The Last Warning (2016 digital restoration by Universal Pictures)

Paul Leni: The Last Warning (US 1929).

Paul Leni: The Last Warning (US 1929). Carrie Daumery (as Barbara Morgan).

Viimeinen varoitus! / Le dernier avertissement / Die letzte Warnung.

    US 1929. P: Carl Laemmle Jr. per Universal Pictures Corp. 

    D: Paul Leni. Based on: dal romanzo The House of Fear di Wadsworth Camp. SC: Alfred A. Cohn, Robert F. Hill, J. G. Hawks. Cinematography: Hal Mohr – b&w. ED: Robert Carlisle. AD: Charles D. Hall. M: Joseph Cherniavsky. 

    C: Laura La Plante (Doris), Montague Love (McHugh), Roy D’Arcy (Carlton), Margaret Livingston (Evalinda), John Boles (Qualie), Mack Swain (Robert), Slim Summerville (Tommy). 

    78 min
    2016 digital restoration by Universal Pictures (see restoration bulletin beyond the jump break)
    DCP from Universal Pictures
    Il Cinema Ritrovato, Bologna 2016: Universal Pictures: The Laemmle Junior Years
    ♪ electric piano Maud Nelissen (not Donald Sosin as announced)
    E-subtitles by Sub-Ti Londra
    Cinema Jolly, 1 July 2016

Dave Kehr (Bologna catalog): "Merrily rifling through a whole bag of tricks, from animated intertitles to careening camera movements, director Paul Leni seems to anticipate the cinematic exuberance of Orson Welles in this comedy thriller from the tail end of the silent era (although the film was released with a score, sound effects and a dialogue sequence, the print that survives, and has been beautifully restored by Universal’s in-house digital team, is the silent version Universal provided for theaters not yet equipped for sound)."

"A veteran of the German expressionist cinema in its humorless hard core years (Hintertreppe, Waxworks), Leni revealed a lighter side when he arrived at Universal in 1927 to direct the ‘old dark house’ comedy thriller The Cat and the Canary. The Last Warning features the same star, Laura La Plante, in a similar context, though this time the murder mystery is set backstage at a haunted Broadway theater – Leni’s imaginative redressing of Universal’s already-venerable Phantom of the Opera stage."

"Secret passageways, trapdoors, a masked villain, clutching hands – The Last Warning has them all, served up in high style by Leni and cameraman Hal Mohr. Even the identity of the killer is, by the standards of the genre, a delightful surprise. Sadly, it would prove to be Leni’s last film – the director died of sepsis a few months after its release, at the age of forty-four." – Dave Kehr

The Last Warning. Margaret Livingston as Evalinda.

AA: Paul Leni was a veteran artist – artist blacksmith, painter, graphic artist, caricaturist, illustrator, adman, Expressionist, and perhaps a member of Der Sturm, who had worked for Max Reinhardt, Joe May, Ernst Lubitsch, and the military film unit Bufa – before he started to direct after WWI. He kept getting better. He mastered the Kammerspiel in Hintertreppe with Leopold Jessner. He directed the beautiful horror dream fantasy Das Wachsfigurenkabinett, for Kracauer the last summit of the golden age of Weimar cinema. With Guido Seeber he designed animated short riddles (Rebus-Filme). At Universal Studios he launched the haunted house trend with The Cat and the Canary and The Last Warning. He also directed the Charlie Chan thriller The Chinese Parrot (believed lost) and the Victor Hugo masterpiece The Man Who Laughs. Paul Leni died young but he left a mark on both Weimar cinema and Universal horror.

I only saw 30 minutes from the beginning of The Last Warning due to an overlap with one of Bologna's Anno uno screenings. Paul Leni displays his delight in animation and art graphics from the start. The camera is unhinged, there is a whirlpool, caleidoscope impression of the bright lights of Broadway with neon montages, dancing follies, and superimpositions. The acting is overdone, there is a bit too much of eccentricism. There is an image (see above) that feels like an anticipation of Mummy Bates (a central figure in the Universal Studio Tour).

(I rushed to see that Anno uno screening. It started 30 minutes too late, and there were so many introductions that I never got to see the films I wanted to see before I had to leave again to the next appointment. I should have stayed to see The Last Warning to the end).

A top restoration job from Universal Pictures. The visual quality of the sources used is variable. In the beginning the quality is weak, but it gets much better.

Storm Warning

 

Stuart Heisler: Storm Warning (1951). The KKK leader Charlie Barr (Hugh Sanders) uses the bullwhip to discipline the blonde troublemaker Marsha Mitchell (Ginger Rogers). There is a lingering feeling that the KKK would prefer to burn her at the stake.

Stuart Heisler: Storm Warning (1951). The KKK leader Charlie Barr (Hugh Sanders) meets District Attorney Burt Rainey (Ronald Reagan) who lifts Barr's mask and
ridicules his "Halloween routine".

La setta dei tre K / Ku Klux Klanin merkeissä / Under Ku Klux Klan.
    US 1951. Director: Stuart Heisler. 93 min
    Scen.: Daniel Fuchs, Richard Brooks. F.: Carl E. Guthrie. M.: Clarence Kolster. Scgf.: Leo K. Kuter. Mus.: Daniele Amfitheatrof.
    Int.: Ginger Rogers (Marsha Mitchell), Ronald Reagan (Burt Rainey), Doris Day (Lucy Rice), Steve Cochran (Hank Rice), Hugh Sanders (Charlie Barr), Lloyd Gough (Cliff Rummel), Raymond Greenleaf (Faulkner), Ned Glass (George Athens).
    Prod.: Jerry Wald per Warner Bros. 35 mm
    Helsinki premiere: 28 March 1952 Kaleva, distributed by Warner Bros.
    Bologna: Il Cinema Ritrovato: Guns for Hire: Frank Tuttle vs. Stuart Heisler
    Print from Warner Bros.
    E-subtitles in Italian by Sub-Ti Londra.
    Viewed at Cinema Jolly, 29 Aug 2020.

Imogen Sara Smith (Il Cinema Ritrovato 2020): "Gorgeously shot and brilliantly directed, Storm Warning is a dark, atmospheric crime melodrama, though in delivering its message it pulls its punches. As an exposé of the Ku Klux Klan, the film exposes its own timidity. There is not a single mention of racist violence or religious bigotry; instead, the organisation is characterised as a money-making racket whose leaders exploit resentment of “outsiders” and government interference. The screenplay, by two excellent writers – Richard Brooks and Daniel Fuchs – amusingly plagiarises A Streetcar Named Desire, with Steve Cochran playing a dim-witted but sexy brute who wears a tight T-shirt, gets raucously drunk, has an adoring wife, and tries to rape his sister-in-law, just like Stanley Kowalski. To make up for its political weakness, the film goes for lurid shock in its climax; to make the KKK unpalatable to American audiences, it casts a blonde woman as the victim of their brutality. These lapses are all the more unfortunate because the film is in many ways so good. The opening scene is a stunner, as a woman from New York (Ginger Rogers) arrives in a Southern backwater to visit her sister, and finds the town mysteriously quiet, hostile, and suspicious. Walking through the dark, empty streets – asphalt glimmering with rain, air still and heavy with moisture – she witnesses a murder by hooded Klansmen, and soon discovers that one of them is her brother-in-law. Rogers gives one of the best performances of her later career as a wary, burned-out woman, torn between a crusading DA (Ronald Reagan) who wants her to testify and the goons who bully and blackmail her into keeping quiet. The film is a trenchant portrait of a cowardly community, where respectable business leaders urge the DA to drop his case because it will make the town look bad and hurt their Christmas sales. The presence of rightwingers Rogers and Reagan seems ironic in this, one of a spate of films about mob violence and civic corruption released at the start of the 1950s, warnings about a society sick with greed and intolerance." Imogen Sara Smith (Il Cinema Ritrovato 2020)

AA: Storm Warning is an excellent political thriller, to me Stuart Heisler's masterpiece of the films that I have seen (and I need to see more).

It was the last Warner Bros. contract film for the visionary producer Jerry Wald and the male lead, Ronald Reagan, playing District Attorney Burt Rainey. Both went independent after Storm Warning, Wald at first releasing through RKO, and Reagan benefitting from a lucrative Lew Wasserman deal.

Based on a powerful screenplay by Daniel Fuchs and Richard Brooks, Heisler immediately creates an electrifying mise-en-scène as Marsha Mitchell (Ginger Rogers) steps out of the bus to experience "Southern hospitality".

Rogers gives an effective and deeply felt performance in the leading role. Mitchell has come to the South to visit her little sister Lucy, played by the young Doris Day in an appealing and disciplined interpretation. In the night scenes there are shades of Southern Gothic or even Dracula (Jonathan Harker crossing the bridge to Transsylvania).

Again it is in the big crowd scenes that Heisler excels. The courtroom scenes are thrilling. I have just seen Roman Polanski's J'accuse, and the conspiracy of silence is similar. A monolithic wall comparable with the mafia law of omertà conceals the crime committed. They did not see anything or hear anything, and they are not going to say anything. Not even Marsha, eyewitness to the murder. She is protecting her sister, married to the Klansman Hank Rice (Steve Cochran), who pulled the trigger.

The most powerful shot of the movie is the one where the widow of the murdered journalist Walter Adams looks Marsha silently in the eyes. She does not say anything, either. At home, Marsha bursts into tears. "I'm not proud of what I did".

The KKK leader Charlie Barr (Hugh Sanders) warns Hank Rice: "don't rock the boat". But at home Hank sees Ginger in lingerie, and as Imogen Sara Smith observes, the screenwriters plagiarize A Streetcar Named Desire in a scene where Hank proceeds to rape Marsha. However, she is no Blanche DuBois.

In a shocking finale Marsha is beaten unconscious by the KKK and bullwhipped by the masked Charlie Barr in front of a burning cross in a huge crowd scene. Alerted by Lucy, Burt Rainey enters to unmask the KKK and ridicule their "Halloween routine".

It could have become a melodrama, but Heisler directs it as pure tragedy. Bosley Crowther compared Storm Warning unfavourably with the previous relevant Warner Bros. films Black Legion and They Won't Forget. I need to see them, and I'll be happily surprised if they are stronger than Storm Warning.

In an incredible casting coup, both players in the leading roles, Ginger Rogers and Ronald Reagan, were activists in the current Hollywood witch-hunts. This contributes to a much richer complexity in the performances than a casting of actors with liberal credentials would have enabled.

Imogen Smith and other critics have reproached Storm Warning for its timidity. I don't know if it would have been possible to make a mainstream Hollywood studio film about KKK lynching a Black person in 1951.

For me, Storm Warning is audacious as it is. Film narration is like dreamwork, based on similar principles, including Verschiebung (displacement) and Verdichtung (condensation). In the nightmare address of Storm Warning, it is an extremely powerful idea to cast a prestigious Hollywood blonde in the part where we would expect a persecuted Black male.

A brilliant Warner Bros. print.

Les Girls (in the presence of Taina Elg)

George Cukor: Les Girls (US 1957). Gene Kelly (Barry Nichols), Taina Elg (Angele Ducros), Kay Kendall (Lady Wren) and Mitzi Gaynor (Joy Henderson).

Tytöt. US © 1957 Loew's & Sol C. Siegel Productions. PC: MGM. P: Sol C. Siegel. D: George Cukor. SC: John Patrick – based on a story by Vera Caspary. DP (CinemaScope, Metrocolor): Robert Surtees. AD: William A. Horning, Gene Allen. Cost: Orry-Kelly. M: Cole Porter – »Les Girls», »Flower Song», »You’re Just Too, Too», »Ça c’est l’amour», »Ladies In Waiting», »La Habanera», »Why Am I So Gone (About That Gal)?». ED: Ferris Webster. C: Gene Kelly (Barry Nichols), Mitzi Gaynor (Joy Henderson), Kay Kendall (Lady Wren), Taina Elg (Angele Ducros), Jacques Bergerac (Pierre Ducros). [On the Warner Home Video (2003) dvd Taina Elg hosts the bonus track "Cole Porter in Hollywood: Ça c'est l'amour".] 114 min. A 35 mm Svenska Filminstitutet / Filmarkivet print with Swedish subtitles by Wilhelm Sörensen. In the presence of Taina Elg interviewed by Foster Hirsch. Viewed at the tent, Sodankylä (Midnight Sun Film Festival), 13 June 2012.

Synopsis: Lady Wren publishes her tell-all memoirs about what happened behind the scenes of the Barry Nichols and Les Girls show. When the case is dealt with in court the movie turns into a musical version of Rashomon. Nobody is lying, yet everybody tells a completely different version of the events. MGM still produced this musical with total commitment and full resources, although the age of the classical Hollywood musical was over. This was George Cukor's first musical, a combination of verbal fireworks and visual splendour, as Jean-Pierre Coursodon has pointed out.

The screening started with a Finnish newsreel compilation on Taina Elg, including her visit to Finland for the Finnish premiere of Les Girls. Taina Elg: I'm very moved since in these newsreels I saw my father, my mother, many friends, and my son Raoul [Björkenheim] who was then 2 years old.

Foster Hirsch: Les Girls is a very important movie, one of the last original MGM musicals, not an adaptation. It was the last MGM movie for Gene Kelly and the last Cole Porter score, an important CinemaScope creation featuring 3 girls, 3 different versions, 3 panels, 3 windows. George Cukor was not known for musicals, but of this story he created a comedy with music, with 5 outstanding musical numbers, such as "Ça c’est l’amour". Taina Elg is a beloved figure in American musical theatre, its best possible ambassador.

Taina Elg: Behind the camera were great experts such as the cinematographer Robert Surtees. Leslie Caron was supposed to appear in Les Girls, but she had different ideas. I tested for the English part because Kay Kendall was married to Rex Harrison and didn't want to be away from him, but when she decided to come after all, suddenly I was the French girl. Cukor explained during the rehearsals that the material is very complicated. Do not trust anything you see.

FH: No, in this effervescent musical, don't trust anything, it's like Rashomon: "what is the truth?". Your body language in the role is French, you are very convincing as a French girl.

TE: It was always "Mr. Cukor", we never could call him George. "Ça c’est l’amour" we did in one take. We had to be careful not to fall into water. "Don't touch my toupé" was a warning from Gene Kelly.

FH: Taina Elg is a legend of U.S. musical theater, having appeared in Irma la Douce and The Sound of Music. She is singing in her own voice, and the choreography... TE: ... Jack Cole was the epitome of jazz dancing. The best. FH: It must have been difficult to dance jazz from a ballet background... TE: Not with Jack Cole.

AA: Revisited Les Girls, still one of the great MGM musicals. "Love is a soufflé, not a pudding". "Strictly business. No complications". A fine vintage Metrocolor print slightly turning red.

Q and A after the screening. TE: The production took four months. Cole was wonderful. It was the last MGM musical Gene did. Jack did most of the choreography. My language skills? I speak Finnish, Swedish, Italian, French, and English.

Q: GENE KELLY. TE: He was very dear. He dediced not to dance after that. This was his last performance. Cole brought the real jazz. I have not seen this movie before with a Finnish audience. We the performers were good friends. Mitzi Gaynor ate vegetables, she still looks great. We others ate cheese and drank wine.

FH: Mitzi Gaynor next made her most famous movie, South Pacific.
TE: She is very much like that. She was early on one who eats vegetables, she was the one who got that started. She got the role in South Pacific while making Les Girls.

Kay Kendall died early, and we were terribly shocked. She married the man she loved the most, but she was already ill. Cole Porter also died not long afterwards.     

FH: I have to compliment your performance, Miss Elg, how different you are in the three acts.

Nightmare Alley (1947) (The Nitrate Picture Show)

Edmund Goulding: Nightmare Alley (US 1947). Joan Blondell (Mademoiselle Zeena), Ian Keith (Pete, her alcoholic husband), and Tyrone Power (Stan Carlisle, the carnival barker).

Painajaiskuja / Mardrömsgränden.
Edmund Goulding, US 1947
Print source: UCLA Film and Television Archive, Los Angeles
Running time: 113 minutes
The Nitrate Picture Show (NPS), George Eastman Museum, Dryden Theatre, Rochester, 4 May 2019.

NPS: About the print
Although the print has several edge nicks and some splices, the overall image and sound quality are excellent. The blacks are saturated to give the eerie feeling of night shadows and life on the dark side. Wonderful resolution is seen in the details. Shrinkage: 0.60%

About the film
“Nightmare Alley sets out to prove, in an original setting, that though you can fool most of the people most of the time you will find in the end, quite simply, that dishonesty does not pay. It is nice to know that, at any rate in the film world, this principle still holds good. Mr. Tyrone Power rises from being a skillful circus trickster to reading written messages blindfolded in a night club, and then with the aid of an unscrupulous female psychoanalyst seeks fresh pasturage in the field of bogus spiritualism. It is here, while bringing spurious comfort to a naïve millionaire, that his fraudulence provokes heaven to justifiable anger. Cast into the awful darkness of drink, he ends up as a Geek, which is a half-man half-beast freak in a circus.”
— Virginia Graham, The Spectator, August 6, 1948

“Nightmare Alley is a harsh, brutal story told with the sharp clarity of an etching. There isn’t a really sympathetic or inspiring character in the show, but acting, direction and production values lift the piece to the plane of gripping drama. In spots it approaches the dignity of authentic tragedy. The picture will satisfy no demands for light entertainment, hence the box office is problematical and largely conditioned on the femme draw of Tyrone Power in the lead. The film deals with the roughest and most sordid phases of carnival life and showmanship. Despite the grim realism of its treatment, it has all the shuddery effect of a horror yarn.”
— Fisk, Variety, October 15, 1947 (NPS)

AA: Last night The Nitrate Picture Show ended with a Fox Technicolor musical. Today it begins with a Fox film noir made two years before.

Nightmare Alley was exceptional for all involved. Fox made fine films noir, but rarely of so dark and daring material. George Jessel, the original Jazz Singer, as a producer focused mostly on light entertainment. Tyrone Power was one of the studio's biggest stars best known for his roles in Jesse James, The Mark of Zorro and Blood and Sand. It was he who insisted on doing this film, and he demanded Edmund Goulding to direct. Goulding, best known as a women's director, had had a tremendous career starting as a screenwriter of Tol'able David, becoming a MGM house director working with Marion Davies, Greta Garbo, and Joan Crawford, then directing Bette Davis at Warner Bros. until he moved to Fox. There he directed the impressive Razor's Edge the year before, screened at this festival last year, also starring Tyrone Power.

The excellent screenplay is by Jules Furthman, based on the novel by William Lindsay Gresham. The film is well cast, and knowing Goulding's experience, it is not surprising that female performances are outstanding. Joan Blondell, who had had her breakthrough as a pre-Code star at Warner Bros., was just experiencing one of her comebacks (she never stopped having them: one of her last films was Grease); at Fox she had just appeared in Elia Kazan's debut film A Tree Grows in Brooklyn. Her role as Zeena is deeply moving. As is Coleen Gray's as the young and naive Molly who refuses to follow through the grand scam plan. The true adversary to Tyrone Power's Stan Carlisle is the psychologist Dr. Lilith Ritter impressively played by Helen Walker. "It takes one to catch one". Walker and Carlisle use their special skills for criminal purposes, but the upstart Stan is outwitted by Lilith.

Much of the special interest of the story is based on Gresham's intimate and detailed knowledge of the world he is portraying. Nightmare Alley belongs to the great carnival stories and it is also rewarding about mentalism, spiritualism, mind-reading, hypnotism, and "the spook racket". It is also a warning tale about the abuses of psychology, the possibility of criminal breaches in confidentiality. It is equally thought-provoking about the exploitation of religion. Like Orson Welles's F for Fake it is a film about the power of illusion with wide-ranging associations. With his mentalism Stan is able to move people more deeply than anybody else, although he is just a showman.

The tragic substance of the story is based on the fact that Stan has real talent and profound insight in psychology. He perishes because of his lack of ethics and professional discipline. He remains a charlatan, but he could have been more.

All this is conveyed brilliantly by Goulding and his team. Tyrone Power, often one of the cinema's "hollow men", succeeds here in a harrowingly tragic role. Although the material is sordid, the approach is not, thanks to the fundamental humanity of the performances. In this tale we are all victims of the Great Depression, trying to survive by any means necessary.

Lee Garmes, Josef von Sternberg's trusted DP, was currently also in favour of De Toth, Vidor, Hitchcock and Ophuls, also known as a "women's cinematographer". Here he displays his skill in film noir, displaying a darkness both physical and metaphysical. The brilliant UCLA print is mesmerizing to watch, conveying themes of illusionism and anti-illusionism in purely visual terms.

The screening of an authentic print confirms the original film's status as a masterpiece on the eve of a remake in pre-production by screenwriter Kim Morgan, director Guillermo del Toro and star Leonardo DiCaprio.

All I Desire

Douglas Sirk: All I Desire (US 1953). Naomi Murdoch (Barbara Stanwyck) returns home after ten years.

Douglas Sirk: All I Desire (US 1953). Naomi is a model for her daughter Lily. Lori Nelson (Lily Murdoch) and Barbara Stanwyck (Naomi Murdoch).

Douglas Sirk: All I Desire (US 1953). Naomi Murdoch (Barbara Stanwyck) sees her daughter Lily performing in a high school theatre performance of Baroness Barclay's Secret.

Ainoa toive / Miksi jätit minut / Varför lämnade du mig / All min längtan. 

    US © 1953 Universal Pictures Co., Inc. PC: Universal International Pictures Co., Inc. P: Ross Hunter. 

    D: Douglas Sirk. SC: James Gunn ja Robert Blees – adaptation: Gina Kaus – based on the novel Stopover (London 1951) by Carol Ryrie Brink / Carol Brink. Poem: Elisabeth Barrett Browning: ”How Do I Love Thee? Let Me Count the Ways” (from Sonnets from the Portuguese, 1847). DP: Carl E. Guthrie / Carl Guthrie – b&w – 1,37:1. AD: Alexander Golitzen, Bernard Herzbrun. Set dec: Russell A. Gausman, Julia Heron. Cost: Rosemary Odell. Jewels: Joan Joseff. Makeup: Bud Westmore. Hair: Joan St. Oegger. M: Henry Mancini (n.c.), Herman Stein (n.c.). Stock music: Daniele Amfitheatrof, Hans J. Salter, Frank Skinner, David Tamkin, Edward Ward. Music quoted: in the poem recital scene: Schubert's Unfinished Symphony. Song: “All I Desire” (comp. and lyrics David Lieberman). M dir: Joseph Gershenson. CH: Kenny Williams. S: Leslie I. Carey, Robert Pritchard, James V. Swartz (n.c.) – mono (Western Electric Recording). ED: Milton Carruth. 

    Studio: Universal Studios (Universal City).
    C: Barbara Stanwyck (Naomi Murdoch), Richard Carlson (Henry Murdoch), Lyle Bettger (Dutch Heinemann), Marcia Henderson (Joyce Murdoch), Lori Nelson (Lily Murdoch), Maureen O’Sullivan (Sara Harper), Richard Long (Russ Underwood), Billy Gray (Ted Murdoch), Lotte Stein (Lena Engstrom), Dayton Lummis (Col. Underwood), Fred Nurney (Peterson).
    An uncredited recurrent music theme: a violin arrangement of "Un sospiro", the third étude from: Franz Liszt: Trois études de concert, S.144 (for solo piano).
    Helsinki premiere: 11.12.1953 Elysee, distributor: Väinän Filmi – tv: 2.2.1993 TV3 – dvd: Barbara Stanwyck – Screen Goddess Collection (Universal Pictures, 2006) – VET 39134 – S – 79 min
    Viewed at Cinema Orion, Helsinki (Douglas Sirk), 9 Sep 2016.

The first American family melodrama by Douglas Sirk, his last conte moral set in nostalgic turn-of-the century America, his second film produced by Ross Hunter, a turning-point on his American career and on his career as a Universal house director (comprising his last 21 films, all during the 1950s, half of them produced by Hunter).

Barbara Stanwyck is the name above the title. All I Desire is a Barbara Stanwyck vehicle, shot in black and white because of her, and with profound affinities with other contemporary Stanwyck movies such as Clash by Night. Sirk considered Stanwyck one of the greatest actors in Hollywood. She has such a strong presence that a problem of balance arises because she outstages the others. But the conflict of balance is also central to the narrative: the glamorous performer returning to the little provincial community.

The supposedly brilliant international career of the Shakespearean actress Naomi Murdoch is an illusion. Naomi has fallen on hard times, and by now she is reduced to vaudeville, performing with dog acts.

All I Desire starts as a first person narrative with Stanwyck as the narrator.

She has left her family and hometown ten years ago. When she returns there is a perfect silence. "What a dramatic entrance". The father is shocked, the youngest child too young to remember. Naomi is warm and kind, but the family is mostly unwelcoming. "We aren't your family. You aren't our mother". Only Lily, with whom Naomi has been in correspondence, idolizes her mother.

Naomi has returned to see Lily performing in a school theater performance of Baroness Barclay's Secret. It is an amateurish high school play until Lily comes on stage. There is a very moving close-up of Naomi watching her daughter perform (see image above). There are tender moments of comedy: "just a stage kiss" is Lily's instruction to the young man playing her lover. Despite or because of the amateurishness the sequence is a display of Sirk's affection for the stage. Naomi is proud of Lily, and Lily is proud of Naomi.

In the party after the show there is a dance at the Murdoch home, and Naomi is invited. It soon turns out that she is the supreme dancer, even in bunny hop, and the event threatens to turn into a Naomi Murdoch show. The rest of the family is embarrassed. But Lily keeps showcasing Naomi and urges her to give a recital. Naomi selects a poem by Elisabeth Barrett Browning, "How do I love thee?". The moment is magical and complex. The tenderness between mother and daughter reaches its peak. Lily expects Naomi to take her to New York and introduce her to the theatre world.

Another daughter, Joyce (Marcia Henderson), condemns her mother, and they have a frank confrontation. Naomi urges Joyce to live a little. "A mother with no principles", Naomi says ironically. "A daughter with no guts". Joyce is offended and affected, but mother's words give her a sting to be more active.

During the long years of Naomi's absence Lily's drama teacher Sara Harper (Maureen O'Sullivan) has become personally close to Henry Murdoch (Richard Carlson) but she soon sees what is happening. "I want him to be happy. You are the woman he needs".

Soon the make-believe of Naomi's supposedly glamorous Shakespearean career becomes unbearable, and Naomi tells the truth to her daughters, crushing their illusion. There is also a frank discussion between Henry and Naomi. Naomi tells him "how unimportant success is". Lily is angry and disappointed when it turns out that Naomi is going to stay.

Meanwhile, Naomi's ex-lover Dutch Heinemann (Lyle Bettger), a gun store keeper, has been lurking around, and he alerts Naomi with his secret code signal, "two shots and then one" (which everybody in the community seems to recognize). Against the warning of the housekeeper Naomi rides for one last time to the river to call it quits with Dutch. When Dutch tries to take her with force, Naomi uses the horsewhip, and Dutch's gun goes off, wounding him dangerously. (Connections with Summer Storm: the shooting party, the nostalgic river, the Chekhovian gun).

Dutch is taken to the hospital. The community is alarmed, and the scandal threatens Henry's position as school principal. "I'm sorry I'm such a disappointment to everybody", comments Naomi. The hurt is most acute for Ted (Billy Gray), her youngest child, the one too young to even remember her. Naomi cries while explaining to Ted what has happened. But facing the scandal Henry stands up to Naomi. At Dutch's hospital bed (Dutch's wound is feared to be lethal) Henry hears the full story and understands that their affair had ended. Naomi is about to leave, and Sirk shot a consistent tragic ending, following the novel on which the film is based. But Ross Hunter demanded a happy ending. "I'm asking you to stay", says Henry. "Some grow old. Some grow up".

Out of this material another director might have made a mediocre and conventional melodrama. Douglas Sirk treats it intelligently, without irony or condescension. The two worlds - the fake world of glamorous entertainment and the provincial world of the little community - reflect each other in a complex way. There is a mastery of mise-en-scène in Sirk's direction. The first thrilling instance of it is the sequence of Naomi's homecoming (see the first image above). Another great instance is the play within the play. The composition in depth and the breakdown of scenes in shots is admirably effective.

A brilliant print.

OUR PROGRAM NOTE BASED ON JON HALLIDAY: SIRK ON SIRK AND MICHAEL STERN BEYOND THE JUMP BREAK:

Van Gogh à Auvers-sur-Oise : Les derniers mois / The Last Months (exposition au Musée d'Orsay)

Vincent Van Gogh: Champ de blé aux corbeaux / Wheatfield with Crows. FR 1890. Plaine d'Auvers-sur-Oise. Mardi 8 juillet 1890. Huile sur toile, 50,5 x 103 cm. Amsterdam, Van Gogh Museum (Vincent Van Gogh Stichting). Cat. rais.: F779; JH2117. Please do click on the image to enlarge it to the full screen. Photo: Google Art Project.

Vincent Van Gogh: Champ de blé sous des nuages d'orage / Wheatfield Under Thunderclouds. FR 1890. Plaine d'Auvers-sur-Oise. Mercredi 9 juillet 1890. Huile sur toile, 50,4 x 101,3 cm. Amsterdam, Van Gogh Museum (Vincent van Gogh Stichting). Cat. rais.: F778; JH2097. Please do click on the image to enlarge it to the full screen. Photo: Musée d'Orsay.

Exposition au Musée d'Orsay

Van Gogh à Auvers-sur-Oise : Les derniers mois
Du 3 octobre 2023 au 4 février 2024

Visited on Friday, 2 February 2024.

AA: There is a discouraging warning on the museum website: "l'exposition Van Gogh est complète jusqu'à sa fermeture le dimanche 4 février". Determined to make every effort, I come early, equip myself with morning papers from the Invalides newsstand and get ready to wait all day. The queue is very long, but I do get in in an hour.

The exhibition is crowded. The experience is epic and reverential. Patience is needed.

Artists have no use for labels. They only exist to be challenged. But critics and historians need them. Van Gogh started in the inspiration of the realism and naturalism of Courbet and Millet. He was passionate about the earth, the sky, the water and the people whose life was all hard work. When Van Gogh moved to France, impressionists and pointillists revealed new dimensions of colour and form. Beyond realism: a faithful rendition of external reality was heightened with an awareness of its perception. The creation transformed into a simultaneous quest of reflection and self-reflection.

This unique exhibition is devoted solely to the last two months in Van Gogh's life. It evokes many thoughts and feelings, and it is a showcase of versatility in many of the artist's favourite subjects including portraits, self-portraits, peasants, flowers, gardens, orchards, wheat fields, stacks of grain, trees, night skies and thunderclouds.

A change takes place towards the end of the chronology. Van Gogh elongates his paintings horizontally, starting to prefer the double square (double carré) format. Cineastes call this format CinemaScope. (See illustrations above).

But a change even more profound takes place. If I would have to choose one word to describe the meaning of this show for me, it would be expressionism. Having started in realism and having upgraded his approach with impressionism, Van Gogh finally moves towards expressionism.

He sees the world increasingly as an inner vision. His passion, his fury, his love, his agony. Portraits turn into self-portraits. Even landscapes become self-portraits. Van Gogh paints his inner world in the mirror of the outer world.

His images are never purely subjective. Van Gogh keeps developing a double narrative. A passionate dialogue between the self and the world.

Even from the realistic viewpoint he gets deeper. Beyond the appearances he sees more. In the age of nuclear physics and quantum physics we sense in Van Gogh's art an awareness of infinities both in the macrocosmos and the microcosmos. There is nothing solid in his vibrant brushstrokes. They express a universe full of life, electricity, particles and cosmic charges. Even in Van Gogh's flowers and still lives everything is in motion. Panta rhei.

PS. 11 March 2026. Van Gogh created about one hundred paintings during the last two months of his life, a culmination and an achievement which alone would suffice as an immortal life's work. And this in an oeuvre of over 2000 works which emerged in only ten years.

...

MUSÉE D'ORSAY INTRODUCTION

" Présentée au musée d’Orsay à l’automne 2023, cette exposition est la première consacrée aux œuvres produites par Vincent van Gogh (1853-1890) durant les deux derniers mois de sa vie, à Auvers-sur-Oise, près de Paris. L’exposition constitue l’aboutissement d’années de recherches sur cette phase cruciale de la vie de l’artiste, et permettra au public de l’apprécier enfin à sa juste dimension. "

" Arrivé à Auvers-sur-Oise le 20 mai 1890, Vincent van Gogh y décède le 29 juillet à la suite d’une tentative de suicide. Bien que le peintre n’ait passé qu’un peu plus de deux mois à Auvers, cette période voit un renouveau artistique, avec un style et un développement propres, marqués par la tension psychique née de la nouvelle situation mais aussi par la création de quelques-uns de ses plus grands chefs-d’œuvre. "

" Durement éprouvé par les différentes crises subies à Arles puis dans l’asile de Saint-Rémy, Van Gogh se rapproche de Paris et de son frère Theo pour trouver un nouvel élan créatif. Le choix d’Auvers tient à la présence du Dr Gachet, médecin spécialisé dans le traitement de la mélancolie, et par ailleurs ami des impressionnistes, collectionneur et peintre amateur. Van Gogh s’installe au centre du village, dans l’auberge Ravoux, et explore tous les aspects du nouveau monde qui s’offre à lui, tout en luttant contre des inquiétudes multiples liées à ses crises, sa santé, ses relations avec son frère, sa place dans le monde de l’art. "

" Aucune exposition n’a encore été consacrée exclusivement à ce stade final, pourtant crucial, de sa carrière. En deux mois, le peintre a produit 74 tableaux et 33 dessins, parmi lesquels des œuvres iconiques : Le Docteur Paul Gachet, L’église d’Auvers-sur-Oise, ou encore Champ de blé aux corbeaux. Riche d’une quarantaine de tableaux et d’une vingtaine de dessins, l’exposition mettra en lumière cette période dans un propos thématique : premiers paysages figurant le village, portraits, natures mortes, paysages de la campagne environnante. Elle présentera aussi une série, unique dans l’œuvre de Van Gogh, de tableaux d’un format allongé en double carré. "

" Cette exposition est organisée par l’Établissement public des musées d’Orsay et de l’Orangerie de Paris et le musée Van Gogh d’Amsterdam qui la présentera du 12 mai au 3 septembre 2023, pour marquer son 50e anniversaire. "

Film concert Poker Faces (composed and conducted by Juri Dal Dan, performed by Zerorchestra)

Harry A. Pollard: Poker Faces (US 1926) starring Edward Everett Horton (Jimmy Whitmore) and Laura La Plante (Betty Whitmore). From: IMDb. Please do click on the poster to enlarge it.

 

Harry A. Pollard: Poker Faces (US 1926) starring Laura La Plante (Betty Whitmore) and Edward Everett Horton (Jimmy Whitmore). From: IMDb.

Harry A. Pollard: Poker Faces (US 1926) starring Edward Everett Horton (Jimmy Whitmore), George Siegmann (George Dixon) and Laura La Plante (Betty Whitmore). From: IMDb.

Friday Pre-apertura / Pre-Opening selection and Thursday evening show

La moglie di mio marito / Lainattu vaimo (US 1926) regia/dir, adapt: Harry A. Pollard. cont: Melville W. Brown. sogg/story: Edgar Fanklin. did/titles: Walter Anthony. photog: Charles Stumar. mont/ed: Daniel Mandell. mont/ed supv: Maurice Pivar. scg/des: Charles D. Hall, Edgar Ulmer.
    cast: Edward Everett Horton (Jimmy Whitmore, “Poker Face”), Laura La Plante (Betty Whitmore), George Siegmann (George Dixon), Tom Ricketts (Henry Curlew), Tom O’Brien (Packey O’Neill, boxer), Dorothy Revier (Mrs. O’Neill), Leon Holmes (fattorino/office boy), Merta Sterling. prod: Carl Laemmle (“presented by”), Universal Pictures (Universal-Jewel). uscita/rel: 5.9.1926. 

    Finnish premiere: 26 Feb 1928 Arkadia, released by Adams-Filmi Oy.

    copia/copy: DCP (4K), 83'; did./titles: ENG. fonte/source: Library of Congress National Audio-Visual Conservation Center, Packard

Campus, Culpeper, VA.

Partitura composta e diretta da/Score composed and conducted by: Juri Dal Dan; esecuzione dal vivo/performed live by: Zerorchestra.

Teatro Verdi, Pordenone, Le Giornate del Cinema Muto (GCM): Rediscoveries, 12 Oct 2023

Steve Massa (GCM 2023): " Edward Everett Horton was a master of befuddlement and the double-take, who’s still remembered for his sound film appearances in Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers musicals, as well as comedies such as Trouble in Paradise (1932), Holiday (1938), and Arsenic and Old Lace (1944). What’s overlooked today is Horton’s substantial career in silent films. After touring all over the country as an actor in stock companies, he settled in as the leading man at the Majestic Theatre in Los Angeles. His cinema debut came in 1922, as the star of the feature Too Much Business. Since he was already 36 years old and approaching middle age, Horton’s screen persona wasn’t that of a young go-getter on the rise; instead he played henpecked husbands, staid businessmen, or English valets that get mixed up in farcical situations. "

" Through most of the 1920s Universal Pictures had a successful run of light comedy features that starred Reginald Denny. Poker Faces (1926) is in that mold, but with Horton substituting for Denny. Jimmy Whitmore (Horton) is an office “working stiff ” who gets a promotion – provided he helps his boss win the business of a difficult wealthy client. Since his wife has her heart set on him getting a raise, Jimmy accepts the offer against his better judgment, which leads to plenty of comedy complications. Director Harry A. Pollard had started his career as an actor at the American and Imp companies, usually teamed with his wife Margarita Fischer, and by the 1920s was turning out light comedy features for Universal that included the Reginald Denny features Oh, Doctor! and California Straight Ahead (both 1925), as well as dramas like Uncle Tom’s Cabin (1927) and the first screen version of Show Boat (1929). "

" Horton is surrounded by a solid supporting cast, made up of Tom Ricketts, George Siegmann, Leon Holmes, Merta Sterling, and most importantly, Reginald Denny’s frequent leading lady Laura La Plante as his wife. La Plante was one of Universal’s biggest attractions in the 1920s. Although a great beauty, her popularity was based on her immense charm and a feeling of familiarity – even though she was a knockout she didn’t know it, and could conceivably be someone you knew living next door. She got started in pictures at age 14, thanks to a cousin who lived around the corner from the Al Christie Studio. Applying at the studio for work she got five dollars a day, and moved from doing bits in shorts like Wild and Western (1919) to being leading lady for Bobby Vernon and Neal Burns. "

" After getting much attention as Charles Ray’s love interest in The Old Swimmin’ Hole (1921), La Plante soon ended up at Universal, which would be her home for the next nine years. Supporting Horton and Reginald Denny in features like The Fast Worker (1924) and Skinner’s Dress Suit (1926) led to a string of her own starring films, which included Silk Stockings, The Cat and the Canary (both 1927), and Thanks for the Buggy Ride (1928). She made a solid transition to sound films, but retired early in 1935. She later worked when she felt like it, doing an occasional film or television show, and as she had become a close friend of Horton’s she would appear with him in stage productions, such as The White Sheep of the Family and Springtime for Henry. "

" Horton followed up Poker Faces with more comedy features, such as The Whole Town’s Talking (1926) and Taxi! Taxi! (1927), and his silent film career culminated in an excellent series of eight two-reel comedies produced by no less than Harold Lloyd. When sound took over the film industry, Horton was well set due to his stage background, and dove right in – appearing in talking features like The Terror (1928), and a series of sound shorts for Educational Pictures. Making a solid hit, with verbal timing that matched his double- and triple-takes, he was in demand for the next 40 years, busy in films and on stage and radio. He remained a popular figure in the television era, narrating “Fractured Fairy Tales” for the animation series The Adventures of Rocky and Bullwinkle (1959-1962), and playing the medicine man “Roaring Chicken” on the Western spoof F Troop (1965). Horton worked right up to his passing in 1970. " – Steve Massa

The music 

" Poker Faces is a hidden gem that captures from afar the carefree life of a historical period. Inspired by the music of the 1920s, the score portrays – or better, blends – the qualities of the characters with the dynamics of the plot. Marked by a Rossini-style crescendo that transforms the film from a play into a comedy, the score closely follows its rhythm as it tries to keep pace with its madcap finale. " – Juri Dal Dan

AA: Edward Everett Horton is familiar to me as a member of the Ernst Lubitsch "stock company" and a ubiquitous presence in the greatest comedies and musicals of the 1930s and the 1940s.

Laura La Plante I mostly know as the queen of Paul Leni horror films at Universal Pictures (The Cat and the Canary and The Last Warning) and as a lovely Alta Studios model.

In Poker Faces, I see Edward Everett Horton for the first time in a leading role and Laura La Plante in a comedy role.

Both are revelations to me. They stand out both individually and as a duo with humoristic chemistry.

Poker Faces is great entertainment, a comedy of misunderstandings with witty dialogue and marvellous pacing, and fundamentally it is a character comedy based on the appealing presences of Edward Everett Horton and Laura La Plante.

Juri Dal Dan's score is perfect for the sense of humour in this Universal-Jewel situation comedy directed by Harry A. Pollard con brio.

A fine 4K transfer from a 16 mm source.

Richard Wagner: Tristan und Isolde (synopsis by Peter Sellars)

Act 1

Two damaged, angry, desperate, and hurt human beings are on a long trip in the same boat. Neither expects to survive the journey. For Isolde, suicidal despair takes the form of violent, destructive mood swings, bitter sarcasm, uncontrollable weeping and the need to talk everything out. For Tristan, it is the scarred, painful silence of emotional blockage and denial (during the entire trip Tristan has refused to acknowledge Isolde’s presence). Their closest friends, Brangaene, a healer and seer, and Kurwenal, an old soldier, are determined to help them through their darkest hours, and to prevent them from infl icting more harm on themselves or each other.

Years before, Tristan had killed the Irish knight Morold in combat and himself been wounded by Morold’s poison-tipped blade. This wound could only be healed by Morold’s fiancée, the princess and shamaness Isolde. Under the name “Tantris” he went to her to be cured. She removed the poison and cured the wound, saving his life. When he looked up into her eyes, she put down her weapon. He went back to his own country.

Now he has returned, but not, as Isolde had hoped, to deepen and consummate their relationship. Instead, he has come to collect her, as a kind of courier service, to present her as a trophy bride to his friend, King Mark of Cornwall. She is privately devastated and publicly humiliated.

The women have brought with them on the journey a secret stash of potent ointments and elixirs, a gift from Isolde’s mother. Among them, the most sacred and beautiful is a philter of nectar of the purest, most distilled essence of love. Alternatively, there is a death drink, a quick solution to snuffing out a wasted life when the pain becomes just too unbearable.

At the climax of the trip, Isolde toasts Tristan with the lethal cocktail. They look into each other’s eyes and drink avidly, each eager for a blessed exit and extinction. What they do not realize is that Brangaene has switched the vials, and they are drinking in pure love. For an infinite instant they think they have crossed the barrier from life into death; their hearts are free. Their secret love begins to flow in an irresistible, transforming torrent as the ship comes into port and King Mark is announced with blazing trumpets.

The bright lights of the world of power and prestige eclipse their dream, and they are left confused and amazed.

Act 2

As dusk deepens the sound of hunting horns echoes through the woods. Tristan’s “best friend” Melot has organised a night hunt for King Mark. In the dying light Brangaene foresees that the true quarry is Tristan himself. Isolde has eyes and ears only for the beauty of nature, the harmonies of the evening and the better self that lives in every human heart. Her heart is illumined by the moon, the goddess of love, the feminine power that surges through the universe. When she puts out the last torch, Tristan, who is waiting deep in the forest, will join her in the moonlight. Brangaene senses that spies are everywhere. She begs Isolde to keep the torch burning, and leaves for her watchtower. Isolde smothers the flame and waits for her lover’s approach in the dark.

Their initial adrenalin rush of danger and exhilaration gives way to disbelief, then to slightly awkward banter, and, finally, to hard work. Isolde asks Tristan directly why he tried to betray her. What possessed him? With her help, and in painful bursts of self-recognition, gradually everything that Tristan sealed off comes pouring out. The allure of brilliant fame, the world’s honours, and the flash of success warped his personality, making him a stranger to himself. He hurt his closest friends without realizing it, and the growing disparity between his public image and his always low personal sense of self-worth produced a seething self-hatred. He felt unworthy of the woman whose praises he was singing, and tried to compensate by plunging into military adventurism.

Isolde begins to understand that the man she saw as arrogant and cold was in fact frightened and desperate. But she also has to acknowledge how deeply she was hurt, and how much of that hurt she still carries. The basis for a serious relationship now can only be built as they deal with each other’s failures, disappointments and deceptions, separating the empowering and transforming imagination that sustains romance from the lies, evasions and falsehoods that poison trust.

Together they step into the realm of night, the nocturnal self, the vast space in every human being that has nothing to do with anyone’s day job. All thinking, all appearance, all remembrance are  extinguished in a night of perfect love “heart on heart, mouth on mouth, merged into one breath”. As their rapture reaches its peak, Brangaene’s warning voice peals across the night sky like clouds rolling in from the sea. The reality that all joy in this world will pass away, all beauty will die or be killed sublimates and elevates the love music – we hear the celestial voice of compassion expounding the Buddha’s four noble truths to mortals.

Isolde begins to wonder what will happen in the morning. Mark and Melot are watching in the woods. Tristan has a strange premonition of his own death and declares that he is ready to die tonight. Isolde gently reminds him of the little word “and” in “Tristan and Isolde”. From now on he should try to include her in his dreams and nightmares – he is no longer alone. Tristan is Isolde and Isolde is Tristan. Even in death they will live in a love without fear, nameless, endless, with no more suffering and no separation.

The day breaks. Melot takes the direct path to political power, denouncing forbidden love with great moral indignation and calling for maximum penalties to be imposed on vulnerable people. King Mark knows this path offers neither restitution nor justice. As he pours out his heart we realize that the king is just a man, that he was Tristan’s first lover, and that the “love that dare not speak its name” is as strong as any other love. He is infinitely tender with the man who betrayed him. He is in hell. He hopes one day to know why.

Tristan ran from King Mark to find Isolde, and then he ran from Isolde by offering her to Mark. Covered in shame, Tristan sees that the only thing he has to offer Isolde, if she chooses to stay with him, is a life of failure and death. He has no home. He never had a home. He never knew his father or his mother, who died bringing him into the world. Isolde’s words of comfort are miraculous. Wherever they go together will be their home; she loves Tristan more deeply in his failure than in his success. Thirty seconds later he is dead. After provoking Melot, he is killed without resistance.

Act 3

After love, the last task in a human life is death. We plunge into a dying man’s last agony, hallucinations, flashbacks, visions. The senses are intermittent, but the pain is continuous. One door is opening and another is closing. Tristan is in a coma for weeks. Kurwenal brings the body back to the ancestral home in Kareol. On a cliff overlooking the sea he waits and watches his best friend’s long, slow descent into death. A shepherd farther up the mountain plays on a pipe an endless ancient
melody drifting in the chilly air as the day wanes. Kurwenal has asked the shepherd to change his tune if he sees a ship approaching. He has sent for Isolde who, if she is still alive, is the only healer who can bring Tristan back from the realm of death.

Tristan stirs. The ancient melody is calling him back into this world. He tries to describe the land on the other side, a state of infinite, ultimate forgetfulness. Here, the sunlight is blinding, the searing pain in his body is unbearable. Within “the light is not yet out, the house is still not dark: Isolde lives and wakes; she called me from the night”.

Tristan is sure that he sees her ship in the distance, that she is coming to him again to heal his wounds. But there is no ship. His life keeps passing before his eyes as he slips below the threshold of consciousness. Childhood memories, thoughts of the parents he never knew mingle with the intense re-living of his previous near-death experiences. Pain floods his brain. The heat of his body is unendurable, the spirit is tearing at the flesh. At the maximum breaking point of mental and physical anguish, an instant of blazing, fiery clarity: the magic drink – was it poison or love potion? – was brewed by no-one other than himself, from all of the hurt, sorrow, suffering and joy of his own life.

A ship appears on the horizon as Tristan sustains his final heart attack. Kurwenal runs to receive Isolde. In a final paroxysm of indescribable waves of pain, Tristan tears off his bandages and bleeds freely and joyously. He hears Isolde’s voice coming to him as he dies. Could he not wait for her one more hour? She pleads for him to continue breathing. She has so much to tell him. She came as his bride, how can she be punished with his funeral? Her shock and overwhelming grief deepen into silence.

A second ship is sighted. Mark and Brangaene are landing. Melot leads their advance party. Kurwenal kills Melot and then himself. The group have come, too late, on a mission of forgiveness and reconciliation.

Now Isolde stirs. Looking deeply at Tristan, she sings “See him smiling, softly, softly, see the eyes that open fondly, oh my friends, don’t you see, don’t you feel and see? Is it only I who hear these gentle, wondrous strains of music, joyously sounding, telling all things, reconciling, coming through him, piercing through me, rising upward in the ocean of sound, in the infinite all of the cosmic breath, to drown, descending, void of thought, into the highest, purest joy.”

On the last evening: Il Cinema Ritrovato, Bologna, 25–31 August 2020

 

The poster boy and the poster girl: Jean-Paul Belmondo and Jean Seberg filming À bout de souffle / Breathless (Jean-Luc Godard, 1960).

 

The silent films of Il Cinema Ritrovato in 2020 were screened at the Bologna Opera House, the legendary Teatro Comunale di Bologna, built in 1763 and designed by the architect Antonio Galli Bibiena. The musicians have never been happier. The acoustics was perfect, and the Steinway Concert Grand Piano was top of the game.

Il Cinema Ritrovato made a strong statement by realizing a full scale festival in the pandemic year 2020. Against all odds, and during a period when other high profile festivals, including Telluride and Pordenone, were cancelled.

It was a much needed statement. My previous film festival visit was to Tampere, 4-8 March, five and a half months ago. Meanwhile I have been watching films online and even had my first online film festival experience: Midnight Sun Film Festival 2020.

All this has been great, but it's not the same. We need the living simultaneous connection. There is a unique electricity in the cinema experience. Big films need the big space. Intimate films need the charged intimacy. Suspense is more thrilling when felt together. Comedy is funnier when there are escalating, successive waves of laughter. Even silliness is funnier when shared. Audiences with children are the greatest elixir.

Bologna 2020 was like arriving at an oasis after a half-year wandering in the wilderness. Thank you directors Gian Luca Farinelli, Cecilia Cenciarelli, Ehsan Khoshbakht and Mariann Lewinsky. Thank you festival coordinator Guy Borlée and all of the dedicated staff. 

We obeyed safe distances and hand hygiene, and in our masks we were like a cast of characters from a Louis Feuillade serial.

We are terrified by the recent news from Hollywood where careers of the most experienced professionals, our beloved colleagues, are on the line. For the current studio heads, streaming is king. But the cinema experience is indispensable.

My three highlights of Il Cinema Ritrovato Anno 2020:

Storm Warning (Stuart Heisler, 1951). One of the greatest political thrillers of all times. Theme: the Ku Klux Klan. In a casting coup, Ginger Rogers and Ronald Reagan play the heroes who defy mob rule.

Sylvester / New Year's Eve (Lupu Pick, 1924). The well-known Weimar classic was reborn in the film concert on Piazza Maggiore. The 2020 Deutsche Kinemathek restoration is based on the brilliant Komiya Collection nitrate print, and the subtle théâtre intime experience is greatly enhanced by the visual refinement. For the first time since the premiere the original music by Klaus Pringsheim was heard, played by the orchestra of Teatro Comunale, conducted by Timothy Brock. It is one of the greatest original silent film scores.

The Rickshaw Man / Muhomatsu no issho (Hiroshi Inagaki, 1943). This engrossing masterpiece of Japanese cinema was shown in a brand new 2020 restoration in the Venice Classics strand of the festival. I have been wanting to see this movie since Nagisa Oshima praised it in his Century of the Cinema tribute to the history of Japanese cinema in 1995. Seeing the film at last, it greatly exceeded my expectations.

Katorga / Penal Servitude

Katorga poster by the Stenberg brothers.

Каторга / [Kuritushuone] / Zuchthaus / Fængslet. SU 1928. PC: Gosvojenkino. D: Juli Raizman / Yuli Raizman. Ass D: Aleksandr Feinzimmer. SC: Sergei Jermolinski / Sergei Yermolinsky. DP: Leonid Kosmatov - silent - b&w. AD: Valentin Komardenkov.
    C: Andrei Zhilinski / Andrei Zhilinsky (Ilja Berts / Ilya Berts, the elder of the political prisoners' cell / староста камеры политических заключенных), Vladimir Taskin (Illarion Ostrobeilo / Illarion Ostrobeylo, collegiate assessor / коллежский асессор), Pavel Tamm (Peshehonov / Peshekhonov, chief warden / начальник тюрьмы), Vladimir Popov (Tshernjak / Chernyak, senior warden / старший надзиратель), Mihail Janshin / Mikhail Yanshin (telegraphist), Boris Lifanov (Katulski / Katulsky).
    Premiere: 27 Nov 1928 (SU). [Duration information online, 72 min, etc., may be based on the full-length version projected at sound speed.]
    Genre: историко-революционный фильм
    Film society screening in Finland: 2.4.1936 Joukola (Filmistudio Projektio).
    Gosfilmofond print, 1824 m /20 fps/ 79 min
    Viewed at Cinema Orion, Helsinki (Yuli Raizman) with Ilari Hannula at the piano and e-subtitles by Onni Nääppä, 10 Dec 2015

Yuli Raizman started his career as a film director with three silent films: Krug / Circle (lost), Katorga, and Zemlya zhazhdet / The Earth Thirsts. In Katorga he worked with the debuting screenwriter Sergei Yermolinsky embarking on a career full of interesting titles. Another significant and talented artist debuting in Katorga was the cinematographer Leonid Kosmatov.

The break from the sober traditional style of Yakov Protazanov is definitive. Raizman indulges here in avantgardistic approaches of the Russian montage school, FEKS eccentricism, and German expressionism.

Katorga starts at once with striking montage sequences of symbols of Russian Imperial power. We get to observe the architecture of power and coercion. Butyrskaya, Orlovskaya, the Irkutsk Highway... A cubist montage takes us to the heart of darkness in the middle of Siberian whiteness of blizzards in almost lethal freeze. Another montage introduces us the circumstances of the prison.

The year is 1917.

Raizman and Kosmatov use cinematic means with panache. There are pars pro toto images, silhouettes, striking angles and deep focus compositions. There are no Caligariesque distortions in the sets themselves, but "warning shadows" are often used imaginatively to create bizarre and threatening impressions. Even more impressive is the mise-en-scène in crowd scenes of hard labour and especially in the church where even the politicals are ushered by force.

Most of the performances are realistic. There is psychological depth in them. Even bit parts feel convincing; the insight here seems to be that of that "there are no bit parts". Andrei Zhilinsky creates a sober, masculine and underplayed performance as Ilya Berts, the fearless champion of the politicals who does not hesitate to defy his superiors.

There is one glaring exception to the authenticity of the performances: that of Vladimir Taskin as the highest official in the Siberian prison system, the dread Ostrobeylo. His weird and grotesque interpretation can be compared with the classic tyrant performances of Werner Krauss and Rudolf Klein-Rogge in Weimar cinema. Ostrobeylo is a little chap playing the great dictator. I was thinking about Hume Cronyn in Brute Force (and even Charles Chaplin as Hynkel). There is an aspect of twisted, convulsive, and macabre comedy in the performance.

The account of the penal servitude in utter cold in heavy chains feels realistic.

Göran Schildt in his magisterial Alvar Aalto biography (Part Two: Modern Times) remembers the previous screening of Katorga in Finland in 1936. The Finnish Security Intelligence Service (Etsivä keskuspoliisi) had an agent spying on the activity of Finland's first film society Projektio, and the screening of Soviet films such as Katorga was the last straw to the police organization then in the hands of the authoritarian right (not quite the Gestapo, but in friendly terms with them). Projektio was promptly banned. The grown-up Schildt is amazed that in his youth he found in Katorga only a film condemning the prison system of Imperial Russia while neglecting the fact that there was a far more terrible camp system now in Stalin's Russia.

But I think that many members of the audience in Russia and Finland were aware how things really were in Russia in the 1920s and the 1930s, and they were able to read the Troyan message in Katorga. Katorga, however, is not a particularly brutal film. The violence is always off-screen.

The finale is structured as a parallel montage. Ostrobeylo's coercive grip is getting tighter. There is a hunger strike. Finally, the political prisoners decide that one of them has to die to wake up the attention of the outside world. Ilya Berts, the elder of the politicals, is about to sacrifice himself in his isolated cell when there is a last minute rescue. The October revolution has won.

The print has been reconstructed from visually uneven sources. There is sometimes a duped quality but not destructively so. There are also passages of excellent quality, including images where one can observe the fine soft detail of hair, and deep focus passages. The very epilogue is a reconstructed montage of stills and bits of moving image. The 20 fps projection speed feels natural. All in all, we were grateful for the rare, remarkable, and striking film experience.

Our previous Yuli Raizman retrospective took place in December 1978 in the presence of Raizman himself. Five films were screened at the Finnish Film Archive: Zemlya zhazhdet, Lyotchiki, Poslednyaya noch, Mashenka, and Kommunist. In the context of the visit, The Culture and Science Institute of the USSR screened Berlin and Urok zhizhni. - We have screened previously also Nebo Moskvy and Kavaler Zolotoi Zvezdy. - In 1983, many Finnish newspapers interviewed Raizman in the context of the telecast of Private Life.

A good concise introduction to Raizman: John Gillett and Ian Christie / National Film Theatre / Oct-Nov 1984.

Based on it and enlarged: John Wakeman's entry in World Film Directors Vol. 1 (1987).

OUR PROGRAM NOTE BY LAURI PIISPA:

After the Festival: Il Cinema Ritrovato, Bologna, 25–31 August 2020

 

Film concert Sylvester (1924) at Il Cinema Ritrovato, Piazza Maggiore, Bologna, 29 Aug 2020. Photo: Lorenzo Burlando, Margherita Caprilli.

When the news was announced that Il Cinema Ritrovato is going to take place in real life and not only online, friends asked me if I'm going, and I replied: "I must go, but I hope they will cancel".

The catalogue was released online three weeks ahead. I spent two days reading, connecting my computer to a big tv screen with an HDMI cable. Normally, the paradox of the catalogue is that there is no time to read it until afterwards.

Everybody warned me not to go, but having read the catalogue I had no choice.

I returned from my forest retreat for a week to a Helsinki that was neglecting safe distances, face masks and hand hygiene. It was the opposite in Bologna where I felt relaxed all the time. If I'm not relaxed I cannot focus, but at Il Cinema Ritrovato I felt safe.

Everything was different. Numbered tickets had to be booked in advance. It was not permitted to change seats. It was still sweltering hot (around 32 degrees Centigrade or more) in the end of August. Wearing face masks from morning till night, also during screenings, did not make it easier.

I can watch movies without glasses, but for an accurate assessment of the visual finesses I wear glasses, and the combination of a face mask and glasses can be paradoxical because glasses tend to get foggy. I learned to manage all that. Safety first.

When I returned to unsafe Helsinki, I took the corona test at the airport and got the negative diagnosis (no virus) the day after. More than usually I had stayed in a bubble. Wearing that mask reduces the desire to meet people and engage in conversations. Such live exchanges are essential to the festival experience.

But I'm happy and grateful that they did not cancel the festival. Seeing the films in actual projections and visiting the events in person cannot be compensated by online access.

There were more venues than ever, and the catalogue was bulging with films of which only a small selection it was possible to see. As usual, I skipped the well-known and focused on films that can be hard to see on screen. I wanted to follow the retrospective of Gösta Werner, the great cineaste who I had the great pleasure to know personally, and considered indulging in the Henry Fonda retrospective, with some of my greatest favourite films, starting with Young Mr. Lincoln, but something's got to give.

The Frank Tuttle / Stuart Heisler double retrospective was a novel and illuminating concept, of two directors both richly deserving further study. Frank Tuttle's background in Paramount's elegant comedies and musicals provided a special background to films that are essential in the genesis of film noir. This Gun for Hire launched the hitman anti-hero of the screen in a way that resonates to this day, and catapulted Alan Ladd as a star.

Stuart Heisler was for decades a top editor in Hollywood before his career as a director started. Many films of his are topical for today's Black Lives Matter movement, including The Negro Soldier and Storm Warning. Heisler had also an original and passionate approach to women's films, such as Smash-Up (launching Susan Hayward as a grand melodrama diva) and The Star (metacinema with Bette Davis).

FRANK TUTTLE
Ladies Should Listen (1934).
The Glass Key (1935).
This Gun for Hire (1942).
Hostages (1943).
Suspense (1946).
Hell on Frisco Bay (1956).

STUART HEISLER
Among the Living (1941) .
The Negro Soldier (1944) .
Smash-Up: The Story of a Woman (1947) .
Storm Warning (1951) .
The Star (US 1952).

The Annales approach has been distinctive and indispensable in Bologna. The Cento anni fà series started in 2003 with "The First Great Year of the Cinema: 1903", and that series still continues. In 2015, a parallel Annales series started with Anno Zero, of the first films released in 1895. This year the series went on with a changed title, "Century of Cinema: 1900", but for my own memory organization, I still call the series also "Anno Cinque". In the beginning, the Annales series were global and representative, but soon they turned Eurocentric and quite selective even at that. They are indispensable all the same. This year's highlights included a Méliès magic show: a delightful attempt to recreate the full Méliès experience. I saw the complete Phono-Cinéma-Théâtre show when it was reconstructed eight years ago in Pordenone, but this year's Bologna selection was exquisite; a smaller sample does more justice to individual films, all extraordinary records of the greatest performers of the age. Unique and outstanding was the Giancarlo Stucky collection made on the first cinema format specifically designed for home movie use: Gaumont-Demenÿ's Chrono de Poche.

1900 ANNO CINQUE (Century of Cinema: 1900 / Il secolo del cinema: 1900)
Lumière: Cinématographe Géant at the 1900 Paris Exposition .
Lumière: Indocina occupata .
Méliès .
Gaumont: Sieurin's French Collection (in Stockholm) .
Phono-Cinéma-Théâtre .
Nice Moves – British Film in 1900 .
Gaumont Chrono de Poche: Giancarlo Stucky .

Alexander Jacoby and Johan Nordström continued their epic project of programming Japanese cinema for heritage festivals. Yuzo Kawashima was revealed as the "missing link" between traditional and modern Japanese cinema, active from the mid-1940s until the early 1960s. I liked best his films conveying a strong community spirit (Tonkatsu taisho, Ai no onimotsu), but another prominent theme of his is the dissolution of that spirit in a new age of anomie. Kawashima was most highly regarded as a director of broad comedy (Bakumatsu taiyoden), which I need to revisit to learn to relate to.

YUZO KAWASHIMA
Tonkatsu taisho / Our Chief, Our Doctor (1952).
Ai no onimotsu / Burden of Love (1955).
Ginza 24 chou / Tales of Ginza (1955) .
Suzaki paradaisu: aka shingo / Suzaki Paradise: Red Light District (1956) .
Bakumatsu taiyoden / The Sun in the Last Days of the Shogunate (1957) .

Just when we thought that we already know Soviet cinema, Irène Bonnaud and Bernard Eisenschitz introduce to us many Soviet women directors in a rich collection of films that have been difficult or impossible to see. All talented and worthy in a "Women Make Film" age of rediscoveries. We saw the first film adaptation of Anton Chekhov's beloved dog tale Kashtanka (by Olga Preobrazhenskaya), highly personal and visually compelling films by Aleksandra Khokhlova, bold and engrossing Georgian visions by Nutsa Gogoberidze (the Ur-mother of a prominent film family in three generations), defiant and surprising works by Margarita Barskaya, a persecuted director who committed suicide during the Great Terror, a heroic Bildungsroman about the revolutionary generation by Vera Stroeva (simultaneously perhaps a Troyan Horse with a double-coded message), and Nadezhda Kosheverova's evergreen Cinderella, one of the most popular Russian films of all times.

EARLY WOMEN DIRECTORS IN THE SOVIET UNION
Olga Preobrazhenskaya: Kashtanka (1926)
Aleksandra Khokhlova: Delo s zastyozhkami / An Affair of the Clasps (1929)
Aleksandra Khokhlova: Sasha (1930)
Nutsa Gogoberidze: Buba (1930)
Nutsa Gogoberidze: Uzhmuri (1934)
Margarita Barskaya: Rvanye bashmaki / Torn Boots (1933).
Margarita Barskaya: Otets i syn (1936) / Father and Son (1936)
Vera Stroeva: Pokolenie pobeditelei / A Generation of Victors (1936).
Nadezhda Kosheverova: Zolushka (1947) / Cinderella (1947).

Among the single highlights in the classics series a special discovery was Mohammed Reza Aslani's Chess of the Wind, a refined and poetic Iranian detective story, a true revelation of a film believed lost and never properly launched. Pietro Germi's Seduced and Abandoned, starring an already formidable young Stefania Sandrelli, remains a startling satire of patriarchy. Two Weimar classics from the golden year 1924 were seen in restorations. Paul Leni's Waxworks is his masterpiece. Lupu Pick's Sylvester is a work of purely visual poetry, and a new exquisite restoration does justice to it. Klaus Pringsheim's original score, one of the best original scores of the silent period, was heard at Piazza Maggiore for the first time in 96 years. My greatest favourite at the festival was Hiroshi Inagaki's The Rickshaw Man. It was cut in two instances of censorship by 20 minutes, and the cuts are still believed lost, but even in this unintentionally elliptic form the movie radiates timeless wisdom and mystery.

THE FILM FOUNDATION 30 YEARS
Mohammed Reza Aslani: Shatranj-e baad / Chess of the Wind (1976).

VENICE CLASSICS / THE FILM FOUNDATION 30 YEARS
Hiroshi Inagaki: Muhomatsu no issho (1943) / The Rickshaw Man (1943) .

VENICE CLASSICS
Pietro Germi: Sedotta e abbandonata / Seduced and Abandoned (1964).

RECOVERED AND RESTORED
Paul Leni: Das Wachsfigurenkabinett / Waxworks (1924).
Film concert: Lupu Pick: Sylvester (1924), with the original score by Klaus Pringsheim.

My immediate reactions on the last evening of the Festival: 31 August 2020 .

Il Cinema Ritrovato selections about which I have also blogged recently:
Esfir Shub: К.Ш.Э. Комсомол – шеф электрификации / K.S.E. Komsomol – Leader of Electrification (1932).
Marco Ferreri: La donna scimmia / The Ape Woman (1964).