Jack and the Beanstalk (Disney Laugh-O-gram, 1922)

Walt Disney: Laugh-O-Grams : Jack and the Beanstalk (US 1922).

(Laugh-O-gram, US 1922) Reissue: On the Up and Up (1929)
    D: Walt Disney; anim: Walt Disney, Hugh Harman, Rudolf Ising, Carman “Max” Maxwell, Lorey Tague, Otto Walliman; DP: Red Lyon; filmed: ca. 6-7.1922, Laugh-O-gram studio, 1127 E. 31st St., Kansas City; dist: Pictorial Clubs Inca. of New York (non-theatrical, regional circuit); 35 mm, 632 ft, ca. 8' (22 fps);
    from: John E. Allen Collection, Library of Congress Packard Campus for Audio Visual Conservation, Culpeper, VA. English intertitles.
    Viewed at Teatro Verdi, Le Giornate del Cinema Muto, Pordenone, with e-subtitles in Italian, grand piano: John Sweeney, 8 Oct 2011.

Russell Merritt & J. B. Kaufman (GCM Catalogue): "Of all the rarities in this series, Jack and the Beanstalk is the rarest. This is the last of the “lost” Laugh-O-grams to be restored to view, discovered in the John E. Allen Collection, recently acquired by the Library of Congress. Even then, it turned up in the form of a nitrate negative, and required printing to safety stock before it could be projected. It will be unveiled to the public for the first time in this Giornate retrospective."

"And, happily, it’s worth the wait; this picture turns out to be a fascinating addition to the Laugh-O-gram library. If Four Musicians has raised the bar for pictorial richness in these films, Jack and the Beanstalk escalates the imagery to spectacular heights – literally. Storytelling becomes more assured in this film, with less repeat movement and more imaginative visual ideas that could take place only in the world of animated cartoons."

"The film becomes even more fascinating in the context of Walt’s career, for we know in hindsight that Mickey Mouse would be cast in the “Jack and the Beanstalk” story in 1933 and again in 1947. Now at last we can see Walt’s original approach to the story – and, characteristically, it’s nothing like the other two. Certainly Mickey’s beanstalk never carried him as far as Mars, nor did he acquire a pair of wings during his adventures. Jack’s comic stratagem in the 1922 film – painting a hole on the surface of a cloud, then tricking the ogre into falling through what is now a real hole – makes use of the kind of optical illusions that were not available to Mickey in later years. And the ogre, plummeting to earth at film’s end, falls into another “impossible” gag, which had appeared, in a different form, in Buster Keaton’s Hard Luck the previous year."

"A word about character design. Jack and the Beanstalk seems to inaugurate a deliberate practice of recycling characters from previous Laugh-O-grams, recast in new roles appropriate to the story. Here we see return appearances by both Little Red Riding Hood and her mother – or, at any rate, characters who bear a strong resemblance to them. The dog and black cat from the earlier films are also back, and, in fact, will go on to appear in all seven Laugh-O-grams. In the title role of Jack, Walt introduces a generic all-purpose “boy” character. In later entries in the series, the boy, girl, cat, and dog would coalesce into a kind of Laugh-O-gram “stock company.” Rudy Ising recalled decades later that Walt had created model sheets of these characters and that the animators had actually traced them: “It was sort of a fastidious thing to trace the characters, and keep the likeness.”" Russell Merritt & J. B. Kaufman

AA: There's no money, so the cow ("it's no bull!"), for which an ingenious milking device has been designed, has to be sold, and Jack gets a handful of miracle beans for it. Immediately he is in deep space, and when he's back he's with flying money bags and a self-playing harp. And the giant's head interrupts a game of dice in China.

Das Spielzeug von Paris / [The Plaything of Paris]

Pariisin leikkikalu (La Poupée de Paris / Célimène, la poupée di Parigi) (Sascha-Filmindustrie AG, AT 1925) D: Michael Kertesz [Michael Curtiz]; P: Alexander Kolowrat; SC: Michael Kertesz [Michael Curtiz] (?), based on the novel Red Heels (1925) by Margery H. Lawrence; DP: Max Nekut, Gustav Ucicky; AD: Artur Berger, Gustav Abel; cast: Lily Damita (Susanne Armand, known as “Célimène”), Hugo Thimig (Duval), Eric Barclay (Miles Seward), Georges Tréville (Charles, Vicomte de la Roche de Maudry), Theo W. Shall (Michel Fournichon), Hans Moser (Nouvel Eden manager), Maria Fein (Ninette), Marietta Müller (Nan Seward), Maria Asti (Germaine Landrolet), Traute Carlsen (Lady Madison), Ria Günzel (Dorothy Madison); filmed: 4-6.1925; première: 1.9.1925 (Wien); released: 16.10.1925 (Wien); 35 mm, 3059 m, 110’ (24 fps); from: Filmarchiv Austria, Wien. Spanish intertitles. Viewed at Teatro Verdi, Le Giornate del Cinema Muto, Pordenone, with e-subtitles in English and Italian, grand piano: Donald Sosin, 8 Oct 2011.

Miguel A. Fidalgo (GCM Catalogue): "The change of orientation was not only thematic, but stylistic. Kertész assembled a new multinational cast, with the Swedish Eric Barclay (born Erik Altber), the French Georges Tréville, the German Theo Shall, and the Italian Maria Asti, to surround Damita, the absolute star of the enterprise. Behind the camera, however, were several of his regular collaborators, including Gustav Ucicky and the art director Artur Berger, whose marvellous sets recreated nocturnal Montmartre in the Sascha studios in the Viennese Prater. Kertész’s script depicted a Paris where everything was different from the rest of Europe: night was more alive than day, parties were massive, feelings extreme, and love might be possessive or free, according to who was practising it. Célimène is the centre not so much of a romantic triangle, as of a “ronde”. A cabaret star and indisputable queen of the city, a series of characters obsessively move around her, all wanting something: the very mature Viscount of Maudry sees in her his last romantic opportunity in life, and clings painfully to this strange relationship; Germaine, an old lover of the viscount, wants to recapture him by provoking Célimène to fancy another; Miles Seward, an insipid British diplomat, at first approaches Célimène in a cautious and conceited way, but ends completely obsessed with making her his wife; Nan Seward wants to marry her brother to the equally insipid Dorothy Madison, involved through her nobility and wealth; Duval, the cabaret manager, wants Célimène on his stage; and Michel Fournichon, Miles’ French friend, simply wants her in bed, though he has never the opportunity to tell her. And Célimène herself? She only wants to be happy, to enjoy life and the moment, love and fame. Such a sexual cocktail was too explosive for certain countries to accept, and Kolowrat did not want to risk losing money at such a delicate moment. Though reluctant to compromise his vision, Kertész shot two quite different endings, leaving each country to decide which best suited its public and market: a moral story in which the “frivolous” Célimène either becomes an “honest” woman or pays for not being one, or a plot with a Lubitsch-like irony on the matter of love and life. In the first version, released in Austria, Germany, and Britain, the comedic tone of the start ultimately gives way to tragedy: the protagonist, understanding that this is her one chance of a pure and redeeming love in marriage, goes in search of Miles in a stormy night, and ends up expiating her sins by dying of pneumonia – decorous, but inconsistent with what has gone before. The version released in France and Spain as La Poupée de Paris, however, offered a vital and carefree vision of promiscuity: instead of dying from her pneumonia, Célimène survives it to resume her privileged place in Paris night-life, with her dear viscount observing her backstage, and boring Miles continuing his boring life with his boring fiancé. Though both versions are valid in their different ways, Kertész’s real sympathy is certainly with the ironic cut, not only because it better matched his personal reality, but because it finally makes the story more finished and substantial. After all, Damita had captured him romantically, and Kertész could understand how easy it was to allow oneself to be overwhelmed by such a possessive and devouring passion."

"Accepting the ironic version as the most suitable and closest to his intentions, we can marvel at Kertész’s accomplishment, and the multitude of significant details: the joint where the Viscount discovers Célimène, with its suggestive name, Le Lapin rouge (The Red Rabbit), peopled with romantics, dirty old men, thieves, lesbians, mystery-men, beauties, victims, all presented in revealing close-ups; the suggestive manner in which Célimène drinks before Miles, slowly and seductively, and her extremely sexual reaction to the kiss on her hand; the dullness of Dorothy, with her “sweet and quiet, a little gray” love; the uninhibited tone of “rivals” but friends Célimène and Germaine, who greet each other with a kiss on the mouth and always gravitate to physical contact; the castrating scissors with which Michel toys when he sees Célimène and Miles entwined by a thread; and, especially, the delightful game of love and desire that Célimène and her maid play with dolls."

"Das Spielzeug von Paris is so different from Kertész’s previous films that it demands radically different staging. The inventive “musical” numbers – different as they are from the future choreographic fantasies of Busby Berkeley – are credible not only because they develop in a theatrical setting, but because while Damita knows perfectly how to move and dance, her supporting chorus is charming in its awkwardness. Berger’s work is equally expressive in showing the difference between the “mondaine” world – fantastic and attractive – and the serious and solemn “normal” world to which the story constantly refers. The rhythm, as usual, is strongly maintained; and in the dramatic storm sequence, the tough realism of the staging confirms again that Kertész has no qualms in his demands on the actors: the spectacle of the seminude Damita buried in the mud and about to be struck by a car is shocking. It is one of the frequent paradoxes of film history that a film as marvellous as this is today virtually forgotten." – Miguel A. Fidalgo

AA: The source novel is apparently trivial entertainment, but this movie comes alive with certain exciting strengths: the performance of Lily Damita in the leading role (she is very good both in sexy dance numbers and on the sickbed fighting an almost lethal attack of fever), the exotic production numbers at the cabarets of Paris, the montage of the faces watching Lily Damita at "la Butte", and the visual power of the climactic storm scene. There is nothing banal in them. The performances of the actors are credible, and Michael Curtiz has a good command on the total vision of this big production. Miguel A. Fidalgo told me before the screening that he had insisted on this version of the movie to be shown (a long version, and an ironic, not melodramatic, version). The Spanish titles have also a pleasant design very appropriate to the subject. There is a slightly duped quality in this print which is not baneful, and I had in fresh memory the brilliant visual quality of the trailer of this movie which was screened a couple of days ago before Der junge Medardus.

Cinderella (Disney Laugh-O-gram 1922)

Walt Disney: Cinderella (US 1922).

(Laugh-O-gram, US 1922) Reissue: The Slipper-y Kid (1929) D: Walt Disney; anim: Walt Disney, Ubbe Iwerks, Hugh Harman, Rudolf Ising, Carman “Max” Maxwell, Lorey Tague, Otto Walliman; DP: Red Lyon; filmed: ca. 11-12.1922, Laugh-O-gram studio, 1127 E. 31st St., Kansas City; dist: Pictorial Clubs Inca. of New York (non-theatrical, regional circuit); 35 mm, 685 ft, 8' (22 fps); from: John E. Allen Collection, Library of Congress Packard Campus for Audio Visual Conservation, Culpeper, VA. English intertitles. Viewed at Teatro Verdi, Le Giornate del Cinema Muto, Pordenone, with e-subtitles in Italian, grand piano: Donald Sosin, 8 Oct 2011.

Russell Merritt & J. B. Kaufman (GCM Catalogue): "Tentatively unearthed for the 1992 Giornate in the form of an abridged 16 mm print, now represented by a complete version in 35 mm from the John E. Allen Collection at the Library of Congress, Cinderella takes its place as one of the most enjoyable Laugh-O-grams. Its setting seems to be the same “Kingville” (a cross between a fairy-tale kingdom and small-town U.S.A.) that we’ve just seen in Puss in Boots; and the four stock characters are back again, as is the King. Cinderella is one of the Laugh-O-grams that tells its traditional story more or less straight – that is, allowing for such minor variations as Cinderella’s arrival at the ball in a chauffeured limousine, and a dance party for a gang of bears, interrupted by a bear-hunting Prince on horseback!"

"Here again Walt and his co-workers indulge in an appealing pictorial effect – far more pronounced than the earlier sunrise scene in Goldie Locks – for Cinderella and the Prince’s silhouetted romantic interlude on the balcony. (Something about the romantic aspect of Cinderella’s story seems to have softened the hearts of the most satiric cartoon makers, even that of so ruthless a prankster as Tex Avery.) On a technical level we may also note the several long pan shots. Perhaps most remarkable is the lengthy bi-level pan just after Cinderella’s escape from the ball: as she runs through the streets, the buildings and the starry sky seeming to move in perspective behind her. Even working with a bare minimum of resources, the Laugh-O-gram crew achieve a striking pictorial effect in this scene."

"Of course this Cinderella is still built for laughs, and there are still plenty of gags, ranging from droll whimsy (the shimmying bears at the dance party) to outright slapstick (the “slipper,” discarded by Cinderella, that brains the Prince and knocks him out cold). Continuing the trend started in Puss in Boots, this film combines its sight gags with a complement of verbal humor: the stepsister’s self-help manual, “Eat and Grow Thin”; the non-sequitur invitation to the Prince’s ball; the inane question to an obviously injured character who has just fallen down a steep hill. And one of the benefits of this restored complete version is a wrap-up gag missing from the earlier print – revealing that, in this edition of Cinderella, Walt and company ultimately turned the romantic story on its head after all!" – Russell Merritt & J. B. Kaufman

AA: A funny modernization of the story. The "happily ever after" is followed by a big question mark and a final scene where rolling-pins fly.

The Race to the Pole III featuring South (Shackleton's Glorious Epic)

Frank Hurley: South: Sir Ernest Shackleton's Glorious Epic of the Antarctic (GB 1919).

SOUTH – SIR ERNEST SHACKLETON’S GLORIOUS EPIC OF THE ANTARCTIC (Imperial Trans-Antarctic Film Syndicate, GB 1919) D, DP: Frank Hurley; 35 mm, 4835 ft, 72' (18 fps), col. (tinted and toned); from: BFI National Archive, London. English intertitles. Viewed at Teatro Verdi, Le Giornate del Cinema Muto, Pordenone, with e-subtitles in English and Italian, live audio commentary: Paul McGann, piano. flute, and accordeon: Stephen Horne, 8 Oct 2011.

GCM catalogue: "At this performance, Paul McGann will read extracts from Sir Ernest Shackleton’s 1919 memoir, South, providing additional commentary to the images. The piano accompaniment is by Stephen Horne. Paul McGann first achieved international celebrity with his performance in Bruce Robinson’s cult British film Withnail and I (1987). His numerous stage, film, and television roles since then have included Doctor Who (he was the eighth incumbent), and his acclaimed 2011 performance in the revival of Butley at London’s Duchess Theatre."

Bryony Dixon: "Frank Hurley was already an experienced Antarctic traveller when he took up the position of official photographer and cinematographer for Ernest Shackleton’s Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition in 1914. The young Australian was only 26 when he first went to Antarctica in 1911 with still- and cine-cameras as part of Douglas Mawson’s Aurora expedition. His time with Mawson and Herbert Ponting’s success with his Scott footage persuaded Shackleton that he needed an experienced professional to photograph his expedition. Raising money for the Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition on the brink of war with Germany was a feat of will-power of which only someone of Shackleton’s determination was capable, but to which the rights to Frank Hurley’s films and photographs would significantly contribute. Hurley was much inspired by Herbert Ponting’s masterly and popular multi-media lecture on the Scott Expedition, which combined film, music, still images, maps, and, of course, commentary. This lecture format is the key to understanding the structure of most of the Polar films of the “Heroic Age”. Hurley’s South (1919) was, after Amundsen’s film, the first to be packaged for stand-alone release in cinemas, but still retains much of the feel of the lecture, incorporating still images and explanatory titles. It was released in Australia in 1920 under the title In the Grip of Polar Ice."

"Sir Ernest Shackleton, having been somewhat eclipsed as premier Antarctic explorer by Scott, planned a brave attempt to cross the continent of Antarctica via the Pole. But his ambitious plan faltered soon after they left the Falklands in unusual weather and the Endurance became trapped in heavy pack-ice. Completely stuck, Shackleton and his crew drifted helplessly northward during the long Antarctic winter while listening to the creaks and groans of their ship the Endurance slowly being crushed by the ice. What followed is one of the greatest survival stories ever told as Shackleton became entirely focused on saving his men, which he did against almost impossible odds. Hurley had documented their time in the ice using specially rigged-up lights to produce stunning images of the break-up and sinking of the ship, but of course he could not film the extraordinary 850-mile journey in the open boat undertaken by Shackleton. He and the shore party were left on Elephant Island to wait for help, so that the (to us) most exciting part of the narrative is not covered in the film, and we default to the images of Antarctic wildlife which he already had in the can. This gives the cinema version of South a slightly interrupted feel, whereas the lecture format would have had the advantage of smoothing out the narrative using commentary and still images. Nevertheless, the film was an extraordinary achievement in such circumstances."

"A record of one of the greatest epics in the history of exploration, this is the original 1919 film produced by Shackleton and Frank Hurley, now restored by the British Film Institute with the original tints and toning." – Bryony Dixon

AA: The film presentation was a successful reconstruction of a lecture show with live audio commentary and music. Beautiful cinematography in this thrilling story in which the topics include dogs, icebreaking, migration of seals, emperor penguins, an experimental motor-sledge, biological samples via a deep net, shags, and giant petrels. The expedition was a devastating experience, and the demise of the ship is the central event of the movie. There is also impressive footage from the whaling station. The restoration is beautiful, and the toning hues are successful.

EL HOMENAJE DEL URUGUAY A LOS RESTOS DE SIR ERNEST SHACKLETON (Henry Maurice, UY 1922) DP: ?; 35 mm, 667 ft, 10' (18 fps); from: Imperial War Museum, London. Spanish intertitles. No translation. Grand piano: John Sweeney.

"Huge crowds gather for the lying in state of the body of Sir Ernest Shackleton in Montevideo, Uruguay, and its transfer to ship for burial on the island of South Georgia." – Bryony Dixon
AA:  A fine composition in the cinematography in this movie memorial. Duped quality in the print.

SOUTHWARD ON THE “QUEST” (GB 1922) (extract) DP: J.C. Bee-Mason, Hubert Wilkins; 35 mm, 386 ft, 5' (20 fps); from: BFI National Archive, London. English intertitles. E-subtitles in Italian. Grand piano: John Sweeney.

Bryony Dixon: "A record of the Shackleton-Rowett Antarctic expedition, 1921. Sir Ernest Shackleton’s fourth and final voyage to Antarctica marked the end of the “Heroic Age”. Restless after the War, the great explorer originally intended to go north to the Arctic, but instead planned a a circumnavigation of the Antarctic continent to map around 2,000 miles of uncharted coastline and take soundings to investigate the possibility of an underwater continental connection between Africa and America. An airplane was taken but never used."

"Although most of the film was shot after Shackleton’s death, the first shot shows the great man bathing “Query”, the expedition’s dog, on board the Quest. Some views of Grytviken, South Georgia, were taken before Shackleton’s sudden death there, of a coronary thrombosis. The ship, under Frank Wild, sailed to Montevideo, from where they intended to send the body back to England, but Lady Shackleton requested that they bury him on South Georgia. Leonard Hussey took the body back to Grytviken while the Quest sailed on. On the ship’s return members of the expedition and crew were filmed visiting Shackleton’s grave and erecting a memorial cairn over him."

"We know very little about the film. J. C. Bee-Mason, having film-making and expedition experience, was appointed as cinematographer, but he succumbed to very bad seasickness in the unsuitably small Quest and was forced to quit the ship at Madeira. The practical Hubert Wilkins, who had been his cabin mate in the ship’s darkroom, undertook the rest of the filming." – Bryony Dixon

AA: An interesting complement to the Shackleton odyssey. A duped quality of the image.

Una tragedia al cinematografo / Cinema Tragedy at Carnival Time

Enrico Guazzoni: Una tragedia al cinematografo (IT 1913). Bruto Castellani as cinema director. Screen shot by Ivo Blom at ivoblom.wordpress.com via Finnish Wikipedia: Una tragedia al cinematografo.

[Een treurspel in de bioscoop] / Une Tragédie au cinéma en Carnaval / Eine fürchterliche Tragödie im Kino-Theater.

    IT © 1913 Cines. D+SC: Enrico Guazzoni; cast: Pina Menichelli; 35 mm, 166 m, 8' (18 fps), col. (tinted) toned; from: EYE Film Institute Netherlands, Amsterdam (Desmet Collection). © 2003 Ripley's Film Srl. Tutti i diritti riservati. Nederlandse tussentitels. Viewed at Teatro Verdi, Le Giornate del Cinema Muto, Pordenone (Italia 150: Italian Cinema: Pina Menichelli), with e-subtitles in English and Italian, grand piano: Nicola Thomas Zyczynski, 7 Oct 2011.

Ivo Blom (2011 GCM Catalogue): "A Cines variation of comedies dealing with cinemas and promoting the company and its films is the short Una tragedia al cinematografo, with a then still-unknown Pina Menichelli as leading actress. A jealous man pursues his elegant wife (Menichelli) who chats with a male friend in front of the entrance of a cinema. The cinema is covered outside and inside with posters of the 1913 Cines top hit Quo vadis? by Enrico Guazzoni, a publicity stroke for the Cines company. Merry people in carnival outfits prevent the husband from seeing whether his wife has entered the cinema. Convinced that she is in there, together with her presumed lover, the husband fights his way in and threatens the manager of the cinema that he will shoot his unfaithful wife. The manager stops the projection – a film about an adulterous woman reading a secret letter from her lover, naturally – and warns the audience that a jealous husband awaits his unfaithful spouse at the exit with a gun. The hilarious result is that, when the projection is restarted, all adulterous couples secretly flee from the theatre. When the lights are on again, the room is almost empty. Apart from being a funny film on the cinema as locus for illicit rendez-vous, the idea of spectators watching a film in which they see other spectators watching a film creates a sort of Chinese-box effect, used elsewhere in Italian cinema, as in Al cinematografo, guardate – ma non toccate (Itala, 1912) and Maciste (Itala, 1915) by Giovanni Pastrone, thereby increasing the sensation of cinematographic voyeurism. This is even more emphatic in Una tragedia al cinematografo." – Ivo Blom (“All the Same or Strategies of Difference. Early Italian Comedy in International Perspective”, in Anna Antonini, ed., Il film e i suoi multipli/Film and Its Multiples, Udine: Forum, 2003)

AA: A comedy (despite the title!). Ivo Blom summarizes the plot above. To be added are the clowns cavorting on the streets, the large cinema handbills delivered in front of the movie palace, the coincidental character of Pina Menichelli's meeting with the male friend of the family in front of the cinema, and the fact that it seems to be a trio playing in front of the screen (tbc). Thirty couples escape through the emergency exit after the cinema manager's useful warning. Although the print has been struck from a heavily used and partially battered source, there is a beautiful visual quality in the imagery, toned in sepia.

Borderline (1930)

(Pool Films, GB 1930). D+SC: Kenneth Macpherson; cast: Eslanda Robeson, Paul Robeson, “Helga Doorn” [H.D.], Winifred Bryher, Gavin Arthur, Robert Herring; 35 mm, 5485 ft, 61’ (24 fps); from: George Eastman House, Rochester, NY. English intertitles. Viewed at Teatro Verdi, Le Giornate del Cinema Muto, Pordenone, with e-subtitles in Italian, grand piano: Günter A. Buchwald, drums: Frank Bockius, accordeon and double-bass: Romano Todesco, 7 Oct 2011.

Roland Cosandey (GCM Catalogue): "Borderline (1930) was rediscovered after an unusual oblivion that lasted some 50 years. Little by little, thanks to the complex body of collaborations and influences involved in its making, Kenneth Macpherson’s film has found a place in the picture of a historical avantgarde of multiple directions: that of the “little magazines”, of which Close Up (1927-1933), published by Macpherson, Winifred Bryher, and H.D. (Hilda Doolittle) under the company name of Pool, was one of the most sophisticated, not just through its specialization on cinema; “Imagism”, which inspired Borderline through the intermediary of the American poet H.D.; psychoanalysis (Hanns Sachs was close to the group); “Neue Sachlichkeit”, via Eisenstein and G.W. Pabst; cultural internationalism (Pool’s influence extended from Switzerland to Paris, Berlin, Moscow, Boston...); anti-racism (Borderline was Paul Robeson’s third screen appearance, in this case alongside his wife Eslanda); and amateurism (the other actors and extras are from the “family”: H.D. and Bryher are joined by the poet and critic Robert Herring, and Gavin Arthur, astrologer, occultist, and pioneer gay activist…)."

"Today, this film from nowhere, made in landscapes near Montreux, where the trio who constituted Pool were then living, little shown at the time, and generally regarded as of forbidding obscurity – a criticism of which H.D. warned in the dithyrambic pamphlet which she devoted to it – figures in the British and Swiss cinematic patrimonies and encompasses American literary studies as well as genre studies. The origin of the copy shown in Pordenone is a 35 mm nitrate positive deposited with George Eastman House in 1958 by Norman H. Pearson, thanks to whom the papers of H.D. and Bryher, now at Yale University, constitute the principal source for our knowledge of Borderline."

"But we have not finished with this film: one day it will be necessary to undertake a careful examination of the original negative, which is apparently conserved by the Cinémathèque Suisse." – Roland Cosandey

AA: This truly strange film has a sketchbook character. It is an experimental film also in the sense that the film-makers have perhaps not themselves quite known what they were doing. An essay film in the literal meaning: trying out things. They just did it, shot sketches of faces and objects, melancholy brooding, desolate rooms, lyrical nature images. A storyline emerges about the adversity of the black protagonist Pete Marond (Paul Robeson) whose woman leaves him and who is evicted from the town because he beats his insulter. The anti-racist theme of the movie is sadly topical in Europe today. There is a parallel storyline of a violent white man who kills his woman. For an one hour long experimental film the structure is rather shaky. In the conclusion there is a close-up of a handshake between a white and a black man, and a shot of the black and white keys of the piano. This print has a duped look. The music trio gave a sensitive experimental performance that brought new and appropriate dimensions to the experience.

The White Shadow (2011 Wellington reconstruction)

Graham Cutts: The White Shadow (GB 1924). Betty Compson as the twin sisters Nancy Brent and Georgina Brent.

Valkoinen varjo / White Shadows / L'ombra bianca / La sombra bianca / Белая тень.

    GB 1924. P: Balcon-Saville-Freedman. D: Graham Cutts; ass D, ED, AD: Alfred Hitchcock; SC: Alfred Hitchcock, based on an original screenplay by Michael Morton; DP: Claude L. McDonnell; P: Michael Balcon, Victor Saville; cast: Betty Compson (Nancy Brent / Georgina Brent), Clive Brook (Robin Field), Henry Victor (Louis Chadwick), A. B. Imeson (Mr. Brent), Olaf Hytten (Herbert Barnes), Daisy Campbell (Elizabeth Brent), Bert Darley, Maresco Marisini, Donald Searle, Muriel Gregory; filmed: summer 1923 (Islington Studios, London)

    Released: 2.1924 (GB, dist: W&F), summer 1924 (US, White Shadows, dist: Lewis J. Selznick Enterprises); U.S. © May 1924.

    Helsinki premiere: 4 April 1926 at Star, released by Suomi-Filmi Oy, 1460 m

    Orig.: 5047 ft; 35 mm, incomplete (only rl.1-3), 2689 ft + 190 ft (newly added credits and titles summarizing the missing footage), 43' (18 fps), col. (tinted); from: Academy Film Archive, Los Angeles (from source material from The New Zealand Film Archive/Nga Kaitiaki O Nga Taonga Whitiahua, Wellington). English intertitles; original main titles missing. 

     Viewed at Teatro Verdi, Le Giornate del Cinema Muto, Pordenone, with e-subtitles in Italian, grand piano: Donald Sosin, drums: Frank Bockius, 7 Oct 2011.

IMDb: "In Paris a wild girl becomes possessed by the soul of her twin who died to save her life."

Annette Melville (GCM 2011): "In celebration of the 2011 Jean Mitry Award, the New Zealand Film Archive, the National Film Preservation Foundation, and the American archival community are delighted to share another astonishing discovery identified as part of the international collaboration to preserve and make available American silent-era films from the NZFA vaults. The film is The White Shadow, a British production from Alfred Hitchcock’s early years, and perhaps the first surviving feature from the young filmmaker. The print is incomplete – only the first 3 reels were found – but what has been recovered reveals a master in the making."

"The White Shadow is a wild, atmospheric melodrama starring Betty Compson in a dual role as twin sisters – one angelic and the other “without a soul.” With mysterious disappearances, mistaken identity, steamy cabarets, romance, chance meetings, madness, and even the transmigration of souls, the feature crammed a lot into 6 reels. Critics faulted the improbable story but praised the acting and “cleverness of the production.”"

"Hitchcock broke into the British film industry in 1920 as a title-card designer. Within three years, he was writing scripts, designing sets, and taking every production role thrown his way. For The White Shadow, which was long assumed to be lost, Hitchcock is credited as assistant director, art director, editor, and writer. David Sterritt, author of The Films of Alfred Hitchcock (Cambridge University Press, 1993), has commented: “This [discovery] is one of the most significant developments in memory for scholars, critics, and admirers of Hitchcock’s extraordinary body of work. At just twenty-four years old, Alfred Hitchcock wrote the film’s scenario, designed the sets, edited the footage, and served as assistant director to Graham Cutts, whose professional jealousy toward the gifted upstart made the job all the more challenging … These first three reels of The White Shadow – more than half the film – offer a priceless opportunity to study his visual and narrative ideas when they were first taking shape.”"

"Why The White Shadow turned up among the American films at the New Zealand Film Archive deserves some explanation. A British feature produced in 1923, the film survives as an American exhibition print distributed by Hollywood’s Lewis J. Selznick Enterprises the following year. The distributor’s logo appears on some of the narrative intertitles, contributing to the assumption that the production was American. Missing its opening credits, the film was identified through the detective work of NFPF nitrate expert Leslie Anne Lewis and NZFA conservators Kurt Otzen and Louise McCrone."

"The film was preserved at New Zealand’s Park Road Post Production and a new preservation master and exhibition print was sent to the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, the repository of Hitchcock’s personal papers and home movies. Prints were also made for the New Zealand Film Archive and the British Film Institute. The White Shadow survives today thanks to New Zealand projectionist Jack Murtagh, a passionate collector of early cinema, and the New Zealand Film Archive. Film lovers everywhere salute their stewardship." – ANNETTE MELVILLE

AA: Graham Cutts was the leading British film director when The White Shadow was made, and this newly rediscovered footage is also important as a sample of some of the earliest work of other great talents such as Michael Balcon, Victor Saville, and Alfred Hitchcock. Betty Compson is the life of the party. The directorial touch is rather ordinary. The concept of the story is mystical: "the soul casts a white shadow". The evil sister has no soul at all to begin with, but after the death of the good sister "her white shadow passes to her who at last has a soul". Maybe we can see here some premonition to the "Celle qui n'était plus" obsessions of Alfred Hitchcock. From a battered source a very watchable print has been restored. The original toning is pleasant to watch. The missing reels are covered by explanatory titles. There was a big laughter in the audience because of the absolutely mad story ideas summarized in them.

Tariel Mklavadzis mkvlelobis saqme / The Case of Tariel Mklavadze

Ivan Perestiani: ტარიელ მკლავაძის მკვლელობის საქმე / Дело Тариэла Мклавадзе / Tariel Mklavadzis mkvlelobis saqme / The Case of Tariel Mklavadze (GE-SU 1925).

ტარიელ მკლავაძის მკვლელობის საქმე / Дело Тариэла Мклавадзе (Delo Tariela Mklavadze / Delo ob ubiistve kniazia Tariela Mklavadze / Geroi nashei strany) [L’affare Tariel Mklavadze / The Case of Tariel Mklavadze; Il caso dell’assassinio del principe Tariel Mklavadze / The Case of Prince Tariel Mklavadze’s Murder; Un eroe della nostra terra / A Hero of Our Land]

    Georgia SSR, SU 1925. Sakhkinmretstvi / Goskinprom Gruzii.

    D: Ivan Perestiani; SC: Shalva Dadiani, Ivan Perestiani; DP: Aleksandr Digmelov; AD: Sergei [Semion] Gubin-Gun; 

    cast: Kote Miqaberidze (Spiridon Mtsirishvili, schoolteacher), Nato Vachnadze (Despine, his wife), Mito Qadagidze (Prince Tariel Mklavadze), Mikheil Kalatozishvili [Mikhail Kalatozov] (Samson [Samora], innkeeper)

    35 mm, 2040 m, 98’ (18 fps)

    from: Gosfilmofond of Russia. Russian and Georgian intertitles. 

    Viewed at Teatro Verdi, Le Giornate del Cinema Muto, Pordenone, with e-subtitles in English and Italian, grand piano: John Sweeney, 7 Oct 2011.

Sergei Kapterev (GCM Catalogue): "In histories of Georgian cinema, The Case of Tariel Mklavadze holds the position of a tactful and professional interpretation of a classic literary work, which discarded a few outdated conventions but generally belonged to the “old school” of filmmaking. This historically viable and respectful evaluation somehow neutralizes the film’s considerable artistic merits: directorial maturity, complex narrative logic, and tonal and stylistic consistency."

"The Case was directed by Ivan Perestiani, a major contributor to Georgian cinema’s development into a formidable cultural force. Perestiani moved to cinema from Russian theatre, starting as an actor – most prominently, he appeared in Yevgeni Bauer’s melodrama A Life for a Life (1916) – and then gaining experience in scriptwriting and directing. In 1920, after a teaching job at Moscow’s First State Cinema School (where his students included Vsevolod Pudovkin), Perestiani moved to Georgia, where, after the Soviet intervention in Georgian affairs, the ideologically important medium of cinema was being given a boost."

"The first film directed by Perestiani in Georgia, Arsen Jorjiashvili (1921), was also the first production of the new Georgian film establishment. In a tribute to the political situation, Arsen described heroic deeds of a famous Georgian revolutionary. The film’s popular success guaranteed Perestiani future commissions from the new regime. In 1923 Perestiani produced his most-remembered work, a lively, Western-like adaptation of a Russian Civil War adventure novelette, Red Imps. This immensely successful foray into dynamic genre cinema was followed by the director’s parallel work on two adaptations of classic works of Georgian literature, Three Lives (finished in 1924) and The Case of Tariel Mklavadze, whose strong social motifs both met Soviet ideological requirements and popularized national Georgian culture."

"In spite of the demand for new topics, more than a half of early Georgian films were based on national literary classics. The Case of Tariel Mklavadze was an adaptation of “A Knight of Our Land,” a story by Egnate Ninoshvili, a prominent 19th-century writer and publicist whose story “Qristine” became the basis for the first fiction work of Georgian cinema in 1917. Ninoshvili’s stories contrasted the cynicism of the moneyed classes with the tragic vulnerability of the poor. In The Case, this conflict was rendered through an unusually understated combination of satirical and melodramatic intonations. While in Three Lives Perestiani continued experimenting with the improvisatory mode of Red Imps (both films were shot without scripts, directly from the literary originals), in The Case he took a different path. As if recalling the disciplined world of Bauer’s cinema, Perestiani chose a tightly controlled dramatic structure built upon an innovative use of flashbacks, supported by psychologically credible acting. The latter was entrusted to a young cast, which included Nato Vachnadze, a future star of Georgian cinema who later praised Perestiani for understanding actors’ psychological moods; and future film directors Kote Miqaberidze and Mikheil Kalatozishvili (Mikhail Kalatozov). Perestiani’s co-contributor to the dramaturgy of The Case was Shalva Dadiani, one of the earliest Georgian champions and theorists of cinema, an influential playwright long interested in scriptwriting and responsible for the screenplay of Arsen Jorjiashvili. Dadiani’s literary talent is revealed in the compact and reflexive intertitles, which avoid dialogue and enhance the audience’s involvement in the film’s emotions and ideology."

"Dramatic sophistication was supported in The Case by the meticulously crafted cinematography of Aleksandr Digmelov, one of the first cameramen to record textures of Georgian life in ethnographic sketches and newsreels – and an organizer of Georgia’s first film shows. His versatile, consistently skillful work included Qristine, Red Imps, and other important early Georgian films, and put him in the ranks of the best Georgian cinematographers.Using time-tested literary material and their own diverse experience in the establishment of the solid values of “old” cinema, the makers of The Case of Tariel Mklavadze produced a masterwork of emotionally compelling narrative filmmaking, indispensable for the understanding of Georgian national cinema." – Sergei Kapterev

AA: A court drama about social injustice told in flashbacks. Set in the 19th century (1880s?) it makes digressions a feature of the narrative, starting with the birth of the evil son and details about his vicious pranks (torturing flies, setting his grandpa's beard on fire). The actual case is about the callous princes' harassment of the gentle bride and his noble husband. The story unfolds in surprising ways, full of striking images, of a sabre dance, a maid swinging on a garland, the nightmare of an eagle devouring its prey, a still alive bird. There are beautiful close-ups of faces. The movie is an indictment of macho mentality and feodal oppression with its jus primae noctis attitude (it existed still even in Finland during its years as a part of the empire, although Finland was never feodal; the classic literary text is Minna Canth's Lain mukaan / Dura lex, based on which Roland af Hällström directed his final film). I was able to see the first hour of the movie. It is possible to appreciate the beautiful cinematography in this print of uneven visual quality, sometimes with an obviously duped character, sometimes with low contrast.

Salomy Jane

(California Motion Picture Corp., US 1914) P: George E. Middleton, Alexander Beyfuss; D: Lucius Henderson, William Nigh; SC: based on the story “Salomy Jane’s Kiss” by Bret Harte and the play Salomy Jane by Paul Armstrong; DP: Bert Mohr, Arthur Pawelson, Arthur Cadwell; cast: Beatriz Michelena (Salomy Jane Clay), House Peters (The Man), Matt Snyder (Madison Clay), William Nigh (Rufe Waters), Ernest Joy (Jack Marbury), Andrew Robson (Yuba Bill), Clarence Arper (Colonel Starbottle), William Pike (“Red Pete” Heath), Harold B. Meade (Baldwin), Harold Entwistle (Larabee), Clara Beyers (Lize Heath), Demetrio Mitsoras (Gallagher), Willie Smith (Walter Williams), Jack Holt (cowboy); 35 mm, 6400 ft, 87’ (19 fps); from: Library of Congress Packard Audio Visual Conservation Center, Culpeper, VA. English intertitles. Viewed at Teatro Verdi, Le Giornate del Cinema Muto, Pordenone, with e-subtitles in Italian, grand piano and flute: Stephen Horne, 7 Oct 2011.

Scott Simmon (GCM Catalogue): "The visual beauty and directorial sophistication of Salomy Jane, the inaugural feature from the California Motion Picture Corporation, upend assumptions of what a film by an untried regional company ought to look like. In 1914, feature-length films were still novel, and the San Francisco boosters behind the company had not the slightest experience making movies. One expects rough techniques, but Salomy Jane arguably surpasses the year’s best-remembered movies from mainstream studios."

"Reviewers recognized something of this at the time, with admiration split between the film’s photographic splendor and its dramatic arca. Moving Picture World praised the “exceptionally fine photography” and also “the love story that becomes more and more interesting toward the close.” The Chicago Tribune labeled it “a picture of fire and beauty,” while Variety noticed that “The scenario is a model of clarity, despite its emphasis upon swift and frequent incident” – this at a time when writers were wrestling with longer film structure. The New York Dramatic Mirror summarized the film this way: “Unless nature betters her handiwork in the forests of California, it is difficult to see how producers are going to improve upon the scenic beauty of Salomy Jane … Through a long cast, each character is made to stand out as a distinct personality … Salomy Jane is in all ways a big Western drama, and soon audiences will draw their own conclusions about its most striking points. They may disagree on details but hardly on the essential fact – it’s a winner.”"

"That the film is forgotten is due primarily to all known complete prints and negatives from the California Motion Picture Corporation going up in flames in 1931 at its abandoned Marin County studio. A single projection print of Salomy Jane, found in Australia in 1996, was preserved by the Library of Congress. Happily, what survives is the original 7-reel version; it was cut down to as few as 5 reels in later screenings."

"The film promotes its locations in its full onscreen title: Salomy Jane, A Story of the Days of ’49, Produced in the Famous California Redwoods. In expanding Bret Harte’s 1898 story “Salomy Jane’s Kiss” into a four-act stage play in 1907, Paul Armstrong borrowed characters from other Harte writings, filled in backstory hints, and invented vengeance subplots. Productions of the play were regularly praised for their ability to bring the outdoors in. “The wonderfully realistic sylvan…settings shared honors with the actors,” wrote a reviewer of one 1913 staging. The play was thus a natural for movie location shooting, and photographs from stage versions reveal that the film costumes were borrowed directly from them."

"Although titled for its central character, Salomy Jane is a community story, set in the summer of 1852 in Hangtown (a California gold-mining settlement more welcomingly renamed Placerville in 1854). The film deftly interweaves older honor violence brought from the East (a feud from Kentucky and revenge for a wronged sister) with new Western threats (a stage robbery, quick-to-lynch vigilantes, and rivalries over Salomy as a young woman among the forty-niners). Playing the title role is 24-year-old Beatriz Michelena, in her first film. She’d been onstage since age 11, first alongside her father, a Venezuelan immigrant and opera tenor, and by age 17 she was promoted in lead soprano roles as “America’s Youngest Prima Donna.” In Salomy Jane, she conveys the no nonsense independence that soon made her America’s first Latina movie star."

"Perfectly matched with her is British-born House Peters, the only cast member with experience in major features. His convincing presence as “The Man” (he reveals his name – Jack Dart – to Salomy in Harte’s story, but not in the film) is reinforced by his return to Paramount-Lasky three months later to play essentially the same role in Cecil B. De Mille’s forty-niner film, The Girl of the Golden West (1915) – again as an outlaw secretly harbored by a tough Western woman."

"The smarmiest of Salomy’s five suitors is played by William Nigh, also the co-director of this film (the first of more than 100 features that he directed)."

"The California Motion Picture Corporation had high ambitions to promote Northern California, especially through an arrangement to adapt several Harte works. In mid-1914 it constructed a glass-enclosed studio as impressive as any at the time, in San Rafael, across the Golden Gate from San Francisco. The company launched its Golden Gate Weekly newsreel (none of whose issues is known to survive) and then plunged into Salomy Jane. Locations for the feature were spread along the Bay Area coast, standing in for the Sierra foothills. The gala October 8, 1914, premiere of Salomy Jane at San Francisco’s St. Francis Hotel led off with the Golden Gate Weekly, including a segment on Ishi, “the last wild Indian,” then living on the University of California’s San Francisco campus. In just two years, however, the California Motion Picture Corporation would be defunct, a victim primarily of the growing stranglehold on the distribution of features by vertically integrated production companies with theater chains. Salomy Jane survives to give vivid witness to the flourishing of the regional feature film in the years just before the conglomeration of Hollywood." – Scott Simmon

AA: A Western. A rambling, violent story involving a stagecoach robbery and vigilante "justice" with instant lynching. The structure of the movie is not completely polished, but there are valuable features such as Beatriz Michelena's performance in the leading role and the impressive use of the magnificent redwoods landscape with rivers and mountains. A story against vigilante "justice". The image quality is often fine, but there are passages with a duped look.

Maddalena Ferat (2003 CSC Cineteca Nazionale restoration)

Febo Mari: Maddalena Ferat (IT 1921) starring Francesca Bertini as Maddalena Ferat. Foto: CSC - Cineteca Nazionale. From: IMDb.

(Caesar Film/Bertini Film, IT 1921) D: Febo Mari; based on the novel Madeleine Férat (1865) by Émile Zola; SC: Vittorio Bianchi; AD: Alfredo Manzi; cast: Francesca Bertini (Maddalena Ferat), Mario Parpagnoli (Guglielmo de Viargue), Giorgio Bonaiti (Giacomo Berthier, friend of Guglielmo), Bianca Renieri (Lisetta), Giuseppe Pierozzi (Signor de Rieu), Achille De Riso (the painter), Giovanni Gizzi (Count de Viargue), Antonietta Zanoni (Elena, De Rieu’s wife); censorship date: 1.12.1920 (no. 15601); Rome première: 5.4.1921; orig.: 1859 m (in 5 parts); 35 mm, 1200 m, 52' (20 fps), col. (tinted and toned); from: Cineteca Nazionale – Centro Sperimentale di Cinematografia, Roma (restored 2003). Didascalie in italiano. Viewed at Teatro Verdi, Le Giornate del Cinema Muto, Pordenone, with e-subtitles in English, grand piano: Philip C. Carli, 7 Oct 2011.

Aldo Bernardini (GCM 2011): "The chronicle of an “amour fou”, a mad love, irrational, absolute: in some ways like that which many years later would impel Adele H. in Truffaut’s 1975 film. Febo Mari clearly felt himself at ease with Vittorio Bianchi’s adaptation of the Zola novel: in many ways it recalls an earlier film which had established his fortune as an actor, Pastrone’s Il fuoco (1916), for which Mari himself had written the story and script. Mari clearly loved excess: and this time in place of an unbridled Menichelli he found a Francesca Bertini at the peak of her divistic career. Nevertheless he succeeds in controlling her in a balanced performance: only in the finale does he permit her to abandon herself to a spectacular death scene, concluding with arms outstretched, which in some respects recalls another, earlier classic of frock-coat cinema, Caserini’s Ma l’amor mio non muore! (1913) – but there the protagonist was the “divine” Borelli. The story is rich in interesting dramaturgical cues: from the encounter of two opposed characters (Giacomo, extrovert and relaxed, and Guglielmo, a nice fellow but a bit awkward) to the characterization of Guglielmo’s home environment, with grotesque and reassuring winks at the expense of petit-bourgeois life (Genoveffa, who spends the evening insistently reading the Bible to the fleeing family, the deaf and distracted Signor de Rieu) to the games of the couples (Giacomo with Maddalena, Lisetta with the painter) and of infidelity observed and accepted. Bianchi’s script again presents situations and dialogues which reveal the taste for excess (even to the extent, at a crucial moment, of giving Bertini the same histrionic line – “trample me, kill me, forget the past” – which she had used in a film released a few months earlier, La serpe)."

"But Febo Mari was not Roberti; his expressive world is much more elaborate, and not reliant on stereotypes. We see how the atmosphere of light comedy in the first part is not without warning signals (for example the pharmacy, with the case of poisons in clear view; the wildness of the natural elements which anticipates the trauma of Giacomo’s departure for Cochin China; the references to the biblical episode of the sinner Magdalene, etca. ), which irrevocably lead on to precipitate the events of the final part, from the reappearance, after four years, of Giacomo, believed to have died in a shipwreck: his return shatters the equilibrium which Guglielmo and Maddalena, happily married, have passively achieved, and the crisis explodes after the woman’s inevitable confession of a “guilty” past (so that Guglielmo, ever more devastated, even doubts that their daughter is his). Maddalena’s obsessive love for Giacomo suddenly reawakens, wild and uncontrollable: not motivated by a story which in the first part has described the meeting of Giacomo and Maddalena as an escapade (even if the man had admitted: “We have committed a very grave error”). At this point the contradictory behaviour of the protagonist is somewhat unexplained, as she first tries to distance Giacomo from her life in restoring her relations with Guglielmo, and then resigns herself to fate: first joining the lover at the inn for a final night of love, and then taking poison."

"The film, one of the best in the filmographies of Mari and Bertini from the perspective of the early 1920s, is therefore interesting in many ways: the photography (rich in lighting and colour effects), the editing, the selective use of close-ups, the acting of the central figures and character players, are all ingredients used by the the director at his best to tell a story of absorbing complexity (despite the considerable lacunae in the present copy, which was most likely saved in extremis). Finally to be noted is the risky theological thesis proposed at the end to explain the protagonist’s autopunitive choice: unlike Jesus, who pardoned the Magdalene, “God does not forgive.” – Aldo Bernardini

AA: A tragedy, a Francesca Bertini vehicle produced by her. The print is incomplete, but the missing parts have been covered with intertitles. Yet there is a feeling that this film is not a story-driven but Francesca Bertini driven. It is a showcase for the wide range of Bertini's talent from comedy to tragedy. There are moments of love (the night in the hay), extreme agony ("Calpestami! Uccidimi!"), a rape sequence and finally the suicide via poison. "Memory follows us everywhere. You cannot wipe out memory". A heavily tinted print, evidently as good as it gets.

Der junge Medardus / Young Medardus

Michael Kertesz [Michael Curtiz]: Der junge Medardus / Young Medardus (AT 1923). Mihály Várkonyi (Medardus Klähr), Anny Hornik (Agathe Klähr).

[the title in Finland was:] Napoleon (Sascha-Filmindustrie AG, AT, 1923) D: Michael Kertesz [Michael Curtiz]; P: Alexander Kolowrat; SC: László Vajda, Arthur Schnitzler, based on the play by Arthur Schnitzler; DP: Gustav Ucicky, Eduard von Borsody; AD: Artur Berger, Julius von Borsody; cast: Mihály Várkonyi (Medardus Klähr), Anny Hornik (Agathe Klähr), Maria Hegyesi (Frau Klähr), Egon von Jordan (Etzel), Mary Stone (Anna), Franz Glawatsch (Berger), Julius Szöreghy (Eschenbacher), Josef König (Wachshuber), Ludwig Rethey (Duc de Valois), Agnes d’Ester (Hélène de Valois), Carl Lamac (François de Valois), Ferdinand Onno (Marquis Albert de Valois), Mihail Xantho (Napoleon Bonaparte); filmed: 1.1923-5.1923; première: 29.8.1923 (Wien); released: 5.10.1923 (Wien); 35 mm, 2010 m, 79’ (22 fps); from: Filmarchiv Austria, Wien. Deutsche Zwischentitel. Viewed at Teatro Verdi, Le Giornate del Cinema Muto, Pordenone, with e-subtitles in English and Italian, grand piano: Gabriel Thibaudeau, 7 Oct 2011.

+ Das Spielzeug von Paris trailer (AT 1925) 35 mm, 96 m /24 fps/ 4 min. From: Filmarchiv Austria, Wien. No intertitles. AA: Excellent visual quality, a fine erotic radiation in Lily Damita's appearance.

Miguel A. Fidalgo (GCM Catalogue): "Late to establish itself, Austrian cinema entered on a golden age in 1919, with the arrival in Vienna of exiles from every part of the disintegrated Empire. Kertész came at the personal call of Count Alexander “Sascha” Kolowrat (1886-1927), a visionary as passionate and visceral as himself. Born in New York to a rich Bohemian aristocrat and a tobacco heiress, and fascinated by technology, Kolowrat established his first studio in 1910, in Bohemia. By 1918 his Sascha-Filmindustrie AG was the most important film concern in Austria, as producer and distributor, with extensive international connections that soon would include the exclusive distribution rights for Paramount films throughout most of Europe."

"Kertész found an immediate rapport with Kolowrat, and rapidly adapted to the new environment, thanks to the presence of many old Budapest colleagues and the dedicated autonomy of his producer, who could facilitate any production. Mihály Kertész now became Michael Kertesz. His first movie for Kolowrat, Die Dame mit dem schwarzen Handschuh (The Lady with the Black Glove, 1919), was followed by eight films of increasing interest and quality, before the spectacular Sodom und Gomorrah (1922) ensured his international reputation. Kertész considered several projects before deciding next on Der junge Medardus (The Young Medardus), a tragedy based on a monumental play of 1910 by Arthur Schnitzler, which Kolowrat had wanted to film since 1919. A relatively prolific writer of plays, novels, and short stories, the Viennese-born Schnitzler was a friend and disciple of Freud, and his plots and characters reveal his deep interest in psychology and the thin line that separates illusion and reality – a theme close to Kertész’s own artistic tastes. The first problem of adaptation was to reduce a 5-hour play to manageable film length. In this the reclusive 61-year-old author, inexperienced in film, was helped by another Hungarian exile, László Vajda."

"Shooting began in Vienna in early 1923. The enormous sets designed by Artur Berger and Julius von Borsody, recreating the city at the beginning of the 19th century, were built at Laäerberg, where the exteriors of Sodom und Gomorrah had been filmed, and location shooting was at the palaces of Schönbrunn and Wagram. The great cost of the film, over 3 billion kronen, was a risky decision at a critical period in Austrian production. Set in the Vienna occupied by Napoleon’s army, between April and October 1809, the story centres on the tortured figure of Medardus Klähr, a Viennese student, whose father was killed by the French at the battle of Austerlitz in 1805, torn between his romantic passion for a French royalist exile and his hatred for the occupiers. Around him, like a Greek tragedy, are woven a series of parallel histories, affecting his own but also Austria’s destiny. Kertész cast his fellow émigré Mihály Várkonyi and the aristocratic Agnes d’Ester (Esterhazy) as the distressed protagonist and the woman he loves."

"Kertész recognized that the actions of Medardus could only be understood from the perspective of his youth. His abhorrence of everything French, together with the inflexibility of the Gallic Royalists, provokes the suicide of his sister Agathe and her lover François. His own initial rejection of Hélène, François’s sister, whom he blames for Agathe’s death, turns to adolescent love but ends in jealousy and murder. Medardus goes from patriot to lover, and from lover to unexpected saviour of Napoleon. Várkonyi, although older than the character, magnificently conveys his pain at the death of his sister and the nobility of his death before the firing squad. But Medardus is only one of the sides of the triangle of passions that articulates the plot – passionate but not affectionate, because the passion comes from complex feelings: in Medardus, love, and tangentially pain; in Hélène, unapproachable, hieratic and cold, the division between passion for power, family obligations, restitution of the French monarchy at any price – and attraction for the young Viennese. The triangle’s third side is Napoleon himself, serious, implacable, equally passionate in his control, but never shown as a heartless tyrant. This strange triangle acts with a certain fatalistic sense, with Destiny as backdrop, as in some of Kertész’s other Austrian films."

"Another crucial motive in the fate of the characters is pride, which drags the Klährs and the Valois directly to tragedy. Agathe and François choose death because the pride of their families prevents their impossible love. Hélène, trained by her (in all respects) blind father, will sacrifice her relationship with Medardus in favour of family pride, when the death of her brother forces her to marry his cousin Albert. Medardus feels his pride hurt by Hélène’s supposed deception, and in the end prefers death to the pardon he receives from Napoleon himself, since the young idealist cannot accept anything that he considers unjust. In fact, the war between Austria and France, like so many wars, is motivated by issues of pride."

"Never until now had Kertész been so serious, restrained, and poetic. His camera moves with moderation, generally distanced from the drama, respecting the theatrical game. The rhythm is slower than usual, though not ponderous. An excess of intertitles slows down the action, yet these serve to punctuate particular thoughts or actions, to explain the reactions of the characters. It is the interior action that matters. Correspondingly, the battle scenes are filmed in static shots, with movement and action limited to mise-en-shot: generous deployment of masses, cavalry assaults, explosions and smoke effects give internal rhythm to these shots, without contradicting the quieter overall tone of the movie. There is, on the contrary, much space for visual poetry and a clear pictorial intention: the suicide of the lovers, framed delicately in a general shot, with the silhouette of Vienna in the background and a brief kiss of farewell; the duel on the shore of the Danube between Hélène and the cunning Duc de Valois, visualized between two columns of smoke; the appearance before the injured Medardus of a luminous Hélène; the continuous use of the horizon, against which silhouettes of the troops or the characters are minimized, diminishing their importance in relation to the enormous conflict. A multitude of visual details reveal familiar Kertész stylistic hallmarks: the treatment of shadows (with some especially celebrated effects, like Napoleon’s enormous silhouette appearing to asphyxiate Hélène); the expressionist design of the inn where Medardus rests before going to war and the jail where he spends his last moments. The three-dimensional physical spaces have the non-naturalistic realism the director so loved, with big empty walls and strategicallyplaced furniture."

"Everything enhances our sensation of being present at an enormous and avoidable tragedy: pride and misunderstood passion lead to an end that is noble, desired, but useless – even though for Napoleon, Medardus’ is “the last heroic death of the war”." – Miguel A. Fidalgo

AA: A historical epic, a historical tragedy. At first this seems like a trite and banal revenge story, but there are surprising changes of perspective in the tragedy. Curtiz was a war veteran himself, who had seen action in WWI and the bloody revolution in Hungary. 

At Warner Bros. he had a sense of history especially in the masterful The Private Lives of Elizabeth and Essex, but that sense is also evident in Casablanca, which rises above a potentially banal intrigue. 

The beginning of the print is heavily truncated but it is rewarding to see this movie to the end. It is a huge production, and Curtiz has full command of the epic scenes. The battle scenes are truly impressive. 

Regarding cinema's obsession with the cancelled wedding, Medardus almost succeeds in having Hélène's wedding with the Valois arrangement cancelled, but Hélène spends her wedding night with Medardus, anyway, and if there would have been an heir, it would have been one conceived by Medardus. "If I become the mother of the king, that moment has to be celestial." "Rausch, Traum, Tod." 

The visual quality is good often enough to have a real impression of this big film. Finally, this is a Napoleon film, whose sense of world history Schnitzler embraces: "die Weltgeschichte geht weiter". In that vision there is no room for revenge or living in a past glory.

Fiaker Nr. 13 / Cab No. 13

Michael Kertész [Michael Curtiz]: Fiaker Nr. 13 / Cab No. 13. Kriminalroman von X. de Montepin in 4 Serien. (AT/DE 1926). Poster design: Theo Matejko.

Michael Kertész [Michael Curtiz]: Fiaker Nr. 13 / Cab No. 13. I Teil Die Geheimnisse von Paris. Das Verbrechen auf der Neuillybrücke (AT/DE 1926).

Michael Kertész [Michael Curtiz]: Fiaker Nr. 13 / Cab No. 13. II Teil Jean Jeudi (AT/DE 1926).

Pika-ajuri n:o 13 (Einspänner Nr. 13 / Colette, ballerina dell’Opera / Fiacre No. 13 / The Road to Happiness)

    (Sascha-Filmindustrie AG / Phoebus-Film AG, AT/DE 1926) 

    D: Michael Kertész [Michael Curtiz]; P: Alexander Kolowrat; SC: Alfred Schirokauer, based on the novel Le Fiacre no. 13 (1880) by Xavier de Montépin; DP: Gustav Ucicky, Eduard von Borsody; AD: Paul Leni; 

    cast: Lily Damita (Lilian), Jack Trevor (François Tapin), Paul Biensfeld (Jacques Carotin), Walter Rilla (Lucien Rebout), Max Gülstorff (Antiquarian), Albert Paulig (Ballet-master), Karl Ebert (Henry Liradon), Hermann Picha (Monsieur Coco), Valeska Stock (Madame Coco), Sophie Pagay (Linotte)

    filmed: 11-12.1925; première: 18.1.1926 (Wien); released: 5.2.1926 (Wien); 35 mm, 2400 m, 104’ (20 fps); 

    from: EYE Film Institute Netherlands, Amsterdam. Nederlandse tussentitels.

    Viewed at Teatro Verdi, Le Giornate del Cinema Muto, Pordenone, with e-subtitles in English and Italian, grand piano: Stephen Horne, 6 Oct 2011.

Miguel A. Fidalgo (GCM Catalogue): "Kolowrat’s pressing need to raise capital for new productions led him to neighbouring Germany, where the economy, though not yet fully stable, had improved markedly over the past two years. Phoebus-Film AG was a small producer and distributor that was part of the huge Ufa (Universal Film Aktiengesellschaft) complex, the giant entity created by the German government in November 1917 to co-ordinate production of propaganda and public service films. An agreement with Phoebus ensured for Sascha financial support for new films, a greater presence in the German market, and substantial savings due both to the lower costs of labour and material in Berlin, and the absence of import tax on raw film."

"Kertesz’s new project with Damita, lauded by the press as “the favorite of audiences and critics”, was Fiaker Nr. 13 (Austrian working title, Einspänner Nr.13). This was an adaptation of an 1880 serial novel, Le Fiacre no. 13, by the French writer Xavier de Montépin, which had already been filmed by Alberto Capozzi for Ambrosio in 1917."

"The story contained all the out-dated period ingredients: revenge, changes of identity, abandoned children, claims to nobility, with the son of a duke as the protagonist. The chosen screenwriter, the German Alfred Schirokauer, had proven experience and had himself directed. Following Kertész’s suggestions he changed the plot to melodrama style and switched the sex of the main character to introduce a convenient love triangle."

"The story of the film now focuses on Lilian, the lost heiress of a millionaire, found as a baby by a Parisian cabdriver, raised as his own daughter, and now the prospective victim of a clever con artist who has discovered the secret of her true origins."

"Kertész began filming in early November 1925, and completed shooting in two months, with locations in Paris, and interiors both in Paris and the Berlin EFA studios, rented by Phoebus. Damita was surrounded by a new group of male faces, with the well-known German actors Paul Biensfeld, Karl Ebert, and Walter Rilla, and the British-born Jack Trevor (1890-1976), whose film career faded with the coming of sound because of his British accent, but who was coerced by the Nazis into acting in anti-British films during the Second World War."

"A particularly positive element was the design by Paul Leni, creator of the magnificent Das Wachsfigurenkabinett (1924), and a sympathetic artistic temperament for Kertész, sharing his intense belief in the dramatic expression of the image. This Paris has little in common with that of Das Spielzeug von Paris. Decidedly Germanic in design and visual aspect, there is little of the light and joy seen in the earlier film, and its characters are framed in a more visually dramatic environment."

"Kertész demonstrates his purpose dramatically in the very first sequence, showing the death of the protagonist’s mother in the midst of a dirty, contorted set, full of shadows and with the straight lines of the floor extended towards the viewer to provide a compelling effect of perspective."

"Leni’s rich and creative designs contribute much, whether giving dimensionality (the simple but effective set of the ballet school) or distinguishing social classes and styles of life (the exterior of the cabdriver’s house, with its sloping, mottled walls, contrasted with the straight lines and symmetry of the millionaire’s house)."

"In terms of narrative resources, Kertész triumphs in the fine balance between the interior rhythm of each sequence and the overall rhythm of the entire film. Fiaker Nr. 13 was released at the beginning of February 1926. Although only four years had passed since Frau Dorothys Bekenntnis (1921), whose story bore some similarity with it, both Kertész as well as movies and society had changed. The melodramatic qualities that imbued the earlier film appear here shaded by a veil of realism and change: perhaps, just as for the old coachman, reflecting the changing times."

"While shooting in Paris, Kertész met Harry Warner, the eldest of the Warner brothers and chairman of the company that bore their name, who was then in Europe recruiting new talent. The meeting would bear fruit a few months later, when Mihály Kertész became, forever, Michael Curtiz. But that is another story." – Miguel A. Fidalgo

AA: The plot is clichéd, but the redeeming features include Lily Damita's vivid and humoristic performance and dance numbers (ballet school pranks, Peter Pan / Robin Hood gear, Black Charleston Bottom) and Paul Leni's excellent art design which Michael Curtiz knows to use very well, in a way that is similar to his collaboration with Anton Grot at Warner Bros. There is an impressive brief montage of the casino where Lucien loses all of his loot. In the intertitles there are appearances of the song lyrics "Das war in Schöneberg in Monat Mai / Ein kleines Mädelchen war auch dabei" (famously in the repertory of Hildegarde Knef and Marlene Dietrich). The print is incomplete, and there are some jarring cuts in the beginning, but they don't harm much. The quality of the image is predominantly beautiful, and the print does justice to the excellence of the cinematography.

Jack the Giant Killer (1923)

(Laugh-O-gram, US 1923) Reissue: The K.O. Kid (1929) D: Walt Disney; anim: Walt Disney, Ubbe Iwerks, Hugh Harman, Rudy Ising, Carman “Max” Maxwell, Lorey Tague, Otto Walliman; filmed: Laugh-O-gram studio, 1127 E. 31st St., Kansas City; 35 mm, 720 ft, ca. 9' (22 fps); from: The Museum of Modern Art, New York. English intertitles. Viewed at Teatro Verdi, Le Giornate del Cinema Muto, Pordenone, with e-subtitles in Italian, grand piano: Stephen Horne, 6 Oct 2011.

Russell Merritt & J.B. Kaufman (GCM Catalogue): "By the time Disney put his final Laugh-O-gram into production, his company was in desperate shape. Disney the naïve country boy had been swindled by city slickers. A year after signing his contract with Pictorial Clubs of Tennessee, he had received virtually no money for his work. And now, with the Tennessee branch of Pictorial Clubs going out of business and the parent organization refusing any responsibility for the contract, the demise of Disney’s company was only a matter of time."

"Disney’s resilience was being tested. By all accounts, his Kansas City studio was a wonderful clubhouse for a gang of pranksters and adventure-happy youngsters barely out of high school. As Walt Pfeiffer, one of Disney’s employee-friends said, “It was more fun than pay. You didn’t look at it as work.” But as the company continued to sink, it inevitably suffered defections – including, for a while, the loss of its most talented animator, Ubbe Iwerks. It took all of Disney’s considerable salesmanship to convince those who stayed behind that the company had much of a future."

"It was in this atmosphere that Jack the Giant Killer, the last Laugh-O-gram, was put into production. It shows both Walt’s dizzying bravado and the dire state of his resources. It is, in some ways, the grandest of all his Laugh-O-grams, notable for its minutely detailed backgrounds, the proliferation of characters, the full range of gray tones in the drawings, and – above all – a fascination with atmospherics. He sets up his circus with three introductory scenes he would have thought extravagant and unnecessary in his earlier cartoons, sample side-show attractions that prepare us for our discovery of his admiring kid protagonists. Even more notable, the sea storm that carries Bobby and his friends – arguably the highlight of the cartoon – is a major breakthrough in Disney animation, a self-contained gem of special effects, most likely created by background painter Otto Walliman. When Bobby explores the island of Woof in Poof, each site reveals attractions more elaborate than the last, culminating in a demented trapeze act where a monkey tiptoes across a snake stretched across the necks of two giraffes."

"The animation, on the other hand, is stiffer, more wooden and more segmented than ever. It’s as though all the energy had been leached out of the action itself, reduced for the most part to jerky back-and-forth motions. Jack the Giant Killer may be the most vivid example of a practice Rudy Ising later described where animators simply traced the characters directly from Disney’s model sheets, and animated only the necessary body parts. The chases, especially when compared with his earlier work, seem dull and uninspired. The fixated, gleeful swordfish in The Four Musicians of Bremen who pursues the cat with such grim determination gives way to a dull copycat sawfish who simply goes through the motions of pursuit, animated against underwater backgrounds redrawn from the earlier film. The giants’ underground hunt for Bobby, painted on cels that would later be recycled in Alice’s Wonderland to fine comic effect, seems similarly anemic and drawn-out."

"But none of this gives the impression of a filmmaker ready to throw in the towel. What is retrograde competes with breakthroughs in both designs and storytelling techniques. While Disney continued to scrounge for money to keep his company afloat, his unflagging enthusiasm kept him eager to keep improving his cartoons and look for better ways to promote them." – Russell Merritt & J.B. Kaufman

AA: Jack tells a tall story to the girl he's wooing about fighting giants on Woof in the Poof island. The sea voyage includes a fight with a special swordfish with a circular saw. The giants fall into the mouths of sharks. I agree with Merritt and Kaufman that the storm is the highlight. Yet it is pretty rough stuff. The print is ok.

Japanese Animation II: Gems of Japanese Silent Animation, tributes to Noburo Ofuji and Shigeji Ogino

Shigeji Ogino: Hyakunengo no aruhi / [A Day after a Hundred Years] (JP 1933).

Viewed at Teatro Verdi, Le Giornate del Cinema Muto, Pordenone, in prints with English subtitles by Dean Shimurachi and with e-subtitles in Italian, 6 Oct 2011. Music: Mie Yanashita (grand piano, koto, bells, percussions).

Tribute to Noburo Ofuji
Alexander Jacoby, Johan Nordström (GCM Catalogue): "Noburo Ofuji (1900-1961), born in Tokyo’s Asakusa District as Shinshichiro Ofuji, was the seventh of eight children. His mother died in 1907 and he was raised by an elder sister. He entered the film industry at the age of 18, becoming a pupil of pioneering animator Junichi Kouchi at Sumikazu Eiga, and began to make his own films in the mid-1920s. In 1925, he established his own studio, the Free Cinema Institute (Jiyu Eiga Kenkyujo), where he made Burglars of “Baghdad” Castle (Baguda-jo no tozoku, 1926, screened at Pordenone in 2005) in homage to the Douglas Fairbanks vehicle, The Thief of Bagdad (1924). This film, which apparently ran for 3 reels on its first release (though surviving viewing copies are only 14 minutes long), earned a commercial release and helped to boost its director’s career. Jasper Sharp comments that “Ofuji is best remembered for his idiosyncratic and highly creative use of the cut-out technique[…] His favoured choice of medium for his cut-out work was chiyogami, a coloured paper with woodblock-printed patterns.” Ofuji’s facility with this technique was recognized in 1927 when he renamed his studio the Chiyogami Film Company (Chiyogami Eiga-sha). However, he also worked creatively with silhouette and cel animation. Ofuji was a seminal figure in establishing the animated cartoon as an art form in Japan. In Giannalberto Bendazzi’s words, he “refused to consider animation as a comic art form: he conceived of a dramatic form of cinema, for adults, and did not eschew erotic themes.” In addition, Ofuji made pioneering use of sound; in the silhouette animation Whale (Kujira, 1927), he sought to synchronize the image with a recording of music from Rossini’s William Tell, played on record, while Black Cat’s Meeow (Kuronyago, 1929) was the first film to make use of the Japanese sound-on-disc system Eastphone. Ofuji continued to work well into the sound era, and became one of the first Japanese animators to gain international acclaim, with his films Whale (Kujira, 1952) and The Ghost Ship (Yureisen, 1956) winning prizes at Cannes and Venice respectively. After his death, in 1962, the Noburo Ofuji Prize recognizing distinction in animated film was established in his memory." – Alexander Jacoby, Johan Nordström

KEMURIGUSA MONOGATARI [Una storia di sigarette / A Story of Tobacco] (Tokyo Jiyu Eiga-sha, JP 1924) D, anim: Noburo Ofuji; 35 mm, 280 ft, 3’ (24 fps); from: National Film Center, Tokyo. Japanese intertitles, with English subtitles.
"Ofuji's earliest existant film blends live footage and cut-out animation as it explores 'the mysterious connection between a woman and a cigarette' (Akira Tochigi). It is not clear as to whether this was a test film, or whether it is a surviving fragment of a longer lost film." - Alexander Jacoby, Johan Nordström
AA: Live action woman with an animated man, the battle of the sexes.

KIRIGAMI ZAIKU: SAIYUKI SONGOKU MONOGATARI [La storia del Re Scimmia / The Story of the Monkey King] (Jiyu Eiga Kenkyujo, JP 1926) D, anim: Noburo Ofuji; 35 mm, 478 ft, 8’ (16 fps); from: National Film Center, Tokyo. Japanese intertitles, with English subtitles.
"The Monkey King Songoku, or Sun Wukong in the original Chinese, is one of the protagonists of the Ming-dynasty novel Journey to the West (Xiyouji, or Saiyuki in Japanese), considered one of the four masterpieces of classical Chinese prose literature. Having rebelled against heaven, Sun Wukong eventually becomes a disciple of a Buddhist monk, Xuanzang, who travelled to the “Western Regions” (Central Asia and India) during the Tang era in quest of Buddhist scriptures. This is a chiyogami retelling of the Monkey King’s perennially popular story." – Alexander Jacoby, Johan Nordström
AA: Stylish design, natural movement. Motifs: holy mountain, sacred text in the pagoda. I love the Wan brothers' Monkey King animations. It is fascinating to see an early adaptation of the same material. From a battered source.

MIKANBUNE [Un bastimento di arance / A Ship of Oranges] (Ofuji Noburo Productions, JP 1927) D, anim: Noburo Ofuji; 35 mm, 386 ft, 6’ (16 fps); from: National Film Center, Tokyo. Japanese intertitles, with English subtitles.
"This film recounts the story of an Edo-period merchant, Bunzaemon Kinokuniya (1669-1734), who traded in citrus fruits, among other commodities. The film shows how he brought mandarin oranges (mikan) from the southwestern island of Kyushu to the capital city of Edo." – Alexander Jacoby, Johan Nordström
AA: Cut-out animation about the orange ship that faces the calamities of the wind god, the mountain god and the lighting. Fine storm and rain animation. From a battered Baby Pathé source.

KOGANE NO HANA [Il fiore d’oro / The Golden Flower] (Chiyogami Eiga-sha, JP 1929) D, anim: Noburo Ofuji; 35 mm, 1003 ft, 17’ (16 fps); from: National Film Center, Tokyo. Japanese intertitles, with English subtitles.
"This incomplete film tells the story of how a villager named Dangobei is caught by a giant snake on his way home from a local festival. He outwits and defeats the monster, even managing to triumph over the ghost of the snake when it returns for a posthumous revenge, and ends up wealthy as a result. Although the extant print, restored from a 9.5 mm Pathé Baby print, is monochrome, it is thought that Ofuji originally made it as an early experiment with colour stock. The colour version appears never to have been screened publicly, however." Alexander Jacoby, Johan Nordström
AA:  Meta-aspect in the start: how cut-out animation is made. A fine festival scene. Elements include: a wrong turn during the journey takes Dangobei into the infamous Darkness Pass; footsteps echo in the dark (seen in animation); the Buddhist statue refuses help; money changes people; a fight against the giant snake; stardust. From a battered source.

KURONYAGO [Il miao miao del gatto nero / Black Cat’s Meeow] (Chiyogami Eiga-sha, JP 1929) D, anim: Noburo Ofuji; 35 mm, 268 ft, 3’ (24 fps), sd.; from: National Film Center, Tokyo. No intertitles.
"Digitally restored from a 9.5 mm Pathé Baby print and an SP record, this so-called “Record Talkie” film was a pioneering attempt at synchronized sound in Japanese animation. The “Record Talkie” sound-on-disc system, also known as Eastphone, was used only very briefly with 35 mm prints designed for theatrical release, but endured longer in the case of home exhibition on 9.5 and 16 mm. Although an SP record was a 78rpm record, it was necessary to play it back at 80rpm in order to achieve synchronization with the film. This example of a “Record Talkie” shows two cats, a black cat and a tabby, dancing in time to a jazz score. The soundtrack features the lyrics of a popular song for children with a number of nonsensical Japanese verbal puns." Alexander Jacoby, Johan Nordström
AA: A dance animation.

MURAMATSURI [Festa di paese / Village Festival] (Chiyogami Eigasha, JP 1930) D, anim: Noburo Ofuji; 35 mm, 238 ft, 2’ (24 fps), sd.; from: National Film Center, Tokyo. No intertitles.
"Another “Record Talkie” film, this chiyogami animation, digitally restored from a 16 mm print and an SP record, “recreates the lively atmosphere of a village festival” (Akira Tochigi). The accompanying children’s song had featured in a national school textbook, becoming familiar to many as a result, and its lyrics appear in Japanese hiragana script onscreen, with a bouncing ball and festival masks taking turns to keep the pace." Alexander Jacoby, Johan Nordström
AA: A song animation with the bouncing ball, inventive visualization.

KOKKA: KIMIGAYO [L’inno nazionale / National Anthem] (Chiyogami Eiga-sha, JP 1931) D, anim: Noburo Ofuji; 35 mm, 297 ft, 3’ (24 fps), sd.; from: National Film Center, Tokyo. No intertitles.
"In this brief silhouette animation, the legendary beginnings of Japan are told to the musical accompaniment of the national anthem, “Kimigayo”. This film was apparently often used to open educational film screenings, a fact which surely testifies to the growing nationalism of the country during the early 1930s." – Alexander Jacoby, Johan Nordström
AA: A nationalistic animation: Japan emerges from the sea in the primordial haze, mythical warriors in silhouette, words of the anthem appear on the screen, the mountain, the clouds, the sun, the birds, the kaleidoscope.

HARU NO UTA [Canzone di primavera / Spring Song] (Chiyogami Eiga-sha, JP 1931) D, anim: Noburo Ofuji; 35 mm, 201 ft, 3’ (16 fps); from: National Film Center, Tokyo. No intertitles.
"The cherry blossom (sakura), which spreads northwards across the Japanese archipelago over the springtime months, remains Japan’s most potent national symbol. In this dreamlike depiction of the cherry in full bloom, falling petals are represented by cut-out chiyogami designs, which are subsequently transformed into the figures of a boy and girl dancing. This film, which also includes among its imagery the lyrics in kana script and the musical notes of the “spring song” of the title – another’s children’s song – was originally a “Record Talkie”, although the SP record containing the synchronized soundtrack was not available for this restoration. This viewing copy was restored from a 9.5 mm Pathé Baby print tinted in magenta." Alexander Jacoby, Johan Nordström
AA: Mie Yanashita played the song of this "music video", a film to a phonographic record, such as the ones Germaine Dulac directed in France at the same time. Fine animation.

KOKORO NO CHIKARA [La potenza del cuore / Power of the Heart] (Ministry of Education, JP 1931) D, anim: Noburo Ofuji; 35 mm, 1051 ft, 18’ (16 fps); from: National Film Center, Tokyo. Japanese intertitles, with English subtitles.
"This short chiyogami film tells the story of Dangobei, a coward who receives the gift of strength from a god and defeats a monster. This educational film was intended to teach the message that even a coward can become brave. It was based on comedian Harold Lloyd’s similarly themed film Grandma’s Boy (1922)." – Alexander Jacoby, Johan Nordström
AA: Fine cut-out animation. Dangobei defeats the sea  monster believing he has magic powers. I like the stylized impression of the storm. "Bravery and cowardice are both states of the mind".

Shigeji Ogino (1899-1991)

“Ogino’s rhythmic, abstract animation has re-written the history of experimental and animated filmmaking in Japan,” claims Sylvia Chong. A leading amateur filmmaker, working in 8 mm, 9.5 mm, and 16 mm formats, he produced over 400 films between 1929 and 1976. Among his other achievements, he was a pioneer of colour filmmaking, using the Kodachrome and Sakura Colour Film processes." Alexander Jacoby, Johan Nordström

FELIX NO MEITANTEI [Il detective Felix nei guai / Detective Felix in Trouble] (JP 1932) D, anim., P: Shigeji Ogino; 35 mm, 680 ft, 9’ (16 fps); from: National Film Center, Tokyo. Japanese intertitles, with English subtitles.
"The influence of animation from the United States helped to transform and modernize the style of Japanese animation in the early 1930s, when numerous American cartoons were screened in Japan. Among the most popular was Otto Messmer’s Felix the Cat, who features in this light-hearted puppet film in the role of a detective, enlisted by a girl, Hanako, to search for her stolen shoes. Ogino used miniature sets, decorated both in Asian and in expressionistic fashion, as a backdrop for the actions of his animal puppets." Alexander Jacoby, Johan Nordström
AA: Rather clumsy puppet animation. A duped look in the print.

? [HATENA] / SANKAKU NO RIZUMU / TORANPU NO ARASOI [Triangoli ritmici / Rhythmic Triangles; Carte battagliere / Fighting Cards] (JP, 1932) D, anim., P: Shigeji Ogino; 35 mm, 269 ft, 4’ (16 fps); from: National Film Center, Tokyo. No intertitles.
"A relatively early example of Ogino’s style of abstract animation, this film depicts a sequence of images moving in rhythm. A question mark starts things off, to be followed by footsteps (“The Owari Street viewed from below the ground”, an intertitle announces), triangles, and symbols from playing cards." – Alexander Jacoby, Johan Nordström
AA: Abstract animation based on a parallelogram through which bar-like forms traverse upwards. Then there are footprints from below, and moving figures such as triangles, stars and playing-card signs.

* HYAKUNENGO NO ARUHI [Un giorno dopo cento anni / A Day after a Hundred Years] (JP, 1933) D, anim., P: Shigeji Ogino; 35 mm, 655 ft, 11’ (16 fps); from: National Film Center, Tokyo. Japanese intertitles, with English subtitles.
"Described by Akira Tochigi as an “existentialist sci-fi animation”, this prophetic film features the filmmaker himself as the protagonist. He is killed in a world war in 1942, a decade after the film was made, but a descendant of his restores his spirit to life in 2032, in a Japan where Tokyo has been renamed “Central City”. The future capital’s visual resemblance to the urban milieu depicted by Fritz Lang in Metropolis (1927) is arguably another fairly accurate prophecy! This remarkable film concludes by sending its protagonist on an ill-fated trip to Mars." Alexander Jacoby, Johan Nordström
AA: The big surprise of this program, an incredible science fiction story that predicts WWII, nuclear power, etc. Stylish siluette animation. The final scene is a trip to Mars, but they lose control, because "there is a spirit from the past on board"!*

RHYTHM (JP, 1935) D, anim., P: Shigeji Ogino; 35 mm, 149 ft, 2’ (16 fps); from: National Film Center, Tokyo. No intertitles.
PROPAGATE (JP, 1935) D, anim., P: Shigeji Ogino; 35 mm, 256 ft, 4’ (16 fps); from: National Film Center, Tokyo. English intertitles.
AN EXPRESSION (JP, 1935) D, anim., P: Shigeji Ogino; 35 mm, 385 ft, 3’ (30 fps), col.; from: National Film Center, Tokyo. No intertitles.
"These three abstract films, screening in prints blown up from 9.5 mm originals, typify Ogino’s experimental style. They are exercises in pure cinema not unlike the films of Oskar Fischinger, whose Composition in Blue (Komposition in Blau) was made in the same year. Rhythm simply depicts patterns of lines in rhythmic motion. Propagate uses the theme of the growth of plant seeds as a peg on which to hang Ogino’s abstract imagery, and may have been inspired by contemporary avant-garde poster art. An Expression depicts the motion of geometric forms, and was shot in colour using a two-colour additive process which employed red and green filters in imitation of the Kinemacolor process devised by British pioneer George Albert Smith in 1906. Hand-painting in red and green was also used, and the print was projected at 32 frames per second, twice the regular 16 fps projection speed of the original Pathé Baby print, to achieve the best visual effect. (An approximation of 30 fps will be attempted at the Pordenone screening if the theatre projector’s variable speed mechanism permits.) The three films won prizes at the First International Competition of Small-Gauge Films in Budapest in 1935." – Alexander Jacoby, Johan Nordström
AA: Three different items of abstract animation: (a) curves, (b) abstractions based on the idea of plant growth, (c) colour studies with triangles, circles, and sliding bars and circles.

SHIKISAI MANGA NO DEKIRU MADE [Come si fa un film animato a colori / Until the Colour Animation Is Made] (JP, 1937) D, P: Shigeji Ogino; 35 mm, 302 ft, 5’ (16 fps); from: National Film Center, Tokyo. Japanese intertitles, with English subtitles.
"Restored from the original 16 mm reversal print, this silent documentary follows the making of Noburo Ofuji’s first Kodacolor animation, The Wigged Princess (Katsura hime, 1937). Ofuji and Ogino had been associates in the milieu of avant-garde filmmaking in the late 1920s." – Alexander Jacoby, Johan Nordström
AA: A good documentary plus the resulting The Wigged Princess animation.