Tempeste di passione / Stürme der Leidenschaft / Tempest (Italian version)

Robert Siodmak: Tempeste di passione / Stürme der Leidenschaft / Tempest (DE 1931) con Anna Sten e Emil Jannings.

DE 1931. PC: Ufa, Berlin. D: Robert Siodmak; P: Erich Pommer; SC: Robert Liebmann, Hans Müller; DP: Günther Rittau, Otto Baecker, asst. Karl Plintzner; ED: Viktor Gertler; AD: Erich Kettelhut; cost: René Hubert; make-up: Waldemar Jabs; ass D: Viktor Gertler; asst: Kurt Hoffmann; rec: Fritz Thiery; M: Friedrich Hollaender; lyrics: Richard Busch, Robert Liebmann, Friedrich Hollaender;
    C: Emil Jannings (Gustav Bumke), Anna Sten (Anna, called “Russian Anya”), Trude Hesterberg (Yvonne, Anna’s friend), Franz Nicklisch (Willy Prawanzke), Otto Wernicke (Chief Detective Goebel), Hans Deppe (Nuschler), Hans Reimann (Max), Julius Falkenstein (Paul), Anton Pointner (photographer Ralph Kruschewski), Wilhelm Bendow (Emmerich), Hermann Vallentin (warden);
    orig. l: 2833 m; 35 mm, 2528 m, 91' (24 fps), sd. (Italian version with original dialogue suppressed); print source: Fondazione Cineteca Italiana, Milano. Didascalie in italiano.
    Teatro Verdi, Le Giornate del Cinema Muto, Pordenone (Anna Sten), e-subtitles in English, grand piano: X, 13 Oct 2012.

Peter Bagrov: "Stürme der Leidenschaft (literally, “Storms of Passion”) marked the highest point in Anna Sten’s German career. She was now a “legitimate” Ufa star with all the consequences: an unpredictably vivid, ironic, intelligent, deliberately modern and deliberately modest girl turned into a somewhat plump blonde displaying round shoulders on most of the postcards and publicity photos. Some of those photographs caught an absolutely unexpected likeness to Brigitte Helm, while others revealed a resemblance to Lilian Harvey. But the general aim was to present Anna Sten as the new Marlene Dietrich, whose departure to the United States at the moment of the premiere of The Blue Angel was a serious blow for Ufa."

"So this time Sten was put in a Blue Angel milieu: teamed with Emil Jannings in a screenplay co-written by Robert Liebmann, shot by Günter Rittau, and even provided with a song by Friedrich Hollaender. Jannings too placed great hopes on Storms of Passion, his third talking picture, following The Blue Angel, where he was overshadowed by Dietrich’s triumph, and a modestly successful comedy, Liebling der Götter (Darling of the Gods)."

"Yet the film didn’t become a vehicle for either Sten or Jannings. Both screen personalities were effortlessly and skilfully exploited by the director Robert Siodmak, who was to enjoy international success with both the German and French versions of Storms (the French one, with a completely different cast led by Charles Boyer and Florelle, was released as Tumultes), leading to his career in France and, eventually, in Hollywood."

"“The story of ‘Stürme der Leidenschaft’ is just another one of those underworld things. Indeed, one might even say that ‘Underworld’ thing,” declared the New York Times, referring to Josef von Sternberg’s 1927 melodrama. Yet, the Germans had their own tradition of underworld films, including Bruno Rahn’s Dirnentragödie (Tragedy of the Street, 1927), Joe May’s Asphalt (1929, shot by the same Günther Rittau who worked on Storms of Passion) and Phil Jutzi’s recently released Berlin-Alexanderplatz (1931). What distinguished Siodmak’s work from these, as well as from Hollywood gangster films like Little Caesar or Public Enemy, was a complete lack of pathos and bourgeois didacticism. The authors and the characters set no hopes upon supreme justice – whether juridical or heavenly. Thus the underworld was presented not as a “sore on the body of society”, but – with a good-natured cynicism – simply as model of one."

"Siodmak was not eager to work with Jannings, having had no sympathy either for his expressive style, or for his tendency to improvise and “direct the directors”, or for the Ufa star system in general. But with the help of Erich Pommer he managed to tame the great actor with the threat to replace him with the rising star Hans Albers. In consequence the critics were quite impressed by a restraint uncharacteristic of Jannings and his ability to become an organic part of an ensemble rather than dominating a supporting cast. They went as far as to claim the birth of “a new Jannings”. Whether or not this is true, Storms of Passion was to be arguably his last international success."

"Anna Sten certainly gained popularity with this picture (along with Der Mörder Dimitri Karamasoff), but critical appraisal was diverse. She was criticized for unsuccessfully copying Dietrich even in her singing manner. (This was true, alas! That same year a vocal expert in Hollywood pronounced an impartial verdict: “She has a small but highly disagreeable voice.”) Yet Siodmak caught maybe the most attractive quality of her acting: spontaneity. One of the most psychologically convincing – and unpredictable – sequences in the film is Bumke’s attempt to strangle his unfaithful mistress; when his grip loosens for a second, instead of screaming or trying to escape Anya embraces him nervously and then faints in his arms. Bumke stares at her expressionless face – and kisses her. (In the French version this mise-en-scène was replicated with a slight adjustment to suit the nature of its stars: when the girl faints it’s not her face but her décolleté at which Boyer stares.)"

"Storms of Passion is often considered a precursor of Siodmak’s film noirs of the 1940s, in particular The Killers (1946) and Criss Cross (1949). This may be true in terms of subject and the aforementioned amorality, but the degree of stylization is quite different. Storms of Passion is a transitional film that still – in terms of acting and lighting – bears elements of Siodmak’s semi-documentary, semi-plotless masterpieces Menschen am Sonntag (People on Sunday, 1930) and Abschied (Farewell, 1930), and on the other hand has the calculated rhythm of Brennendes Geheimnis (Burning Secret, 1933) and his elegant French films. This rhythm – strange as it may seem – emerges from the Ufa musicals of the early 1930s. Which is no surprise, since both scriptwriters collaborated on some of the most significant specimens of the genre – Robert Liebmann on Der Kongreß tanzt (The Congress Dances, 1931), Hans Müller on Lubitsch’s Monte Carlo (1930) and The Smiling Lieutenant (1930), and both of them on Liebeswalzer (Love Waltz, 1930). More important, Siodmak’s chief assistant Viktor Gertler was an expert in musical editing, whose filmography includes the first German musical, Melodie des Herzens (1929), as well as Der Kongreß tanzt, Die Drei von der Tankstelle (The Three from the Filling Station, 1930), and Peter (1934). No wonder that Siodmak’s next film was to be a Lilian Harvey circus comedy, Quick (1932)."

"The Italian distribution version of Storms of Passion is one of the most bizarre foreign-language adaptations of the early sound period. The original soundtrack was replaced by a new musical score – except for Hollaender’s hit song “Ich weiß nicht zu wem ich gehöre” (literally, “I don’t know to whom I belong”), bits and pieces of which can be heard in Anna Sten’s performance. The German dialogue was replaced with Italian intertitles, translated by Camillo Bruto Bonzi, making Tempeste di passione virtually a silent film (and justifying its inclusion in this programme). The picture did not benefit from that, since in the original version Siodmak took advantage both of Jannings’ perfect and Sten’s imperfect German; the German audience – let alone the Russian émigrés – were moved by her babble – “D’ushen’ka” [“sweetheart”], addressed to each of the three lovers with equal naïve sincerity. Despite such losses, this clumsy Italian re-editing of a German film offers a curious example of the silent/sound “interregnum”." PETER BAGROV

AA: I checked just the beginning and observed the beautiful visual quality of this strange print and got an impression of the performances of Emil Jannings and Anna Sten in the direction of Robert Siodmak.

Fires of Youth

US 1917. Thanhouser / Pathé Gold Rooster Play, D: Émile Chautard; P: Edwin Thanhouser; SC: Agnes Christine Johnston; DP: Jacques Bizeul; ass D: James Ewens; C: Frederick Warde (Iron-Hearted Pemberton), Helen Badgley (Billy), Jeanne Eagels (Billy’s sister), Ernest Howard (Billy’s father), Robert Vaughn (Jim), James Ewens, Carey L. Hastings, Grace Stevens; orig. l: 5 rl.; 35 mm, incomplete, 2116 ft [3 rl.], 32' (18 fps); print source: Library of Congress Packard Campus for Audio Visual Conservation, Culpeper, VA. [Announced: English intertitles. Actually:] sous-titres français. Cinemazero, Le Giornate del Cinema Muto, Pordenone (Thanhouser), e-subtitles in Italian, grand piano: Bruno Gratini, 13 Oct 2012.

David Robinson: "In 1916, Thanhouser brought from the legitimate theatre the most outstanding actress his company was ever to employ – even though neither he nor anyone else fully realized it at the time. Jeanne Eagels (1890-1929) was still struggling up the theatrical ladder when she had her first remarked success in the touring company of Hubert Henry Davies’ play Outcast, in the role of a prostitute who becomes a faith healer, created in 1914 by Elsie Ferguson. The tour included a New York off-Broadway engagement, as a result of which Thanhouser engaged her for a film version of the play, retitled for the screen The World and the Woman (1916). The credits for this were exceptional, with Frank Lloyd and Eugene Moore as directors, and William C. de Mille and Philip Lonergan (younger brother of Lloyd) credited as writers. Eagels was apparently contracted to make two more films for Thanhouser, and in both of these – Fires of Youth and Under False Colors, in which she played a nihilist Russian countess – she was directed by Émile Chautard (1864-1934), a French stage actor who had turned film-maker at Éclair, and was to end his career as a Hollywood character actor. Chautard seems to have brought with him Alfred Machin’s former cinematographer, Jacques Bizeul, who was to have a fruitful Hollywood career until his death in 1925. By the time she made these two films, however, Jeanne Eagels had already achieved stardom with The Professor’s Love Story, the first of three successive productions in which she appeared with George Arliss in 1917. Five years later, her creation of the role of Sadie Thompson in Rain (1922) was to make her an enduring Broadway legend. Her biographers believe that it was this period, when she was filming all day in New Rochelle and rushing back to the Knickerbocker Theatre for the night’s performance, that began the dependence on drugs and alcohol that was to lead to her early death at 39. But her personal demons undoubtedly also included her acutely analytical and self critical passion for her art."

"Fires of Youth – certainly in the abbreviated versions that have survived – gives us little sense that we are watching one of the great 20th-century stage actresses. The film is, in fact, designed to star Frederick Warde (1851-1935), an English-born Broadway veteran who had worked with Edwin Booth and reached the peak of his popularity as a Shakespearean actor in the 1870s. In 1912, at 61, he made Richard III, regarded as the first American Shakespearean feature film, with which he toured, delivering lectures and monologues. For Thanhouser he made seven films, including King Lear and The Vicar of Wakefield. The screenplay is by Agnes Christine Johnson (1896-1978), a prolific writer whose later credits include Show People, The Patsy, and the Andy Hardy series. This though is a far-fetched melodrama about a wicked mill-owner whose conscience is awakened by the friendship – and subsequent injury in a factory accident – of little Billy, the son of a worker, played inevitably but admirably by Helen Badgley. Jeanne Eagels’ role as Billy’s sister gives her small scope, but while it is not possible here to recognize a great actress, she is certainly a very good one, restrained and with a natural response to the camera. Fires of Youth was the 1079th Thanhouser production. Only seven more films were completed before the company ceased operations and the studio was leased to the Clara Kimball Young Film Corporation." DAVID ROBINSON

AA: Fires of Youth is a movie of social awareness. The mother is afraid of accidents at the foundry; there is a disaster. There is deep feeling in the account of the profound sense of loss. The little daughter Billy sees Iron-Hearted Pemberton as the devil. The old millionaire's child is dead, and he plays with Billy, but the furious father forbids it. The foreman warns that salaries will have to be cut by a quarter. But in the end the salaries are raised and security measures upgraded. There is a storyline about the possibility of a May September romance ("l'automne si loin du printemps").

In true Thanhouser fashion there is a plain, sober, and mature approach to the storytelling regardless of how wild the plot turns may be.

Jeanne Eagels in one of her earliest film roles gives a natural and realistic performance as Billy's big sister.

From a battered and incomplete print with footage missing so much that the plot becomes incomprehensible. Partly the visual quality is good, partly the image has low contrast or a heavily duped or even a horribly disfigured character.

A Modern Monte Cristo

Eye for an Eye (Thanhouser / Pathé Gold Rooster Play, US 1917). D: W. Eugene Moore, Jr.; P: Edwin Thanhouser; SC: Lloyd F. Lonergan; DP: George Webber; C: Vincent Serrano (Dr. Emerson / Gen. Fonsca), Helen Badgley (Virginia Deane at age 6), Thomas A. Curran (William Deane), Gladys Dore (Virginia Deane at age 18), Boyd Marshall (Tom Pemberton), H.M. Rhinehardt (aviator); orig. l: 5 rl.; 35 mm, 1156 m, 56' (18 fps), col. (tinted & toned); print source: EYE Film Institute Netherlands, Amsterdam. English intertitles. Cinemazero, Le Giornate del Cinema Muto, Pordenone (Thanhouser), e-subtitles in Italian, grand piano: Bruno Gratini, 13 Oct 2012.

David Robinson: "Thanhouser’s gifted scenarist (and brother-in-law) Lloyd F. Lonergan conceived a present-day variation of the Dumas story: the modernity of the resulting revenge drama is stressed in inserted documents prominently displaying the date “1916”. Lonergan also introduces a favourite stock theme of early silent cinema: the ship-owner who sends an unseaworthy but heavily insured vessel to sea, unaware that his nearest and dearest is aboard. The trade press received it as a fairly routine melodrama: “This picture will suit the patrons of a theatre catering to average patronage” (New York Dramatic Mirror); “The feature will hold thrills for the less discriminating fans” (Variety). The Thanhouser company had always excelled at maritime scenes, and the film contains two dramatic storms and a shipwreck, convincingly filmed at Block Island, off the coast of Rhode Island. A novelty is the aerial rescue from a desert island."

"For the leading role of Dr. Emerson, Thanhouser turned to a Broadway artist who had made only one previous film, for Famous Players – the 1915 Lydia Gilmore, starring Pauline Frederick. Vincent Serrano (1866-1935) had enjoyed early stage success as Lieutenant Denton in Arizona (1900), a role which he was often to revive, and here proves an effective screen actor in the internalized Thanhouser style – despite his reported indignation at being submitted to aquatic dousings. He was to make several more silent films, and his stage career lasted until the long-running Rio Rita (1927). His arch-enemy is played by the Australian Thomas A. Curran (1879-1941), who ended his screen career in numerous uncredited walk-on roles – the last as Teddy Roosevelt in Citizen Kane. Boyd Marshall (1884-1950), whom the company publicized as “the handsomest man in the movies”, made 100 films, exclusively for Thanhouser, between 1913 and 1917, but then returned to his modestly successful career in vaudeville and musicals. Playing the child, Helen Badgley (1908-1977) was perhaps the company’s longest-serving actor, appearing in 105 films between 1911 and 1917." – DAVID ROBINSON

AA: A completely new story with some links to the Monte-Cristo story (= lifelong revenge, new identity). There is a strong and dramatic opening: at a dinner table Dr. Emerson tells about the strange challenges that doctors can face in their profession. Today he has been offered $5.000 by an inheritor if the operation for a patient is unsuccessful. The patient dies, and the ship-owner William Deane denounces Emerson to the police, lying that Emerson has told him that he planned to let the patient die. Emerson fakes suicide. Six years later Deane plans an insurance fraud, planning a shipwreck of a heavily insured ship of his. But unbeknownst to him, his six year old daughter Virginia has hid herself in the ship and is about to die, but a sailor who is "a doctor-man" (Emerson) saves her life. The ship drowns but Emerson and little Virginia are saved on a desert island (Greble Island = Dutch Island). There Emerson finds a lot of pearl mussels. A test pilot discovers them, and as there is room for only one passenger on the plane, Virginia is rescued. 12 years later: "General Fonsca, the wealthiest man in Brazil" appears as Deane is about to face absolute ruin. Fonsca wants to marry the now 18 year old Virginia, but she is in love with the young Pemberton, and she recognizes Fonsca as "my doctor-man".

In Thanhouser style the approach is sober to the story with many wild turns.

The image is at times beautiful and the sepia toning charming in a print of variable visual quality.

Die freudlose Gasse / The Joyless Street (2012 print of the Filmmuseum München 1989-2009 restoration)

G. W. Pabst: Die freudlose Gasse / The Joyless Street (DE 1925).

Iloton katu / Den glädjelosa gatan / L’ammaliatrice / Street of Sorrows (Sofar-Film-Produktion GmbH, DE 1925).
    D: G. W. Pabst; P: Michael Salkind, Romain Pinès, G. W. Pabst, Mark Sorkin; SC: Willy Haas, based on the novel by Hugo Bettauer; ED: Mark Sorkin, G. W. Pabst; DP: Guido Seeber, Curt Oertel, Walter Robert Lach; AD: Hans Sohnle, Otto Erdmann; Ass. D: Anatole Litvak.
    C: Asta Nielsen (Maria Lechner), Greta Garbo (Grete Rumfort), Gräfin [Countess], Agnes Esterhazy (Regina Rosenow), Werner Krauß (butcher), Henry Stuart (Egon Stirner), Einar Hanson (Lieutenant Davis, US Army), Grigori Chmara (waiter), Karl Etlinger (General Director Rosenow), Ilka Grüning (his wife), Jaro Fürth (Councillor Rumfort), Robert Garrison (Ganez), Tamara Tolstoi (Lia Leid), Valeska Gert (Frau Greifer), Hertha von Walther (Else), Mario Cusmich (Col. Irving, US Army), Max Kohlhase (Maria’s father), Silvia Torf (Maria’s mother), Alexander Mursky (Dr. Leid, a lawyer), Gräfin [Countess] Tolstoi (Fräulein Henriette), Edna Markstein (Frau Merkl), Otto Reinwald (Else’s husband), M. Raskatoff (Trebitsch), Kraft Raschig (American soldier), Loni Nest (Miriandl Rumfort)
    Première: 18.5.1925 (Berlin); 35 mm, 3270 m, 150' (19 fps), col. (tinted, Desmet method); print source: Filmmuseum München (printed 2012). Deutsche Zwischentitel.
    Teatro Verdi, Le Giornate del Cinema Muto, Pordenone, e-subtitles in English and Italian, grand piano: Antonio Coppola, 12 Oct 2012.

Restored version 1989–2009, this print 2012, first screening in Pordenone. The hand-tinting without splices to this print was performed by Synchro Film. Original length: 3738 m. There are still approximately 500 m / half an hour missing.

My notes on a 2 March 1998 viewing of Die freudlose Gasse (1972 ZDF Tonfassung / Gerd Luft, Jürgen Labenski).  

Nicholas Baer: "In an early scene of Georg Wilhelm Pabst’s Die freudlose Gasse (The Joyless Street, 1925), a well-to-do woman suggests visiting the Viennese underworld while disguised in costume – “just like in the movies!” This self-reflexive line not only demonstrates Pabst’s awareness of his own cinematic construction of urban space; it also highlights the obliviousness of the city’s haute bourgeoisie, whose image of working-class quarters is filtered through sensationalist crime films. Acknowledging the crucial function of visual media in envisioning “how the other half lives”, Pabst’s film attempts to offer a verisimilar representation of both halves of Vienna during a period of economic polarization."

"The film initially juxtaposes Vienna’s two halves through parallel editing between an extravagant party at a luxury hotel and an extended line outside a butcher shop; abundance, gaiety, and gratification are counterposed to hunger, misery, and deferral. Pabst elaborates upon the city’s class dynamics and economic workings by establishing spatial hierarchies along vertical axes, by differentiating between affluent foreign speculators and struggling Viennese residents, and by revealing illicit affairs that occur behind respectable façades. Furthermore, through the inclusion of no fewer than 22 characters within four interwoven plot lines, The Joyless Street presents a veritable crosssection of a highly stratified Viennese society."

"In emphasizing the great disparity between rich and poor, The Joyless Street follows an aesthetic trajectory of films that deploy editing as a means of moral juxtaposition. In particular, Pabst’s film recalls D. W. Griffith’s A Corner in Wheat (1909), which likewise cross-cuts between a lavish banquet and an extended breadline, as well as his Isn’t Life Wonderful? (1924), which shows a long queue outside a butcher shop in inflation-era Berlin. Filmed contemporaneously with Griffith’s film, F.W. Murnau’s Der letzte Mann (The Last Laugh, 1924) similarly contrasts the destitute lives of German hotel attendants with the fortunes of American visitors."

"Set in 1921, The Joyless Street evokes the acute turmoil of the postwar years, when Austrians faced a disorienting and  disconcerting new sociopolitical reality. The 1919 Treaty of Saint-Germain-en-Laye had stipulated the dissolution of the Austro-Hungarian Empire into a new Republic of Austria, and the diminution of Austria’s territory and population, as well as the payment of large reparations for the Great War. Following this Treaty, long-standing political structures lost their bases, and traditional social hierarchies and distinctions were devalued."

"Like Germany, Hungary, and Poland, Austria underwent a period of hyperinflation in the early 1920s, with dramatic price increases and rapid depreciation of its currency. Though these countries’ national currencies stabilized by mid-decade, residents maintained a strong awareness of their economies’ precariousness and foreign dependency. Germany only found economic relief through the 1924 Dawes Plan, which reduced war reparation payments and provided American loans. The Joyless Street allegorizes such foreign aid, one might argue, in the form of two officers from the United States Army. The very production of Pabst’s film relied on forms of outside support and transnational exchange within this post-war “new world order”. The film was financed by Romain Pinès, a Russian Jew based in Paris, and produced by La Société des Films Artistiques, or “Sofar-Film” for short. Led by Russian-born Michael Salkind, this independent firm gave Pabst and his creative team a degree of autonomy otherwise unimaginable within an increasingly American-controlled German studio system."

"Written by Czech literary editor Willy Haas, The Joyless Street was based on a popular 1924 crime novel (originally serialized in Vienna’s Der Tag) by Austrian writer Hugo Bettauer. The film, Pabst’s third, was shot in Berlin during February and March of 1925, and premiered in the Berliner Mozartsaal on 18 May. The film features a multinational cast including veteran Danish movie star Asta Nielsen, German stage and film actor Werner Krauß, and German-Jewish dancer and cabaret artist Valeska Gert, as well as glamorous young Swedish actress Greta Garbo, who left for Hollywood later that year."

"Positioned at the cusp of Expressionism and New Objectivity, The Joyless Street can be associated with various cinematic genres, styles, and modes. Through its naturalist depiction of a working-class milieu and sustained interest in urban space, Pabst’s film reveals affinities with Weimar “street films” such as Karl Grune’s Die Straße (The Street, 1923) and Bruno Rahn’s Dirnentragödie (Tragedy of the Street, 1927). The film’s seedy locales, corrupt characters, and expressive lighting techniques also prefigure those of later film noirs made by German and Austrian directors in American exile. Finally, Pabst’s film aligns itself with melodrama or the “woman’s film” in identifying unmanageable social forces and highlighting women’s limited options under desperate circumstances."

"Indeed, like Pabst’s later Die Büchse der Pandora (Pandora’s Box, 1929), The Joyless Street focuses especially on the circulation and circumscription of women during periods of crisis. The film emphasizes patterns of female display and objectification through the proliferation of windows, mirrors, mannequins, and tableaux vivants within the mise-en-scène. Moreover, recurring images of meat and fur coats evoke the dehumanizing situations into which women are forced, as well as their fetishization and reduction into pure physicality. Pabst’s film indicates that the status of women was particularly fraught with contradictions in the post-war years, when female agency was both a necessary means of survival and a source of masculine anxiety. During this period, an increasingly dispossessed and proletarianized middle class retained outmoded, constrictive, and even inimical bourgeois values. These values, the film suggests, were decisively at odds with the roles available to women, whose bodies served as objects of reliable exchange-value."

"Much as Ernst Bloch identified a temporal non-simultaneity (Ungleichzeitigkeit) resulting from the uneven rate of socioeconomic processes, Pabst’s film emphasizes the persistence of anachronistic social mores under new economic conditions. The film’s allusions to the Bible and to Dante’s “Gate of Hell” often gain ironic connotations in post-war, crisis-ridden Vienna. Furthermore, many of the film’s formal and stylistic devices – its multiple flashbacks, instances of reenactment, and slow-motion shots of Garbo – convey the sense that “time is out of joint”."

"Censored upon its release for its frank sexuality, brute violence, and inflammatory ending, The Joyless Street may itself have been untimely. Pabst’s film was twice shortened by the German censors, and other countries also trimmed, tweaked, or even banned the film on moral and political grounds. Recent decades have witnessed many reconstruction efforts, though it would now never be possible to establish with certainty a complete version as Pabst intended it. The Giornate is happy to be able to screen this premiere of the new restoration by Filmmuseum München and Filmarchiv Austria, done under the supervision of Stefan Drössler. Even with its abridgments and alterations, The Joyless Street remains rich, multifaceted, and resonant – especially in our own period of socioeconomic upheaval." NICHOLAS BAER

The Restoration

Stefan Drössler: "The Joyless Street was never a lost film, yet all extant copies are mere fragments, sometimes drastically changed and  mutilated due to censorship cuts and re-arrangements of scenes that aimed to defuse the film’s daring story of poverty, prostitution, financial speculation, and the ramifications and mastery of power. Unfortunately, no complete German version of the film survives. Without the first German censorship record, which documents all the film’s titles and would thus offer a reliable framework to arrange the sequence of scenes and the numerous shots within them, any reconstruction must remain merely a tentative approximation of the missing original."

"The surviving script of the film is so extensive that Pabst kept deviating from it, eliminating, combining, or rearranging many scenes. Thus, it is as unreliable as the film’s foreign versions, which all fall short of the film’s documented original release length. The exact circumstances of why, how, and by whom the various versions were created remain elusive. However, it is certain that titles were modified not only in translation but also out of necessity, to bridge narrative gaps caused by cuts and re-editing, or to invent new motivations for the plot. Even the sole surviving German censorship record from March 1926 represents a version already 200 metres shorter than the original length, and whether it still retained authentic titles remains unknown."

"In 1989 Enno Patalas created a first reconstruction of the film at Filmmuseum München. For the order of scenes and titles he entirely relied on the script, however with necessary modifications or edits to conform to the content and rhythm of the scenes at hand. A comparison of all extant nitrate copies of the film was the basis of the second restoration of the film, begun in 1995 under Jan-Christopher Horak and concluded in 1998. Due to the deplorable condition of extant materials, shots of the domestic A-negative had already been combined out of necessity with those from the export B-negative in the first restoration. This time, it was our goal to use material from only one of these sources, at least within each scene. Additionally, newly discovered shots from lost scenes – possibly outtakes – could be taken into consideration. Choosing the wording of titles, translations back to German from foreign prints were now preferred over phrases from the script. Since three of the available original copies were coloured, albeit differently, a colour concept was developed for the new version and implemented using the Desmet process."

"The version at hand was created by Filmmuseum München under my supervision for the 2009 DVD edition. For the first time, the graphic design of the titles, based on five original titles surviving in a fragment of the film, was taken into account. In creating the new titles, further scrutiny and correction of the phrasing was possible thanks to a contemporary souvenir programme, which was compared to the original script. Some instances of editing were also changed. The “happy ending” described in the script, which had been placed in the middle of Act 9 in the second reconstruction with rather little motivation, was moved back prior to the last scene of the burning house – although a conceivable reading of sources could also suggest placing it at the very end of the film. The new 35 mm print being premiered at the Giornate del Cinema Muto was prepared in collaboration with Filmarchiv Austria, and authentically tinted at Synchro Film, Vienna, allowing further improvement of the pictorial quality and colours." – STEFAN DRÖSSLER

AA: The first screening of this new colour print of the latest Munich restoration. There is a magnificent feeling of the epoch and the society. The epic, novelistic qualities of the movie are enhanced by the added details, as essential as in Erich von Stroheim's films. They are all part of a vital, organic, vibrant whole. From very challenging, often heavily battered and heartbreakingly duped sources (with even facial features sometimes lost) the Munich Film Museum has created a powerful reconstruction during many decades, now improved and providing the best version that has been available since the first run.

Resonant features this time, in the screening of the movie about the tragedies on Melchior Street:
– the stock exchange speculation plotline
– Agnes Esterhazy as Regina gives a performance stronger than the famous stars Asta Nielsen and Greta Garbo
– the bordello madame (Valeska Gert) mentions that with moving images one can earn well
– Viennese squalor offered as entertainment for tourists and rich people
– first Regina has rejected the love of Egon because she is rich and he is poor, but when Regina, too, loses her wealth, they can connect
– the US [Red Cross] Army soldier Davis (Einar Hanson) first believes that Grete Rumfort (Greta Garbo) is guilty of vice, squandering her means to "Glanz, Luxus, Sittenlosigkeit"
– like in A Woman of Affairs screened the next day, Garbo is actually nobler than the others and a victim of misunderstanding
– the young couple exhausted by hunger
– the young mother committing a desperate deed with the butcher
– the mobile camera following the young mother
– their family perishing in the attic fire tinted red, the baby rescued in a bundle.

German Animation, 1910–1930 2: The Wonderful World of Things

Walter Ruttmann: Der Sieger / The Winner (Werbefilm GmbH, Berlin, for Excelsior Reifen, Hannoversche Gummiwerke, Hannover, DE 1922). D: Walter Ruttmann; P: Julius Pinschewer. Photo: Filmwissen Online: Haus des Dokumentarfilms: Meister der Reklame: Werbefilmpionier Julius Pinschewer.

German Animation, 1910–1930 2: Il meraviglioso mondo delle cose / The Wonderful World of Things. Teatro Verdi, Le Giornate del Cinema Muto, Pordenone (German Animation), e-subtitles in English and Italian, grand piano: Günter A. Buchwald, 12 Oct 2012.

DER ZAHNTEUFEL [Il diavolo dei denti / The Tooth Devil] (Werbefilm GmbH, Berlin, for Beiersdorf & Co. GmbH, Hamburg, DE 1915?/1921?). D: Harry Jaeger; P: Julius Pinschewer; 35 mm, 58 m, 2'32" (20–22 fps), col. (tinted); anim: hand-drawn; print source: Bundesarchiv-Filmarchiv, Berlin. Deutsche Zwischentitel.

"This commercial for Pebeco toothpaste might be Harry Jaeger’s first animated film (it is unclear whether it was made in 1915 or 1921 – censorship documents say 1921, Pinschewer says it was made in 1915). Jaeger started out as a photographer; during World War I he was trained as a cameraman at BUFA (Bild- und Filmamt), the war ministry’s umbrella organization for all government and military film, founded in January 1917. After the war Jaeger worked for Julius Pinschewer, as well as a number of other advertising film producers." ANNETTE GROSCHKE & DORIS HACKBARTH.

AA: It is literally the Devil himself who is attacking the tooth with his drill. Zu Hilfe! Luckily there is the Pebesco toothpaste whose very existence frightens the devil. 

DER SIEGER [Il vincitore / The Winner] (Werbefilm GmbH, Berlin, for Excelsior Reifen, Hannoversche Gummiwerke, Hannover, DE 1922). D: Walter Ruttmann; P: Julius Pinschewer; 35 mm, 50 m, 2'11’’ (20 fps), col. (hand-coloured); anim: hand-drawn, cut-outs; print source: Bundesarchiv-Filmarchiv, Berlin. Deutsche Zwischentitel.

"An abstract commercial for Excelsior automobile tires."

"Walter Ruttmann (1887–1941) began studying architecture in 1907 in Zürich; two years later he changed to painting, first in Munich, then in Marburg. He served as an artillery lieutenant at the Eastern Front from 1914 and returned home as a pacifist in 1917. In 1920 he founded the company Ruttmann-Film GmbH in Munich and patented his animation stand. The animation stand, the first such device to be patented in Germany, was used to make the first animated abstract film in colour with the accompaniment of a specially composed musical score, Lichtspiel Opus I (1921). Ruttmann subsequently made several commercials with abstract elements for Pinschewer." ANNETTE GROSCHKE & DORIS HACKBARTH.

AA: A purely Ruttmannian animation, tending towards abstraction (circles, wheels, flames, waves, stairs). Fine colour in this print. Wonderful. *

DAS WUNDER [Il miracolo / The Miracle] (Werbefilm GmbH, Berlin, for Kantorowicz, DE 1922). D: Walter Ruttmann; P: Julius Pinschewer; 35 mm, 48 m, 2'05" (20 fps), col.; anim: hand-drawn, cut-outs; print source: Bundesarchiv-Filmarchiv, Berlin. Deutsche Zwischentitel.

"A commercial for Kantorowicz liqueur."

AA: Another typical Ruttmann animation with reduced figures. Colour is essential, and the colours (red, green, yellow) are good in this print.

DER ERSTE EHEZWIST [La prima disputa coniugale / The First Marital Dispute] (Döring-Film Werke, Hannover, for Spanetti, DE 1924). D: Resl Bucher, Karl Pindl; 35 mm, 82 m., 3'59’’ (18 fps), col. (tinted & toned); anim: hand-drawn; print source: Deutsche Kinemathek, Berlin. Deutsche Zwischentitel.

"An animated commercial for the chocolate brand Spanetti. The animator’s hand draws a woman who is waiting for her husband to return home. He arrives intoxicated, which earns him a thorough beating. Only a bar of Spanetti milk chocolate soothes the furious woman. The husband and wife are sucked back into the animator’s pen." ANNETTE GROSCHKE & DORIS HACKBARTH.

AA: An "out of the inkwell" style framework: the figures to the marital drama emerge from the artist's ink pen. Amor springs to help with his advice and a Spinetti chocolate bar brings back the bliss. The titles are in verse.

DER HARTNÄCKIGE SELBSTMÖRDER [Il suicida ostinato / The Stubborn Suicide] (Werbe-Kunst-Film AG, Berlin, DE 1925). D: Curt Schumann; 35 mm, 51 m, 2'01" (22 fps), col. (tinted); anim: hand-drawn; print source: Deutsche Kinemathek, Berlin. Deutsche Zwischentitel.

"A man wants to commit suicide. This advertising film for department stores contains empty spaces (a plaque outside a building and a card held up at the end) for the insertion of a client’s name." ANNETTE GROSCHKE & DORIS HACKBARTH.

AA: The return of the suicide plot in a commercial. With little success the man tries to hang himself and poison himself with gas. But luckily there is an entirely different solution to the dilemma of life: clothes make a man.

IN SCHNEEKÖNIGS REICH [Nella terra del re delle nevi / In the Kingdom of the Snow Giant] (Deulig-Film AG, Berlin, DE 1926). D: Ewald Mathias Schumacher; 35 mm, 89 m, 3'53" (20–22 fps), col. (tinted); anim: silhouette; print source: Bundesarchiv-Filmarchiv, Berlin. Deutsche Zwischentitel.

"A commercial made by Ewald Mathias Schumacher, whose silhouette animations are sometimes mistaken for Lotte Reiniger films. The ruler of the Pole kidnaps the princess of the Orient. His frosty realm makes her recoil in horror, but thanks to a nice bath drawn from his modern hot water tank he wins her heart after all. The film’s client is unknown." ANNETTE GROSCHKE & DORIS HACKBARTH.

AA: It is easy to understand that Schumacher's work may be mistaken for Reiniger's as his style is refined in this silhouette fairy-tale with cranes and the oriental woman frozen in ice and snow and saved by a hot bath.

FLAMMENTANZ [Danza delle fiamme / Dance of the Flames] (Deulig-Film AG, Berlin, DE 1926). D: Ewald Mathias Schumacher; 35 mm, 59 m, 2'34" (20–22 fps), col. (hand-coloured); anim: silhouette; print source: Bundesarchiv-Filmarchiv, Berlin. Deutsche Zwischentitel.

"This gorgeous film combines the colours of the rainbow with a ballet of flame-bearing fantasy figures. The film’s client is unknown." ANNETTE GROSCHKE & DORIS HACKBARTH.

AA: Another fine silhouette animation by Schumacher, with a wizard and the dance of the flames, advertising Gaskoks = gas coke.

DAS ZÜNDHOLZ [Il fiammifero / The Matchstick] (Werbefilm GmbH, Berlin, for GEG deutscher Consumvereine [Großeinkaufsgesellschaft Deutscher Consumvereine mbH], Hamburg, DE 1926). D: Lutz Michaelis; P: Julius Pinschewer; 35 mm, 89 m, 3'32" (22 fps), col. (tinted); anim: hand-drawn; print source: Bundesarchiv-Filmarchiv, Berlin. Deutsche Zwischentitel.

"One of the outstanding features of the Pinschewer productions is the precision of the colouring methods. In this commercial for GEG safety matches the bright red tinting in the fire scenes is combined with a green speech bubble." ANNETTE GROSCHKE & DORIS HACKBARTH.

AA: A matchstick commercial in verse, the story of all the trouble one can have with matchsticks until one understands to select GEG safety matches, "imprägniert ohne Nachglut".

// not shown FELITA, DIE KATZE [La gatta Felita / Felita the Cat] (Werbe-Kunst-Film AG, Berlin, for Eltgas, DE 1926). D: Curt Schumann; 35 mm, 84 m, 3'20" (22 fps), col. (tinted); anim: hand-drawn; print source: Bundesarchiv-Filmarchiv, Berlin. Deutsche Zwischentitel.

"Felita the Cat lives in a house full of electrical appliances by Eltgas. She uses them to cook a mouse and to get ready for her rendezvous with a Felix look-alike who serenades her in her front yard." ANNETTE GROSCHKE & DORIS HACKBARTH. not shown //

IM FILMATELIER [Nello studio cinematografico / At the Film Studio] (Pinschewer-Film, Berlin, for Bayer, Leverkusen, DE 1927). D: Gerda Otto, Hedwig Otto; P: Julius Pinschewer; 35 mm, 97 m., 3'32" (24 fps); anim: stop-motion; print source: Bundesarchiv-Filmarchiv, Berlin. Deutsche Zwischentitel.

"This puppet stop-motion film made by Hedwig Otto (b. 23.3.1873, Berlin) and her daughter Gerda (b. 31.3.1897, Berlin) features a languishing actress at a film studio. While she is being plagued by a headache her director uses the opportunity to shoot a commercial for Bayer Aspirin. It’s unknown where the mother and daughter team learned their craft, so perhaps they were self-taught masters of the stop-motion technique and the building of lovingly detailed miniature sets and dolls. Together they made at least three stop-motion commercials for Pinschewer-Film AG, all of which are preserved at the Bundesarchiv-Filmarchiv." ANNETTE GROSCHKE & DORIS HACKBARTH.

AA: A Bayer Aspirin commercial about the headaches one can have when a film star is being photographed at a film studio.

NUR DU! [Solo tu! / Only You!] (Mode-Film-Vertrieb, Berlin, DE 1927). D: ?; C: Ernst Hofmann, Tala Birell; 35 mm, 125 m, 4'33" (24 fps); anim: live action, hand-drawn; print source: Bundesarchiv-Filmarchiv, Berlin. Deutsche Zwischentitel.

"An early example of a well-known actor doing advertising work: Ernst Hofmann can be seen here opposite Tala Birell in a commercial for stockings which combines live-action and animation. Before shooting this ad Hofmann (1890-1944) had appeared in more than 80 silent films, including Algol (1920, Hans Werckmeister) and Satanas (1920, F.W. Murnau). One of the earliest known films combining live-action and animation is J. Stuart Blackton’s The Enchanted Drawing (1900,  Vitagraph). One of the earliest surviving German films to do so is Louis Seel’s Münchner Filmbilderbogen Nr. 9 (1922), which is now held at Filmmuseum München. In April 1921 Svend Noldan and Hans Pander registered a German patent for a method of combining live-action and animation." ANNETTE GROSCHKE & DORIS HACKBARTH.

AA: A sepia-coloured stocking commercial combining live action and animation, showing the difficulties one can have with runs in the stocking when one does not understand to select good stockings.

HERR JEDERMANN IST WISSENSDURSTIG! [Il signor Qualunque è assetato di sapere / Mr. Everyman Is Thirsty for Knowledge!] (Werbekunst Epoche Reklame GmbH, Berlin, for Meyers Lexikon, DE 1928). D: Hans Fischerkoesen; SC: Wilhelm Thiele?; 35 mm, 57 m, 2'16" (22 fps), col. (tinted); anim: hand-drawn; print source: Bundesarchiv-Filmarchiv, Berlin. Deutsche Zwischentitel.

"Hans Fischer was born in 1896 in Bad Kösen, the source of his selfcreated pseudonym “Fischerkoesen”. He worked for the Pinschewer studios and also started his own studio for animation films in 1920, Dux-Film Leipzig, which became Fischerkoesen-Film in 1929. In this advertising film for Meyers Lexikon, a popular German encyclopedia, Mr. Everyman, thirsty for knowledge, wants to look up information on “Mussolini, voting rights, cocaine”, which rhymes in the German version with “taxes, radio, Tauentzien”."

"One of the most prolific graphic artists of silent animation films, Fischerkoesen made more than 50 films for Julius Pinschewer from 1920 to 1928. In 1928 he became head of the design department at the advertising film section of Ufa, which competed with Pinschewer. He reached the height of his career as an advertising film producer in West Germany in the 1950s, when he made millions in turnover, employed more than 50 people, and was called the “German Disney” by the newsmagazine Der Spiegel." ANNETTE GROSCHKE & DORIS HACKBARTH.

AA: Before the internet: encyclopedias such as Meyer Lexikon were all-important, "im Sommer 1930 vollständig". It could replace a whole case of books.

PITJE BACKSPIER ALS PELZJÄGER [Pitje Backspier cacciatore di pellicce / Pitje Backspier as Fur Hunter] (Ewald-Film GmbH, for Sanitas, DE 1928). D: ?; 35 mm, 67 m, 2'55" (20 fps), col. (tinted); anim: hand-drawn; print source: Bundesarchiv-Filmarchiv, Berlin. Deutsche Zwischentitel.

"A slightly surreal commercial starring Captain Pitje Backspier, who uses his Sanitas brand hair-dryer to power his sail boat, gain blubber from a walrus, and get a polar bear’s fur. The normal actual use of a hair-dryer is never pictured, but we are informed that over half a million have already been sold." ANNETTE GROSCHKE & DORIS HACKBARTH.

AA: A crazy, absurd animation where the hair-dryer has multiple uses as explained above. A commercial in verse with a fine blue hue for the Arctic Ocean.

KÜCHENREBELLEN [Ribelli in cucina / Kitchen Rebels] (Pinschewer-Film AG, Berlin, for Lever Brothers, DE 1928). D: ?; P: Julius Pinschewer; 35 mm, 100 m, 3'38" (24 fps); anim: live action, stop-motion; print source: Bundesarchiv-Filmarchiv, Berlin. Deutsche Zwischentitel.

"When a kitchen maid does not succeed in cleaning the cooking utensils properly, some of them come to her rescue by getting her some VIM scouring powder at the local drugstore. This commercial was re-released in a sound version in 1934." ANNETTE GROSCHKE & DORIS HACKBARTH.

AA: A stop motion animation about the maid and her trouble in cleansing the kitchen utensils (a rolling pin, a pot, a jug) until VIM scouring powder provides the solution.

DAS WETTERHÄUSCHEN [La casetta del tempo / The Little Weather-House] (Pinschewer-Film AG, Berlin, for IG-Farben, Leverkusen, DE 1929). D: Gerda Otto, Hedwig Otto; P: Julius Pinschewer; 35 mm, 120 m., 4'46" (22 fps), col. (hand-coloured); anim: stop-motion; print source: Bundesarchiv-Filmarchiv, Berlin. Deutsche Zwischentitel.

"The second surviving stop-motion film by Gerda and Hedwig Otto. The inhabitants of a weather-house are caught out by a sudden rain shower. Her dress is ruined, and they go downtown together to find a replacement. Her new outfit, and their new curtains and tablecloth, are made with colour-fast and light-resistant Indanthren textiles. This film won an award in 1929 at the first international commercial film competition at the advertising fair in Berlin. (For information about Gerda and Hedwig Otto, see the entry for Im Filmatelier earlier in this programme.)" ANNETTE GROSCHKE & DORIS HACKBARTH.

AA: A puppet animation about a loving couple in a little weather-house, exposed to sun and rain, finding a solution in Indanthren textiles. A rooster understands what it's all about.

DIE KATASTROPHE [La catastrofe / The Catastrophe] (Pinschewer-Film AG, Berlin, for GEG Deutscher Consumvereine [Großeinkaufsgesellschaft Deutscher Consumvereine mbH], Hamburg, DE 1930). D: Leni Fischer; P: Julius Pinschewer; 35 mm, 113 m, 4'29" (22–24 fps); anim: hand-drawn; print source: Bundesarchiv-Filmarchiv, Berlin. Deutsche Zwischentitel.

"This commercial for the washing-powder brand GEG-Famos is like a mini-documentary on the tedious techniques of doing the laundry before modern washing machines were invented. Who can still imagine that it took two whole days of hard manual labour until one had fresh sheets again? Leni Fischer, Fischerkoesen’s sister, had been working with him in the 1920s and rejoined him after World War II when he reopened his animation film studio in West Germany." ANNETTE GROSCHKE & DORIS HACKBARTH.

AA: The catastrophe of the title is the fact that the hen and the rooster walk over the linen left to dry. The GEG-Famos washing-powder supposedly helps prevent catastrophes such as this.

[WERBEFILM FÜR TISCHTÜCHER VON BIELSCHOWSKY] [Film pubblicitario per le tovaglie Bielschowsky / Commercial for Bielschowsky Tablecloths] (?, for Bielschowsky, DE, c.1920-29?). D: ?; 35 mm, 20 m, 43" (24 fps), col. (tinted); anim: hand-drawn; print source: Bundesarchiv-Filmarchiv, Berlin. Deutsche Zwischentitel.

"A husband and wife try to escape from a burning building. While he crashes through a flimsy jumping sheet held by the fire-fighters, she lands safely on her tablecloth made by Bielschowsky." ANNETTE GROSCHKE & DORIS HACKBARTH.

AA: Effective red colour for the fire.

[WERBEFILM FÜR DIE NEUE FORD-LIMOUSINE] [Film pubblicitario per la nuova Ford Limousine / Ford Commercial] (?, for Ford Motor Company, DE, c.1920–29?). D: ?; 35 mm, 53 m, 1'55" (24 fps), col. (tinted); anim: hand-drawn; print source: Bundesarchiv-Filmarchiv, Berlin. Deutsche Zwischentitel.

"An Eskimo in a racing car abducts a polar bear mother’s children. She flings away her knitting and borrows the new Ford limousine from the North Pole garage. After a quick chase she rescues her children." ANNETTE GROSCHKE & DORIS HACKBARTH.

AA: An absurd animation about the polar bear family reunited with the help of the new Ford limousine.

The sum of these two German animation programmes 1910–1930 is of a magical dance of objects of consumption. They are largely commercials, but especially now that many of the brands no longer exist even they have become like fiction. Great talent is evident also in the animations made by less known artists. The visual quality of the show is good. The programmes have been very well mounted with funny links between movies that follow each other. The concept in the commercials that life's problems can be solved by using a certain product is ridiculous, and one feels one is laughing with the artists at such notions.

The Ne'er-Do-Well

US 1916. PC: Selig Polyscope Company. D: Colin Campbell; ass D: Al [Alfred E.] Green; SC: Lanier Bartlett (n.c., based on the novel by Rex Beach (1911); DP: Harry Gerstad; tech. dir: Gabriel Pollock; C: Wheeler Oakman (Kirk Anthony), Kathlyn Williams (Mrs. Edith Cortlandt), Harry Lonsdale (Stephen Cortlandt), Frank Clarke [sic; Clark] (Darwin K. Anthony), Norma Nichols (Chiquita Garavel), Will Machin (Locke) Jack McDonald (Allan Allan), Sidney Smith (Ramón Alfarez), Fred Huntley (Andres Garavel), Lamar Johnstone (Runnels), Harry De Vere (detective Williams); première: 19.4.1916 (Los Angeles); orig. l: 10 rl.; 35 mm, incomplete, 8447 ft [8.5 rl.], 125' (18 fps); print source: Library of Congress Packard Campus for Audio Visual Conservation, Culpeper, VA. English intertitles. Teatro Verdi, Le Giornate del Cinema Muto, Pordenone (Selig Polyscope), e-subtitles in Italian, grand piano: Neil Brand, 12 Oct 2012.

Andrew Erish: "For his second 2-hour feature, Selig chose to follow up The Spoilers with an adaptation of another Rex Beach novel. The Ne’er-Do-Well is a Selig masterpiece. Instead of re-creating the novel’s Panamanian exteriors on his Los Angeles backlot and supplementing them with actuality footage, he followed the strategy begun in 1904 with his production of Westerns by incurring the additional expense and hardship of producing The Ne’er-Do-Well amidst the actual Canal Zone settings in Beach’s novel."

"On 4 January 1915, a company of 14, led by director Colin Campbell and stars Wheeler Oakman and Kathlyn Williams, sailed from New Orleans to Panama. Within the month they were joined by William Selig, who personally oversaw most of the production. In addition to the Selig contract players, the two-month-long production employed scores of American soldiers and Panamanian and Jamaican Canal workers as extras. The exotic location also benefited from the utilization of the old Panama prison, exteriors and interiors of mansions built by the Spanish aristocracy, shantytowns, jungle locations, and the actual Canal itself. The filming appears to have gone smoothly, with one tragic exception: Helen Castle, engaged to play the second female lead of Chiquita Garavel, became seriously ill during the voyage to Panama and was returned to New Orleans, where she died."

"Although advertised at 10 reels, the only known surviving print of The Ne’er-Do-Well runs 8½ reels. Wheeler Oakman stars as Kirk Anthony, the wastrel son of a New York millionaire. As a practical joke Kirk’s rowdy friends put the inebriated playboy on a boat bound for Panama. Aboard ship, Kirk is befriended by smitten socialite Mrs. Edith Cortlandt (Kathlyn Williams), whose husband has been appointed to a diplomatic post in Panama. Upon arriving in Colón, penniless Kirk learns his father has disowned him. He’s befriended by Allan Allan, who alerts Mrs. Cortlandt to Kirk’s predicament. Mrs. Cortlandt and Kirk take day trips inspecting the construction of the Canal, go horseback riding in the jungle, and spend the night together on a small island after missing the last ferry home. Kirk later falls in love with the beautiful Chiquita, the daughter of an aspiring politician. Shortly after Kirk and Chiquita secretly marry, Cortlandt accuses Kirk of having an affair with his wife, then returns home and begs for her love. Mrs. Cortlandt coldly orders him out of the house, and her distraught husband commits suicide. Kirk is accused of murdering Cortlandt and arrested. The film’s happy ending isn’t surprising, though how the resolution is achieved both cinematically and within the narrative is fraught with several unexpected nuances."

"Colin Campbell’s direction and the editing of The Ne’er-Do-Well are more sophisticated than The Spoilers, with much more cutting within individual scenes, tighter compositions, close-ups and inserts, and a greater tendency to photograph the subjects at more aesthetically pleasing angles rather than head-on. Dynamic tracking shots are also very much in evidence, from Oakman and friends driving down Broadway to several stunning images of Williams and Oakman aboard a train touring the Canal and traveling past discarded machinery and shantytowns."

"The production makes extraordinary use of its locations, from the throngs of black Panamanians filling the waterfront, slums, and redlight districts of Colón, to the aristocratic mansions of Ancón with verandas abutting the dense jungle. The employment of black extras stands in marked contrast to actor Jack McDonald’s blackface makeup, though a scene in which Kirk defends his friend’s decision to sit at the front of a railroad car in defiance of segregation policies indicates a particularly progressive attitude for 1915."

"Just as unique as the Central American location is The Ne’er-Do-Well’s attitude toward miscegenation. Only the father expresses any apprehension over the union of his white son with a brown-skinned Panamanian, which quickly dissipates. Chiquita’s rejection of the black-skinned policeman Alfarez is not the result of racial prejudice but rather because she loves another. Such acceptance of romance between the races would soon be forbidden during Hollywood’s “Golden Age.”"

"Sol Lesser, who earned a small fortune distributing The Spoilers in several Western states, paid $150,000 cash for exclusive United States distribution rights for The Ne’er-Do-Well, though no records survive to indicate how it performed at the box office. Rex Beach’s novel was filmed again in 1923 by Alfred E. Green for Famous Players-Lasky with Thomas Meighan, Lila Lee, and Gertrude Astor." ANDREW ERISH

AA: In the last Selig Polyscope screening I was struck by the audacity of the vision of society in these movies. Columbus is taken back to Spain in chains because he has failed to provide more gold for the Queen. The breakdown of justice in Alaska is total in The Spoilers. The West is quite wild in Selig's Westerns, and of course, the jungle is wild in the jungle adventures. The strong woman, typically played by Kathlyn Williams (star of the first American action serial, and inevitably Selig's Queen Isabella in their Columbus epic) is a recurrent figure.

I watched only the first of the two hours of The Ne'er-Do-Well. During the first hour the protagonist is an anti-hero. Kirk Anthony, the no good son of a railroad magnate, has constant trouble with the law, typically because of speeding. The stern father declares: "one more escapade and I'll disown you". But while celebrating a football victory Kirk participates in a rampage in which the revellers' car speeds right inside a restaurant, and they fight the policemen who try to calm them down. It is no joke since a police detective gets probably fatally injured. But there is a joke as Kirk's drink is spiked, and he is put into a ship to Panama with no money at all. He has received the ticket of one Weller who is wanted by the police for bank embezzlement.

In Panama we witness a seedy American consulate where the consul keeps a whisky bottle close at hand during office hours. We see views of the wreckage of early machines to build the Panama canal. We observe the squalor of the slums where a fire is ignited by a cigarette, the inept fire brigade arrives, and Kirk tries to instil American firefighting ideas. The scene is spectacular but very strange as it is played for slapstick.

Colin Campbell was a prolific director, but he seems to have lacked talent. There is no cinematic flair in Thor, Lord of the Jungle, The Spoilers and The Ne'er-Do-Well. In The Ne'er-Do-Well there is a curious uncertainty and unevenness of tone. Yet there are strong images in The Ne'er-Do-Well, including those of the fire brigade.

Rex Beach was a popular writer also in Finland, mainly because of The Silver Horde, translated as Hopealauma. The Spoilers was based on Rex Beach's first hand experiences and research in Alaska. I don't know about The Ne'er-Do-Well, but it would not be surprising if it would turn out that it too has a factual background. The Panama location shooting gives The Ne'er-Do-Well permanent value.

The print is choppy in the beginning. The visual quality is variable, but there is often a good definition of light, with occasional water / nitrate damage marks.

Provokator / Ego kariera / [Agent Provocateur] (2012 restoration in 2K)

Viktor Turin: Провокатор / Его карьера / Provokator / Ego kariera (SU 1928) starring Anna Sten (Lipa Khromova).

Viktor Turin: Провокатор / Его карьера / Provokator / Ego kariera (SU 1928) starring Anna Sten (Lipa Khromova).

Провокатор / Его карьера / В паутине / Ego kariera / V pautine [Provocatore; Informatore; La sua carriera; Nella tela del ragno / Stool Pigeon; His Career; In the Spider’s Web] (VUFKU, Yalta, SU 1928).
    D: Viktor Turin; SC: Aleksandr [Oles’] Dosvitnyi; DP: Mikhail Belskii; AD: Abram Goncharskii; ass D: G.F. Zosimov, Anna Levodarova, Sergei Skriabin; ED: David Volzhin;
    C: Anna Sten (Lipa Khromova, a student), Vladimir Kriger (Borovsky, a prosperous landowner), Nina Tairova (his wife), Nikolai Kutuzov (Viktor Borovsky, their son, a student), Anna Dodonova (Lidia Ziger, his fiancée), Anna Agramova (Lidia’s mother), G.F. Zosimov (student Zubenko, a revolutionary), Larisa Liliyeva (Nina Bakhmetieva), V. Komar (Ivanov, a student), Nikolai Panov (Bakhmin, police colonel), M. Arbenin (Struzky, police captain), Lev Konstantinovskii, Leonid Danilov (student), Karl Tomskii, Vladimir Uralskii (conservative); filmed: 1927; rel: 16.10.1928 (Russia);
    orig. l: 2315 m; incomplete, 2K DCP, 77' (transferred at  17 fps);
    print source: Oleksandr Dovzhenko National Centre, Kiev. Russian intertitles.
    Teatro Verdi, Le Giornate del Cinema Muto, Pordenone (Anna Sten), e-subtitles in English and Italian, grand piano: Gabriel Thibaudeau, 12 Oct 2012.

Natalia Nussinova: "The student Lipa in Agent provocateur seems to have been Anna Sten’s first role in the cinema. It was probably in 1926 that Viktor Turin offered to the very pretty beginner the part of a character who seems marginal to the story, and does not even figure in the synopsis of the film that he had been shooting since 1923. Lipa, the girlfriend of the revolutionary terrorist, is a little student, a young girl from a good, honest but not rich family, a delicate young lady in the old style, who blushes and faints, and whose character bears the surname Khromova, like the heroines played by Vera Kholodnaya and Lidia Koreneva, rival sisters in the famous melodrama Zhizn’ za Zhizn’ (A Life for a Life)."

"Bauer’s 1916 masterpiece could surely not have been unknown in the VUFKU studios, established in the Ukraine in 1922 on the basis of the old pre-revolutionary studios of Khanzhonkov, Ermoliev, Kharitonov, etc., and giving shelter to such directors from the Tsarist cinema as Vladimir Gardin and subsequently Piotr Tchardynin."

"But the marginal character played by Sten comes out of the shadows to assume an important place in the structure of the film. The police arrest the girl, using blackmail, aggression, and even money to try to make her become an agent provocatrice. Fragile though she seems, she nevertheless finds the strength to refuse, and it is thus that she becomes the antithesis of the agent provocateur Viktor, the main hero, a student from a well-off family, inspired by the romantic and clandestine, who readily cracks under police pressure and becomes a traitor and informer, resulting in the death of his friends. It is in this counterpoint of characters that Sten found the opportunity to show the evolution of her heroine, who passes from timidity to extreme courage, to the point of throwing an inkwell in the face of the policeman and threatening him with a pistol. And of course her courage costs her dear: three days later the newspapers tell us that the body of Miss Khromova has been fished out of the river. The official explanation of the “suicide” is quite in keeping with the traditions of Russian melodrama of the 1910s – a case of unhappy love."

"Work on the film lasted 4 years, owing to conflicts between the director and the management of VUFKU studios. For Viktor Turin (1895-1945) this marked his debut as a director, following his return to the USSR; he had lived in the United States (1912-22), been educated at M.I.T. (Massachusetts Institute of Technology), and had worked in Hollywood as an actor and synopsis writer. But he took the liberty of criticizing the scenario by Oles’ Dosvitnyi (Aleksandr Skripal-Mischenko, 1891-1934), a Ukrainian writer who was editor-inchief at VUFKU and one of the founders of the Yalta studios where the film was made. Turin blamed the scenario for many ideological errors, but the VUFKU bosses insisted on the production. Turin delayed the shooting on the pretext that the facilities given him were unsatisfactory. Accused in his turn of ideological errors, he called for a control commission at which he offered his justification. But finally, just as the film was finished, the presidential council of VUFKU was renewed, and the new heads criticized him, demanding re-editing involving serious cuts which affected the very heart of the story. For Turin this was not very worrying, because he had meanwhile made another film, Struggle of Giants (1926), also for VUFKU, and then acheived fame thanks to the documentary Turksib (1929), with its scenario by Yakov Aron and Viktor Shklovsky."

"But Dosvitnyi’s ending was to be much different. The Party Congress on Cinema in March 1928 accused the heads of VUFKU of nostalgia for Tsarist cinema and of having employed “old reactionary directors”. As a result of the purges that followed, Dosvitnyi lost his post as chief editor at VUFKU in 1929; four years later he was accused of counterrevolutionary activity, arrested, and shot.""

"Since the distribution of Ukrainian films in the Soviet Union took time, Agent provocateur was not released in Russia until October 1928, when it provoked very opposing reviews. The Moscow newspaper Kino reproached this “screen novelty” for being banal, old-fashioned, and naïve, and using the images to illustrate the intertitles. Kino’s critic went on to complain of the uninteresting interiors: “It is very badly staged, and so badly lit that it takes some effort to recognize the actors at the start of every shot.” The critic of the revue Zhizn Iskusstva was much more tolerant, especially with regard to the scenario – in his view, it was an important story from the “psychological” viewpoint, demonstrating the transformation of the revolutionary student into an agent provocateur for the police, with a precise and original representation of “details of the period”. However, he was more sceneptical regarding Turin’s direction, which he considered reproduced the tradition of the “German psychological genre” (we can assume that the reason for this was the scene in the prison where the student Viktor is obsessed by visions of himself, as he is now, as a future prisoner, and as an old convict, all three images appearing in split-screen and making him so fearful that he agrees to collaborate with the police)."

"It is notable that though neither critic is very satisfied with the acting, both appreciate Anna Sten. The author of the article in Zhizn Iskusstva writes: “And yet Anna Sten is magnificent. She has succeeded in creating a remarkable image, sweet and touching, for the quite small role as the student, which is, it appears, the first part she has played.” The severe critic of Kino goes even further: “The actors in the film are very different; here is the respectable Panov, the eternal scoundrel Kutuzov, and finally Anna Sten, who is very young, but already very amusing and piquant in her movements. But this actress is only one very small bright spot, lost in the gray background of the film. … This is why the calculation of VUFKU’s distributors, to launch an old film taking advantage of the name of Sten, which is now in vogue, has little chance of succeeding.”"

"Thus it was that the first small role of the young novice Anna Sten, making her film debut, became a trump card for Sten the Star, which was to attract Russian spectators to the premiere of a Ukrainian film, made by a Soviet director formed in Hollywood and imitating German films." – NATALIA NUSSINOVA

AA: Yet another remarkable Anna Sten discovery, even the title of the movie missing from standard sources, although the talents involved are no less than Viktor Turin, creator of the masterful Turksib, and Anna Sten in her debut role.

Like Belyi oriol / The White Eagle, this is an account of police oppression and the use of stool pigeons and provocators to demoralize and destroy opposition. And like in The White Eagle, Anna portrays an innocent, good-hearted woman who is caught in the web.

Provokator is a tragedy where all the rebels are murdered or executed, the self-respect of the attorney Borovsky, turned stool pigeon, is crushed, and Lipa (Anna Sten) is "found dead in the river having committed suicide due to unrequited love" = killed in prison because of her refusal to betray fellow students.

The most impressive feature of the movie is the sense of demoralization in circumstances where anyone can be a traitor.

Memorable features:
– Lipa's soul fight when she has inadvertently betrayed her fellow student
– action scenes from the underground resistance
– the secret police (the okhrana) softening and bullying Borovsky to collaboration
– a view of rebels being "exiled" = sentenced to hard labour in a quarry, perhaps in Siberia, often a slow version of a death sentence
– Borovsky's stream of consciousness montage before he informs on all the members of the opposition
– Lipa's encounter with Borovsky: innocently, unknowing that he is a traitor, she repents her act of treason
– she cries loudly, attracting everyone's attention
– Borovsky's ballerina wife does not respect her husband's weakness
– back at the okhrana's office the colonel offers Lipa a good compensation: nikogda!
– like in The White Eagle, she receives a pistol but does not shoot
– she sees Borovsky and realizes everything: predatel!
– soon she is found dead in the river
– there is a final act of terror, a minister is assassinated by the rebels
– the final images are of the hanging of the rebels, the body bags, and the noose.

The Oleksandr Dovzhenko National Centre has performed the digital restoration from sometimes difficult sources (sometimes marks of nitrate / water damage, low contrast, variable visual quality), but there are often enough passages of fine visual quality in the 2K DCP.

Phono-Cinéma-Théâtre (2012 restoration)

Phono-Cinéma-Théâtre: Les précieuses ridicules. Molière. Scène IX jouée par M. Benoît-Constant Coquelin aîné (Mascarille) et Mlles Marguerite Esquilar (Magdelon) et Jeanne Kervich (Cathos) (1900).

Phono – Cinéma – Théâtre: Visions animées des artistes célèbres
.
    FR 1900. PC: Paul Decauville, S.A. du Phono-Cinéma-Théâtre. P: Paul Decauville; DP: Clément Maurice Gratioulet; artistic director: Marguerite Vrignault; camera and film: Parnaland frères.
    C: Sarah Bernhardt, Brunin, Jeanne Chasles, Coquelin aîné, Émile Cossira, Desjardin, Footit et Chocolat, Jeanne Hatto, Christine Kerf, Little Tich [Harry Relph], Pierre Magnier, Félicia Mallet, Louise Mante, Suzette Mante, Mason & Forbes, Rosita Mauri, Cléo de Mérode, Mily-Meyer, Jules Moy, Polin, Désirée Pougaud, Gabrielle Réjane, Mariette Sully, Michel Vasquez, Achille Viscusi, Carlotta Zambelli; 2K DCP (from 35 mm), 75'
    Including a 5 min documentary: Le Cinéma parlant en 1900, sd.; print source: Gaumont Pathé Archives & La Cinémathèque française, Paris (restoration and reconstitution 2012). Cylinders lus par L'Archéophone.
    Teatro Verdi, Le Giornate del Cinema Muto, Pordenone (Special Events), e-subtitles in English and Italian, 11 Oct 2012.

THEATRE
Benoît-Constant Coquelin (Coquelin ainé)
Les Précieuses ridicules, de Molière, avec Coquelin aîné, Mlle. Esquilar, et Kervich [Kerwick?] - sound synchronized from a wax cylinder
Cyrano de Bergerac, scène du duel, par Edmond Rostand, avec Coquelin aîné, Desjardin - sound synchronized from a wax cylinder
Gabrielle Réjane
Ma Cousine, scène mimée, avec Mme. Réjane
Sarah Bernhardt
Hamlet, scène du duel, scène mimée, avec Mme. Sarah Bernhardt (Hamlet), M. Pierre Magnier (Laërte), Mlle. Seylor, Hommes d’armes
Félicia Mallet
L’Enfant prodigue, pantomime, de Michel Carré, musique d’André Wormser; 3 tableaux:
1. Le Vol;
2. Pierrot chez Phrynette;
3. Le retour; avec Mlle. Félicia Mallet (Pierrot fils), Mme. Marie Magnier (Mme. Pierrot), Mlle. X… (Phrynette), M. Duquesne (Pierrot père)

OPERETTA I
Mariette Sully
La Poupée, musique d’Edmond Audran, chantée par Mariette Sully, MM. Fugère et Soums - sound synchronized from a wax cylinder

OPERA
Émile Cossira
"Lève-toi, soleil!": Air de Roméo and Juliette, musique de Charles Gounod, chanté par Émile Cossira, ténor de l’Opéra
Jeanne Hatto
"Invocation à Diane": Air d’Iphigénie en Tauride, musique de Christoph Willibald Gluck, chanté par Mlle. Jeanne Hatto, de l’Opéra - sound synchronized from a wax cylinder

CIRCUS, CAFÉ-CONCERT AND MUSIC HALL
Footit et Chocolat (du Nouveau-Cirque)
Entrée des échasses
Guillaume Tell
Mason and Forbes, Excentriques américains
Chez le photographe, pantomime
Little Tich des Folies Bergère
Little Tich
Little Tich, danse espagnole
Brunin des Ambassadeurs
Le Déshabillé de la mariée, pantomime, parodie comique
Polin
Le Troupier pompette, monologue par Polin
Jules Moy
Le Maître de ballet - sound synchronized from a wax cylinder
Une poule introduite dans un concert

OPERETTA II
Mily-Meyer et Désiré Pougaud
Duo Mily-Meyer et M. Pougaud
Mily-Meyer
Fleur de l'âme, musique: ?, paroles: Victor Hugo - sound synchronized from a wax cylinder
Pourquoi garder ton cœur, musique: Jean-Baptiste Weckerlin; paroles: J. Leybach, Victor Wilder - sound synchronized from a wax cylinder

DANCE
Blanche et Louise Mante, de l'Opéra
Danse Louis XV, musique de William Marie, dansée par Mlles. Blanche et Louise Mante de l’Opéra
Danse Directoire, musique de William Marie, dansée par Mlles. Blanche et Louise Mante de l’Opéra
Carlotta Zambelli, Michel Vasquez
Le Cid (Pas de la Castillane) (La habanera), musique de Jules Massenet, dansé par Mlle. Carlotta Zambelli et M. Michel Vasquez de l’Opéra
Carlotta Zambelli  
Sylvia (La pizzicata), musique de Léo Delibes, dansé par Mlle. Carlotta Zambelli de l’Opéra
Rosita Mauri
La Korrigane (Le Pas de la Sabotière), musique de Charles-Marie Widor, dansée par Mlles. Rosita Mauri, Violat, et Suzanne Mante de l’Opéra
Le Rêve (Pas de la Mikagouva), musique de Léon Gastinel, dansé par Mlles. Rosita Mauri, Violat, et Suzanne Mante de l’Opéra
Jeanne Chasles
Le Cygne, de Catulle Mendès, musique de Charles Lecocq, dansé par Mlle. Jeanne Chasles de l’Opéra-Comique
Jeanne Chasles, Achille Viscusi
Danses slaves, musique de William Marie, dansées par Mlle. Jeanne Chasles de l’Opéra-Comique et M. Achille Viscusi
Christine Kerf, Achille Viscusi
Ballet de “Terpsichore” (Un mariage aux flambeaux), musique: Léon Pouget, dansé par Mlle. Christine Kerf, M. Achille Viscusi du Palais de la Danse
Cléo de Mérode
Gavotte, danse ancienne, musique de Samuel Rousseau, dansée par Mlle. Cléo de Mérode
Danse javanaise, dansée par Mlle. Cléo de Mérode

Répertoire du Phono-Cinéma-Théâtre: *the films indicated by asterisks have not been found
*Caroles du Moyen Age, danse ancienne, musique de William Marie, dansées par Mlles. Blanche et Louise Mante de l’Opéra
*Chapeau récalcitrant
*Concert arabe, Jules Moy
*Danse comique, par Brunin des Ambassadeurs
*J’ai le pied qui remue, Louis Maurel
*Ma Gigolette, Louis Maurel

 2011-2012 restoration: Gaumont-Pathé Archives (Manuela Padoan, Agnès Bertola, Julien Boury, Pierre Philippe); La Cinémathèque française (Laurent Mannoni, Céline Ruivo, Joël Daire, Sébastien Martineau) with the collaboration of Lobster Films, Henri Chamoux (Archéophone)
    With the precious collaboration of Jean Guillaume Bart, Claude Bessy, Camille Blot-Wellens, Serge Bromberg, Dr. Richard Copeman, Eric Lange, Martin Pénet, Touve R. Ratovondrahety, David Robinson, John Sweeney, Olivier Auboin Vermorel, Nicolas Villodre.

The piano accompaniment is compiled and performed by John Sweeney; and has involved extensive research to discover the (often obscure) authentic musical accompaniments, particularly for the 11 sequences of ballet, totalling 25 minutes of film. Frank Bockius and Romano Todesco provide additional musical effects. Seven of the films are accompanied by synchronized sound from the original wax cylinders.

Laurent Mannoni: "The long history of the sound film began with the appearance of the Edison Kinetoscope, but achieved a prodigious leap forward during the Paris Exposition Universelle of 1900, when talking and colour films were in evidence in a variety of forms. Among the shows presented during the Exposition, Phono-Cinéma-Théâtre was one of the most successful both from the technical and artistic point of view."

"On 27 December 1899, the engineer and industrialist Paul Decauville secured the concession for a space of some 210 square metres in the body of the Exposition Universelle, near the entry at 43 rue de Paris, close to the Pont des Invalides. The limited company S.A. Phono-Cinéma-Théâtre was established by Decauville on 2 March 1900, with a capital of 100,000 francs. The actress and dancer Marguerite Vrignault, initiator of the project, was named artistic director. The theatre for Phono-Cinéma-Théâtre was designed by the architect R. Dulong, modelled on the “Pavillon frais” created in 1751 by Ange-Jacques Gabriel in the gardens of the Petit Trianon at Versailles."

"The photography was undertaken by Clément-Maurice, a close associate of the Lumière Brothers, under his real name Clément Maurice Gratioulet. He filmed with a 35 mm camera using film with a central perforation or two lateral perforations, made by Ambroise-François Parnaland, an excellent maker of reversible cameras and notably, again with Clément-Maurice, a collaborator of Dr. Doyen, the pioneer of medical cinematography."

"A studio was installed on the roof of the “Pavillon frais” and the films were recorded shortly before the opening of the Exposition."

"They were made in “play-back”, like the later Gaumont phonoscènes."

"The phonograph used was Henri Lioret’s Idéal, which used large cylinders (22 cm long, 13 cm diameter) which could record 4 minutes; in September 1900, the Idéal was to be replaced by Pathé’s Céleste."

"Phono-Cinéma-Théâtre is an attraction which mingles several different genres: sound films synchonized with the phonograph (songs, monologues, extracts from plays), but also dances and pantomimes which were simply accompanied by a pianist or orchestra. There was also a sound effects man and possibly a  bonimenteur (narrator)."

"The programme presented the most prestigious artists of the time, coming from the Comédie-Française and the theatres of the Grands Boulevards, from the music hall and the circus. For the first time, L’Enfant prodigue was adapted to the screen – a little marvel of pantomime by Michel Carré, with music by André Wormser, first produced in 1890 and a great success of the day. Another current theatrical success filmed was Henri Meilhac’s Ma Cousine, which premiered at the Théâtre des Variétés on 27 October 1890, with the great actress Gabrielle Réjane (1856-1920). The film is only comprehensible if the action of the scene represented is known – the rehearsal of a pantomime entitled Le Piston d’Hortense, which appears in the 3-act play."

"The first performance of Phono-Cinéma-Théâtre took place at the Exposition on 28 April 1900. The projectionists were Georges and Léopold Maurice, the sons of Clément-Maurice; the synchronisation was manually controlled by the projectionists, who slowed or accelerated the phonographic cylinder as necessary."

"Despite the celebrity of the actors, singers, dancers, clowns, and mimes who had taken part in the enterprise (Sarah Bernhardt, Coquelin, Réjane, Mily-Meyer, Émile Cossira, Jeanne Hatto, Carlotta Zambelli, première danseuse of the Opéra, the dancer Cléo de Mérode, the clowns Footit and Chocolat, and the comic Polin in his soldier act, etc.), despite the enthusiasm of the press, despite the beautiful poster by François Flameng, despite the gala soirées (notably for the Shah of Persia at the Palais de l’Optique on 10 August 1900), the public did not flock to Phono-Cinéma-Théâtre and the accounts, at the close of the Exposition, showed only a tiny profit."

"Although the Phono-Cinéma-Théâtre company was dissolved on 26 November 1901, the show continued in Paris (42 boulevard Bonne-Nouvelle, 10 November 1901; Olympia, 1901), and toured in Switzerland, Sweden, Spain, Britain, Germany, Austria, and Italy during 1901-1902. The Lumières’ former cameraman Félix Mesguich undertook some of the projection during these tours."

"After this the attraction was forgotten, until the early 1930s, when a group of the original negatives was rediscovered. In 1933 the producer Bernard Nathan, who had a great interest in the origins of the cinema, financed a documentary directed by Roger Goupillières, Le Cinéma parlant en 1900. Thus it was once again possible to see several titles from Phono-Cinéma-Théâtre, among them Cyrano de Bergerac, Sarah Bernhardt in Hamlet, Mariette Sully in La Poupée, Little Tich, and others, either with the original sound from the cylinders or newly-recorded music. The original Parnaland negatives had to be reperforated in Edison format in order to be copied."

"Phono-Cinéma-Théâtre was again discovered by chance in 1961, thanks to Mme. Bernhart (!), an employee of the distributors and producers U.G.C. (Union Générale Cinématographique). This time 24 negatives (sometimes several takes of the same title) and one positive print, comprising 18 different titles, were found."

"In 2010, the Cinémathèque française decided to restore this entire collection digitally in 2K. The work was carried out at Bologna’s L’Immagine Ritrovata laboratory. Some negatives have suffered over the years, but many are still of fine quality. At the end of one of the takes, a beautiful woman crosses the scenene: it is the artistic director, Marguerite Vrignault, in person."

"In 2011, the important collector of early cinéma, Olivier Auboin-Vermorel, deposited in the Cinémathèque française a group of very precious early films, among them works by Méliès, Marey, Nadar, and several Phono-Cinéma-Théâtre films until now unseen, for example Ma Cousine, with Réjane, and L’Enfant prodigue – unfortunately two only of the three tableaux. All in good state, these films were also digitally restored."

"With the object of reconstituting as far as possible the near-totality of the repertoire of Phono-Cinéma-Théâtre, with its original sound, the Cinémathèque française asked the expert Henri Chamoux to provide the recordings already made from the still-existing original cylinders. He located 17 Phono-Cinéma-Théâtre cylinders, corresponding to 8 titles, including Cyrano de Bergerac, Iphigénie en Tauride, and Les Précieuses ridicules. The majority of the cylinders are conserved at the Musée de Radio-France in Paris. Chamoux perfected the “Archéophone”, an apparatus able to read and record cylinders in bad condition or even broken. The synchronisation was therefore once again possible, above all thanks to the use of digital techniques. Certain sounds still sometimes remain difficult to hear."

"It was already miraculous that so many negatives and cylinders of Phono-Cinéma-Théâtre had survived to the present, given the great fragility of the supports – nitrate and wax. Then excellent news came from Manuela Padoan of the Gaumont Pathé Archives, which have themselves conserved an important collection of original nitrate prints of Phono-Cinéma-Théâtre, very prettily painted by hand."

"This collection has been preserved for several years on colour film and recently 4K digital scans have been made in collaboration with Lobster Films, with the prospect of attempts at synchronisation."

"The combined collections of the Gaumont Pathé Archives and the Cinémathèque française now make possible the reconstitution of practically the entire Phono-Cinéma-Théâtre repertoire, moreover with colour! Henceforth, to cite Baudelaire, “les couleurs and les sons se répondent”."

"A final miracle: in the collection of the Gaumont Pathé Archives was the missing first tableau of L’Enfant prodigue. The film is thus now complete in its three parts. Final discovery: in 2012 the director of the École de Danse of the Opéra de Paris, Claude Bessy, put at the disposal of the Cinémathèque française a positive print, in very good condition, of Le Cid (La Habanera), danced by Carlotta Zambelli (1875-1968), prima ballerina of the Opéra, who had astonished Paris in 1896 with her unprecedented (in France) 15 fouetté turns in a divertissement in La Favorita."

"The two teams of the Cinémathèque française (Céline Ruivo) and the Gaumont Pathé Archives (Manuela Padoan and Agnès Bertola) have worked in concert to achieve this magnificent project, which permits us to savour, almost as in 1900, one of the most beautiful cinema attractions of the Exposition Universelle. But keep your ears open: the sound is, as it was at the beginning, less than perfect! But savour the pleasures of seeing again, sometimes in colour, the greatest artists of that era: Sarah Bernhardt, Jeanne Hatto, Jean Coquelin, Victor Maurel, Rosita Mauri, Félicia Mallet, Carlotta Zambelli, Mily-Meyer, Little Tich, Cléo de Mérode, Jules Moy, etc. – the élite of the dance, the theatre, pantomime and music hall of the Belle Époque." – LAURENT MANNONI

AA: The first performance of the 2012 restoration of Phono – Cinéma – Théâtre: Visions animées des artistes célèbres, the showcase of the performing arts of la Belle Époque produced for the Paris world's fair of 1900, was the most magnificent highlight of this year's Giornate. There were 34 records of legendary performances, seven of them synchronized with the original wax cylinder sound, and the dances presented with their actual music played live. The whole was much bigger than the sum of its parts: a great cross-section and celebration of performing arts. A lot of talent and skill has been spent to this reconstruction, sometimes from extremely difficult sources, such as the wax cylinders. The sound is sometimes barely audible, yet it conveys a precious feeling. The digital look of the scanned images is sometimes slightly too polished-lifeless, but they have been restored from challenging sources with a special Parnaland perforation, and the show conveys a feeling of grandeur and stability, and often a sense of the original colour world of the images. The beautiful 12-page souvenir programme, notes written by David Robinson, is a collector's item and full of interesting information about the legendary performers and their legendary performances. This is a classic achievement with permanent value for lovers and professionals of performing arts.

Torgovtsy slavoi / [Merchants of Glory]

Leonid Obolenski: Торговцы славой (Мёртвые не возвращаются) / Miortvyie ne vozvrachayutsia [Merchants of Glory (The Dead Do Not Return)] (SU 1929) starring Anna Sten (Yvonne, the orphan girl) and Vsevolod Aksionov ("the unknown": Henri Bachelet, the soldier who has lost his memory).

Торговцы славой (Мёртвые не возвращаются) / Miortvyie ne vozvrachayutsia [Mercanti di gloria; I morti non ritornano / Merchants of Glory: The Dead Do Not Return]
    Mezhrabpomfilm, SU 1929. D: Leonid Obolenskii; SC: Nikolai Ravich, Leonid Obolenskii, based on the play Les Marchands de gloire by Marcel Pagnol, Paul Nivoix; DP: Aleksandr Dorn, Igor Turovtsev; AD: Ivan Stepanov, Sergei Kozlovskii; ass D: Boris Sveshnikov;
    C: Anna Sten (Yvonne), Yakov Volkov (Bachelet, official of the military establishment), Vsevolod Aksionov (Sgt. Henri Bachelet, “the unknown”), Anel Sudakevitch (Germaine), G. Barskii (Major Blanchard), Pavel Pol (Berlureau, a speculator), Igor Stravinskii (Parlo, a Communist worker), Rafail Korf (editor);
     Unreleased in Finland. Marcel Pagnol's play premiered at Suomen Kansallisteatteri, 9 Sep 1927, as Kunnian kauppiaat, probably hand-picked by the theatre director Eino Kalima, the play directed by Pekka Alpo, starring Tyyne Juntto (Yvonne) and Jussi Snellman (Henri).
     rel: 4.5.1929; orig. l: 2150 m [6 rl.]; 35 mm, incomplete [Rl. 1 + 4 missing], 1300 m, 47' (24 fps); print source: Gosfilmofond of Russia. Russian intertitles.
    Teatro Verdi, Le Giornate del Cinema Muto, Pordenone (Anna Sten), e-subtitles in English and Italian, grand piano: Neil Brand, 11 Oct 2012.

Natalia Nussinova (GCM Catalog 2012): "Anna Sten is often mistaken for Anel Sudakevich. Their filmographies are confused, each is wrongly credited with the other’s roles, and the false legend persists that Anel Sudakevich is actually the real name of Anna Sten. In fact they were two actresses of the same age, who both worked for Mezhrabpom, and they even resembled each other.
    "This duality seems to be consciously exploited in Merchants of Glory, in which they play two women involved with the same man. The bourgeoise Germaine (Sudakevich) is greedy and egoist, languid and sexual, in contrast with the gauche and badly-bred Yvonne (Sten), who suffers sincerely, loves life, howls with a silent cry, and has a quaint, distinctive plastique invented expressly for the film, which was appreciated by the harsh critics of the period as virtually the film’s only merit:"
    “The work of [Pavel] Pol and Anna Sten must be noted. Sten has found a very good expressivity for the role which is new to her, that of a gauche and clumsy girl. But these are the only qualities of this film.”"

"The critic of the Leningrad newspaper Kino reproached Merchants of Glory for using the genre of political pamphlet mainly as a pretext to show balls, revues, variety numbers, and sumptuous dinners in preference to the war scenes, as well as having abused “elements characteristic to the style of Mezhrabpom”, with slow action, interruptions, “endless passes”, etc. "
    "(The phrase “endless passes” – бесконечные проходы / beskonechnyie prokhody – was a current critical cliché used to condemn screen time wasted on mechanical activities like walking down streets or getting in and out of cars, when ellipsis was more admired.)"
    "In the process, the film adaptation lost the irony and sharp political sense of the play by Marcel Pagnol and Pierre Nivoix, which had demonstrated the  falseness and meanness of bourgeois society."

"The Pagnol and Nivoix play was published in two different Russian editions and translations in 1926, even before it had been published in French. Both Russian versions are severely abridged and altered from the French original. In Pagnol and Nivoix’s original, the story of Sergeant Henri, believed killed in battle in 1916 and now a posthumous national hero and object of speculation, ends with his return home, where he discovers that his wife Germaine has remarried, to the “merchant” of his glory, a situation from which his father also derives profit. The only person who remains faithful to his memory is Yvonne, his distant cousin, an orphan who has grown up in his house."

"In order that his “resurrection” will not impair his father’s chances in an election campaign, Henri exiles himself to the provinces with Yvonne. When he returns to Paris on the eve of the election, it is only because he wants to marry Yvonne under his true name to legitimize the child she is expecting."
    "He yields, however, overwhelmed by the hypocrisy of those who are stronger, apologizing for taking off his hat too slowly in front of his own portrait in uniform, during his father’s electoral address: “Forgive me, it is emotion. I knew him well.”
    "In the Russian translation by Emil Mattern and Vladimir Binshtok, Henri’s premarital relations with his fiancée are chaste, but his conformism is much more pronounced: it ends with Henri agreeing to live for the rest of his life with false papers for the sake of the official career which is promised him."
     "However, in the translation by Yevgenia Russat and Viacheslav Golichnikov made for the production of Merchants of Glory at the Leningrad Bolshoi Drama Theatre, the ending was radically changed: Henri bows politely in front of his portrait and withdraws, taking Yvonne with him and accepting nothing from the hands of the hypocrites."

"The film scenario was clearly based on one of these Russian versions of the play. Yet the story was even further altered. There is now no longer any question of marriage with Yvonne, or of her pregnancy."
    "When Henri recovers from his wounds, and above all from the amnesia from which he has suffered for four years (compare Ermler’s Fragment of an Empire, which also concerns a soldier’s amnesia, and came out six months after Merchants of Glory), he desires the wife who is no longer his, Germaine, and does not seek the consolation of another love."
    "It is evident that Yvonne is in love with him, but Sten’s heroine in the film is only a kid: all the eroticism has passed to Sudakevich. Everything that outraged the Kino critic – the foxtrots and the dancers’ legs which appear in double exposure, the girls astride the canon – are motifs surrounding Sudakevich. As for Sten, she follows the images of this perversity all alone, with a boyish air, drolly curled up in an armchair."

"The revolt of the hero against the merchants of his glory is much more pronounced in the film. Instead of bowing in front of the portrait which robs him of his personality, Henri, like a Dorian Gray, attacks it with a knife. After this he leaves his house and joins a crowd of demonstrators."
    "The revolutionary slogans they display are written in Esperanto, the constructed international language that was very widespread in the Soviet Union in the 1920s, thanks to Trotsky, who called it “the language of world revolution”. We can suppose that Esperanto is introduced into the film in this way to provide a certain abstract quality. All the same, it would have been too daring to represent the Communists winning the elections in France in 1920."
    "And yet this happy ending seemed insufficiently politicized to the critics of the time. The director Leonid Obolenskii (1902-1991) had been an actor, a pupil of Vladimir Gardin and Lev Kuleshov, and a celebrated dancer, trained by the former director of the Imperial Theatres, (Prince) Sergei Volkonskii. This talent – he was particularly admired for his tapdancing – probably explains the abundance of dances in the film, which so outraged the critics."
    "In the 1920s Obolenskii began to work as a director at Mezhrabpom, at first in collaboration with Mikhail Doller (Kirpitchiki / Little Bricks, 1925; Eh, Jablochko / Eh, Little  Apple!, 1926). His first solo direction was Albidum (1928), followed shortly after by Merchants of Glory. Subsequently his career was crippled by the taint of his aristocratic background." – NATALIA NUSSINOVA (GCM Catalog 2012)

AA: What a surprise: the earliest Marcel Pagnol movie adaptation, unknown in the usual sources, based on his first play. As Natalia Nussinova points out above, there is a connection with The Fragment of an Empire in the theme of the amnesia of the soldier who regains his consciousness in a much-changed world.

The film is not very good, but the eclecticism of the approaches is interesting. There are furious images from the front, heavy-handed satirical scenes of nationalism, the church, and high society, and dance montages in Hollywood bubbly style (So This Is Paris).

Marcel Pagnol's play could have been promising material for Frank Capra or Preston Sturges (Mr. Deeds Goes to Town, Hail the Conquering Hero). Leonid Obolenskii is no Capra and no Sturges, but some of the force of Pagnol's satire remains. Believed dead, the war hero inspires the founding of a national, populist right-wing party, "Sergeant Bachelet's Honest People's Party", worshipping his image immortalized in a magnificent portrait, multiplied in the party's posters.

But Sergeant Bachelet displays bad taste in coming back. Having lost his memory, he has spent years in a mental hospital, but now he has come to his senses and immediately joins the communists. "How much did the communists pay you to pretend you're Henri Bachelet?" ask the furious nationalists.

But Germaine knows it's him all right. "I cried on your grave for five years", she says having now married a merchant of weapons. Anna Sten is refreshingly different as the clueless sister.

The Esperanto aspect is delightful; I remember meeting in Tampere in the 1970s people disseminating "Esperanto propagando" flyers.

The most memorable image is the one of Henri Bachelet tearing his own hero-worshipping portrait.

Another memorable image is the moving Mezhrabpom logo in the end: the Promethean hero turning the wheel of time. I don't remember having seen it or paid attention to it before.

An incomplete and choppy version, scenes sometimes conveyed in freeze frames.

...

THE CAST OF THE FINNISH THEATRE PREMIERE OF LES MARCHANDS DE GLOIRE:
Juntto Tyyne : Yvonne Bachelet,
Kilpi Eero: Grandel,
Korhonen Aku: Bachelet,
Korhonen Heidi: Germaine Bachelet,
Montonen Uuno: majuri Blanchard,
Pihlajamäki Hilda: rouva Bachelet,
Puro Teuvo: Berlureau,
Seppälä Urho: lähetti,
Snellman Jussi : Henri,
Somersalmi Urho: kreivi Lieuville,
Tuominen Yrjö: Richebon,
Virtanen Heikki: vahtimestari