Summer Storm

Summer Storm. George Sanders (judge Petrov), Edward Everett Horton (Count Volsky), Linda Darnell (Olga). Please do click to enlarge the images.

En sällsam bekännelse.
    US © 1944 Angelus Pictures, Inc. PC also: Nero Films (n.c.). Original distr: United Artists Corp. P: Seymour Nebenzal. Assoc P: Rudolf S. Joseph / Rudolph Joseph.
    D: Douglas Sirk. SC: Rowland Leigh – adaptation Douglas Sirk and Michael O’Hara [= Douglas Sirk] – add. dialogue: Robert Thoeren – based on the novel by Anton Chekhov: Drama na okhote (1885), in Finnish Kohtaus metsästysretkellä in the SaPo series of detective fiction (WSOY 1980, translation into Finnish by Valdemar Melanko, cover image from the Emil Lotianu film adaptation), Engl. The Shooting Party. DP: Archie Stout / Archie M. Stout. Second cameraman: Eugen Schüfftan (n.c.). AD: Rudi Feld. Set dec: Emile Kuri. Cost: Lon Anthony, Max Pretzfelder. M and musical D: Karl Hajos. S: Richard DeWeese / Richard de Weese (sound recording), Fred Lau (sound, n.c.). ED: Gregg G. Tallas (collaborating editor). Technical D: Eugen Schüfftan / Eugene Schufftan.
    C: George Sanders (magistrate Fyodor “Fedya” Mikhailovich Petrov), Linda Darnell (Olga Kuzminitshna Urbenina), Anna Lee (Nadena Kalenina), Edward Everett Horton (Count “Piggy” Volsky), Hugo Haas (Anton Urbenin), Laurie Lane / Lori Lahner (Klara Heller), John Philiber (Polycarp, Petrov's butler), Sig Ruman / Sig Rumann (woodcutter Kuzma), John Abbott (Lunin, public prosecutor), Mary Servoss (Mrs. Kalenina), André Charlot (Anton Kalenin), Robert Greig (Gregory, Volsky's butler), Nina Koshetz (gypsy singer), Paul Hurst (Orlov), Charles Trowbridge (doctor), Mike Mazurki (tall policeman bending over Petrov).
    Not released in Finland – 106 min
    According to Sirk the film was mostly shot by Eugen Schüfftan, not credited since he was not a member of the cinematographer's union.
    Another film adaptation: The Shooting Party / Kohtaus metsästysretkellä / Murhenäytelmä metsällä / Olet rakkaani, olet petoni (Moi laskovyy i nezhnyy zver / Мой ласковый и нежный зверь, SU 1978), D: Emil Lotianu / Emil Loteanu, C: Oleg Yankovsky (Kamyshev), Galina Belyayeva (Olga), Kirill Lavrov (the Count).
    A 16 mm print viewed at Cinema Orion, Helsinki (Douglas Sirk), 31 Aug 2016

Before his evolution into a writer of great tales (The Steppe, 1888) and great plays (The Seagull, 1895; nb. The Wood Demon, a previous version of Uncle Vanya, stems already from 1889) Anton Chekhov was a prolific and versatile writer also of light entertainment fiction, such as The Shooting Party, a first person narrative in which the narrator turns out to be the killer – "Who did it?" "I did it" – a device later brought into play by Agatha Christie in his Hercule Poirot mystery The Murder of Roger Ackroyd (1926), "in 2013, 87 years after its release the British Crime Writers' Association voted it the best crime novel ever" (Wikipedia). There is, however, no reason to think that Christie was aware of The Shooting Party.

The dilemma of Chekhov's narrator is aggravated by the fact that he is a magistrate in charge of justice. He has not lost his sense of justice, but his will-power is too weak, and so in his stead an innocent man is sent to life imprisonment in hard labour in Siberia. Finally the judge writes his account of what has happened, including his confession.

Douglas Sirk was a great man of the theatre in Germany who had gotten a solid start for his film career at Ufa in the 1930s. In Hollywood emigration he was getting restarted on his film career, and together with co-exiles such as producer Seymour Nebenzal and cinematographer Eugen Schüfftan he created Summer Storm.

There is a touch of Hollywood Russia in the atmosphere, but the account of decay and corruption is faithful to Chekhov as well as the psychology of the main characters. George Sanders is excellent as judge Fyodor (Fedya) Mikhailovich Petrov, as is Edward Everett Horton as his best friend, Count Volsky. The female roles remain underwritten, but Linda Darnell is attractive as the sensual Olga Kuzminicha Urbenina, and Anna Lee conveys the role of the sensible Nadina Kalenina very well. Sig Rumann is unrecognizable behind his mighty beard as woodcutter Kuzma, Olga's vulgar father, who gets stone drunk and spoils his daughter's wedding party.

Michael Stern has noted how the very first shot of the film is already characteristically Sirkian: a close-up pan of hesitant feet.

Critics have observed ways in which Summer Storm prefigures later works of Douglas Sirk such as Written on the Wind. There is an affinity between Judge Petrov and Kyle Hadley (Robert Stack). The key sentence "do you remember the rainbow and lake?" reminds us of "look how far we've come from the river?".

Summer Storm is a tale of corruption, but there is an unmistakable flow of sympathy for the human potential of the characters who are drifting on a collision course in the current of life. Sirk always roots for his characters, no matter how ill advised they may be. They are depraved but full of life – and remorse. For Andrew Sarris Summer Storm was about "an ecstasy of irresolution.".

There is a dimension of the sublime here. When Olga is introduced she tells how her mother died in a thunderstorm "of heavenly electricity" and predicts that that is going to be her fate, as well. Her final words to Fedya are, indeed "heavenly electricity". And when Fedya is shot while trying to flee from the militia, he, too, utters those words.

The period of the action has been transferred from the 1880s to the 1910s, before and after the revolution. The account of the Soviet period in the framing story is neutral (the film was produced during a period when USA and USSR were allies). Might this be a reason why Summer Storm has become a difficult film to access?

There is an obsession with the theme of the cancelled wedding in the cinema. In Summer Storm the wedding of Olga and Anton is not cancelled, but to all participants it is obviously wrong, and everyone is ill at ease. Olga the bride leaves her own wedding party, and Fedya meets her for a passionate embrace in another room. Nadina sees them and abandons Fedya's tender dance card to the floor. That is the end of Nadina and Fedya's engagement. The final image of the film is of a waste paper basket with the dance card which Fedya has carried all his life, with the inscription "I love you".

Visually striking passages include the one where the maid Klara sees from a crack of a bathing hut a hand washing the bloody knife with which Olga was stabbed. Equally striking is the scene at the court where Klara realizes to whom the hand belonged.

There are passages of Tchaikovsky baked into the music score. It would be interesting to know the titles of the beautiful Russian romances sung by an old lady and George Sanders with the Romani orchestra.

A film that I was thinking about while watching Summer Storm is La Règle du jeu.

The 16 mm print is somewhat battered especially during the first minutes but it still provides a memorable experience of a rare and important Douglas Sirk film.

Summer Storm. George Sanders (judge Petrov), Robert Greig (Gregory, Volsky's butler) Edward Everett Horton (Count Volsky).

Summer Storm. Linda Darnell (Olga).

Summer Storm. Olga's wedding. Linda Darnell (Olga), George Sanders (judge Petrov, best man at the wedding).

Summer Storm. At Olga's deathbed. George Sanders (judge Petrov), Hugo Haas (Anton Urbenin), Linda Darnell (Olga, Anton's wife). The violent and jealous Anton is about to be convicted for the murder of his wife.

Summer Storm. George Sanders (judge Petrov).

OUR PROGRAM NOTE BASED ON JON HALLIDAY'S SIRK ON SIRK AND MICHAEL STERN:

Le Passé / The Past

گذشته / Menneisyys / Det förflutna. FR/IT © 2013 Memento Film Production / FR3 – France 3 Cinéma / BIM Distribuzione / Alvy Distribution / CN3 Productions. P: Alexandre Mallet-Guy. D: Asghar Farhadi. SC: Asghar Farhadi, Massoumeh Lahidji. DP: Mahmoud Kalari – digital – Arri Alexa, Zeiss Master Prime Lenses – colour – 1,85:1 – distribution: DCP. PD: Claude Lenoir. Makeup: Lucia Bretones-Méndez. Hair: Fulvio Pozzobon. M: Evgueni Galperine, Youli Galperine. S: Thomas Desjonquères. ED: Juliette Welfling. C: Bérénice Bejo (Marie Brisson), Tahar Rahim (Samir), Ali Mosaffa (Ahmad), Pauline Burlet (Lucie), Elyes Aguis (Fouad), Jeanne Jestin (Léa), Sabrina Ouazani (Naïma). Loc: Paris. Original in French. Helsinki premiere: 29.11.2013, distributor: Cinema Mondo, suom. tekstit / svensk text Outi Kainulainen / Markus Karjalainen – dvd: 2014 Scanbox – MEKU K7 – 130 min
    2K DCP from Cinema Mondo
    Viewed at Cinema Orion, Helsinki (French Summer), 10 Aug 2016

Wikipedia synopsis: "Ahmad, an Iranian man, returns to France after four years to finalise his divorce with his wife Marie. On the way to her home, he learns that she has begun a relationship with Samir, the owner of a dry cleaning service and he is to share a room with his son Fouad. At Marie's request, he speaks to her daughter from a previous marriage, Lucie, regarding her recent troubled behavior. She disapproves of Marie's new relationship."

"Ahmad and Marie attend court to complete their divorce. Just before the meeting with the officials, she tells him that she is pregnant with Samir's child. Ahmad continues to counsel Lucie, hoping to reconcile her to the situation. She reveals that Samir is still married and his wife is in coma after a suicide attempt, caused by the revelation that Samir and Marie were conducting an affair. Samir tells Ahmad that his wife suffered from depression and the suicide attempt was in fact caused by an incident with a customer in his shop. His wife was unaware of his affair and he arranges for his employee, who witnessed both the suicide attempt and the incident in the shop, to meet with Lucie. After hearing her story, Lucie becomes distressed and confesses that she forwarded Marie's emails to Samir's wife the day before she tried to kill herself, after calling her at the dry cleaning shop. She disappears and Ahmad and Samir search for her. Ahmad finds Lucie, who has been staying with a friend, and tries to convince her to tell Marie what she did, saying that she had a right to know, now that she is carrying Samir's child. Lucie does so and Marie becomes enraged, telling Lucie to leave. Ahmad calms the situation and Lucie returns."

"After questioning what feelings he may still hold for his wife, Marie tells Samir what Lucie did. Samir finds this hard to accept and questions his employee, Naïma, about the events leading up his wife's suicide attempt, who states his wife wasn't even in the shop the day that Lucie said she called. After Marie accuses Lucie of lying, Lucie maintains her version of events saying that she spoke to a woman with an accent on the phone. Samir realizes that she actually spoke to Naïma, who then gave Lucie his wife's email address. He confronts Naïma, who confesses and explains that his wife had always been jealous of her and had been trying to get her either sacked or deported from France and had initiated the confrontation with the customer. However, Naïma believes that his wife never read the emails, because she came into the shop and choose to drank bleach in front of her, instead of in front of Samir or Marie."

"Samir and Marie discuss the events and their relationship. Marie decides that they should focus on their future, while Samir appears conflicted. Ahmad prepares to return to Iran. He says farewell to the children and attempts to talk to Marie about the end of their marriage, but Marie does not let him stating that she doesn't need to know such things now. Meanwhile, Samir visits his wife in hospital with a selection of perfumes, which the doctors have recommended in order to possibly initiate a response. He sprays on some of his cologne and leans over her, asking her to squeeze his hand if she can smell it. A tear runs down her face and he looks down at her hand, which is holding his."

AA: I found Asghar Farhadi's A Separation (2011) a masterpiece immediately. Yet I saw Farhadi's next film The Past first now, perhaps because of reserved reactions by people I know.

The Past is more plot-driven than A Separation, and it proceeds as a series of revelations where we keep learning things that fundamentally change everything we believed we knew. The film is very well made. Its general sense is about the precariousness of life: how little we know. This has also a distanciating and alienating effect to the characters and the film itself, but not in a Brechtian sense.

A hallmark of the Iranian cinema is the strong presence of children, and that is a strength of The Past, as well. All the children – Léa, Fouad, Lucie – are important, individual, and interesting. The young actors are brilliant. The grown-ups have made a mess of their lives. I bambini ci guardano. These children are disturbed, and we feel concerned for their need of a basic security.

My main problem with The Past is about what sense we should make of Marie. Either her character is underdeveloped – or the viewpoint of the director on her is underdeveloped. Marie's grip on life is not very good, but what should we make of that?

My verdict: The Past is imperfect. But I look forward to seeing all films by Farhadi, one of the most distinguished directors working today.

The Past is the first Farhadi film that has been shot digitally. It is largely a chamber piece where the digital is perfect in interiors. Exteriors look ultra sharp in a digital kind of way.

P.S. 14 Aug 2016. Douglas Sirk: "I am extremely interested in the contrast between children and adults: there is a world looking at another world which is going downhill, but this new world does not yet know if its own fate will be the same... The look of a child is always fascinating. It seems to be saying: is that what fate has in store for me, too?" Jon Halliday: Sirk on Sirk. London: Secker & Warburg with the British Film Institute, 1971, p. 107

OUR PROGRAM NOTE BASED ON KENNETH TURAN AND PRESS KIT MATERIAL:

The Quiet Man

John Ford: The Quiet Man (US 1952). In memoriam Maureen O'Hara (1920–2015). Mary Kate Danaher meets the desperate Sean Thornton who is riding like a wild man.

Vaitelias mies / Hans vilda fru. 

    US © 1952 Republic Pictures. PC: Argosy. P: John Ford ja Merian C. Cooper / (ass P: Michael Killanin) / Republic / Herbert J. Yates. 

    D: John Ford. SC: Frank S. Nugent – adapted by Richard Llewellyn – based on the story by Maurice White (Saturday Evening Post, February 1933). DP: Winton C. Hoch – Technicolor – 1,37:1. Second unit cinematography: Archie Stout. M: Victor Young.
    Songs: “The Isle of Innisfree” (original song for the movie, Richard Farrelly 1950), perf. Maureen O'Hara, "Galway Bay" (Arthur Colahan), ”The Humour Is On Me Now” (trad arr. Richard Haywood), ”The Young May Moon” (Thomas Moore) perf. Maureen O'Hara, ”The Wild Colonial Boy” (trad., adapt. Sean O'Casey and Dennis O'Casey), ”Mush-Mush-Mush Tural-i-addy” (trad., adapt. Sean O'Casey and Dennis O'Casey), "Rakes of Mallow" (trad.), "Rising of the Moon" (trad.), "I'll Take You Home Again Kathleen" (Thomas Payne Westendorf 1875), "The Kerry Dance", "Barbary Bell", "Believe Me If All Those Endearing Young Charms" (trad. 1808), "Mitty Matty Had A Hen" (trad.).
    AD: Frank Hotaling. Set dec: John McCarthy, Jr., Charles Thompson. Cost: Adele Palmer. ED: Jack Murray, (Barbara Ford). Cost: Adele Palmer. S: T. A. Carman, Howard Wilson – mono (RCA Sound System). Technicolor consultant: Francis Cugat.
    C: John Wayne (Sean Thornton), Maureen O’Hara (Mary Kate Danaher), Barry Fitzgerald (Michaeleen Oge Flynn), Ward Bond (Father Peter Lonergan), Victor McLaglen (Squire ”Red” Will Danaher), Mildred Natwick (the widow Sarah Tillane), Francis Ford (Dan Tobin), Eileen Crowe (Mrs. Elizabeth Playfair), May Craig (fishwoman with basket at the railway station), Arthur Shields (Reverend Cyril Playfair), Charles B. Fitzsimons (Hugh Forbes), James Lilburn / James O'Hara (Father Paul), Sean McClory (Owen Glynn), Jack MacGowran (Ignatius Feeney), Joseph O’Dea (train guard Molouney), Eric Gorman (engine driver Costello), Ken Curtis  (Dermot Fahy), Mae Marsh (Father Paul's mother).
    Loc: Ireland (County Mayo, County Galway).
    Helsinki premiere 13 March 1953 Aloha, released by Astor Filmi, re-release by Lii-Filmi – telecast: 1.4.1967 TV2 etc. – VET 37902 – K8 – 3546 m / 129 min
    A NFI print with Norwegian subtitles by Per Aaman
    Viewed at Cinema Orion (Maureen O'Hara in memoriam), 7 Aug 2016

Revisited The Quiet Man which I had not seen for a while. John Ford is my favourite director (or one of my three favourites), and The Quiet Man has a link to my favourite John Ford film, Young Mr. Lincoln. Cinema is an art form with an attraction to violence. The subject for me of Young Mr. Lincoln is that of a man who displays courage in stopping violence. It is the portrait of a peacemaker who knows how to act in turbulent times.

The Quiet Man is about a boxer, a professional fighter who has stopped fighting after killing a man in the boxing ring. Sean Thornton (John Wayne) has become aware of the murderous impact of his fighting skills. He regrets having killed a good man, making a widow of his wife, and rendering his children fatherless. Sean has fought for money, and now all money for him is tainted, blood money.

The dilemma at Innisfree revolves around the fact that Sean must fight Will Danaher (Victor McLaglen) in order to win his sister Mary Kate's (Maureen O'Hara) love. If Sean does not fight, he will lose Mary Kate. If he fights and kills Will, he will lose Mary Kate, as well.

The related dilemma is about Mary Kate's dowry. The furniture, the spinette, and the £350 are essential to her. Sean does not take them seriously, because money and property for him are tainted and he is independently wealthy. He must learn to understand the dowry's symbolic value, similar to the ancestral home for him. The dowry is Mary Kate's link to the tradition, the heritage, the past generations, the legacy. They are about her identity. Also the act of the donation of the money is important as a symbol of independence. When she has received the money, Sean and Mary Kate unanimously throw it to the fire. Its function has been accomplished. Burning the money clears it for Sean. Now Sean has not chosen Mary Kate as property, as a commodity. He is free to fight Will because the fight no more is connected with money.

The fight between Sean and Will is a fight of friendship, making brothers of them.

For John Ford The Quiet Man was special and unique. For him it was his only love story – which should be qualified: in the sense of a love affair between a man and a woman being the center, the raison d'être. It was also a potential "last film" for him during a period when he was not certain whether he would care to continue directing.

The Quiet Man is a grown-up love story. It is about love at first sight. Both Sean and Mary Kate turn serious at moments of mutual recognition. This is no longer one among many. This is the one. This is it. End of search.

The seriousness in the key moments is the distinction of The Quiet Man which is generally a humoristic tale with a lot of singing. The revelation of love is a revelation of one's self. The other is inscrutable, unavoidable. Falling in love this deeply means redefining oneself, reinventing oneself. This is serious business, an irresistible journey to the unknown. It is also a meeting of equals, the end of freedom as a single, and the beginning of a freedom in union.

John Wayne and Maureen O'Hara, long term family friends, convey this. We sense the love in their looks, on their faces, in their movements. It is a spiritual bond. It is also a physical attraction. The physical side is even expressed via objects: Mary Kate's reaction to the sight of Sean's king size bed being transported to his home. That same bed being crushed by Sean when he throws Mary Kate on it ("Impetuous! Homeric!" is Michaeleen's comment when he sees that bed next morning and draws conclusions). And her reaction to the sight of the cradle which she has inherited from her mother and grandmother.

"I love red hair", says Abraham Lincoln to Ann Rutledge in Young Mr. Lincoln. So did John Ford. (And Michael Powell, but that is another story). Maureen O'Hara, above all; and Katharine Hepburn, among others. Red is a colour of passion, temperament, and an independent spirit.

The Quiet Man was Maureen O'Hara's favourite film. It was also a film that Peter von Bagh often mentioned as his personal favourite film, including in Matti Salo's extensive poll in Filmihullu magazine about "my personal favourite film". Peter's favourites changed, and The Quiet Man was not always necessarily included in his top ten film lists. I do not know why he favoured this very film. He wrote about it at length, for instance in the book Elämää suuremmat elokuvat [Films Bigger Than Life], but I doubt the answer can be found there.

The Quiet Man is a fairy-tale film like Brigadoon, a pastoral idyll, a wish-fulfillment dream. "Is that real?" asks Sean when he sees Mary Kate for the first time, and Michaeleen mentions the word "mirage". Within its fantasy approach The Quiet Man is serious about the great issues of love and violence. It is great in its poetic touch, mixing comedy, romance, and action in wonderful balance. There is a vivid sense of a community living with the elements of nature.

Favourite moments of mine: the desperate Sean rides like a wild man and meets Mary Kate who looks disturbed (see image above). Sean and Mary Kate walk to the graveyard; a thunderstorm breaks out; Sean covers Mary Kate with his jacket. The flashback to the fatal boxing match; the look on Sean's face. The scene by the fireplace: Mary Kate has learned Sean's secret; the affectionate reconciliation. The morning: the grief on Sean's face when he realizes that Mary Kate has gone.

Secrets: the brief passage of dialogue conducted in Gaelic. And the final whisper by Mary Kate to Sean's ear.

The print is no good, and the duration is only 118 min, yet this was a powerful experience.

P.S. 29 Aug 2016. At home we discussed the John Wayne walk. On screen John Wayne was a paragon of masculinity, although John Ford called him a "sissy" because Wayne was a draft dodger (where the much older Ford served in heavy duty, at great cost, missing lucrative Hollywood projects). The question of a gay aspect in John Wayne's performance was first suggested for a wide audience in The Midnight Cowboy. Famously, it is one of the biggest jokes in the French hit play La Cage aux folles written by Jean Poiret in 1973. Laurent, the son of a Saint Tropez night club owner and his gay lover, is about to bring his fiancée's ultraconservative parents to dinner, and in no time the flamboyant lover needs to learn to act like a man. The club owner suggests he should walk like John Wayne, and both are stunned at the revelation. "Actually, it's perfect. I just never realized that John Wayne walked like that" (this wording is from the Mike Nichols film adaptation, written by Elaine May, starring Robin Williams and Nathan Lane). To make things even more complicated, John Wayne learned his walk in imitation of John Ford. It is a personal version of a sailor's walk and a cowboy's walk.

OUR PROGRAM NOTE BY MARKKU VARJOLA:

Hymyilevä mies / The Happiest Day in the Life of Olli Mäki

Den lyckligaste dagen i Olli Mäkis liv. FI © 2016 Elokuvayhtiö Aamu. Co-production companies: Tre Vänner, One Two Films, Film Väst. P: Jussi Rantamäki. D: Juho Kuosmanen. SC: Juho Kuosmanen, Mikko Myllylahti. DP: J-P Passi – 16 mm (Kodak Tri-X) reversal film – b&w – 1,85:1 – released in 2K DCP. AD: Kari Kankaanpää. M: Miika Snåre, Laura Airola, Joonas Haavisto. Cost: Sari Suominen. Makeup: Salla Kaarina Yli-Luopa. S: Pietu Korhonen - Dolby Digital 5.1. ED: Jussi Rautaniemi. C: Jarkko Lahti (Olli Mäki), Oona Airola (Raija Jänkä), Eero Milonoff (Elis Ask), Joanna Haartti (Laila Ask), John Bosco, Jr. (Davey Moore), Esko Barquero (Snadi), Elma Milonoff (Evi), Leimu Leisti (Tuula), Hilma Milonoff (Anneli). 93 min
    Released in Finland by B-Plan Distribution.
    International sales: Les Films du Losange.
    2K DCP with English subtitles by Aretta Vähälä from B-Plan Distribution.
    Introduced by Mia Vainikainen, Mickael Suominen, Manna Katajisto, Anna Möttölä.
    Press screening at Cinema Orion (Espoo Ciné press screening), 2 Aug 2016

Boxing films have a distinguished history from some of the earliest films from Thomas A. Edison to the present day. We remember Keaton (Battling Butler), Hitchcock (The Ring), Wyler (Shakedown), Lloyd (The Milky Way), Mamoulian (Golden Boy), Walsh (Gentleman Jim), Rossen (Body and Soul), Wise (The Set-Up, Somebody Up There Likes Me), Huston (Fat City), Hill (Hard Times), Stallone (the Rocky series), Scorsese (Raging Bull), Sheridan (The Boxer), great Muhammad Ali films (When We Were Kings), several Clint Eastwood films (Million Dollar Baby), and Tarantino (one of the stories in Pulp Fiction).

All this is well-known to the director Juho Kuosmanen, and all this is blithely ignored by him in his saga of the biggest boxing event ever in Finland. Hymyilevä mies [The Smiling Man] is not a film based on other boxing films. It emanates an authentic sense of being both on the proudly provincial home turf Kokkola of Olli Mäki and his girlfriend, and in Helsinki, the capital of the country, no less provincial although there may be a pretense otherwise.

The Helsinki Olympic Stadion, filled to 23.000, was the stage for the professional boxing match as Olli Mäki fought Davey Moore for the World Featherweight Title in August 1962. He was beaten in two rounds. The mystery of Mäki's blatant loss is the subject of the film.

Olli Mäki (born 1936 in Kokkola) was the most talented boxer in the history of Finland. He was a favourite for the 1960 Summer Olympics in Rome, but he was removed from the Olympic team by the Finns for political reasons because Mäki refused to resign from TUL, the Finnish Worker's Sports Federation.

Juho Kuosmanen's approach is humoristic. We have a big strategy – and a total failure. How could this be? Olli Mäki is in great shape when he lands in the hands of the manager Elis Ask, himself a former boxing champion. Strategic mistakes are made. Olli Mäki is booked for the fight at too short a notice. As a professional he has only ten fights under his belt where his opponent Davey Moore has more than sixty. Mäki needs to lose seven kilograms weight in a month, to fight in a series of 57 kg which is not his comfort zone. "61 kg would have been just right". (Mäki had won medals in the category of 60 kg and would be at his best later at under 63,5 kg). Mäki fights although he has no chance to win.

Although the sport event is professional, Elis Ask's handling of it is amateurish. He invites Olli Mäki to stay at his home but is evicted by his wife who throws him to the street with their children and Olli Mäki. Ask is efficient in finding sponsors but that requires a lot of PR energy from Olli Mäki who is fundamentally incapable of handling the PR circus. Let's put it this way: Olli Mäki is the diametric opposite of Cassius Clay / Muhammad Ali who thrived in publicity. The fuss with Ask's ineptitude and the PR buzz distracts Olli Mäki seriously. He is never discouraged but he may start to be unconsciously giving up, no longer one hundred per cent focused on the fight.

The simple way to explain the mystery of Olli Mäki's defeat: bad management.

But then there is the most crucial thing: Mäki falls in love during the training period and is terminally distracted. Jarkko Lahti and Oona Airola convey the budding romance charmingly. Their love is so great that it makes Olli Mäki feel hardly anything when he suffers the crushing loss at the biggest boxing fight in the history of Finland. He becomes a stranger in his own fight thanks to the wheeling and dealing of Elis Ask. Simultaneously he finds his true self, his perfect happiness in the company of Raija.

"The easiest fight of my life", is Olli Mäki's baffling comment. "I did not have time to feel anything, it went so fast".

The love theme is introduced in the most direct manner in a wedding sequence in the beginning of the movie. We hear the wedding ceremony at the church ("but the greatest of these is love") and hear Friiti Ojala's "Wedding Waltz" sung by Oona Airola as Raija to the words of Wiljami Niittykoski ("Nuoruus onnen aika armahin on elon tiellä ihmisen"), different from the Tuula Valkama lyrics famous from the Tapio Rautavaara interpretation. The stirring musical performance is by the Mäkipelimannit and Ykspihlajan Kino-orkesteri bands.

I happened to see during the same week Hymyilevä mies [The Smiling Man] and The Quiet Man, two stories of love stronger than boxing. And two stories about proudly original provinces: Kokkola and Innisfree.

But the film that comes to my mind from Hymyilevä mies, rather than all those great boxing sagas, is Walt Disney's Ferdinand the Bull. Embarrasing everybody, Olli Mäki is almost apologetic towards the adversary whom he has to fight, and he is always ready with a bunch of flowers for him.

The visual look of the movie, although digital, comes from cinematography conducted on black and white Kodak Tri-X 16 mm reversal film designed predominantly for newsreels. There is a harsh actuality look in the movie.

PS. 15 Aug 2016. I have revised a credit thanks to comments to the blog.

FROM THE PRESS KIT:

Abbas Kiarostami 1940-2016

The Wind Will Carry Us. The title of Kiarostami's film is from a poem by Forough Farrokhzad. Please click to enlarge the image.

Sohrab Sepehri
Address

“Where is the friend’s house?” asked the horseman just at dawn.
The heavens paused.
A wayfarer took the bright branch from his lips,
conferred it on the darkness of the sands,
pointed with his finger to a poplar tree and said,

“Just before that tree
there is a garden path greener than God’s dreams.
In it there is love as wide as the blue wings of true friendship.
You go on to the end of the path that takes up again
just beyond maturity,
then turn toward the flower of loneliness.
Two steps before the flower,
stop at the eternal fountain of earthly myth.
There a transparent terror will seize you,
and in the sincerity of the streaming heavens
you will hear a rustling.
High up in a pine tree,
you will see a child
who will lift a chick out of a nest of light.
Ask him,
“Where is the friend’s house?”

(trans. Jerome Clinton.)

The friend = God in Sufi tradition.



Sohrab Sepehri
Osoite

"Missä on Ystävän talo?" kysyi ratsumies aamun hämärässä.
Taivas pysähtyi.
Kulkija otti valonkorren suustaan, antoi sen hiekan pimeyteen
ja osoitti poppelia, sanoi:

"Ennen kuin tulet puun luo,
kääntyy lehväkuja, Jumalan unta vehreämpi.
Siellä rakkaus on vedensininen, ystävyyden levitettyjen siipien kokoinen.
Kulje sen kujan päähän, joka näkyy murrosiän jälkeen,
käänny sitten yksinäisyyden kukan suuntaan.
Kaksi askelta ennen kukkaa
seisahdu maan ikuisten kertomusten lähteelle.
Läpikuultava pelko valtaa sinut.
Kuulet kahinaa avaruuden virtaavassa avoimuudessa,
näet lapsen korkean kuusen latvassa, viemässä poikasta valon pesästä.
Kysy häneltä: Missä on Ystävän talo?"

– Sohrab Sepehri, runoelmasta Veden askelten ääni (1964)

Vain ääni jää. Runoja Iranista (suom. ja toim. Jaakko Hämeen-Anttila, WSOY, toinen laitos 2006) sisältää mm. Kiarostamin ja Sepehrin runoja.



سهراب سپهری
نام شعر : نشاني

"خانه دوست كجاست؟" در فلق بود كه پرسيد سوار.
آسمان مكثي كرد.
رهگذر شاخه نوري كه به لب داشت به تاريكي شن‌ها بخشيد
و به انگشت نشان داد سپيداري و گفت:

"نرسيده به درخت،
كوچه باغي است كه از خواب خدا سبزتر است
و در آن عشق به اندازه پرهاي صداقت آبي است
مي‌روي تا ته آن كوچه كه از پشت بلوغ، سر به در مي‌آرد،
پس به سمت گل تنهايي مي‌پيچي،
دو قدم مانده به گل،
پاي فواره جاويد اساطير زمين مي‌ماني
و تو را ترسي شفاف فرا مي‌گيرد.
در صميميت سيال فضا، خش‌خشي مي‌شنوي:
كودكي مي‌بيني
رفته از كاج بلندي بالا، جوجه بردارد از لانه نور
و از او مي‌پرسي
خانه دوست كجاست."

Midori haruka ni / Far Off in the Green / The Green Music Box

緑はるかに / [Al di là del prato]. JP 1955.
    D: Umetsugu Inoue. Story: dal romanzo omonimo di Makoto Hojo. SC: Umetsugu Inoue. Cinematography: Isamu Kakita. AD: Takeo Kimura. M: Masao Yoneyama.
    C: Ruriko Asaoka (Ruriko), Minoru Takada (il dottore), Ayuko Fujishiro (la madre), Soichi Asanuma (Chibi Shin), Fumio Nagai (Noppo), Hideaki Ishii (Debu), Noriko Watanabe (Mamiko), Kenjiro Uemura (Tazawa), Kyoko Akemi (la madre di Mamiko), Frankie Sakai (Piero).
    P: Takiko Mizunoe per Nikkatsu. [The film was not released in Finland]. 35 mm. Col. 90 min
    Japanese version with English subtitles
    Da: National Film Center, Tokyo per concessione di Nikkatsu
    This print was struck in 1993 from 35 mm dupe negatives derived from a 35 mm color master positive, transferred from the nitrate three-strip Konicolor original negative
    Il Cinema Ritrovato, Bologna
    Richness and Harmony. Colour Film in Japan (part two)
    Cinema Jolly, 2 July 2016

Alexander Jacoby, Johan Nordström (Bologna catalog): "The first feature length theatrical film shot in Konicolor, this musical action film for children is based on the novel of the same name by Makoto Hojo, adapted for the screen and directed by Umetsugu Inoue. Inoue was a prolific commercial director who worked not only in Japan but also, during the late 1960s, in Hong Kong, where he directed films at the famous Shaw Brothers studio, some of them being remakes of his own Japanese films. His Arashi o yobu otoko (Stormy Man, 1957) was one of actor/singer Yujiro Ishihara’s most characteristic star vehicles, and, like this film, typified the director’s creative use of colour."

"The film marked the debut of 14-year-old Ruriko Asaoka (b. 1940), who stars here as the daughter of an important researcher who becomes entangled with a spy trying to steal her father’s secrets. The cast also includes the talented comedian Frankie Sakai. Asaoka was to sustain a career in Nikkatsu action and melodrama pictures through the following decades, while Sakai brought his inimitable sly humour to a number of the vibrant dark comedies of Yuzo Kawashima." – Alexander Jacoby, Johan Nordström

AA: A children's film, an adventure film, a musical, a spy story with science fiction elements.

Ruriko enters the spy villains' lair to rescue his father, a scientist whose invention is important for humanity. Also her mother is in the clutch of the villains, being whipped to put pressure on father. Ruriko escapes, taking her father's secret formula with her, hidden in her green music box. Believing her parents are dead Ruriko meets in a cave in the forest orphan boys who have escaped from the House of Light, sporting masks which scare the villains. As the kids fight the villains on a suspension bridge the green music box falls into a river flowing to Tokyo. On their way to Tokyo they meet yet another orphan boy, and they are also joined by a girl whose mother is a singer in Tokyo. They try to find the music box in Tokyo, but there are many similar ones. There are interesting scenes in an antique store and at Union Circus which is a front for the spies. There is a happy ending, Ruriko's parents are alive, after all, and they decide to adopt the three orphans who have followed Ruriko. The girl joins her singer mother, as well.

There is a framing story in the musical format, to the sound of the music of the green music box.

The colour in the Konicolor world is somewhat stylized and sometimes a bit off, but this feels like a faithful presentation of it.

Salvatore Quasimodo: "Già vola il fiore magro" (a poem)

Salvatore Quasimodo. Photo from: Centro Cultural Tina Modotti.

Salvatore Quasimodo: Ja äkkiä on ilta. Kirjayhtymä 1962. The title of this Finnish edition, "Ja äkkiä on ilta", is Finnish for "Ed è subito sera".

    Già vola il fiore magro

    Già vola il fiore magro
    Non saprò nulla della mia vita
    oscuro monotono sangue.

    Non saprò chi amavo, chi amo,
    ora che qui stretto, ridotto alle mie
    membra
    nel guasto vento di marzo
    enumero i mali dei giorni decifrati

    Già vola il fiore magro
    dai rami. E io attendo
    la pazienza del suo volo irrevocabile.

    Salvatore Quasimodo: Poesie (Milano: Primi Piani, 1938)

        [Je ne saurai rien de ma vie
        sang obscur et monotone.

        Je ne saurai rien, qui j'aimais, qui j'aime
        maintenant que replié, réduit à mes
        membres,
        dans le vent pourri de mars
        j'énumère les maux des jours déchiffrés.

        Des branches déjà s'envole la fleur maigre
        Et moi j'attends
        la patience de son vol irrévocable.]


LENTÄÄ KUIVA KUKKA

En ole tietävä mitään elämästäni,
hämärästä, yksitoikkoisesta verestä.

En tiedä ketä rakastin tai rakastan,
nyt kun oienneena, jäseniini vähenneenä
maaliskuun autiossa tuulessa
arvioin luettujen päivieni vaivoja.

Jo lentää kuiva kukka
oksista. Ja odotan
sen peruuttamattoman lennon rauhaa.

Salvatore Quasimodo GIÀ VOLA IL FIORE MAGRO
Suomennos Elli-Kaija Köngäs
kokoelmasta JA ÄKKIÄ ON ILTA (Kirjayhtymä, 1962)

Déjà s'envole la fleur maigre / From the Branches Drops the Withered Blossom / [The Children of Borinage] (2016 digital restoration by Cinematek, Brussels)

Jo kuihtuu hento kukka / Già vola il fiore magro. BE 1960. D+SC: Paul Meyer. Cinematography: Freddy Rents. ED: Paul Meyer, Rose Tuytschaver, Roland de Salency. M: Arsène Souffriau. C: Domenico Mescolini (Domenico), Valentino Gentili (Valentino), Luigi Favotto (Luigi), Attilio Sanna (Attilio), Dolorès Oscari (Dolorès), Giuseppe Cerqua (Giuseppe), Louis Vander Spieghel. P: Paul Meyer, Maurice Taszman per Les Films de l’Eglantine. Original in French and Italian. DCP. B&w. 82 min
    Restored by Cinematek (Brussels) from the original camera negative in 2016
    Il Cinema Ritrovato, Bologna
    Ritrovati e restaurati
    DCP with English subtitles from Cinematek (Brussels)
    Introduce Nico Mazzanti + la figlia del regista Claire Meyer
    Cinema Arlecchino, 2 July 2016

Nicola Mazzanti (Bologna catalog): "Buñuel meets Rossellini in the landscape of the Borinage, blackened by the dust of the carbonnages, the coalmines, and of the terrils, the hills created by the waste of the mines."

"The best movie ever made on the cruelty of emigration, the timeless lie of ‘social integration’, the pains of displacement and the shameless depths of human exploitation is shot by a filmmaker who could and should have become the best Belgian filmmaker of his generation, had the system allowed him to keep producing films. But Paul Meyer made the mistake of telling the truth. First, he had told the terrible story of a worker forced to sleep with her boss in the twenty relentless minutes of Klinkaart (savagely attacked in Catholic Belgium). With Déjà s’envole la fleur maigre he dares to unveil the truth behind the Italo-Belgian Treaty that would send Italian workers to Belgium in exchange for much needed coal to feed the industrialization of Italy. Although Déjà s’envole la fleur maigre earned awards in Italy (the Porretta festival, the anti-Venice father of Il Cinema Ritrovato) and was lauded in Cannes by both the “Cahiers du cinéma” and “Positif” as the work of the great new talent of a Belgian cinema otherwise largely dormant, Paul Meyer was ostracized and basically forced out of Belgian film production. This restoration is intended to do him justice."

"Engraved with the deep black of the coal dust and the oppressive grey of the Belgian sky, Déjà s’envole la fleur maigre uses the bodies, the accents and the faces of non-professional actors to bring us the lives (as true and real as only fiction can do) of a group of kids, sons and daughters of Italian immigrants. Today, when we rediscover the faces of the kids filmed by Paul Meyer, we cannot but be reminded that not so long ago, we were the refugees and the migrants."

"Although over the years the film gained the status of a mythical work, only one 35 mm print of Déjà s’envole la fleure maigre survived. The restoration project (which includes the restoration of the body of Paul Meyer’s work) was based on the original camera negative, deeply scarred by the mistreatment typical of a very low budget production." – Nicola Mazzanti

AA: The Italian veteran immigrant worker Domenico notices the little newcomer boy examining birds' nests and eggs. "Non toccare le uova". Instead, Domenico introduces the boy to the coal-mining district, condensing his lesson into four words: BORINAGE (the name of the famous Belgian place), CHARBONNAGE (coal mine), CHOMAGE (massive unemployment), and SPERANZA (hope).

Borinage is a famous place in the history of art. The young Vincent van Gogh worked there as a priest but was fired by the Church because he identified too much with the workers who toiled in desperate conditions in the underground hell of the coal mines. (A few years before Paul Meyer Vincente Minnelli's Lust for Life had been "partiellement tourné dans les villages de Hornu et Wasmes"). Henri Storck and Joris Ivens made their documentary classic Misère au Borinage in the same district during the Great Depression.

The workers get coal dust in their lungs. As we at my office at KAVI in Helsinki are located opposite the open coal hill of Helen the Helsinki Energy Company we are getting an impression, too, of what miner's lungs might be.

When Paul Meyer directed his masterpiece in Borinage the coal mines were already being closed, and the area was the site of the highest unemployment rate in Belgium. A Sardinian father has invited his family to join him in Borinage although he is half-unemployed. The children know no French, but they play with other children, and the young ones contact other young ones, negotiating a cultural shock in dating manners.

Paul Meyer combines approaches of the lyrical cinema and the documentary. The protagonists are not actors but real people playing parts close to themselves. There are passages of a stream of consciousness, and the tempo is leisurely. This is not a story-driven film but a work that attempts to catch the intensity of the real time, the real place, and the real being in Borinage in 1959.

Much of the film has been made from a child's perspective. The hills are prominent: from them we get establishing views in great panoramic shots. The hills are also used by the children as slides. There the little newcomer meets a priest with flowers and fish. The presence of the nature is intensive not far from the mines.

The music includes fairground and park orchestra music and songs, including a song to Salvatore Quasimodo's poem which gave the title to the film [tbc].

A poetic vision of society, change, childhood, longing, and homesickness.

Paul Meyer's film was a labour of love. It took him 32 years to pay back his debt for the film to the Ministry, as we heard from the director's daughter, Claire Meyer, who introduced the screening.

The digital restoration has been conducted with great skill and taste from difficult source materials. It looks clean and even, with a fine grayscale, but when you clean the image digitally there can be a difficulty with nature footage.

Anno uno 10: Méliès Star Film 1896

1896. Cinema anno uno – Lumière!
1896. Year One of Cinematography
Programma 10 / Programme 10: Méliès Star Film 1896

Il Cinema Ritrovato, Bologna
♪ Grand piano Donald Sosin
[cancelled: Introduce e ♪ grand piano Serge Bromberg]
There are no intertitles on the prints
Cinema Lumiere – Sala Officinema/Mastroianni, 2 July 2016

Serge Bromberg (Bologna catalog): "Magician Georges Méliès, owner of the Theatre Robert-Houdin in Paris, attended the first public screening of the Lumière Cinématographe December 28, 1895, and realized how valuable such an attraction would be for his venue."

"Alas, the Lumière brothers refused to sell him a cinématographe, so he went to Robert William Paul in England to buy his first apparatus."

"He started filming the most common subjects, documentaries, men playing cards, children, etc. until one day his camera stopped while filming the Place de l’Opéra, resulting in the first accidental stop-motion special effect."

"Méliès quickly specialized in trick films. He shot a series of films in his Montreuil garden, and built the first film studio in 1897 in the same place."

"Because Méliès destroyed his own negatives in 1923, he became the symbol of lost films, and discoveries of new title today seem almost impossible (220 films survive of his 520 productions)."

"This programme includes films shot by Méliès 120 years ago in 1896, which was his first year of production. Only a handful of titles survive of the 80 films he made that year." – Serge Bromberg

Georges Méliès: Une partie de cartes. From the right: Gaston Méliès, Georges Méliès.

UNE PARTIE DE CARTES. FR 1896. D: Georges Méliès. PC: Star Film (n. 1). DCP. 1’. B&w. Da: BFI – National Archive / Lobster Films. - AA: Scène de la vie bourgeoise. Georges Méliès's first film is an imitation, a copy, and a parody on the Lumière film Partie d'écarté (Catalogue Lumière 73, shot early in 1896). Three men smoke, drink, play cards, and read a newspaper. A waiter, a waitress, and a dog appear. More comical and exaggerated than the Lumière original. Sometimes called the first remake in film history, but the Lumière brothers made several remakes of their own films, too. A duped visual quality.

DÉFENSE D’AFFICHER / [Paste No Bills]. FR 1896 D: Georges Méliès. PC: Star Film (n. 15). DCP. 1’. B&w.  Da: Lobster Films. - AA: A comedy. "Paste no bills" says the ban on the wall. Two men engage in a furious fight to paste their bills on the forbidden wall. The slothful janitor is fired from le Théâtre Robert-Houdin.

UNE NUIT TERRIBLE / [A Terrible Night]. FR 1896 D: Georges Méliès PC: Star Film (n. 26). DCP. 1’ . B&w  Da: Lobster Films. - AA: A comic horror fantasy, a trick film. A man lays down to sleep, only to be harassed by a huge bug. Might Kafka have seen this?

ESCAMOTAGE D’UNE DAME CHEZ ROBERT-HOUDIN / The Vanishing Lady. FR 1896. D: Georges Méliès. PC: Star Film (n. 70). DCP. 1’. B&w. Da: Lobster Films. - AA: A trick film, a record of a magician's performance. The magician Georges Méliès makes a lady (Jehanne d'Alcy) vanish from a chair, then conjuring her skeleton only, and finally the complete lady. The film ends with a bow. Based on the act of the French magician Buatier de Kolta. This has been called the first trick film, but the recently rediscovered Une séance de prestidigitation (Méliès Opus 2) might have the distinction of the first Méliès trick film now. The first Méliès screening was on 5 April 1896, and during the same month the first Lumière trick film, Charcuterie mécanique (Catalogue Lumière, Vue N° 107 was programmed le 18 avril 1896 à Lyon. That film was screened as a bonus in the Anno uno 5 show in Bologna. Who was first?

LE MANOIR DU DIABLE / The Haunted Castle. FR 1896-1897. D: Georges Méliès. PC: Star Film (n. 78-80). DCP. 3’. B&w. Da: New Zealand Film Archive (Corrick Collection) / Lobster Films. - AA: Un film fantastique, a trick film. Georges Méliès as Mephistopheles and Jeanne d'Alcy as the lady. A giant bat turns into Mephistopheles who conjures a big cauldron and a hunchback monster. From the cauldron Mephistopheles conjures a woman and diabolical creatures. He makes everything disappear, including himself. Two explorers appear and experience strange things, invisible to them. One is teletransported across the room. A skeleton appears, turning into a bat, turning into Mephistopheles.  He makes the lady appear from the cauldron, and the explorer succumbs to her charm, but when he wants to kiss her, she turns into a witch. Four more creatures appear, one explorer jumps from the balcony, but the other defeats Mephistopheles with a cross. Sometimes called the first horror film, but also Un nuit terrible has a horror aspect. Low contrast.

LE CAUCHEMAR / [The Nightmare]. FR 1896-1897. D: Georges Méliès. PC: Star Film (n. 82). DCP. 1’. B&w. Da: Lobster Films. - AA: A fantasy, a trick film. A man sleeps restlessly, dreaming of a woman, but it transforms into a dancing satyr and a Pierrot Lunaire: the wall of the bedchamber opens, an immense cartoon moon appears, three dream figures dance around him, and the man wakes up.

AA: Here we witness the genesis of fantasy, magic, horror, special effects, animation, and the art of transformations and metamorphoses in the cinema in the films of Georges Méliès sometimes called the first artist of the cinema, but for me the Lumière brothers were already artists, as well.

Afraid to Talk

Merry-Go-Round. US 1932. D: Edward L. Cahn. Based on: dalla pièce Merry-Go-Round di Albert Maltz e George Sklar. SC: Tom Reed. Cinematography: Karl Freund. ED: Maurice Pivar. AD: Charles D. Hall. C: Eric Linden (Ed Martin), Sidney Fox (Peggy Martin), Tully Marshall (Anderson), Louis Calhern (Wade), Edward Arnold (Jig Zelli), George Meeker (Lennie). P: Carl Laemmle Jr. per Universal Pictures Corp. [The film was not released in Finland]. 35 mm. 69′. B&w
    US © 1932 Universal Pictures
    C also: Gustaf von Seyffertitz (attorney Harry Berger, Ed's defense lawyer)
    Print from Universal Pictures
    Il Cinema Ritrovato, Bologna
    Universal Pictures: The Laemmle Junior Years
    E-subtitles in Italian by Sub-Ti Londra
    Cinema Jolly, 2 July 2016

Dave Kehr (Bologna catalog): "Where, as the critic Robert Warshow famously noted, the Warner Bros. gangster films presented their protagonists as tragic heroes, their generic equivalents at Universal present no trace of the romantic individualism of a Cagney or Robinson; instead, they are cogs in a cold machine of corruption, functioning without conscience, remorse or even much sense of personal volition. Based on Merry-Go-Round, a controversial, widely censored play by Albert Maltz and George Sklar, Edward L. Cahn’s film remains faithful to the structuring principle implied by the title, portraying a closed circle of venality that seems to include every major institution in the nameless city in which it is set. When a bellboy (Eric Linden) witnesses a gang chief (Edward Arnold) rubbing out a rival, he dutifully reports to the District Attorney (Tully Marshall) – who promptly frames the boy for the killing."

"As an editor at Universal, Cahn made his reputation for his rapid re-editing of All Quiet on the Western Front, working in an editing suite set up on the train that was carrying the preview print from Los Angeles to New York. His assignment: to remove all traces of ZaSu Pitts, who had originally been cast as the hero’s mother but had to be replaced by Beryl Mercer when test audiences, accustomed to Pitts as a comedian, laughed when she appeared. Promoted to director, Cahn was soon working with Universal’s top stars (including Walter Huston in another portrait of civic corruption, the western Law and Order). Cahn’s mastery of tempo and counterpoint is quite evident here thought not unexpected; more surprising is his visual flair, which finds him revisiting some of the more abstract moments of German Expressionism with the cameraman Karl Freund." – Dave Kehr

AA: The first established cycle of the gangster film as a genre started with Josef von Sternberg's Underworld. The Racket, Little Caesar, The Public Enemy, and Scarface all belonged to that stylized line of the gangster film. As did City Streets, which, however, was different in portraying gangsters as businessmen, launching a trend that culminated in the Godfather trilogy.

Startlingly different were the films by Rowland Brown: Quick Millions, Hell's Highway and the extraordinary Blood Money. These sinister films were not based on other fiction but apparently on the writer-director's first-hand knowledge. Brown's brief career as director ended with Blood Money.

Edward L. Cahn's Afraid to Talk belongs to the same rare class of the gangster film as the movies of Rowland Brown. It is a genre movie, but there is never a feeling of safety within genre convention. Instead, there is a pervasive sense of corruption and danger. Afraid to Talk contains the first screen credit of Albert Maltz who rose to the top of Hollywood's screenwriting profession, becoming a victim of the blacklist but finishing his career with work for Clint Eastwood.

The hotel bellboy Ed Martin is an eye-witness to the gangland murder of Mr. Slansky who is in the possession of incriminating records of corruption. Ed Martin identifies Jig Zelli (Edward Arnold) as the killer. But soon tables turn. Ed is fired, and he is himself framed and accused of the murder. The police, the justice system, and the city administration have been corrupted by the gangsters who use the documents to blackmail their victims. When Ed does not confess he is put through a third degree interrogation. He almost dies of the brutality and is taken to a hospital bed at the prison. But then Ed gets a top lawyer, Harry Berger, feared by the gangsters.

The most shocking sequence is the murder attempt of Ed while he lies on the hospital bed. Might this be the first appearance of the motif that reappears memorably in Criss Cross and The Godfather? The plot is to have Ed "found hung", but uncorrupted policemen rescue Ed from the noose in the nick of time and the corruption ring is exposed.

Interesting faces include Louis Calhern and Tully Marshall as corrupt lawyers. The opening credit music (not credited) is impressive, there is a torch singer and a chain gang dancing girl number. The story is contemporary with news flashes on breadlines and unemployment.

The good print does justice to the work of the master cinematographer Karl Freund.

Weda'an Bonapart / Adieu Bonaparte (2016 digital restoration in 4K by Misr International Films, TF1 Droits Audiovisuels and La Cinémathèque française)

Youssef Chahine: وداعًا بونابرت / Weda'an Bonapart / Adieu Bonaparte (FR/EG 1985). With Michel Piccoli (General Caffarelli) and Mohsen Mohieddin (Ali).

Youssef Chahine: وداعًا بونابرت / Weda'an Bonapart / Adieu Bonaparte (FR/EG 1985).

وداعًا بونابرت 

    FR/EG 1985. P: Humbert Balsan, Marianne Khoury, Jean-Pierre Mahot per Misr International, Ministère de la culture (Cairo), Lyric International, Ministère de la culture (France), Renn Productions (Paris), TF1 Films Production. 

    D+SC: Youssef Chahine. Cinematography: Mohsen Nasr - colour. ED: Luc Barnier. AD: Onsi Abou Seif. M: Gabriel Yared. 

    C: Michel Piccoli (Caffarelli), Mohsen Mohieddin (Ali), Patrice Chéreau (Bonaparte), Mohsena Tewfik (la madre), Mohamed Atef (Yehia), Christian Patey (Horace), Hoda Sultan (Nefissa). 

    C also: Gamil Ratib (Barthelemy), Taheya Cariocca (la sage femme), Claude Cernay (Decoin), Mohamad Dardiri (Sheikh Charaf), Hassan El Adl (Cheikh Aedalah), Tewfik El Dekn (Le Derwiche), Seif El Dine (Kourayem), Hassan Husseiny (le père), Farid Mahmoud (Faltaos), Hoda Soltan (Nefissa), Salah Zulfakar (Cheikh Hassouna).

    The film was not released in Finland. 

    Restored in 4K in 2016 by Misr International Films, TF1 Droits Audiovisuels and La Cinémathèque française with the support of CNC, Fonds Culturel Franco-Américain, Archives audiovisuelles de Monaco e Association Youssef Chahine at Éclair laboratories and at L.E. Diapason studio, from the negative and the sound magnetic tapes
    Il Cinema Ritrovato, Bologna (Ritrovato e restaurato).
    DCP from La Cinémathèque française
    Introduce Gian Luca Farinelli, Frédéric Bonnaud (La Cinémathèque française)
    Arabic and French with English subtitles
    Cinema Arlecchino, 1 July 2016

Frédéric Bonnaud (Il Cinema Ritrovato 2016): "Thirty one years after being presented in the official competition of the Cannes Film Festival, Adieu Bonaparte returns in a new restored version. At the time, the film received a lukewarm, if not downright hostile, reception: several journalists judged the project ‘anti-French’ and it would not have been completed were it not for the direct support of the Cultural Minister Jack Lang, who was in the line of fire in almost all the attacks. In France, History is never written with a cool head and the idea that an Egyptian dared pit himself against Bonaparte (not yet Napoleon) could only provoke polemic."

"During the press conference Youssef Chahine, Michel Piccoli and Patrice Chéreau had to strenuously defend a film that didn’t respect the academic rules of historical reconstruction. It was judged a confused work and its absence from the Palme-winners forewarned of its failure at the box-office, where it was seen by little more than 50,000 people. But this matters little: the French-Egyptian alliance between Youssef Chahine and the producer Humbert Balsan was set, and would last for twenty years."

"It is its richness and complexity that makes Adieu Bonaparte a strangely contemporary film. It is as if History had validated all of Chahine’s intuitions, especially the most pessimistic ones about disaster in the Middle East, in particular in light of the mad hopes raised by the Egyptian revolution of 2011."

"Showing the people of Cairo asking how they should resist the French (under what banner? In the name of what?), Chahine is simultaneously a historian and a prophet. He does not condemn anyone, even if it is clear that he prefers the ardent humanism of General Caffarelli to Bonaparte’s genius for publicity, and he multiplies characters and points-of-view so that none of them is ever completely wrong or completely right. This interior split is typical of an Egyptian who had studied in California, an Arab intellectual possessing a universal culture, who was the greatest Egyptian filmmaker, free and cosmopolitan, hated by the powers-that-be and adored by the people. This is where the Renoir-like genius of Chahine resides. Adieu Bonaparte is his Marseillaise." – Frédéric Bonnaud

Cinando synopsis: "In 1798, Napoleon lands his army in Egypt, defeats the Mamluk [Mamelouk] warlords (the remnants of Ottoman rule), and goes on to Cairo. Three brothers, who are Egyptian patriots, chafe under Mamluk rule and reject the prospect of French domination. Bakr, the eldest, is a hothead, quick to advocate armed rebellion; Ali is more philosophical and poetic; Yehia is young and impressionable. One of Napoleon's generals, the one-legged intellectual Caffarelli, wants to make Frenchmen out of Ali, Yehia, and other Egyptians, opening a bakery where their father works, becoming a tutor, and declaring his love for them. Is tragedy the only resolution of these conflicting loyalties?"

AA: As the show started a half an hour late, and there were also long introductions, I could not stay until the end of the film because of another scheduled appointment. I saw 80 minutes of the film.

An epic on Napoleon's Egyptian campaign directed by the master Youssef Chahine. In the 1970s Chahine had founded his Misr production company. His films had considerable range from personal semi-autobiographical films to big budget historical epics. Starting from the 1982 French-Egyptian cultural exchange agreement Chahine's films were French co-productions. Adieu Bonaparte was produced on the biggest budget so far of an Egyptian film.

Patrice Chéreau offers a convincing performance as Napoleon, but although Napoleon is the primus motor of the action, he is not the protagonist of the narrative. In this Chahine is following the guidelines of Walter Scott on the historical novel: never make a great personality of history the protagonist of fiction.

Instead, we have an Egyptian family, and especially the three brothers Bakr (the rebel who incites the entire family to move from Alexandria to Cairo), Yehia (the literate one who has learned French from a young Alexandrian woman of Greek background), and Ali (the youngest one, the director's alter ego played by his favourite actor Mohsen Mohieddin).

Egypt is still under the last remains of the rule of the Ottomans (the Mamluks) and the resistance against the Mamluks and the French invaders who present themselves as liberators is incoherent.

The French protagonist is General Caffarelli (Michel Piccoli), a fearless soldier, scholar, and man of culture whose affection to the Egyptians is genuine. He has lost one leg by the time the film starts. During it he will lose an arm, and he will die in the siege of Acre in the Egyptian campaign.

Adieu Bonaparte belongs to Chahine's studies of the cosmopolitan tradition of Egypt, his vision of a great heritage where Muslims, Jews, and Christians co-exist. Instead of building a drama of clear-cut demarcation lines it blurs them by showing Caffarelli's profound sympathy with Egyptians, and also, characteristically for Chahine, developing a love story between men in Caffarelli's close relationships with Ali and his brothers.

Herodotus in his Histories acknowledged ancient Egypt as the main influence for Classical Greece. As we now know that means that the genesis of Western civilization is in ancient Egypt. Napoleon's campaign led to the rediscovery and renaissance of the magnificent Egyptian legacy. Ancient Egypt was probably the first universal civilization. Chahine, too, belongs to this great tradition.

The historical reconstruction feels faithful, and the epic battle scenes are impressive.

The digital restoration is impeccable, the image is sharp, the colour is bright. The purity even borders on the clinical in its sharpness and brightness.

La mano dello straniero / The Stranger's Hand

Mario Soldati: La mano dello straniero / The Stranger's Hand (IT/GB 1954). Richard O'Sullivan (Roger Court, the boy), Alida Valli as Roberta.

Mario Soldati: La mano dello straniero / The Stranger's Hand (IT/GB 1954). Alida Valli as Roberta and Richard Basehart as Joe.

Rapt à Venise / La Main de l'étranger. 

    IT/GB 1954. 

    D: Mario Soldati. Based on: dal racconto omonimo di Graham Greene. SC: Giorgio Bassani, Guy Elmes. Cinematography: Enzo Serafin. ED: Tom Simpson, Leslie Hodgson, Leo Cattozzo. AD: Luigi Scaccianoce. M: Nino Rota. 

    C: Alida Valli (Roberta), Trevor Howard (maggiore Court), Richard Basehart (Joe), Richard O’Sullivan (Roger Court), Eduardo Ciannelli (dottor Vivaldi), Arnoldo Foà (il commissario), Guido Celano (questore), Jacopo Tecchio (Giorgio Luzzi), Guido Costantini (Peskovitch), Nerio Berardi (direttore dell’albergo). P: Peter Moore per Rizzoli Film, Milo Film. [The film was not released in Finland]. 35 mm. 87’. B&w.
    Versione italiana
    Print from CSC – Cineteca Nazionale
    Il Cinema Ritrovato, Bologna
    Mario Soldati, a Writer at Cinecittà
    E-subtitles in English by Sub-Ti Londra
    Cinema Jolly, 1 July 2016

Emiliano Morreale (Bologna catalog): "One day, for fun, Graham Greene adopted a pseudonym and took part in a competition for stories written in the style of Graham Greene. He came second. His friend Mario Soldati asked him to produce a film story based on this idea, and thus La mano dello straniero was born. It is a classic story of the loss of childhood innocence set against a backdrop of espionage and intrigue: a sort of cross between The Third Man and Fuga in Francia. A child is searching for his kidnapped father in a noisy and hostile Venice with the help of a beautiful nurse and an ambiguous doctor. The cinematic encounter between Soldati and Greene is a curious one, and the story was perfect. Both men shared a Stevenson-like taste for adventure and a Catholic sense of suspense. Unfortunately, the production suffered from serious financial difficulties, while the Cold War espionage backstory had to be modified for political reasons until it was barely intelligible. However, the characters’ disorientation in the city remains one of the film’s strong points, together with the extraordinary figure of the villain, played by Eduardo Ciannelli. He is the heart of the film: an actor born in Ischia who became one of the great character actors of Thirties and Forties Hollywood (he had worked with Walsh, Hitchcock and Ford, amongst others) and was now promoted to the rank of protagonist. His character of a nihilist who reads The Decline of the West, aided by his worn features, is one of the details which, as is often the case in Soldati, unifies and justifies the whole film." – Emiliano Morreale

AA: Graham Greene had had his finest success in the cinema in Carol Reed's The Fallen Idol and The Third Man. The Stranger's Hand, directed by Mario Soldati, has elements of both. It is a Cold War story set in Venice, bringing back Alida Valli and Trevor Howard from The Third Man to another Graham Greene thriller. And it is an "end of childhood" story like The Fallen Idol. While The Stranger's Hand does not have a great reputation, it is an exciting and well-made film, and a treat for us interested in Graham Greene in the cinema.

I was only able to see the first 60 minutes of the film due to an overlap with Youssef Chahine's Adieu Bonaparte at Cinema Arlecchino.

I liked:

– the engrossing, operatic score by Nino Rota
– the wonderful cinematography by Enzo Serafin, who had a special talent in transforming a landscape into a soulscape (see Viaggio in Italia)
– the way Venice has been turned into a protagonist of the story, in a way similar to the use of Vienna in The Third Man. In this case the concept is not to turn Venice menacing (like in Don't Look Now). On the contrary, its friendly, beautiful and touristic ambience is an unpredictable background to the sinister plot.
– the plot belongs to the same tradition as Roman Polanski's Frantic: nobody believes that a disappearance of a person (in this case the little boy Roger's father, played by Trevor Howard) has taken place, and the first problem is to have others recognize it
– there is still an atmosphere of post-war unrest; for instance Roberta (Alida Valli) is a refugee
– Roger has not seen his his father, who is a major, in three years, and at first he does not even recognize him when he lies drugged on a hospital bed with a thick stubble
– this is Roger's lonesome quest at first, but then there is a team of three, a kind of an ad hoc family, consisting of Roberta, Joe (Richard Basehart), and Roger (this is where I had to leave for the next screening)
– the film is well cast to the tiniest parts, and as Emiliano Morreale states above, there is an interesting performance by Eduardo Ciannelli as the dubious doctor. He even meets Roger on sympathetic terms.

The print is watchable, with a duped visual quality.

Narayama bushiko / The Ballad of Narayama (1958) (2012 digital restoration by Shochiku)

The Ballad of Narayama (1958). In the poster image: Tatsuhei (Teiji Takahashi) takes his mother Orin (Kinuyo Tanaka) to the mountain to die.

楢山節考 / La ballata di Narayama.
    JP 1958. D: Keisuke Kinoshita. Story: based on the novel by Shichiro Fukazawa. Cinematography: Hiroshi Kusuda. ED: Yoshi Sugihara. AD: Kisaku Ito, Chiyoo Umeda. M: Rokuzaemon Kineya, Matsunosuke Nozawa.
    C: Kinuyo Tanaka (Orin), Teiji Takahashi (Tatsuhei), Yuko Mochizuki (Tamayan), Eijiro Tono (il fratello di Tamayan), Seiji Miyaguchi (Matayan), Yunosuke Ito (il figlio di Matayan), Danko Ichikawa (Kesakichi), Keiko Ogasawara (Matsuyan).
    P: Shochiku. [The film was not released in Finland]. DCP. Col. 98 min
    Fujicolor, Shochiku Grandscope 2,35:1
    Restored in 2012 by Shochiku
    Il Cinema Ritrovato, Bologna
    Richness and Harmony. Colour Film in Japan (part two)
    DCP with English subtitles from Shochiku
    E-subtitles by Sub-Ti Londra
    Cinema Jolly, 1 July 2016

Alexander Jacoby, Johan Nordström (Bologna catalog): "Having helmed Japan’s first full-colour feature, Kinoshita became something of an expert in the new medium, as witness this extraordinary fable shot in exquisite and experimental Fuji- color, shown to best advantage here in a new digital restoration. Recounting a story based on a traditional legend about a community requiring its elderly people to go away to die on a mountain on reaching the age of seventy, Kinoshita, working in the age of postwar liberal humanism, fashioned a critique of traditional culture, but also expressed a sympathetic understanding of patterns of thought and feeling in the imagined community he depicts."

"The film draws deliberately on the style and atmosphere of classical Japanese theatre. Keiko McDonald writes: “Using a wide screen and taking particular care with colour, spotlighting, curtains and sets, [Kinoshita] recreated the atmosphere of the classical Kabuki stage – even its blackhooded kurogo, which Kinoshita introduces as stagehands conventionally ‘invisible’”. Colour, she notes, is used in the film “to signal shifts in psychology”. Kinoshita himself declared, “This is my first work in which I tried a unique manner of presentation and colourization based on the Japanese traditional artistic style”. The great actress Kinuyo Tanaka gives a stunning performance in the lead role. Her dedication as a performer is exemplified by the scene where she sells her teeth; for the sake of realism, it is said that she had several of her own front teeth removed. Teiji Takahashi, playing her son, lost 15 kilos of weight during the shooting."

"Kinoshita’s colour experimentation did not end with this film; in Fuefukigawa (The River Fuefuki, 1960), he established mood by applying vivid strokes of colour to monochrome footage. A quarter of a century later, the story of The Ballad of Narayama was retold, in a contrasting style of harsh realism, by Shohei Imamura in his film of the same name, which scooped the Palme d’Or at Cannes." – Alexander Jacoby, Johan Nordström

AA: This first film adaptation of Shichiro Fukazawa's novel is the diametrical opposite to Shohei Imamura's naturalistic interpretation. Keisuke Kinoshita's version is boldly stylized, and there is an atmosphere of a ritual and ceremony in it. There is also so much song and music that there is an aspect of the musical.

The subject is the mythical practice of ubasute (obasute, oyasute, 姥捨て): in the distant past, in conditions of poverty, a very old parent was taken to the mountain to die in a form of euthanasia.

As Alexander Jacoby and Johan Nordström state above, Kinuyo Tanaka's performance is powerful as the old mother. Her transformation is so total that I had a hard time recognizing in her the vibrant star of Kenji Mizoguchi and many others.

Keisuke Kinoshita and his cinematographer Hiroshi Kushuda use Fujicolor in the Shochiku Grandscope format without inhibition. The maple leaves are burning red in the autumn. The field is shining in gold in harvest time. There is an emphasis on bright colour until in the finale the mountain top is full of skeletons and black vultures, and finally snow covers everything.

There are powerful performances and visions in the film, but the sense of duration is overstated and the long journey is needlessly prolonged.

The digital restoration is fine.