitsch tells in a flash, and with lasting effect, what novels must explain in chapters. This, it seems to me, is the inherent power of the screen. Lubitsch has brought it forth in all its fullness.”"

"This new digital restoration of Lady Windermere’s Fan is based on a 35 mm nitrate print purchased from Warner Brothers in the 1930s by Iris Barry, the first director of the Department of Film of The Museum of Modern Art. Scanning and clean-up were performed by Image Protection Services under the supervision of MoMA’s chief preservationist, Peter Williamson. The project was made possible by the generous financial support of Matthew and Natalie Bernstein." – Dave Kehr

The music 

"In every café, private party, and hotel foyer in Oscar Wilde’s London would be, discreetly placed, a small group of musicians providing a sonic background to the social scene. They would be playing arrangements of operatic arias, marches, sentimental ballads, and, above all, waltzes. Without making direct quotes, I have attempted to evoke, using a trio consisting of a solo violin, a cello, and a piano, the era of this play, premiered in 1892 and set in the heyday of the Palm Court Orchestra. Although Ernst Lubitsch’s 1925 Hollywood film is made-up and costumed in contemporary style, there are no Charlestons here. The tone of the score is STRICTLY Victorian!" – Carl Davis (GCM 2021)

AA: I include the Giornate del Cinema program notes of Lady Windermere's Fan in my blog although I decided at the last moment not to visit the screening – out of respect for MoMA for the new digital restoration and for Carl Davis for his composing and conducting his score. After a hard week at work I am too tired to do justice to these masters of their art and craft.

We screened the previous (2007) MoMA restoration of Lady Windermere's Fan in our complete Lubitsch retrospective in Helsinki in 2008. At 20 fps it ran 98 minutes, while the previous available version was only 77 minutes at the same speed. The original duration was 104 minutes at that very speed. I believe that storywise all versions are identical. Only the edit has been made slower or faster.

In the new digital edition the speed has been slightly accelerated to 21 fps. I am sure that this decision has been carefully judged. I loved the previous photochemical restoration and am sure that the new digital version is not worse.

As for the film itself, it belongs to the biggest surprises in the history of adaptations of classics of literature to the cinema. In 2008 I wrote: "Wilde's play was an attack on Victorian hypocrisy, Lubitsch's film was produced at the height of the Jazz Age. Interestingly, he removed Wilde's frivolity and replaced it with gravity."

Famously, Lubitsch eliminated from the dialogue all Wilde's famous witticisms: " I can resist everything except temptation". "No, we are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars". 
"In this world there are only two tragedies. One is not getting what one wants, and the other is getting it." "Cecil Graham: What is a cynic? Lord Darlington: A man who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing". Removing all of them was a very daring thing to do. Lubitsch won the gamble and created an original work, a parallel masterpiece to Wilde's play.

The Purple Mask (a compilation of Episodes 12: The Vault of Mystery, 13: The Leap and 16: A Prisoner of Love)

Grace Cunard & Francis Ford: The Purple Mask (US 1916 starring Grace Cunard as The Purple Mask.

Grace Cunard & Francis Ford: The Purple Mask (US 1916 starring Francis Ford as Detective Phil Kelly and Grace Cunard as The Purple Mask. Source: IMDb.

Grace Cunard & Francis Ford: The Purple Mask (US 1916–1917) starring Grace Cunard as The Purple Mask. Photo: AMPAS – Margaret Herrick Library, Los Angeles

THE PURPLE MASK (US 1916–1917) regia/dir: Grace Cunard, Francis Ford. scen: Grace Cunard.
    cast: Grace Cunard (Patricia [Patsy] Montez, the Purple Mask), Francis Ford (Detective Phil Kelly), Pete Gerald (Pete Bartlett, il suo assistente/Kelly’s assistant), Jerry Ash (Bull Sanderson, un altro assistente/another assistant), Jean Hathaway (Eleanor Van Nuys, Patricia’s Aunt), John Duffy (Silk Donahue), John Featherstone (Stephen Dupont), Mario Bianchi [Monty Banks] (Jacques, the butler), Duke Worne (Duke Hestor).
    prod: Universal Film Manufacturing Company. uscita/rel: 1916–1917 (orig. 16 ep.); 18.3.1917 (12. “The Vault of Mystery”); 25.3.1917 (13. “The Leap”); 15.4.1917 (16. “A Prisoner of Love”). copia/copy: DCP, 52′ (ep. 12, 19’26”; ep. 13, 10’40”; ep. 16, 21’53”) (da/from 35 mm); did./titles: ENG.
    fonte/source: Library of Congress National Center for Audio-Visual Conservation, Packard Campus, Culpeper, VA (Dawson City Collection).
    Le Giornate del Cinema Muto (GCM) at Pordenone. Corona emergency security: half programming, half capacity, COVID certificate required, temperature measured, hand hygiene, face masks, distancing.
    Grand piano: Philip Carli.
    Viewed at Teatro Verdi with e-subtitles in Italian, 2 Oct 2021.

Jennifer M. Bean (GCM 2021): "Known to her fans as “The Master Pen,” Grace Cunard (Harriet Milfred Jeffries, 1893‒1967) wrote and performed in over 80 films in the 1910s, including four of Universal’s most popular adventure serials. The daughter of a grocery clerk in Columbus, Ohio, she left school after completing the eighth grade to act in local stage productions. In a May 1915 item for Motion Picture Magazine, “How I Became a Photoplayer,” Cunard explained that her film career began “in the spirit of fun” in 1908, when she applied to the Biograph Company in New York after a friend “dared” her to try acting in motion pictures for a day. Apocryphal or not, this story of Cunard’s first appearance before the camera shares traits with the roles she repeatedly created for herself: an intrepid, often mischievous, but decidedly plucky female-adventurer, with a signature laugh."

"Of the many women writers whose work defines early U.S. filmmaking, Cunard is one of the few who also performed in the scripts she created. And she is the only female of the period who wrote scenarios for serial films, including Lucille Love, The Girl of Mystery (1914), The Broken Coin (1915), The Adventures of Peg o’ the Ring (1916), and The Purple Mask (1917). By the mid-1910s, publicity stressed her capacity to “write everything” in which she appeared, a job that allegedly began spontaneously in 1912 when she and director Francis Ford could not find a satisfactory scenario and she “sat up all night” to write one herself. Together, Cunard and Ford left the Bison company and joined Universal in 1913, playing opposite one another in a prolific array of mystery, adventure, and crime-caper films that Cunard most often wrote and Ford most often directed. On occasion, Cunard also served as co-director or director, as was the case for nearly half of the episodes of The Purple Mask."

"Developed under the working title Lady Raffles Returns, the serial launched on 31 December 1916, with Moving Picture Weekly (16.12.1916) calling it “The best kind of Christmas present.” Cunard conceived it to showcase one of her favorite characters: a clever thief with a reckless charm who lives a dual identity, often as a member of upper-class society. First introduced as “Meg” in The Black Masks (1913) and as “Grace” in The Twins’ Double (1914), Cunard dubbed her notorious female crook “My Lady Raffles” in a series of shorts released throughout 1914, including The Mysterious Leopard Lady, The Mystery of the White Car, The Mysterious Hand, The Mysterious Rose, and The Return of the Twins’ Double. In each of these films Lady Raffles (Cunard) outwits the detective Phil Kelly (Ford), while Cunard demonstrates her talent for reinventing and repurposing well-known male characters of the era, in this case Raffles, the British gentleman thief and master of disguise created in 1898 by E. W. Hornung."

"In The Purple Mask, Ford’s role as detective Phil Kelly remains nearly identical to the earlier cycle of “Lady Raffles” films. But Cunard’s character is known in polite society as Patricia (Patsy) Montez, a young woman living with her aunt in Paris when the story begins. Near the end of the opening episode, she joins a band of working-class Apaches and becomes their leader, committing crimes exclusively for the purpose of aiding the less fortunate, often women or girls, and of redistributing wealth in a pseudo-socialist manner. Sporting a purple cape, a domino mask, and a jaunty cap, Patsy leaves a note signed “P.M.” at each scene to ensure that innocents are not wrongly accused of the crimes. By organizing her female thief as the film’s visual and narrative center, Cunard invites viewers to cheer for the charming criminal while sharing her (often extraordinary) point of view: eavesdropping on revolutionists from a thin, high window ledge; watching her gang battle with Ford from a perch two stories above; manipulating the trapdoor button, rotating staircase, or sliding fireplace in the New York home designed as her headquarters."

"Although incomplete, the serial’s extant reels reveal Cunard’s gift for constructing marvelous worlds through her playful but always carefully structured plots. Each episode introduces the motivation for the next, and subplots often extend across several installments. When fleeing from Phillip Johnson’s mansion after breaking into his “submarine vault” in Episode 13, for instance, the Purple Mask learns of a conspiracy to bomb Manhattan’s public buildings. Her efforts to halt the revolutionists as well as the “river pirates” in alliance with them create an interlocking set of actions sustained across the serial’s final three episodes. This plot twist also provides Phil Kelly with leverage to convince the Secret Service to “let Patsy go” in the concluding episode. She thus becomes a “Prisoner of Love” (as the episode’s title not so subtly hints) rather than a prisoner of the state. Our screening includes portions of Episodes 12, 13, and 16, in which all the action is set in New York." – Jennifer M. Bean

AA: Grace Cunard and Francis Ford created the first serials for Universal Pictures in 1914–1917, starting with Lucille Love, Girl of Mystery. The Purple Mask was the last serial they made together.

Film history and film credits are being revised today from the female viewpoint. Grace Cunard has always been celebrated as a great action star, but now is the time to recognize her also as director, screenwriter and editor.

These serials were collaborations with Francis Ford. The close professional relationship of Ford and Cunard also turned personal, but they were never married to each other. It seems that Francis Ford treated Grace Cunard as an equal and defended her from the interventions of Thomas Ince leading to their move to Universal Studios.

The portions of episodes 12: The Vault of Mystery, 13: The Leap and 16: A Prisoner of Love convey a sense of action, adventure and excitement, with Grace Cunard as the female bandit and Francis Ford as detective Phil Kelly. Although they are antagonists, their mutual attraction is irresistible.

The phenomenon of the action serial had started in 1908 when Victorin Jasset directed his first Nick Carter movies for Éclair. Among Jasset's characters was also the first female bandit of the serials, Rosaria, interpreted by Josette Andriot.

The twist in The Purple Mask is that the bandit is a revolutionary leader for justice.

There are topical currents in The Purple Mask.

The masks, obviously. In the opening screening of Le Giornate del Cinema Muto both the characters on the screen and the audience don masks.

Terrorism.

The longevity and vitality of the action series phenomenon. This week the latest James Bond movie, No Time Die, had its worldwide premiere, in direct lineage from Victorin Jasset, Grace Cunard and Francis Ford.

The DCP is from a battered and fragmented source with water or nitrate damage marks, yet watchable, conveying the joy of action and the joy of cinema. In a film historical screening, the battle scars of the source material become special effects.

Näin pilvet kuolevat / How to Kill a Cloud

Tuija Halttunen: Näin pilvet kuolevat / How to Kill a Cloud (FI/DK 2021), a documentary on bringing rain to the desert on the Arabian peninsula, featuring Hannele Korhonen, Professor at the Finnish Meteorological Institute.

Näin pilvet kuolevat (2021)
NatureTechSociety
Theme: Maailma palaa / The World Is Burning
Country: Finland, Denmark
Director: Tuija Halttunen
Screenplay: Tuija Halttunen
Starring: Hannele Korhonen
Production: Niina Virtanen, Pasi Hakkio, Ulrik Gutkin / Wacky Tie Films, Copenhagen Film Company
Duration: 80 min
    Language: Arabic, English, Finnish
    Subtitles: English
    Distribution: Pirkanmaan elokuvakeskus
    Cinematography: Ville Hakonen
    Editing: Jussi Sandhu
    Music: Kristian Eidnes Andersen
    Sound: Kristian Eidnes Andersen
Festival premiere: 22 March 2021 Copenhagen International Film Festival
Finnish premiere: 10 Sep 2021
To be screened and streamed also at Love & Anarchy The Helsinki Film Festival, 16-27 Sep 2021, theme: Maailma palaa / The World Is Burning
Viewed from a festival platform in a copy with English commentary on a 4K tv set at Midnight Sun Film Festival 2021 online, 19 June 2021

Finnish Film Catalogue: "The scientist Hannele Korhonen has one ultimate passion: to work at the top of the atmospheric science community in the world. She wishes to be totally independent and concentrate on her science while maintaining high ethical values."

"Her life changes dramatically when she is awarded a 1,5 million USD research grant by the United Arab Emirates. The funder expects her to find ways to make the migratory clouds above the UAE to rain on the country suffering of drought. The opportunity to get proper funding for such a special research is perfect. Gradually she learns that the aim of the funder is to benefit one country, not science at large. Korhonen’s enthusiasm morphs into an ethical dilemma and inner conflicts." Finnish Film Catalogue – facts and presentation copied from Love & Anarchy: Helsinki Film Festival (2011) catalogue

“Cursed be, at once, the high ambition
Wherewith the mind itself deludes!
Cursed be the glare of apparition
That on the finer sense intrudes!

Cursed be the lying dream’s impression
Of name, and fame, and laurelled brow!
Cursed, all that flatters as possession,
As wife and child, as knave and plow!

Cursed Mammon be, when he with treasures
To restless action spurs our fate!
Cursed when, for soft, indulgent leisures,
He lays for us the pillows straight!

Cursed be the vine’s transcendent nectar,
— The highest favor Love lets fall!
Cursed, also, Hope!—cursed Faith, the spectre!
And cursed be Patience most of all!”

From: Goethe: Faust, Part One (quoted in the film's motto)

AA: I remember Tuija Halttunen as the director of an unforgettable documentary feature film, Mielen tila (2007), shot at the Vanha Vaasa Hospital, the special mental hospital dedicated to criminal psychiatry. Amazingly, Halttunen was able to collaborate with three patients who have been diagnosed non compos mentis or are too dangerous or difficult to treat in regular hospitals. She earned the confidence of Dr. Markku Eronen, a respected expert in the field. The more one reflects on this sober film, the more incredible it seems that it was made at all.

In How to Kill a Cloud, Halttunen again finds a subject that borders on the inconceivable: how to bring rain clouds to the desert of the Arabian peninsula. We visit five star hotels at Abu Dhabi, the capital of the United Arab Emirates. (My mind wanders to Sex and the City 2, also shot there, perhaps of the clash of independent Western woman with archaic patriarchal conditions). Extreme wealth resides next to abject poverty and exploitation. Two thirds of the inhabitants are expatriates.

Where Mielen tila was shot in confined spaces of a prison, How to Kill a Cloud is a movie of infinity, displaying cosmic views of the sky, the clouds and the desert. We are not very far from the area where three great world religions were born. This movie belongs to the realm of the sublime. Besides gorgeous cinematography by Ville Hakonen, animation is employed to convey meteorology, just like in television weather forecasts.

Again there is a scientist, an authority of her field, in the center. Professor Hannele Korhonen. Because she is a woman, one of the tensions of the movie is confronting the world of a religious order in which women are marginalized and discriminated. The sharia law is enforced, and there is a separate queue for women.

How to Kill a Cloud poses huge questions about geo-engineering, rain enhancement science and cloud management. We engineer the atmosphere all the time. Clouds have been sown since 1946. Could a country claim ownership to a cloud? Water is power: true equality is randomness of power. When Donald Trump considered a nuclear weapon to annihilate a hurricane, the answer was that a hurricane equals a million atom bombs. Cloud-engineering has been used as a weapon since the Vietnam War. Silver iodine was utilized for weather modification to manipulate the monsoon season.

The issues in How to Kill a Cloud could not be more alarming, but cinematically and dramatically, the documentary lacks some sense of urgency.

Gerald Peary: American Film Noir Poll (1940–1959) on Facebook 6 July – 3 August, 2021

Billy Wilder: Double Indemnity (US 1944), based on the tale (1936) by James M. Cain, screenplay by Raymond Chandler. Scene deleted: the claims adjuster Barton Keyes (Edward G. Robinson) witnesses his protégé Walter Neff (Fred McMurray) enter the gas chamber.

Billy Wilder: Double Indemnity (US 1944), based on the tale (1936) by James M. Cain, screenplay by Raymond Chandler. Scene deleted: the claims adjuster Barton Keyes (Edward G. Robinson) witnesses his protégé Walter Neff (Fred McMurray) executed in the gas chamber.

Gerald Peary, 3 August 2021:

"Thanks to 145 voters in 14 countries including film critics, cinema historians, filmmakers, academics, and knowledgeable fans for participating in my Facebook contest for the Best of American Film Noir, 1940-1959. The winner on 94 ballots is Billy Wilder's masterful Double Indemnity, beating out two atmospheric cult classics, Jacques Tourneur's Out of the Past (87 ballots) and Orson Welles' Touch of Evil (81). All power to the "B" movie: Detour 5th and Gun Crazy 9th. What happened to Hitchcock, with Shadow of a Doubt buried at 19th, Strangers on a Train at 21st? The top 20:

1. Double Indemnity (94 votes)
2. Out of the Past (87)
3. Touch of Evil (81)
4. Kiss Me Deadly (61)
5. Detour (59)
6. In a Lonely Place (57)
7. The Big Heat (52)
8. The Big Sleep (50)
9. Gun Crazy (41)
10. The Killing (40)
11. The Maltese Falcon (39)
12. The Asphalt Jungle (34)
13. Pickup on South Street (33)
14. Scarlet Street and The Killers (26)
16. Force of Evil (25)
17. Sunset Boulevard (24)
18. Criss Cross (22)
19. Shadow of a Doubt and Lady from Shanghai (21)"

Antti Alanen: My Film Noir Top Ten:

This Gun for Hire (1942)
The Seventh Victim (1943)
Double Indemnity (1944)
Phantom Lady (1944)
Gilda (1946)
The Postman Always Rings Twice (1946)
Out of the Past (1947)
Caught (1949)
Criss Cross (1949)
In a Lonely Place (1950)
    It would be easier to create a top ten list of films noirs of 1946, 1947, 1948...
    Gerald Peary: "Thanks for doing what was not easy."

AA: Making lists for Gerald Peary was a summer pastime, but there was a lively discussion on the definition of film noir and the origins of the term on Gerald's page. The term was minted by Nino Frank in Paris in 1946, and the first book was Raymond Borde and Étienne Chaumeton's Panorama du film noir américain in 1955. Inspired by this debate, I finally read that book for the first time. The term was apparently established in Anglophone discourse in 1970 by Raymond Durgnat. 

There are many definitions of film noir, all valid and rewarding. As for me, this chain inspired me to define it for myself anew. I copy some of my remarks in Gerald Peary's Facebook chain here:

Noir: "The streets were dark with something more than night" (Raymond Chandler).

"For me, noir has a sense of cosmic agony. It acknowledges death in metaphysical terms, and has affinities with the Orphic lineage of poetry: a quest into the underworld, the femmes fatales being the maenads. There is a transcendent dimension. The peculiar existential dread was probably inspired by the awareness of Nazi terror conducted by citizens who appear perfectly harmless. In addition to the other criteria detailed by Gerald."

"I don't know if this is a commonplace to say, but for me, a (the?) keyword to film noir is the Holocaust. It started in 1941, and the premiere of The Maltese Falcon was in October 1941. There is a general sense of an unfathomable evil and a gravity of a completely different order in film noir than in the crime films made before 1941. It is a different Weltanschauung, a different cosmology, a different metaphysics. It is a subtext, of course, but a profound one."

"That said, some noir directors also discussed Nazi Germany directly, such as Farrow (The Hitler Gang), Zinnemann (The Seventh Cross, The Search) and De Toth (None Shall Escape). Some even documented it (Fuller: Falkenau) or advised on documentaries (Wilder, Hitchcock). An interesting parallel is Melville: the Resistance veteran whose cycle of crime films mirror his Resistance film trilogy, particularly L'Armée des ombres."

"Of course also Fritz Lang created a Resistance series of films: Man Hunt (my favourite), Hangmen Also Die!, Ministry of Fear, Cloak and Dagger and American Guerrilla in the Philippines."

On the recommendation of Imogen Sara Smith I'm now reading James Naremore's book More Than Night. Its discussion of Double Indemnity includes the deleted ending with Walter Neff's execution in the gas chamber, witnessed by his senior colleague Barton Keyes (Edward G. Robinson)..

I agree with Borde and Chaumeton in seeing film noir from the viewpoint of surrealism. These films are dream plays. They have affinities with dreamwork, including displacement (Verschiebung). Films noirs were powerful in a dream mode, open to many interpretations; subversive, ambiguous and incoherent in many ways. For me, essential in the genesis of film noir was an awareness of the Holocaust that made the streets dark with something more than night.

VOTERS:

Anthony Mann, Glenn Kenny, Paul Byrnes, Garen Daly, Tanja Bresan, Jan Lumholdt, Andrew Luria, Paul Brenner, Lewis Klahr, Larry Knapp, John Powers, Jessica Rosner, John Anderson, Joseph McBride, David Reeder, Allan Arkush, A. S. Hamrah, Eric Martin, Eric Werthman, Brad Stevens, Michael Atkinson, Mike White, Patrick McGilligan, Peter Keough, Derek Lam, Joe Ebbinger, Stephen Rebello, Christian Monggaard, Liam Lacey, Nat Chediak, Steve Ellman, Al J. Meyer, Elliot Lavine, Mike Maggiore, Anne Thompson, Dmitry Martov, Laurent Vachaud, Murray Neilse Stone, Reid Rosefelt, Rick Winston, Larry Gross, John Ned, Alex Simon, Douglas Brode, Richard Herskowitz, Mark Goldblatt
   
Michael Sragow, David Ansen, Larry Jackson, Jim Beaver, Chris Fujiwara, Nat Segaloff, Geoff Pevere, Adrian Danks, Peg Aloi, Barbara Bernstein, Jim Healy, Stephen Winer, Steven Pope, Louis Alvarez, Chale Nafus, Daniel Moore, Steve Fagin, Howard A. Rodman, Carol Summers, Susan Wloszczyna, Lyn Vaus, Eddie Cockrell, Diane Waldman, Godfrey Cheshire, Gabe Klinger, Steven Fagan, Louis Goldberg, Dean Michael Kuehn, Carl Rollyson, Dennis Fischer, Patricia Gruben, John F. Davis, Reece Beckett, Alan Zweig, Matthew Sorrento, Garner Simmons, Gene Seymour, Carrie Rickey, Howard Gelman, Jerry Carlson, David D'Arcy, Sean Axmaker, Terrence Rafferty, Jack Vermee, Hadley Obodiac, Mike Bowes, Brecht Andersch
   
Axel Kuschevatzky, Tim Miller, Anand Venigalla, Desson Thomson, Evelyn Rosenthal, Drew Todd, Peter Kemp, Richard Brody, Chris Morris, Jayne Loader, David Sterritt, Andy Klein, Tom Brueggemann, Maurie Alioff, Larry Karaszewski, Antti Alanen, Geoff Andrew, Rob Ribera, John Paizs, Tim Jackson, Rahul Hamid, Greg Klymkiw's TFC – The Film Corner, Jack Miller, Paul Mollica, Jay Atkinson, Barry Marshall, Kevin Stoehr, Maitland McDonagh, Dennis Delaney, Paul Sherman, John Hall, Paul Schrader, Scott Braid, Tom Meek, Mike Downey, Danny Peary, Stephanie Piro, Ken Eisner, Steve Elworth, Dante Del Corso, John Kaufman, Peter Lynch, Paul Buhle, Preston Gralla, Dror Izhar, Adrian Martin, Matt Hanson, Tony Joe Stemme

Sokea mies, joka ei halunnut nähdä Titanicia / The Blind Man Who Did Not Want To See Titanic

Teemu Nikki: Sokea mies, joka ei halunnut nähdä Titanicia / The Blind Man Who Did Not Want To See Titanic (FI 2021) starring Petri Poikolainen.

Teemu Nikki: Sokea mies, joka ei halunnut nähdä Titanicia / The Blind Man Who Did Not Want To See Titanic (FI 2021) starring Petri Poikolainen.

Director: Teemu Nikki
Production: It’s Alive Films (Jani Pösö), Wacky Tie Films
Running Time: 82’
Language: Finnish, English
Country: Finland
Main Cast: Petri Poikolainen, Marjaana Maijala, Hannamaija Nikander, Matti Onnismaa, Samuli Jaskio, Rami Rusinen
Screenplay: Teemu Nikki
Cinematographer: Sari Aaltonen
Editor: Jussi Sandhu
Sound: Sami Kiiski, Heikki Kossi
Producer: Jani Pösö
    Released by B-Plan Distribution, spoken in Finnish, subtitled in Swedish by Ditte Kronström.
    Festival premiere: 8 Sep 2021 Venice Film Festival, Orizzonti Extra.
    Finnish premiere: 10 Sep 2021.
    Viewed at a press screening at Tennispalatsi 2, Helsinki, 31 Aug 2021.

Synopsis (Venice Film Festival 2021):

"An intense movie, shot from a blind man’s perspective. An atypical action/thriller film about a man who has to go through hell to reach his loved one. Jaakko is blind and disabled, tightened to his wheelchair. He loves Sirpa. Living far away, they have never met in person, but they meet every day over the phone."

"When Sirpa is overwhelmed by the shocking news, Jaakko decides to go to her immediately despite his condition. In any case, he just needs to rely on the help of five strangers in five places: from home to taxi, from taxi to station, from station to train, from train to taxi and finally from taxi to... her."

Director’s Statement (Venice Film Festival 2021):

"In spring 2019 I asked my friend, Petri, whether he still would like to act. He admitted that it was still his dream, and I promised to write him a role in a short film. The role grew into a main role and the short film grew into a feature film. Petri’s MS is so aggressive that we were in a hurry to film. Petri told me that he still travels on his own, even though he is blind and only right-hand moves. That is where the idea came from. Nevertheless, I did not want to make a documentary about a disabled actor. I wanted to work with Petri, an actor who happens to be blind and in a wheelchair. Our main character has the same disease as Petri, but the script is fictional."

AA: The Blind Man Who Did Not Want To See Titanic is the most extraordinary achievement of Teemu Nikki, all of whose films are special.

It is also one of the most interesting achievements in the lineage of films starring disabled protagonists. Let's remember the recent Sound of Metal, about a musician who loses his hearing.

Teemu Nikki's film starts and ends with Braille. This work belongs to the paradoxical category of films that take place in the world of the blind, beyond the visible. An early distinguished example is the German Aufklärungsfilm Vom Reiche der sechs Punkte (1927, D: Hugo Rütters). In such a story, in such a film, we can take nothing for granted. What's more: in such a life, in such a world, nothing can taken for granted.

It is a daunting challenge, but in creative hands, promising and rewarding material. Seeing (and unseeing) the world anew, when everything has to be achieved differently, there are surprises in every scene.

It is a love story and a death story.

Both protagonists, Jaakko (Petri Poikolainen) and Sirpa (Marjaana Maijala) are terminally ill. He, with MS, she, with cancer. They have never met in live contact. (A story for the pandemic age). It's now or never.

Jaakko and Sirpa are incurable film buffs whose dialogue consists largely of movie references. Stephen King, John Carpenter, Martin Scorsese... and this is where Titanic appears in a surprising way and with surprising identification structures: she as the iceberg, he as the Titanic.

But in a unique way, this saga of film nerd banter turns into an action thriller, more fearsome than many of the hit films that have been mentioned.

One of the greatest paradoxes is the visual concept based on first person identification with the blind Jaakko. The world is blurred, and extreme close-up is the favoured field size.

Teemu Nikki keeps the mind-boggling material with multiple meta-levels in firm control. The soundtrack and the sound world are exciting. Petri Poikolainen's death-defying performance is unforgettable. Finally, it's about love.