Robin Hood (1912)

Étienne Arnaud: Robin Hood (Éclair-America 1912) with Robert Frazer (Robin Hood) and Arthur Hollingsworth (Richard the Lion-Hearted). Photo: IMDb.

ROBIN HOOD (Éclair-America, US 1912)
    Dir: Etienne Arnaud; cast: Robert Frazer, Barbara Tennant, Alec B. Francis, Muriel Ostriche, John Adolfi; rel. 22.8.1912.
    16 mm, 720 ft /18 fps/ 27 min, Fort Lee Film Commission, Al Dettlaff Collection.
    English intertitles.
    Grand piano: Donald Sosin.
    Viewed at Cinema Ruffo, Sacile, Le Giornate del Cinema Muto (GCM): Fort Lee, 15 Oct 2004   

Richard Koszarski (GCM): "This work print represents a restoration in progress based on a now decomposed tinted nitrate original from the collection of Al Dettlaff. The Éclair studio, opened in 1911, was the first to be built in downtown Fort Lee, literally down the block from parts of Main Street frequently used by Biograph and other producers. The stated policy of Éclair’s president, Charles Jourjon, was to combine French dramatic and technical skills with American players, subjects, and scenery. To accomplish this Jourjon imported Étienne Arnaud, Ben Carré, Lucien Andriot, Émile Cohl, Maurice Tourneur, and many others, but Éclair suffered, especially in comparison with Pathé, from a lack of adequate distribution (at the time Arnaud filmed Robin Hood Éclair’s product was being distributed by Universal, but this relationship was never satisfactory). The slight lack of clarity in the narrative might have been less of a problem for audiences familiar with the apparent source, Reginald De Koven’s 1890 comic opera." – Richard Koszarski (GCM)

AA: Primitive gesticulation. Unintentionally comical. A good 16 mm print.

The Great Adventure (1918)

Alice Blaché: The Great Adventure (1918). Slide from IMDb.

Alice Blaché: The Great Adventure (1918). Magazine advertisement from Wikipedia.

Alice Blaché: The Great Adventure (1918). Bessie Love as Ragna Jansen, "Rags". Photo from Wikipedia.

Alice Blaché: The Great Adventure (1918). Bessie Love as Ragna Jansen, "Rags" and Flora Finch as her aunt. Photo from Wikipedia.

THE GREAT ADVENTURE (Pathé Exchange, US 1918)
    Dir: Alice Guy Blaché; ph: George K. Hollister, John G. Haas; adapted by Agnes C. Johnson from “The Painted Scene”, by Henry Kitchell Webster; cast: Bessie Love, Flora Finch, Donald Hall, Chester Barnett, Florence Short; rel. 10.3.1918.
    35 mm, 3032 ft /16 fps/ 51 min – 925 m /16 fps/ 51 min – BFI / NFTVA.
    English intertitles.
    Grand piano: Donald Sosin.
    Viewed at Cinema Ruffo, Sacile, Le Giornate del Cinema Muto (GCM): Fort Lee, 15 Oct 2004

Richard Koszarski (GCM): "Alice Guy Blaché’s last surviving film (and last Fort Lee production) has recently been restored by the NFTVA from a somewhat abridged 28 mm copy. As noted by Alison McMahon, it demonstrates the director’s continuing interest in complex female characterizations even at the very end of her career, and features engaging performances from all the women in the cast, each of whom represents a different ideal of contemporary womanhood. The theatrical background also provides a rich opportunity for Blaché to explore her interest in role-playing, show business, and the need to balance romantic illusion with practical common sense."

"Alice and her husband Herbert had built a new Solax studio on Lemoine Avenue in Fort Lee in 1912. After the introduction of features the Blachés often directed films here for others, or even leased the facility outright (Goldwyn made its first films here early in 1917, before moving to the larger Universal studio). Pathé occupied the studio from the summer of 1917, and Alice Blaché appears to have directed this film for them at the instigation of her friend Albert Capellani, who was then its manager." – Richard Koszarski (GCM)

AA: A country girl (Bessie Love) becomes a star of the local theater in a patriotic success play called "The Spring of the Year". The theatre world is portrayed in caricature, but there are dreams about the "cinema, where talent is truly appreciated" (there was a good laugh from the audience here). New York provides "the great adventure" of the film's title on a date with the actor Mr. Sheen (Donald Hall) with a visit to the zoo and comic blunders on the beach.

The 28 mm source is poor, the faces burned white.

Bessie Love's (1898–1986) film career had started two years earlier, but she had at once had the tripple whammy of working with Griffith (Intolerance), William S. Hart (The Aryan) and Douglas Fairbanks (The Good Bad-Man). 65 years later her last appearances took place in films by Milos Forman (Ragtime), Warren Beatty (Reds) and Tony Scott (The Hunger).

Alice Guy (1873–1968) was a pioneer of the cinema. The Great Adventure was her penultimate film as a director, and the last one with her sole directorial credit. In 1896 (Anno Uno of the cinema) she had been one of the first film directors – before the job description existed. Often people wonder why she finished so early, and with justification.

On the other hand, Alice Guy was one of the last ones from Anno Uno to continue directing. Of the film directors of 1896 I can only think of Cecil M. Hepworth who continued longer (until 1927). The Skladanowskys withdrew in 1897, W. K. L. Dickson in 1899, the Lumières in 1905, R. W. Paul in 1910 and Méliès in 1912. Edwin S. Porter who started in 1898 withdrew in 1915.

Alice Guy: La Fée aux choux / The Cabbage Fairy (1900). Guy directed three films of this subject (1896, 1900, 1902). Her first La Fée aux choux (1896) was shot on 60 mm. In the 1900 version, the fairy is played by Yvonne Serand. There is an affinity with the appearance of Bessie Love in The Great Adventure.

WIKIPEDIA SYNOPSIS

Rags (Love), has found local success and acclaim in her small town as an actress, but dreams of stardom on Broadway. She and her aunt (Finch) go to New York, where she unsuccessfully looks for work in a Broadway chorus. On the advice of Billy Blake (Barnett), she holds up the producer of a Broadway show to get a job. The lead actor in the show, Sheen (Hall), likes Rags, but on a date together, he cannot ride a horse, paddle a canoe, or swim. Embarrassed, he leaves the Broadway show, allowing Billy to take over the male lead, and Rags to take over the female lead.

AFI CATALOG SYNOPSIS

Ragna Jansen, affectionately called "Rags" by her high school chums in Middletown, is assured that she will win instant fame and fortune on Broadway, but when she and her aunt arrive in New York, they find that success does not come so easily. Billy Blake, who is an understudy for Sheen, the leading man in a Broadway show, takes an interest in Rags and helps her to secure a position in the chorus. When Sheen and his wife, the leading lady, quarrel, the wife quits the show and Rags is given the part. She captivates the audience and attracts the leading man, but Billy and actress Hazel Lee, aware of the shallowness of Sheen's character, conspire to prevent the romance. Rags, however, witnesses Sheen's foolishness herself. On a canoeing jaunt, Sheen's inability to swim leads to his public humiliation when Rags, in an impulsive publicity stunt, throws herself in the water, only to find herself forced to rescue the drowning actor. Sheen, disgusted, leaves the show, and Billy wins the leading role as well as Rags's heart.

Old Heidelberg (1915)

John Emerson: Old Heidelberg (1915). Digital ID: TH-41476. Source: Billy Rose Theatre Collection photograph file / Productions / Old Heidelberg (Cinema 1915) (http://digitalgallery.nypl.org/nypldigital/explore/?col_id=201). Repository: The New York Public Library. The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts. Billy Rose Theatre Division. See more information about http://digitalgallery.nypl.org/nypldigital/id?TH-41476 and others at http://digitalgallery.nypl.org. Persistent URL: http://digitalgallery.nypl.org/nypldigital/id?TH-41476 . Rights Info: No known copyright restrictions; may be subject to third party rights (for more information, http://www.nypl.org/node/8314). Date 14 December 2008, 22:29:31. Source https://www.flickr.com/photos/nypl/3110052628/ . Author: New York Public Library. Permission (Reusing this file): At the time of upload, the image license was automatically confirmed using the Flickr API. For more information see Flickr API detail. Flickr sets: Cinema 1915. Flickr tags: New York Public Library dc:identifier http://digitalgallery.nypl.org/nypldigital/id?TH-41476 xmlns:dc http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/ silent film. There is a whole set of rare Old Heidelberg (1915) photos in Wikimedia Commons. Please click on the photo to enlarge it.

OLD HEIDELBERG (Fine Arts Film Co., US 1915)
    Dir.: John Emerson; supv.: D. W. Griffith; cast: Wallace Reid, Dorothy Gish, Erich von Stroheim; 35 mm, 4223 ft, 62’ (18 fps), BFI / National Film and Television Archive.
    English intertitles.
    Grand piano: Antonio Coppola.
    Viewed at Teatro Zancanaro, Sacile, Le Giornate del Cinema Muto (GCM): The Griffith Project 8, 15 Oct 2004.

J. B. Kaufman [DWG Project # 519]: "Along with other cinematic milestones, the year 1915 was a major turning point in the career of Wallace Reid. Formerly one of the second string of actors in Griffith’s stock company at Majestic, Reid made a brief but memorable appearance as a blacksmith in The Birth of a Nation which proved to be his breakthrough. Although Griffith seemed to have little use for the young actor in his own films, Reid continued to prosper with the company, enjoying progressively larger roles until, by the end of the year, he stood on the brink of stardom. One of his featured roles, that of Philip Ray in Enoch Arden, can be seen elsewhere in this program; by the time of Old Heidelberg he was playing the leading role of Prince Karl, torn between the demands of love and duty and sadly bowing to the inevitable. By the end of 1915 Reid had been lured away from Griffith’s company by Cecil B. DeMille, and his all-too-short reign as a popular star lay directly ahead."

"For an actor who represented such an unknown quantity in Griffith’s eyes, Old Heidelberg was an ideal vehicle; the story was already so well known that it had a pre-sold popular appeal. This film version was, in fact, only one link in a long chain of adaptations. Wilhelm Meyer-Förster’s romance Karl Heinrich had first been published in 1902 as a novel, and at least three stage adaptations had quickly followed. The most successful of these was revived in New York in 1910, and this quite likely led to Majestic’s 1915 film version. In 1924 the story took a lighter turn when it was adapted as Sigmund Romberg’s operetta The Student Prince. This was followed in turn by another film version in 1927, directed by Ernst Lubitsch and starring Ramon Novarro and Norma Shearer, and the story continued to resurface on stage and screen in later years."

"The top screen billing in Old Heidelberg actually goes to Dorothy Gish, who was herself well on the way to screen stardom. Though she has little to do, her performance as Katie (Kathie in the original story) displays her natural charm, and was and is a delight to all except, apparently, the critic “Jolo.”, who complained in Variety (8 October 1915, p. 21) that she “doesn’t suggest anything Teutonic, thereby failing to preserve the otherwise strongly created atmosphere of German student life”. Other reviewers were far more complimentary. Another notable member of the cast is young Harold Goodwin, who plays the Prince at age 12. In later years Goodwin would virtually grow up onscreen, appearing in the silent films of Mary Pickford and Buster Keaton among many others, and continuing his acting career in dozens of sound films in succeeding decades."

"In retrospect, perhaps the most interesting casting choice in the film is that of Erich von Stroheim, who appears as valet and chief killjoy Lutz, and who also assisted director John Emerson behind the camera. Richard Koszarski has written on Stroheim’s connection with Old Heidelberg, providing valuable insights on his working relationship with Emerson, and speculating on the extent of his involvement in the finished film. (Koszarski’s comments are reprinted in Griffithiana 71, pp. 56 –60.) Traces of Old Heidelberg can be seen in several of Stroheim’s own later films, while, conversely, Koszarski makes a case for Stroheim’s creative contribution to this film. The royal edict “that each crippled soldier be given a hand-organ” is offered as one touch that suggests the Stroheim influence."

"Of course there are other influences at work here, not least that of Griffith himself. The title “Love’s marriage”, followed by an idyllic shot of the lovers by a stream, seems a striking example of Griffith’s hand at work. And, as the Variety reviewer commented, “No Griffith feature would be complete without a battle-scene” (reviewers frequently wrote about these Griffith-supervised program pictures as if Griffith himself had directed them). In the original version of Old Heidelberg, the end of Karl’s idyll was brought about by the simple necessity of royal obligation; here his return to Karlburg is prompted by an impending war, and the film suddenly takes off in a new direction as Reid finds himself in the midst of an anti-war lecture. The inclusion of a war was of course motivated by World War I, which was already raging in Europe when this film was produced. The anti-war stance may have reflected the United States’ current neutrality policy, but it seems to come directly from Griffith, who had presented glorious scenes of the Civil War in The Birth of a Nation but took pains to link them to a strong anti-war statement, and was preparing an even stronger one in his current production of Intolerance. (Interestingly, the passage in question in Old Heidelberg – in which Reid is conducted through scenes illustrating the horrors of war – suggests Thomas Ince’s Civilization, which would be released months later, far more strongly than any other Griffith film or Meyer-Förster’s original story.)"

"Continuing this thread, Kevin Brownlow pointed out in a personal conversation that some of the differences between the (vastly different) 1915 and 1927 film versions of Old Heidelberg are prompted by the intervening changes in world history. The Locarno Treaty of 1925 had admitted Germany to the League of Nations, and MGM’s 1927 film version, The Student Prince in Old Heidelberg, directed by Ernst Lubitsch, was designed to reflect a new and more positive attitude between nations. Wallace Reid’s 1915 duel was not repeated by Ramon Novarro in 1927, nor was there any mention of war, mythical or real."

"Released on the second Triangle program in November 1915, Old Heidelberg drew a generally favorable reaction from critics, but was overshadowed by Ince’s contribution to the program: the Civil War drama The Coward, with Frank Keenan and Charles Ray." – J. B. Kaufman [DWG Project # 519]

AA: + Very likeable. Revisited the first 20 minutes.

Stekliannyi glaz / [The Glass Eye]

I missed this screening due to an overlap with the Griffith Project: Old Heidelberg, but I include Thomas Tode's excellent program note to keep a full record of the Vertov Project in this blog.

DZIGA VERTOV XVI
Grand piano: studente SMI
Cinema Ruffo, Sacile, Le Giornate del Cinema Muto (GCM), 15 Oct 2004

Prog. 16

STEKLIANNYI GLAZ / [L’OCCHIO DI VETRO / THE GLASS EYE] (Mezhrabpom-Film, Moscow, USSR 1928)
Dir/sc: Lily Brik & Vitaly Zhemchuzny; ph: K. Vents; ed: Lily Brik; prod. des: Sergej Kozlovski; superv: I. Freund; cast: Anatoli Golovnya, Veronika Polonskaya, A. Sdrok, N. Prozorovski, E. Gvosdikov, I. Tsitinnik; premiere: 15.1.1929, Moscow; lunghezza originale / orig. length: 5 rls., 1703 m. (per Kulturfilmkatalog 1929-1930 des Kino-Kontor der Handelsvertretung der UdSSR in Deutschland, p.48); 35 mm, 1455 m, 52’ (24 fps), Gosfilmofond.
Didascalie in russo / Russian intertitles.

Thomas Tode (GCM): "Stekliannyi Glaz [The Glass Eye] was filmed by Vitaly Zhemchuzny and Lily Brik, the muse and former lover of the famous Futurist poet Vladimir Mayakovsky (his new lover, Veronika Polonskaya, appears in the film in the parody role of the kissed-and-kissing movie star). It is — as Lily Brik herself wrote — "a parody on the commercially-oriented feature films which then swamped the screens, and at the same time agit-prop for the documentary newsreel film. Mayakovsky liked its topic a lot; it coincided with his own ideas." In the first part it ridicules the shooting of a "heartbreaker", including a director whose monocle brings to mind Fritz Lang. All this in the train of thought of Dziga Vertov: "We invite you — to flee — the sweet embraces of the romance, the poison of the psychological novel."(Kino-Eye: The Writings of Dziga Vertov, p.7) The second part compiles images from newsreels and documentaries (among them Mikhail Kaufman’s Moskva [Moscow] — shown in an earlier program in this series) to articulate a plea to observe topics in documentary style. For example, an operation first filmed in Germany, in which a file was removed from a prisoner’s intestines, was extensively shown."

"Sovetskii ekran (30.10.1928) wrote enthusiastically: "It [The Glass Eye] strips and unmasks pseudo-realistic means with the help of authentic film footage, and does more telling than a book, a lecture, or a play could have done... How foolish it is to waste the grandiose means of cinematographic expression on such scenic nonsense." Curiously enough, Lily Brik uses footage she herself shot to deconstruct the feature film, whereas the sequences that her heart clung to came from archives."

"At first, films that supported radical social change in revolutionary Russia, e.g., those of Eisenstein, Pudovkin, Dovzhenko, and Vertov, were in the minority on the playbills of metropolitan cinemas in the 1920s. In 1924 the playbill of a Leningrad movie theatre featured titles such as The Indian Tomb, The Adventures of a Lady, The Love of a Gypsy, The Temple of Delight, First Love, India: Land of Wonders, Bianca the Adventuress, The Female Fantomas, The Girl in the Mask, etc. (cf. Richard Taylor and Ian Christie, eds., The Film Factory, p. 102). From 1922 onwards Vertov mobilized his films and manifestos against this so-called "opium for the masses". This tradition was taken up by Lily Brik with her film Stekliannyi Glaz. Using a metonymy for the camera, already in the film’s title, the widespread fascination with technology breaks through. The film-eye surpasses the human eye; it sees everything, all over the world. Stekliannyi Glaz opened on 15 January 1929, almost parallel with Vertov’s Man with a Movie Camera. In both films the camera gets top billing." – THOMAS TODE (GCM)

Sorrell and Son (1927)

Herbert Brenon: Sorrell and Son (1927) with H. B. Warner (Captain Sorrell) and Mickey McBan (his son Kit). Photo from IMDb.

SORRELL AND SON (Feature Productions / United Artists, US 1927)
Isä ja poika / Elämänvaihtelut / Livets växlingar.
    Dir/sc: Herbert Brenon; adapt: Elizabeth Meehan, from the novel Sorrell & Son (1925) by Warwick Deeping; ph: James Wong Howe; ed: Marie Halvey; art dir: William Cameron Menzies; cast: H. B. Warner, Anna Q. Nilsson, Nils Asther, Carmel Myers, Mary Nolan, Alice Joyce, Mickey McBan, Lionel Belmore, Louis Wolheim; 35 mm, 9448 ft, 90’ (24 fps), Academy Film Archive.
    English intertitles.
    Grand piano: Phil Carli.
    Viewed at Teatro Zancanaro, Sacile, Le Giornate del Cinema Muto (GCM): Fuori quadro, 15 Oct 2004.

Kelly Chisholm (GCM): "Based on a beloved British novel by Warwick Deeping, Sorrell and Son tells the story of a father and son’s life together in post-World War I England. Stephen Sorrell (H. B. Warner) returns from the front a wounded war hero, but finds his past bravery is not enough to prevent his wife (Anna Q. Nilsson) from deserting the family or to gain him gentlemanly employment.  The bond between Stephen and his only son, Kit (Mickey McBan as a child, Nils Asther as an adult), is deep and loving, through years of Stephen struggling in porter jobs to send Kit to privileged schools and provide a respectable upbringing for him. Women come into both their lives, whether welcome, like Kit’s lifelong sweetheart (Mary Nolan), or unwelcome, like Stephen’s abusive and lustful employer (Carmel Myers). Hardship, illness, and the re-entry of Kit’s mother into his life test their bond, but throughout Stephen and Kit remain devoted to each other, with the true test coming when Stephen falls gravely ill."

"The film was shot on location in England by legendary cinematographer James Wong Howe.  Director Herbert Brenon (Peter Pan, A Kiss for Cinderella, and Laugh, Clown, Laugh) brings a warm touch and coaxes lovely performances out of the cast, especially child actor Mickey McBan.  Leading man H. B. Warner went on to reprise his role of Stephen in a sound version of the story in 1934."

"This version of Sorrell and Son has been preserved from the only known existing material, an incomplete, early safety film print of very poor image quality. We have done the best we can using standard photographic laboratory techniques to bring out the beauty of the image; however, very little detail remained in the existing material. The film is missing roughly about 5 minutes of the very end of the picture, most likely due to deterioration of the original nitrate elements. A summary of the film’s ending, based on existing stills and the script, follows the surviving footage." – Kelly Chisholm (GCM)

AA: Sorrell and Son (1927) was a film believed lost at the time of GCM's 1996 Herbert Brenon retrospective, but it has just been discovered and restored by the Academy Film Archive.

There is a Warwick Deeping connection in this year's retrospective: in the first screening we saw Fox Farm (1922) which deals with blindness as a life-changing tragedy. The wife distances herself from her husband after he turns blind (but he then finds a new and true love). In Sorrell and Son it's about WWI: the wife leaves Captain Sorrell with another man when Sorrell returns from the front. Sorrell is sick, poor and unemployed, but he takes good care of his son as a single father despite a long series of hardships and humiliations. The son grows up (incarnated by Nils Asther), becomes a surgeon and has to make a hard decision of euthanasia when his dad is diagnozed with terminal cancer.

The actual duration of the screening was: 2880 m /24 fps/ 104 min.

...
SYNOPSIS FROM AFI CATALOG ONLINE:

"Captain Stephen Sorrell, who was badly wounded during World War I, returns to London with the Military Cross, only to find that his pleasure-seeking wife Dora is leaving him for a wealthier man.

Sorrell's pain at her betrayal is only softened by the love he and his young son Kit feel toward each other. Hoping to care for Kit and retain his status as a gentleman, Sorrell tries to return to his old position as a sales manager but is told that it has been filled.

Because of his poor health and difficult times, Sorrell cannot find work in London, so he accepts a clerk's position at an antiques store in Staunton. Although the position reduces Sorrell's status, he is happy it will enable him to provide for Kit. Arriving in Staunton, Sorrell is shattered to learn that the antiques dealer has died and the position no longer exists. Desperate to keep Kit with him, Sorrell accepts a job as a porter at a local inn. The proprietress, Flo Palfrey, delights in humiliating Sorrell, whom she recognizes as having been born a gentleman, yet she also is attracted to him and tries to seduce him. When he rejects her advances, she fires him, but his fortunes turn for the better when Thomas Roland, a guest at the inn, hires him to work as a porter at a large hotel he manages.

Sorrell works very hard at the hotel, despite constant ill treatment by Buck, the bullying head porter. One night, when Buck tries to force himself on Fanny Garland, a housekeeper who has befriended Sorrell, he is stopped by Sorrell in a violent clash. Awakened by the disturbance, Roland dismisses Buck and makes Sorrell the new head porter.

As the years pass, Sorrell excels as the head porter, while Kit and Roland's daughter Molly happily play together. Roland pays for Kit's tuition at a prominent boarding school, but when Sorrell goes to visit his son, the headmaster berates him for being a lowly porter and expels Kit. Despite their humiliation, Sorrell and Kit are happy to be reunited.

As the years pass, Kit, who has wanted to become a surgeon since the famous Dr. Orange saved Molly’s life after a childhood accident, attends Oxford and graduates from medical school. For Sorrell, now manager of the hotel after Roland retires, and in a loving relationship with Fanny, life seems complete until Dora, now a lonely, wealthy widow, re-enters his life. Although Kit does not want to see her, Sorrell convinces him that he should accept her offer to stay with her in London for a few weeks. Dora shows Kit a life of luxury pleasure in London, but he rejects her and returns to his father.

Sometime later, after Dr. Orange has given Kit a position at a London hospital, he begins to excel at his profession. One day, however, during brain surgery, Kit accidentally cuts his hand, which becomes infected. The infection soon becomes so serious that doctors are certain that Kit’s arm must be amputated to save his life. Kit refuses the operation, with the loving support of his father, but passes the crisis and recovers.

Soon Kit and Dora marry, to the pride and happiness of Roland and Sorrell. While the newlyweds are on their honeymoon, Sorrell collapses in the garden of the cottage he shares with Fanny. Sorrell does not want to disturb Kit’s honeymoon, but upon his return, Kit learns that his father is dying.

Orange, who is attending Sorrell, tells the devastated Kit that only morphine will stop the great pain that will be with his father until death. That night, acquiescing to his father’s wishes, Kit gives him an overdose of morphine to stop the pain, then kisses his dying father’s forehead. Despondent and racked with guilt, Kit is comforted by Molly, who tells him “what a last service” he did for his father. The next day, the devoted Fanny attends Sorrell's garden."

Der falsche Dimitry

Hans Steinhoff: Der falsche Dimitry (1922).

THE STEINHOFF PROJECT
DER FALSCHE DIMITRY (ed. it: BORIS GODUNOFF) (Gloria-Filmgesellschaft, D 1922)
Vale-Dimitri.
    Dir: Hans Steinhoff; prod: Hanns Lippmann; sc: Hans Steinhoff, Paul Beyer; ph: Helmar Lerski; des: Walter Reimann, Alfred Junge, Hans Lück; cost: mainly supplied by Dresdner Staatsoper; artistic advisor: Leo Witlin; technical advisor: Hans Lück; technical assistants: Kiekebusch, Steinert, Schmidbauer;
    cast: Alfred Abel (Iwan der Grausame), Agnes Straub, Eugen Klöpfer (Boris Godunov), Paul Hartmann, Gina Relly, Joseph Klein, Eduard von Winterstein, Leopold von Ledebur, Hanni Weisse, Friedrich Kühne, Ilka Grüning, Wilhelm Diegelmann, Hans Albers, Harry Hardt, Erhard Siedel, Arthur Bergen, Hugo Döblin, Wassilij Wronski, Josef Klein, Fritz Achterberg, Heinrich Schroth, Kl. Hoschek, Lothar Müthel, John Gottowt, Georg Baselt, Tatjana Tarydina, Oscar Sabo, Hans Heinrich von Twardowski, Jaro Fürth, Franz Egenleff; Georg Schnell, Georg John;
    premiere: 15.12.1922, Ufa-Palast, Berlin; orig. length: 2694 m; restored version: 35 mm, 2042 m, 82’ (22 fps), tinted, Bundesarchiv-Filmarchiv.
    German intertitles.
    Grand piano: Donald Sosin.
    20 min from the beginning viewed at Teatro Zancanaro, Sacile, Le Giornate del Cinema Muto (GCM): Fuori quadro – The Steinhoff Project, 15 Oct 2004

Horst Claus (GCM): "Following the critical success of his debut film Kleider machen Leute, Steinhoff was signed up to direct three films for Hanns Lippmannís prestigious Gloria Film Company, a subsidiary and “Jewel in the Crown” of Ufa.  The first of these was this costume drama set in Russia at the turn of the 16th century. Deliberately avoiding references to literary and musical adaptations by Pushkin, Schiller, and Mussorgsky, it is a liberal adaptation of events surrounding the Russian usurper Boris Godunov. The film was shot in the studios of Staaken between early June and the end of August 1922. To reduce costs, designer Walter Reimann used painted backdrops for several of the more spectacular scenes rather than expensive three-dimensional sets."

"Der falsche Dimitry is the third work in a programme of the restoration and preservation of the silent films of Hans Steinhoff, undertaken by the Bundesarchiv-Filmarchiv, Berlin, with partial support of the UK Arts and Humanities Research Board, and the University of the West of England, Bristol. It is based on a tinted nitrate print with Italian intertitles held by the Fondazione Cineteca Italiana, Milan. The German original aimed at a broad panorama of the period, starting with the last years of Ivan the Terrible and covering aspects of the reign of his successor Fyodor II. Cutting it by approximately 700 metres, the editors of the Italian print concentrated on (and called their version) Boris Godunov. Among their changes, they reduced the role of Fyodor to two brief appearances at the opening of the film and the end of Reel 2, shortened scenes relating to predictions about Ivan’s death, and re-edited the murder sequence of his young son Dimitry and the abduction of the latterís friend Peter Grigory (who subsequently becomes the “wrong Dimitry”). Sequences reflecting Godunov’s brutal dictatorship appear to have also fallen victim to the ravages of time. Though the Italian print retains a verbatim translation of almost all the German intertitles, its editors added ten titles in order to cover gaps in the visual narrative caused by their interference. As their main aim was to tighten and speed up the plot, they retained the film’s original narrative structure."

"The reconstruction follows the information and sequence of events as contained in the German censorship records. Added Italian titles have been ignored, and re-edited shots have been put back into their original context. Though shortened by a third, the result retains the atmosphere and most of the action of the original 1922 print." – Horst Claus (GCM)

Kleider machen Leute / Clothes Make the Man (1921) (fragment)

Hans Steinhoff: Kleider machen Leute / Clothes Make the Man (1921) with Hermann Thimig.

The Steinhoff Project
KLEIDER MACHEN LEUTE / BRŸUTIGAM AUF KREDIT (Volo Film, AT 1921)
Clothes Make the Man.
Unreleased in Finland.
    Dir/prod: Hans Steinhoff; sc: Hans Steinhoff, based on the short story “Kleider machen Leute” di / by Gottfried Keller; titles: Homunculus [Robert Weill]; ph: Anton Pucher; des: Hans Neumann (interiors), Hans Dostel, Robert Reich; cost: Karl Alexander Wilke; title des: Mayblond [Michael Maybaum], based on ideas by Hans Steinhoff;
    cast: Hermann Thimig, Dora Kaiser, Hugo Thimig, Thea Oesy, Wilhelm Schmidt, Franz Kammauf, Cornelius Kirschner, Eugen Günther, Fritz Straßny, Josef Moser, Victor Kutschera, Hans Thimig;
    premiere: 29.12.1921, UT Kurfürstendamm, Berlin; orig. length: 1893 m; fragment [restored Act 2 only]: 35 mm, 335 m, 13’ (22 fps), tinted & toned, Bundesarchiv-Filmarchiv.
    German intertitles.
    In the presence of Horst Claus
    Grand piano: Donald Sosin.
    Viewed at Teatro Zancanaro, Sacile, Le Giornate del Cinema Muto (GCM): Fuori quadro  – The Steinhoff Project, 15 Oct 2004

Horst Claus (GCM): "Based on a short story by the 19th-century Swiss author Gottfried Keller about the discrepancy between appearances and reality, the film tells the story of an unemployed, penniless tailor whom the petty bourgeois citizens of the small provincial town of Goldach mistake for an important aristocrat. Having eaten an opulent meal that was practically forced on him by the landlord of the “Hotel zur Waage”, the tailor’s various attempts to sneak away are thwarted by important citizens anxious to meet him in the hope of profiting from his acquaintance. Eventually he ends up in the hotel’s best room having a nightmare about the day's events, leading him up to the gallows."

"Written, directed, and produced by Steinhoff himself, this fragment of his first feature (restored by the Bundesarchiv-Filmarchiv in 1999 from an original nitrate print) reflects its director's lifelong (but rarely realised) ambition to be the auteur of his films. It is an example of the professionalism with which he entered (and continued to work in) the film industry. The reel’s (originally tinted and toned) titles and trick sequences are imaginative, charming, and of a high professional standard. The humorous nightmare sequence nicely contrasts with that of Ivan the Terrible’s horror dream in Steinhoff’s next film, Der Falsche Dimitry (1922). All the location work took place in villages of the Vienna Woods. Though a flop with audiences, the film’s enormous critical success became Steinhoff’s entry ticket to the Berlin film industry. The archive would very much welcome information about any other elements of this film which may survive." – Horst Claus (GCM)

AA: I saw this fragment (duration at Zancanaro was 14'21"): innovative camera work and titles, even animation, interesting colour solutions of tinting and toning.

The Lure of Crooning Water

Arthur Rooke: The Lure of the Crooning Water (1920). Photo: Internet Movie Database.

THE LURE OF CROONING WATER (George Clark Productions, GB 1920)
    Dir/prod: Arthur Rooke; sc: Guy Newall, dal romanzo di / from the novel by Marion Hill; ph: Joe Rosenthal, Jr.; des: Charles Dalman; cast: Ivy Duke, Guy Newall, Mary Dibley, Hugh C. Buckler, Arthur Chesney, Lawford Davison, i bambini Hood / the Hood children, Chuh Ah Moy; trade show: 1.1920; 35 mm, 6237 ft, 84’ (20 fps), BFI / National Film and Television Archive.
    Didascalie in inglese / English intertitles.
    Viewed at Teatro Zancanaro, Sacile, Le Giornate del Cinema Muto (GCM) (Asquith e gli altri), 15 Oct 2004.

Bryony Dixon (GCM): "Ivy Duke plays Georgette Verlaine, a sophisticated and jaded city actress suffering from exhaustion who is sent by her doctor friend for a rest cure to a farm in the country, where she causes the farmer, Horace (Guy Newall), to fall in love with her. The tensions between the hard work and simple morals of the rural environment and the excesses of the town are thrown into sharp relief when he later follows her to the city. The setting-up of the romance starts lightly, as she mocks him for his coarseness and he shows his disapproval of her frivolity. This is frequently juxtaposed with the homeliness and drudgery of the farmer’s wife Rachel (Mary Dibley), although the husband and wife seem to exist together happily enough."

"Of Ivy Duke’s charms in the film, historian Rachael Low said that they held “just that touch of refinement and distinction that might cause resentment in a village”, and Duke does indeed play the part with great subtlety. Likewise, Newall’s portrayal of his developing passion for her is beautifully restrained. The pivotal scene takes place in a thunderstorm, prefigured metaphorically in the intertitles: “Rachel didn’t see the storm clouds gathering.” As Rachel comforts the children upstairs, Georgette invades the farmer’s private study. As the lightning flashes, he sneeringly asks if she is afraid. “ No,” she says, “I want someone to revel in it with me”. Bodies move closer; he follows her off screen; fade to black. A great movie moment, even if the lightning is a bit cheap."

"This was one of the first George Clark/Guy Newall feature collaborations. It was made with very little money, and cramped studio space, but ironically this forced the team (with Rooke directing and Joe Rosenthal, Jr. on camera) to shoot as much as possible on location, greatly to the benefit of the final film." Bryony Dixon (GCM)

AA: The theme of the collapsing diva reminds me of Persona. Crooning Water is the name of a place, of which it is said that it is "the back of beyond". (A Finnish expression would be "tuppukylä").

Big Red Ridin' Hood

Leo McCarey: Big Red Ridin' Hood (1925). Jimmy Jump (Charley Chase) uses every opportunity to read "Little Red Riding Hood", even during a car chase. My screenshot from YouTube.

BIG RED RIDIN’ HOOD (Hal Roach, US 1925)
Big Red Ridinghood [the title credit]
    Dir: Leo McCarey; prod: Hal Roach; cast: Charley Chase, Helen Gilmore, Richard Daniels, Martha Sleeper; 35 mm, 295 m, 13’ (20 fps), Lobster Films.
    English intertitles.
    Grand piano: Günter Buchwald.
    Viewed at Teatro Zancanaro, Sacile, Le Giornate del Cinema Muto (GCM): Goodnight, Silents, 14 Oct 2004.

Serge Bromberg (GCM): "Jimmy Jump, a professional translator, is commissioned to do a Swedish version of “Little Red Riding Hood”. Having no money to buy the book, he thinks up a thousand tricks to read the story without spending a cent. A delectable 2-reeler from the team of Leo McCarey and Charley Chase, the forgotten greats of the Roach Studio." – Serge Bromberg (GCM)

AA: * One of my favourites at the Festival. Charley Chase in great form. Very nice, made just before his very greatest films.

East Is East (1916)

Photo: Internet Movie Database.

EAST IS EAST (Turner Company, GB 1916)
    Dir/prod/sc: Henry Edwards; cast: Henry Edwards, Florence Turner, Edith Evans; trade show: 9.1916; 35 mm, 4787 ft, 71’ (18 fps), BFI / National Film and Television Archive.
    Didascalie in inglese / English intertitles.
    Viewed at Teatro Zancanaro, Sacile, Le Giornate del Cinema Muto (Asquith e gli altri),

Bryony Dixon (GCM): "Edith Evans, an arch ham even in 1916, tries to upstage everyone in this rags-to-riches drama of childhood sweethearts, played with exquisite naturalness by Florence Turner (“The Vitagraph Girl”) and Henry Edwards. This film is the only survivor of several films starring the pair. The influence of Hollywood narrative style is clear. The film is well structured, with an elegance that is not so surprising until you look at the date it was made and its country of origin. The subject, though, is fundamentally British, a familiar theme concerning the impossibility of finding love and fulfilment outside one’s social class. Money is a hindrance, and financial comfort or security brings with it stifling social conventions. As always with these stories, happiness is achieved only through escape to the rose-covered cottage of every Englishman’s dreams."

"Well-worn as the story is, the performances lift the film out of the ordinary (although by 1916 not enough features had been made for it to have really become a cliché). Edwards’ performance in particular is notable for its profound understanding of the spatial qualities of cinema, even with a relatively static camera. Edwards was already an experienced stage and screen actor by this time ­ watch how as an actor he makes us believe in the three-dimensional world we see through the frame. This is much helped by his use of location work in the hop-fields of Kent, where traditionally the working classes of London enjoyed a brief working holiday away from the miseries of the city. The beautiful English rural scenery adds greatly to the film’s charms." Bryony Dixon (GCM)

AA: A social comedy, a satire of class society, with a great sense of humour and social observation, nuance and realistic density. The print is ok. *** Actual duration of the screening 1:15'38" = 76 min.

Chelovek s kinoapparatom / Man With a Movie Camera (GCM Sacile 2004)

Dziga Vertov: Chelovek s kinoapparatom / Man With a Movie Camera (1929). Poster design by the Stenberg brothers (Vladimir Stenberg, Georgi Stenberg), signature "2 Stenberg 2". Photo from IMDb.

DZIGA VERTOV XIV
Grand piano: John Sweeney
Teatro Zancanaro, Sacile, Le Giornate del Cinema Muto (GCM), 14 Oct 2004

Prog. 14 (82’)

Dziga Vertov: Goskinokalendar 47. Photo: Österreichisches Filmmuseum, Collection Dziga Vertov.

GOSKINOKALENDAR 47 / [CINECALENDARIO DI STATO N. 47 / STATE KINO-CALENDAR NO. 47] (Goskino, USSR 1925)
Dir: Dziga Vertov; rel: 2.1925; 35 mm, 160 m, 6’ (24 fps), RGAKFD.
Didascalie in russo / Russian intertitles.
    AA: Duration of the screening: 5'59".

CHELOVEK S KINOAPPARATOM / L’UOMO CON LA MACCHINA DA PRESA / MAN WITH A MOVIE CAMERA (VUFKU, USSR 1929)
A Film Feuilleton.
Author/Leader: Dziga Vertov; chief ph: Mikhail Kaufman; asst. dir: Elizaveta Svilova; rel: 9.4.1929; lunghezza originale / orig. length: 1839 m; 35 mm, 1785 m, 65’ (24 fps), Nederlands Filmmuseum.
Didascalie in russo / Russian intertitles.
    AA: A good print. Duration of the screening: 1:06'+ = 67 min.

CHELOVEK S KINOAPPARATOM / L’UOMO CON LA MACCHINA DA PRESA / MAN WITH A MOVIE CAMERA (VUFKU, USSR 1929)
Rullo / Reel 3, 35 mm, 300 m, 11’ (24 fps), RGAKFD.
Didascalie in russo / Russian intertitles.
    AA: Lower and weaker definition than in the previous print. 10'39"12.

Yuri Tsivian (GCM): "Much in agreement with the Productionist movement in art (of which more later), L’uomo con la macchina da presa is a film about film production: it shows a movie being made. But this alone does not make Man with a Movie Camera unique. What does is that the film which Man with a Movie Camera shows being made is Man with a Movie Camera itself. It is as if Man with a Movie Camera had two, even three, identities at once: the film that we are watching, the film which we see being made, and the film that we are shown being shown somewhere else. There are no clear boundaries between the three — or, to be more exact, the boundaries are clear; it is Vertov who keeps teasing us by constantly shifting these boundaries."

"Take the beginning of the film. Man with a Movie Camera begins with a prologue set in a movie theatre. We see what takes place in the projection booth and in the orchestra pit before a movie show, and see people filling the theatre, just as we have filled ours only minutes before. What film have they come to watch? When the projectionist opens a can and prepares to put the film in the projector, we can read the film’s title on the can: "Liudina z aparatem, Ch. 1," [Ukrainian for Man with a Movie Camera, Reel One] — the very reel of the very film we are now watching — but of course, the onscreen Man with a Movie Camera is only going to be shown. Note the fascinating sensation of being "in" and "out" at the same time — it will be key throughout the entire film. We see how the conductor’s baton requests the orchestra’s attention, how the projectionist adjusts the knob of the carbon-arc lamp, how inside the projector two carbon needles come closer together — and as a bright spot of light is formed between the two, the two films — the one we are watching, and the one shown to the onscreen audience — become one. The prologue is over; we are now part of the prologue audience."

"Evidence survives that this illusion — the fusion of two movies and of two movie theatres into one — may have been particularly strong when Man with a Movie Camera was screened on its opening night on 9 April 1929. From Vertov’s instructions for the orchestra, we know that he wanted no music to be heard throughout the prologue — nothing apart from the percussion imitating the "tick-tock of a clock" — the pulse of silence. Only when the conductor on the screen waves his baton and the screen musicians start playing is live music from a real orchestra supposed to join in. If there can be such a thing as musical trompe-l’oeil, this is it."

"Those who have followed our Kino-Pravda shows will have noticed that that self-reflexive quality, that in-or-out ambiguity is not something peculiar to Man with a Movie Camera alone. Recall issues 6 and 9, which begin in a projection booth, showing how a projectionist threads Kino-Pravda 6 and 9 into his projector, or a more recent issue, 18, with its recurring shadow of a man with a movie camera recording what we see. Is this just a Baroque idiosyncrasy, or there is something about Vertov’s time and culture that can help us explain his tendency to expose the "backstage" story behind film images and films?"

"To address this question we would need to connect Man with a Movie Camera to the Left Front [LEF] doctrine known as Productionism [proizvodstevennichestvo], according to which (to summarize this rather sketchy set of ideas), in the future society where everyone works, the work itself — not its end results — will become the aesthetic value. The process will prevail over the object, the production over the product. The future belongs to the art of work, not to works of art.
This was a rather vague theory indeed, but maybe it was exactly due to this vagueness that Productionist ideas became productive for Left-wing cinema and art. It was up to the artist to translate these ideas into practice. Was it not an interesting and challenging task — to make a picture or write a book that would be less concerned with its end value — the book as such, a picture as such — than with the process of their coming into being? Suddenly, such marginal genres as do-it-yourself books for children came into focus. One of these — a 1926 collection of poems under the tell-tale title Samozveri [Self-Animals] by the Productionist writer and theorist Sergei Tretiakov — is so much like Man with a Movie Camera in miniature that it is worth mentioning here. The poems the book includes describe various adventures of people and animals cut out of paper; there are also photographic illustrations which show these adventures enacted by cut-out people and animals (designed, staged, and photographed by the Constructivist artists Aleksandr Rodchenko and Varvara Stepanova). A book as a book — but the reason why its title is "self-animals" is that, in addition to the poems and photographed paper figures, it includes cutting charts, guided by which the little reader can take the scissors, cut out his/her own paper animals, and involve them in new adventures. A model Productionist book: in it, reading and making are treated as one."

"Two major film directors, Vertov and Sergei Eisenstein, tried to apply the Productionist principle in their works. The way Eisenstein interpreted it was to say that his aim was not to produce films, but to produce film spectators. His films, he wrote, were what the hammer was for the factory worker: their aim was to process the mind of the spectator through a series of pre-calculated shocks. Distinct from Eisenstein’s, Vertov’s approach to production art was more of a Constructivist variety — somewhat similar to the Constructivist cut-it-yourself book mentioned above. Truly Constructivist artworks — from Tatlin’s tower to a book for children — are transparent as to their own making, its "construction". This transparency is best described through an architectural metaphor. Normally, after a building has been erected, the builder removes the scaffolding. The Constructivist artists would rather remove the building, but leave the scaffolding intact. Vertov’s movie is of a similar kind — the building of thebuilding is more important than the building built. That Man with a Movie Camera lays bare the process of its own production — from the cameraman and the editor to the projectionist and the orchestra — was consistent both with the principle of Constructivist transparency and with the Productionist doctrine. A true do-it-yourself movie, Man with a Movie Camera puts the making above the made. Each time Man with a Movie Camera is shown, it is made anew. While other movies are made to exist, this one exists to be made."

"You will not easily find a Soviet silent more often shown in the West than Man with a Movie Camera. This film has also been shown before at the Giornate — this film, but not this print. All 35 mm prints of Man with a Movie Camera available in the West have the same defect — they have been printed sound aperture, without adjusting the aspect ratio, which means that a soundtrack-wide area on the left has been lost — and with it, Mikhail Kaufman’s painstakingly achieved frame compositions. The Nederlands Filmmuseum print we are showing is a good full-frame print, whose provenance goes back to the time when Man with a Movie Camera was first shown in The Netherlands. The only trouble with this print is that one shot is missing — the one that shows, point-blank, the moment a baby is being delivered, the most direct manifestation of Vertov’s direct cinema, which may be the reason why it has been censored from the Dutch print. In order to make up for this loss, Reel 3 from the full (and full-frame) print of Man with a Movie Camera preserved at RGAKFD will be shown after the Dutch version."

"It was Aleksandr Deriabin’s idea to show the 1925 State Kino-Calendar No. 47 before the 1929 Man with a Movie Camera. It helps to situate that famous trick shot from the last reel of Man with a Movie Camera which makes the Bolshoi Theatre collapse. A more or less similar thing happens to the Bolshoi in the 47th issue of State Kino-Calendar. For a variety of reasons (detailed in my introductory essay in Lines of Resistance: Dziga Vertov and the Twenties), Left-wing writers and filmmakers alike perceived the Bolshoi (former Imperial) Theatre as an emblem of dated, portentous, etc., art. Vertov, who was, as we know, always on the Left, took the existence of the Bolshoi Theatre almost personally — as the theatre which the authorities refused to demolish or convert into something useful, as the Left Front of the Arts [LEF] group demanded, or at least closed (as Lenin wanted to, back in 1921), and which was instead turned into an official showcase for official art. Ironically, in February 1925, when the 100th anniversary of the Bolshoi was pompously celebrated (meetings, speakers, banners, demonstrations), Vertov was assigned to record the event for State Kino-Calendar. But then, he could use the movie camera — the filmmaker’s weapon — to knock out symbolically what could not be physically knocked down." – YURI TSIVIAN (GCM)

The Birth of a Nation (Photoplay print with a music soundtrack of John Lanchbery's adaptation of the Carl Joseph Breil score)

D. W. Griffith: The Birth of a Nation (1915).

THE BIRTH OF A NATION (David W. Griffith Corp. / Majestic Motion Picture Co., US 1915)
    Dir.: D. W. Griffith; cast: Henry B. Walthall, Lillian Gish, Mae Marsh, Miriam Cooper, Ralph Lewis, Mary Alden, George Siegmann, Walter Long, Elmer Clifton, Joesphine Crowell, Spottiswoode Aitken, Raoul Walsh;
    English intertitles.
    35 mm, 11,335 ft, 190' (16 fps), Photoplay Productions.
    Act I: 88 min, Act II: 101 min.
    Playback: music score: John Lanchbery.
    Cinema Ruffo, Sacile, Le Giornate del Cinema Muto (GCM): The Griffith Project 8, 14 Oct 2004.

Eileen Bowser [DWG Project # 513]: "Memoirs by several eyewitnesses of the production of The Birth of a Nation have been published. Two who were closest to it day by day were G. W. Bitzer, the cameraman, who had been with Biograph from its beginnings, and Karl Brown, a clever and sharp-eyed kid in his teens, later a well-respected cameraman, writer, and director. Karl Brown wangled a job as assistant to Bitzer as soon as the new company had arrived in California, months before production of The Birth of a Nation began. As part of his job assisting the cameraman, he recorded every scene of that production in his log as it was made. These men were blessed with good memories and a desire to record what happened as objectively as possible, but we have to take into consideration that their remembrances were those of old age, long after the events they recorded (see G. W. Bitzer, Billy Bitzer: His Story, 1973; Karl Brown, Adventures with D. W. Griffith, 1973; another eyewitness account, Before, In and After Hollywood: The Autobiography of Joseph E. Henabery, was published in 1997)."

"In April the company completed and released Home, Sweet Home, and in May produced The Avenging Conscience. At the same time that Griffith worked on that innovative film, preparations had already started on The Clansman. A caravan of automobiles led up through Cahuenga Pass to the northern slope of Cahuenga Peak, and there, in a natural clearing, the plans were laid out for the battle scenes. Karl Brown remembered: “A sort of ridge of high ground curved around the rim of a gently descending slope of clear ground that ran down to where the dry-as-dust riverbed of the Los Angeles River lay baking in the sun. There were little clumps of trees clustered on both sides of this open area, with small hills rounding up here and there in the background to provide splendid locations for artillerymen to rake the field with grape and canister, the two favorite close-range charges of the Civil War cannoneers. Not only the geography but the orientation of the field happened to be perfect. When shooting big stuff you must shoot either north or south, never east or west. On this location all the camera angles from the ridge would be shooting north, which meant cross light from the right during the morning, and from the left throughout the afternoon.” (Adventures with D. W. Griffith, pp. 55–56)"

"Frank Wortman, master carpenter, and George Siegmann, chief among the multitude of assistant directors, laid out the trenches and gun emplacements as Griffith surveyed the scene and expressed his vision with gestures and words that to the young Karl Brown were poetic and unspecific but that Wortman and Siegmann knew how to interpret in practical terms. Confederate trenches to the right, Union to the left. Griffith had observed long ago at Biograph that it was necessary to preserve screen direction in battle scenes, in order not to confuse the audience about which running and falling soldiers belonged to which side of the conflict. There is a long list of “assistant directors”: Joseph Henabery (in the Appendix to his autobiography) disputed the title of chief assistant director that Karl Brown awarded to George Siegmann, claiming that title for George Beranger. It is easy to fall into such disagreements, since the title “assistant director” was not then an official one, and any number of people might have acted in that capacity for the moment when Griffith needed something done. As Karl Brown put it, “…and whoever else happened to be standing around doing nothing…”. Brown mentioned, after George Siegmann, Elmer Clifton, Herbert Sutch, Erich von Stroheim, Howard Gaye, Monte Blue, George (André) Beranger, Donald Crisp, Fred Hamer, Tom Wilson, Christy Cabanne, and Raoul Walsh, all names known to film history, but this list is not complete and surely not entirely accurate. Some of these names are also to be found in Bitzer’s account. Many of these men also worked on Intolerance, which could have added to the confusion in Brown’s and Bitzer’s memories. Henabery thought Stroheim and Monte Blue were not yet at the studio. Ambitious young men were eager to act in the lowliest capacity to work with D. W. Griffith, considered the outstanding creative genius of his day in motion pictures, or, if not actually present, ready to claim in later years that they were. Assistants were always needed in large crowd scenes such as the battle sequences to direct groups of extras in the action."

"Brown said that Battles and Leaders of the Civil War became the chief reference for all the military equipment. The job of Herbert Sutch was to procure the ancient muskets, and to find a way to convert these weapons, which had been modernized to fire cartridges, to the appearance of Civil War authenticity, not to mention the necessity of shooting blanks. According to Brown’s account, Sutch achieved this by pouring a very soft wax into the modern cartridges with a small amount of smoky black explosive powder (Brown, p. 58). Such improvisation characterized the spirit of Griffith’s team. For period uniforms and costumes, they turned to Robert Goldstein, a Los Angeles costumer who was to be enriched by having to accept part ownership in the production instead of payment of his bill. The same reference, Battles and Leaders of the Civil War, was Goldstein’s guide to preparing the costumes. Bitzer, too, became a part owner of the film when he advanced his savings to help finish it. W. H. Clune, owner of Clune’s Auditorium, where The Clansman had its Los Angeles premiere, was a big contributor to the costs of production. Nobody had reason to regret their investment, as it turned out."

"Journalistic attempts to characterize the achievement of The Birth of a Nation often point to its production cost, lavish for its time, and its record-breaking return at the box-office, but the problem with this is that we do not have good enough financial records to tell us the real story. All we really know is that production costs swelled way beyond what they had available, and loans were needed to complete the film. Bitzer gave a sort of account of costs: $10,000 to Thomas Dixon for the rights to The Clansman; filming costs rose to $78,000 at one stage; Bitzer put in $7,000 from his own savings; Griffith told Bitzer “That Woman” (whoever that may have been) invested $9,000; W. H. Clune put up $15,000, and Goldstein took payment for costumes in stock for $7,000. Originally budgeted for $40,000, Bitzer said, The Birth of a Nation cost $110,000. He also announced that it grossed $20,000,000 over the years, but Variety is unsure enough as to decline to list the film at all in their annual top-grossing films lists, although, of course, they mention it."

"While trenches were dug and gun emplacements built in the valley chosen for the battle scenes, a vacant lot across the street from the studio was leased, where “Huck” Wortman and his carpenters erected the streets, house fronts, and slave quarters of a sleepy Southern town. Some of these sets were erected right on the studio lot, conveniently next to the carpenter shop."

"After six weeks of rehearsal, shooting began on 4 July 1914. Bitzer said that just one camera was used, a Pathé “with a 3.5 two-inch lens interchangeable with a wide-angle lens – that is, you had to screw one out and screw the other into its place” (Iris Barry, D. W. Griffith, p. 37). The orthochromatic film was slow, and limited in tonal range. Bitzer suggested that the limitations of this stock may have helped give the images “historical authenticity”. The entire film was hand-cranked by Bitzer, in what he described as 3⁄4 waltz time, and the turning had to be absolutely constant to the end of the shot, as was second nature to any experienced cameraman of that day. It was also common to vary the cranking speed according to the demands of the specific scenes, and in addition, Griffith films were sometimes sent out with instructions to the theatre manager to vary the projection speed in certain scenes."

"The first scenes filmed were the battle scenes. Bitzer claims that the little family group on the hill, watching Sherman’s march to the sea, were discovered sitting there by Griffith, and were captured on film without their knowing. The team went up in the mountains to Big Bear to shoot Gus’s chase of Little Sister among the pine trees, and her fall to her death among the rocks. Later, Brown and Bitzer were sent back to the mountain to film a dummy that Brown threw – in place of Mae Marsh – over the cliff, and, according to his tale, almost went over with it. In a mountain meadow at Big Bear, they did the love scene between Margaret Cameron and Phil Stoneman. They drove east to the open country around the Rio Hondo [a tributary of the Los Angeles River] to film the thundering hordes of the white-robed Clansmen on horseback from every possible angle: both Billy Bitzer and Karl Brown have left harrowing tales of horses jumping over them and explosions and smoke beside them as they filmed from ground level."

"The assassination of Lincoln in Ford’s Theatre was pictured in authentic detail according to old engravings, with the playscript of Our American Cousin at hand to guide the performance on stage. A mirror was moved around to reflect sunlight on Booth like a spotlight as he slid through the theatre crowd. After three seasons filming on the West Coast, Billy Bitzer was experienced with lighting by the brilliant California sunlight, aided by soft cloth diffusers and mirrors, instead of the electricity needed for indoor work back East. According to him, the only scene requiring special lighting was the burning of Atlanta in miniature, in order to make it look real, as he put it (Bitzer, p. 106). Joseph Henabery, stepping out of the ranks of extras, got the role of Lincoln by showing Griffith what he could do with Lincoln make-up: actors at that time were still responsible for their own make-up. Joseph Henabery said that in one long sequence he was chasing himself: as a black renegade and then as a white soldier. As an extra, he believed he played 13 different characters. The repeated use of extras, and at times actors playing extra roles, may explain why some scholars have found editing “errors” in later years, such as a character falling dead in battle and discovered up and running in a later scene. Blackface make-up on white actors, and black extras even in the same scene, were common in the industry."

"Karl Brown told us that Griffith (at least in the period to which Brown was witness) never called “camera” or “cut” as other directors did, but always “fade in” and “fade out”. Brown’s theory was that Griffith never knew in advance whether he would need a fade to open or close a scene, and the system of including a fade every time gave him the option to use it or not. Rose and Jimmie Smith were his cutters for most of his career. They knew how to interpret the remarks he made when he looked at the footage in the projection room at night, after shooting was done for the day."

"Shooting was complete in October, and the footage was edited to 12 reels by the end of the year. Karl Brown was assigned to shoot the intertitles for the film, and therefore was not a daily witness to the editing work. While the editing and titling went on, the indefatigable Griffith produced The Mother and the Law, which was not released at that time, but revised and incorporated as the modern story of Intolerance (1916)."

"As The Clansman, The Birth of a Nation had its first public showing on 1 January 1915, at the Loring Opera House in Riverside, California, with a special seven-piece orchestra, and prices of 20 and 30 cents, according to the printed program in the Griffith Papers at the Museum of Modern Art. This was a high-class showing for 1915. Nevertheless, Griffith considered it only a trial run, held secret from most of his staff, because he did not want any cheerleaders in the audience, just ordinary moviegoers. Joseph Henabery said that he went along with Griffith to that screening and wrote down as best he could and with the help of his fiancée, later his wife, what was in the film at that date (this document is in the Joseph and Jeanne Henabery Collection at the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, Margaret Herrick Library; see Henabery, p. 82). The official premiere was at Clune’s Auditorium in Los Angeles on 8 February. Griffith attended these showings to judge audience reaction, and then edited further. He continued to do the same at the New York premiere on 3 March, where the picture was now known as The Birth of a Nation; he followed it to the showings in Boston and Chicago for the same purpose."

"If production of a film includes its editing stages, production of The Birth of a Nation continued long after the film was being shown to the public. It is hardly surprising that modern-day prints and even negatives show some gaps or illogical connections, when the editing continued under such circumstances. Today, archival reconstruction offers a variety of choices to the restorer: which showing constitutes the original version? Griffith cared deeply about audience reaction. I expect he would be quite bewildered to observe how young audiences perceive the film today. The film has not changed, but we have."" – Eileen Bowser [DWG Project # 513]

AA: I viewed only 25 minutes from the beginning because I wanted to catch the Vertov screening at 20.30 at Teatro Zancanaro. And because I had seen the electrifying 1997 Pordenone film concert The Birth of a Nation of the Photoplay print with John Lanchbery himself conducting his adaptation of the Carl Joseph Breil score. A great score and a great print.

Krunisanje kralja Petra I Karađorđevića i Putovanje kroz Srbiju, Novi Pazar, Crnu Goru i Dalmaciju / Coronation of King Peter I Karadjordjevic and Journey through Serbia, Novi Pazar, Montenegro and Dalmatia

Frank Mottershaw: Krunisanje Kralja Petra I Karađorđevića / The Coronation of King Peter I Karadjordjevic of Serbia (1904). Photo: IMDb.

KRUNISSANJE KRALJAA PETRA I KARADJORDJEVICA I PUTOVAWE KROZ SRBIJU, NOVI PAZAR, CRNU GORU I DALMACIJU / THE CORONATION OF KING PETER I OF SERBIA AND A RIDE THROUGH SERBIA, NOVI-BAZAAR, MONTENEGRO AND DALMATIA / [INCORONAZIONE DI RE PIETRO PRIMO DI SERBIA ED IL VIAGGIO ATTRAVERSO LA SERBIA, NOVI-BAZAAR, IL MONTENEGRO E LA DALMAZIA]
Krunisanje kralja Petra I Karađorđevića i Putovanje kroz Srbiju, Novi Pazar, Crnu Goru i Dalmaciju / Coronation of King Peter I Karadjordjevic and Journey through Serbia, Novi Pazar, Montenegro and Dalmatia
Krunisanje kralja Petra I / The Coronation of King Peter I of Serbia
Krunisanje Kralja Petra I Karadjordjevica [IMDb]
GB 1904
    Prod: Arnold Muir Willson; ph: Frank Mottershaw, Jr.; 35 mm, 1480 m, 54’ (25 fps), virato / toned, Jugoslovenska Kinoteka.
    Serbian & English intertitles.
    Grand piano: Antonio Coppola.
    Viewed at Teatro Zancanaro, Sacile, Le Giornate del Cinema Muto (GCM): Fuori quadro, 14 Oct 2004.

Dejan Kosanovic (GCM): "This is the oldest preserved film shot in the territory of former Yugoslavia (now Serbia). In June 1903 (actually 29 May at the time, as Serbia was still following the old Julian Calendar), King Alexander Obrenovich and his wife Queen Draga were assassinated in Belgrade.  The throne passed to the Karageorgevich dynasty, and the new king, Peter 1st Karageorgevich, was crowned in September 1904, more than a year after the coup d’état. Belgrade invited foreign guests to the coronation, but no European court (except Montenegro) sent representatives, as Serbia was under sanctions because of the 1903 killing of the royal family. But the coronation festivities in Belgrade were attended by delegations from all parts of the Kingdom of Serbia, as well as many private guests from abroad."

"Among the guests was an eminent lawyer from Sheffield, England, Mr. Arnold Muir Willson, who was also the Honorary Consul to the Kingdom of Serbia. Beside being a lawyer, Willson was a traveller, journalist, and photographer.  He hired cameraman Frank Storm Mottershaw, Jr. of the Sheffield Photo Company, a very active film production company at this period. They attended the coronation together, and realized a documentary film about the event. After Belgrade, they visited and filmed some other places in Serbia: the small town of Kraljevo, the medieval monasteries of Zica (Zhicha) and Studenica (Studenitza), and then, on their way home, Novi Bazar (under Turkish rule at the time), Andrijevica and Cetinje in Montenegro, and Sibenik (Sebenico) and Zadar (Zara) in Dalmatia.  Willson screened this film several times in Britain to illustrate his lectures on Serbia.  In the spring of 1905 he screened the film at the Serbian National Theatre in Belgrade in the presence of the king and the royal family."

"The print of this film was found in England and purchased before World War II by a collector from Belgrade, Mr. Jovanovic-Marambo. It has been in the collection of the Yugoslav Film Archive (Jugoslovenska Kinoteka) in Belgrade since 1949, the year of its founding. Some parts of the film were copied 5 decades ago, and they have occasionally been screened or broadcast, but the whole film has never been completely reconstructed until this year. The new print, including new intertitles, was made in Bologna at the Immagine Ritrovata lab." – Dejan Kosanovic (GCM)

AA: Epic themes today: The Birth of a Nation preceded by the first surviving film shot in Jugoslavia, Karageorgevich. A good-looking print, well restored from sources in bad shape. Endless processions. A very moving experience nonetheless, documentation from the powder keg from which a world fire was ignited.

Captain January (1924) in the presence of Baby Peggy: Diana Serra Cary

Baby Peggy, Diana Serra Cary, at Le Giornate del Cinema Muto in Sacile, 2004.

CAPTAIN JANUARY (Principal Pictures, US 1924)
Dir: Edward F. Cline; prod: Sol Lesser; sc: Eve Unsell, John Grey, dal romanzo di / from the novel by Laura Elizabeth Richards (1891); ph: Glen MacWilliams; art titles: William J. Sackheim; cast: Baby Peggy, Hobart Bosworth, Irene Rich, Lincoln Stedman, Harry T. Morey, Barbara Tennant, John Merkyl, Emmett King; prima proiezione pubblica / rel: 6.7.1924; lunghezza originale / orig. length: 6194 ft.; 35mm, 5040 ft., 61’ (22 fps), Library of Congress.Titolo edizione italiana: Capitan Baby. Didascalie in inglese / English intertitles.
    GCM Sacile, Teatro Zancanaro, 14 Oct 2004

GCM: "A little girl is the sole survivor of a shipwreck, but is rescued by a kindly lighthouse keeper who raises the child as his own until inevitable complications — meddling moralists and the girl’s relatives among them — ensue. Captain January is very much a star vehicle for "Baby Peggy" Montgomery, and, like Jackie Coogan in the almost identical My Boy (First National, 1922), she takes to the role of urchin-with-a-heart-of-gold with great gusto. Avuncular Hobart Bosworth is ideally cast as her surrogate father, and although one might wish director Eddie Cline had used more of his estimable comic sensibility to enliven the proceedings (and dampen some of the more treacly sentimentality), the overall effect is that of a charming story, well told. — Mike Mashon"

"I left Universal for Lesser’s Principal Pictures in September of 1922 and started work on Captain January immediately. I was supported by veteran stage and screen actor Hobart Bosworth and the popular actress Irene Rich. Most of the filming was done on location aboard a yacht anchored off scenic, sparsely populated Laguna Beach, sixty miles south of Los Angeles. Its one hotel, where we were put up, had no electricity, heat, or indoor plumbing."

"Throughout my life, whenever movie buffs have seen this film, they’ve been sure to ask, ‘Surely you can’t remember that movie? You were much too young!’ The truth is, every time I watch it, the same feeling sweeps over me that I experienced sharply on the first day of shooting — a feeling of being suddenly very old. This was a big production, an expensive one, and my part very demanding. I felt the weight of the load I was carrying. True, I was four and a half, but by now I had been working without letup for the past two and a half years, having made close to one hundred fifty comedies and three feature films. By the time I started Captain January, the day my fancied ‘stars’ began pouring rain through the roof of Century’s Barn seemed ages ago." — Diana Serra Cary (What Ever Happened to Baby Peggy? 1996)

AA: A good children's film. Actual duration of the screening: 64 min. It was amazing to see this delightful film in the presence of its star, Baby Peggy, Diana Serra Cary, 85 years old. ***

NB. Baby Peggy died on 24 Feb 2020, age 101.

How It Happened (US 1925, Twisted Tales, Ira Young, Betty Young)

Not from the film. An illustration by Cyrus Cuneo in The Strand Magazine (September 1913) where Arthur Conan Doyle's short story "How It Happened" was originally published. From: The Arthur Conan Doyle Encylopedia.

HOW IT HAPPENED (Short Film Syndicate, Inc. / Reciprocity Films, US 1925)
    series: Twisted Tales
    Dir: ?; ed/titles: Hal Hodes; cast: Ira Young, Betty Young, Martin Decker, Henry Carter; 35 mm, 731 ft, 10 min (20 fps), tinted, UCLA Film and Television Archive.
    English intertitles.
    Grand piano: Mauro Colombis.
    Viewed at Teatro Zancanaro, Sacile, Le Giornate del Cinema Muto (GCM): Fuori quadro, 14 Oct 2004

Doron Galili (GSM): "How It Happened is an episode from a short-lived series of one-reel mystery films, Twisted Tales. The production company, Reciprocity Films, is unrecorded in the Library of Congress copyright catalogue. Adapted from a short story by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, it is faithful to its literary source‚ the story of a rich man who is killed in an accident in the mountains while driving with his chauffeur. He nevertheless remains among the living, as a dead man, and encounters an old friend who died in the war." – Doron Galili (GCM)

Enoch Arden (William Christy Cabanne, Majestic 1915)

William Christy Cabanne: Enoch Arden (1915) starring Lillian Gish and Wallace Reid. Photo: IMDb.

AA: I missed this screening but include J. B. Kaufman's text to keep a full run of the program notes of The Griffith Project 8.

The third Enoch Arden in the Griffith Project. The previous ones, directed by Griffith: After Many Years (1908) and Enoch Arden (1911).

ENOCH ARDEN (Majestic Motion Picture Co., US 1915)
    Dir.: William Christy Cabanne; supv.: D. W. Griffith; cast: Alfred Paget, Lillian Gish, Wallace Reid; 35 mm, 3502 ft, 58’ (16 fps), George Eastman House (Casselton / Larson Collection).
    Preserved and printed 1997.
    English intertitles.
    Grand piano: Donald Sosin.
    Teatro Zancanaro, Sacile, Le Giornate del Cinema Muto (GCM): The Griffith Project 8, 14 Oct 2004

J. B. Kaufman [DWG Project # 514]: "Considering that Griffith hardly ever remade one of his films, it’s especially remarkable to find a story produced in three different versions, as Enoch Arden was. We’ve already seen the first two, both produced at Biograph: After Many Years (1908), which is not strictly based on Tennyson’s poem but clearly derives from it, and the two-reel Enoch Arden in 1911. This multiplicity of versions probably has something to do with the prestige associated with Tennyson’s name, but in addition it may well indicate a fondness for the story on Griffith’s part. (After all, despite numerous stage adaptations, Enoch Arden doesn’t appear to have been particularly popular with other filmmakers.) Technically, of course, this feature-length 1915 version is directed not by Griffith but by Christy Cabanne. But it’s no discredit to Griffith to say that this version is, in some respects, the best of the three; not only did Griffith supervise the film, but it’s clear that Cabanne was heavily influenced by the previous Griffith-directed versions."

"This is strikingly evident in the film’s structure. The intercutting in After Many Years, implying a telepathic connection between Charles Inslee on the island and Florence Lawrence at home, has given that film a degree of latter-day notoriety, but we can infer that Griffith was equally taken with the effect in 1908. For his subsequent 1911 version he expanded on it, interweaving the scenes of shipwreck survivor and wife far more extensively than in the 1908 version – even though (as Tom Gunning has pointed out in D. W. Griffith and the Origins of American Narrative Film, p. 112) the original poem had offered little or no precedent for either formal interweaving or the idea of a telepathic connection between husband and wife. By 1915 the device has become a tradition, and Cabanne cuts between the two threads of the story with freewheeling abandon. The story is faithful to the original poem (most of the titles are taken directly from it, though often condensed and modified), but in terms of formal structure Cabanne is taking his cues not from Tennyson but from Griffith."

"The influence of the earlier film versions can also be seen in such scenes as those of the sailors’ discovery of Enoch on the island, and his return to his former home, both of which are staged very much as in the 1911 version. The device of taking the intertitles from Tennyson has some interesting results: when Alfred Paget as Enoch proposes to Lillian Gish as Annie the scene is played without titles, simply because it’s not described in the poem. At times Cabanne’s interpretation of a scene seems slightly at odds with that offered in the titles. When Lillian consults the Bible for an answer to her dilemma, the sense of the scene matches that in the poem, but Cabanne condenses the action so that what we see on the screen seems to clash with what we read in the titles. And midway through the last reel we are informed that Lillian has become fully reconciled to her second marriage to Wallace Reid, but Cabanne allows Reid to worry about it until the very last scene in the film."

"Roberta Pearson has analyzed Griffith’s 1908 and 1911 versions of this story in detail, comparing the acting in both films and distinguishing between “histrionic” and “verisimilar” styles. In general she finds that Griffith tends towards the latter by 1911, encouraging his cast to adopt more restrained gestures and expressions, and helping them out by conveying narrative information himself through props and editing. In general, we can say that the 1915 version reflects the same trend. By and large, the acting of the three principals is subtle enough that when Paget, in the tavern near film’s end, delivers a gestural soliloquy about his changed appearance – an action that would not have seemed out of place during most of the Biograph years – it seems jarring by its contrast with the general tone of the film."

"The prize performance here is that of Lillian Gish as Annie Lee. Enoch Arden was produced immediately after The Birth of a Nation, and displays, perhaps even more prominently than that film, the promise of the sensitive, thoughtful actress Lillian Gish would become in just a few short years. In Enoch Arden her character ages two decades, a process convincingly conveyed through acting far more than make-up. Her painful indecision in the last two reels, agonizing over whether to accept Reid’s marriage proposal or cling to the dwindling hope of Paget’s return, is just the kind of dilemma she would portray so well throughout her career. Admittedly, she benefits from the increased length of the film. Linda Arvidson, playing Annie in the 1911 version, is required to submit to her persistent suitor in one shot; Lillian, in 1915, holds Reid off for the better part of a reel, a luxury that would have been impossible in the earlier versions. But even allowing for such advantages, Lillian’s future acting accomplishments are unmistakably announced here. When she holds her sickly baby in an early scene, fearing for its life, and later when the baby dies, it’s difficult not to think of Way Down East."

"As a 1915 version of a story that had already been produced twice at Biograph, Enoch Arden offers a useful index to the rapidly changing conditions of film production during these vital years: it’s produced on a far more lavish scale than the Biograph versions, but would itself have seemed quite modest within a few years. In the shipwreck scene an actual sinking ship was beyond the means of Biograph (or Majestic), but here Cabanne is able to give us the rocking, partially submerged interior of the boat. The passage of time on the island is cleverly suggested by placing Paget on the beach next to some little imitation palm trees, and later situating him among fuller vegetation. The most elaborate setting is the exterior of the village square, with a working windmill at the rear, a church on one side, and a tavern on the other. When Paget returns at the end, the passage of time is again suggested by tall weeds and fuller vegetation, and the faded sign of the “King Henry Inn”."

"Enoch Arden was reissued in 1922 with the less-than-inspired title The Fatal Marriage. Art titles, augmented with such touches as an animated tolling church bell, were added to pad the film’s length from four reels to five. (Regular attendees of the Giornate may remember that a fragment of this version was shown at the festival in 2001.) Whatever one may think of such reissues, we can be grateful for this one. A nitrate print of the 1922 edition, combined with authentic 1915 intertitles from a 28 mm original, provided the source material from which George Eastman House produced their gorgeous restoration print." – J. B. Kaufman [DWG Project # 514]