Now We're in the Air (2017 restoration by Národní filmový archiv & San Francisco Silent Film Festival)

Now We're in the Air (US 1927). D: Frank R. Strayer. Raymond Hatton, Louise Brooks, Wallace Beery.

Now We're in the Air (US 1927). D: Frank R. Strayer. Emile Chautard, Louise Brooks. Photo: Louise Brooks Society.

Now We're in the Air (US 1927). D: Frank R. Strayer. Raymond Hatton, Louise Brooks, Wallace Beery. Photo: Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences - Margaret Herrick Library. Scene not included in the surviving fragment.

Now We're in the Air (US 1927). D: Frank R. Strayer. Louise Brooks. Portrait by Eugene Robert Richee. Photo: Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences - Margaret Herrick Library. Scene not included in the surviving fragment.

Now We're in the Air (US 1927). D: Frank R. Strayer. Louise Brooks. Portrait by Eugene Robert Richee.

Now We're in the Air (US 1927). D: Frank R. Strayer. Louise Brooks. Portrait by Eugene Robert Richee. Scene not included in the surviving fragment.

Sankareita ilmassa / Hjältar i luften / Aviatori per forza (US 1927), D: Frank R. Strayer, story: Monte Brice, Keene Thompson, scen: Tom J. Geraghty, titles: George Marion, Jr., photog: Harry Perry, [2nd camera: Alfred “Buddy” Williams, E. Burton Steene. ed: Carl Pierson.], cast: Wallace Beery (Wally), Raymond Hatton (Ray), Louise Brooks (Griselle Chelaine; Grisette Chelaine), Russell Simpson (Lord Abercrombie McTavish), Emile Chautard (M. Chelaine), Malcolm Waite (Professor Saenger), Duke Martin (Top Sergeant), [uncredited: Mattie Witting (Mme. Chelaine)], prod: Adolph Zukor, Jesse L. Lasky, Paramount, dist: Paramount, rel: 22.10.1927, copy: incompl. (orig. 5798 ft, 6 rl, ca 70′), 35 mm, 1377 ft (fragments of rl. 2, 3, 6), 23 min (20 fps); titles: ENG, source: Národní filmový archiv, Praha, & San Francisco Silent Film Festival, restored: 2017.
    Le Giornate del Cinema Muto, Pordenone, e-subtitles in Italian.
    Teatro Verdi, 2 Oct 2017.

GCM (2017): "It’s hard to imagine anyone at Paramount seriously believing that Mauritz Stiller was well-suited to direct the third World War I-themed comedy pairing of Wallace Beery and Raymond Hatton, but that’s what Film Daily reported on 26 January 1927. Unsurprisingly, the idea didn’t last long, and the following month the same trade paper announced that James Cruze would be the popular duo’s latest director instead. Louise Brooks Society founder Thomas Gladysz found evidence that William Wellman was also attached at some point, which makes quite a bit of sense, but by June the studio revealed that the director for Now We’re in the Air would be Frank R. Strayer, a considerably lesser talent than the original three choices. On this basis, the film’s loss wouldn’t generate more than passing disappointment, but there was another factor to be considered, in the form of its 21-year-old leading lady, Louise Brooks."

"Eugene Robert Richee’s playfully seductive portraits of Brooks from the film, saucily posed in a racy black tutu, made the loss even more tantalizing, and the actress’ own declaration that her favorite publicity still was a casual shot of her reading on the set, next to screenwriter Keene Thompson, added to the feeling that we were missing something special. Then came the announcement in 2016 that parts of Reels 2, 3, and 6 were discovered at the Národní filmový archiv in Prague (the cans were labeled with its Czech title, Rif a Raf, Politi), making the incomplete Now We’re in the Air footage the sole surviving element from any of the four films Brooks made in 1927. Sadly, Brooks appears in only about 5 minutes of the newly found fragments, but it’s hard to look anywhere else when she’s on screen. Though purely decorative, she exudes a timelessness, relaxed and informal, that stands out for modern audiences when contrasted with the broad-based comedy around her."

"It’s important to remember that Brooks was just in her second year making movies, and her contribution was always secondary: production files at the Margaret Herrick Library show she was paid $500 a week, which was $50 a week less than actor Malcolm Waite’s salary. On the other hand, Beery was getting $3,000, and Hatton $2,000. The main stars had already appeared in two other comedies with military backgrounds, Behind the Front and We’re in the Navy Now (both 1926 and both directed by Brooks’ husband, Eddie Sutherland), and Paramount cleverly chose to complete the armed services trilogy with an air force setting just when aviation mania was sweeping the globe following Charles Lindbergh’s transatlantic flight in May 1927. Profiting from the hoopla, advertisements hailed Beery and Hatton as “loony Lindberghs.”"

"Although Strayer (1891-1964) was a largely workmanlike director whose career highlight was a string of “Blondie” films in the late 1930s and early 40s, the cinematographer, Harry Perry, had a knack for aerial photography: in 1923 he shot The Broken Wing, and four months before Now We’re in the Air he’d finished work on Wings, together with second cameramen Alfred “Buddy” Williams and E. Burton Steene, also collaborating here (Perry and Steene later shot Hell’s Angels). Aside from Brooks’ presence, it’s these aerial moments that generate the most interest in the surviving footage, some of which, during the Armistice scene, was actually left over from Wings, no doubt used as a cost-saving measure – perhaps Paramount had blown their budget when they rented 15 planes to add to the authenticity and thrills."

"The plot is predictably silly: Beery and Hatton are Wally and Ray, a couple of bumbling cousins scheming to get their aristocratic Scottish grandfather’s inheritance by appealing to his love of aviation. Once on the Continent during the War, the two fall for twin sisters Grisette and Griselle, one raised in France, the other in Germany – Brooks plays both characters, though the surviving footage only shows Grisette, a tutu-clad carnival entertainer, and not Griselle in her peasant bodice and kerchief. Wally and Ray wind up in the U.S. air service, but get blown into enemy territory in a circus balloon, where they’re mistaken for sympathizers. The Germans think they can use them as spies so send them back across the lines, where they’re finally able to make things right after nearly being blown up. Critic Wilella Waldorf, in the New York Evening Post, was not amused: ”Mr. Beery and Mr. Hatton have been seen so often to kick each other that it has ceased exactly to be a fountain of wit.” However, Alfred Greason was far more positive in Variety, praising the aerial photography and the succession of gags, notwithstanding “an utter disregard of the finer aspects of wit and humor.”" Jay Weissberg

AA: This fragment of 23 minutes has brought film aficionados a lot of joy. Now We're in the Air is an action comedy set in WWI. In its surviving footage a spy is found at a carnival, and there is some thrilling action, perhaps a bit like Laurel and Hardy in Liberty, as Wallace Beery and Raymond Hatton are caught in a hot air balloon which takes them across enemy lines. An epic battleground scene is included. For five minutes Louise Brooks lights up the screen by her mere presence as the carnival dancer Grisette. Very watchable from scratched fragments with tinting simulated.

For a Better Vision (GCM 2017, a Desmet Collection show from 1910-1915 curated by Elif Rongen-Kaynakçi)

Water Lilies (US 1911). Photo: Collection EYE Filmmuseum, Amsterdam.

Prints from EYE Filmmuseum / Desmet Collection (expect A Flash of Light by Griffith).
Le Giornate del Cinema Muto, Pordenone.
Grand piano: Mauro Colombis.
Teatro Verdi, e-subtitles in English and Italian, 2 Oct 2017.

Elif Rongen-Kaynakçi (GCM 2017): "Cinema is visual entertainment. It seems only fair then that filmmakers are obsessed with themes around seeing and not seeing. Not being able to see provides an intensely dramatic plot, with regaining one’s vision often constituting the climax. Whether melodramas, comedies, or even documentaries, plots are often constructed in such a way to achieve “better vision”."

"This year’s Desmet selection contains fewer comedies and more dramas. The consequences of not being able to recognize a face or read a letter, and constantly being dependent on others, are so powerful that blindness seems to be more often used for drama."

"As usual, this year’s compilation consists of fiction and non-fiction films (from 1910-1915), relevant to the same theme in very different ways. The programme brings together various films in which men or women go blind and then recover their vision; there’s also a charity fashion show to help the blind, as well as films in which characters pretend to be blind, and others in which doctors perform eye surgery to overcome blindness." Elif Rongen-Kaynakçi

Mieux valait la nuit (FR 1911).

MIEUX VALAIT LA NUIT (Was ik maar blind gebleven) / [Night Would Have Been Better] ? (FR 1911), cast: ?. prod: Éclair, copy: 35 mm, 214 m, 11’26” (18 fps), (tinted, Desmet process); titles: NLD. Preserved in colour in 1990 using an internegative.
    While preparing to go out with her husband, Simone is blinded by a sudden explosion in her face while her maid helps her do her hair (this accident is shown in a neighbouring room via a reflection in a mirror, while her husband reads a newspaper in the foreground). The doctors tell her she can never see again. Despite giving Simone loving care, her husband eventually grows fond of one of her best friends. The lovers get careless, trusting that Simone can never see them together. But Simone secretly tries an alternative cure which does heal her. She rushes to tell her husband, only to witness him in the arms of his lover, and collapses of a broken heart.
    Not much is known about this mysterious Éclair film. The identification of the title is not fully confirmed, and no information about the cast is available in written sources. We believe that Simone is played by Renée Sylvaire, and her rival by Cécile Guyon. Could the husband be the Éclair veteran André Liabel. Elif Rongen-Kaynakçi
    AA: Drama. A startling mini-movie on the perennial motif of melodrama: blindness. The Finnish counterpart would be Teuvo Tulio's Restless Blood. In both, the woman believed blind discovers what is going on with her husband and another woman. Here she dies of heartbreak. Mirrors expand the scope of vision. From a tinted and toned source with sometimes a soft and duped look.

Amma, le voleur aveugle (FR 1912). Photo: Collection EYE Filmmuseum, Amsterdam.

AMMA, LE VOLEUR AVEUGLE / [Amma, the Blind Thief]. ? (FR 1912), cast: ?, prod: Pathé Frères (The Japanese Film), copy: incomp., DCP, 4’45”; intertitles missing.
    The plot, as related by the Pathé Catalogue: “The delicate Lotus Flower is tired after attending to her bonsai trees, and calls for a masseur. She leaves her jewels in a precious box and slips them under her pillow while her maid brings in the masseur Amma, who, like all his colleagues in Japan, is blind, or at least seems to be. Lotus Flower soon falls asleep; the masseur, taking advantage of her slumber, searches the room. Noticing the box resting under her head, he tries to take it, but awakens the sleeper. After a short struggle Lotus Flower faints and Amma runs away with his booty. The maidservant alerts her mistress. Amma is discovered and punished.”
    Only 108 metres of this film (of the original 280 m.) were found and identified in 2014. This is believed to be the second half of the film. It only shows the “blind” masseur being escorted out by the maidservant, who then goes to check on her mistress and finds the wooden box is empty. She wakes up her mistress, who is distraught at the robbery. In the meantime, a policeman arrives and the gardener is summoned; they all go after Amma, who is hiding up a tree in the garden. A struggle ensues, the thief is captured, and the jewellery is recovered.
    The original nitrate is tinted and toned. However, for the moment the film is preserved via a black & white duplicate negative only. The intertitles are missing. The DCP is based on the HD scan of the duplicate negative made from the nitrate in 2014 at Haghefilm. Elif Rongen-Kaynakçi
    AA: Crime drama. Again, the fact of being believed to be blind leads to suspense and drama. Furious action. There are some damage marks in the source.

Le Cœur et les yeux (FR 1911), D: Émile Chautard. Photo: Collection EYE Filmmuseum, Amsterdam.

LE COEUR ET LES YEUX (Ziek hart et zieke oogen) (US: Hearts and Eyes; GB: The Heart and the Eyes), FR 1911, dir, scen: Émile Chautard, cast: Cécile Didier (Cécile Aubry [Dutch print: Cecilie]), Philippe Damorès (Dr. Paul Humbert), Maria Fromet (Jeanne Aubry), prod: ACAD [Association Cinématographique des Auteurs Dramatiques], dist: Éclair, 35 mm, 182 m., 9’35” (18 fps), col. (tinted, Desmet process); titles: NLD. Desmet Collection. Preserved in colour in 1989 using an internegative.
    Cécile is blinded while cleaning a pair of gloves with benzine. As she is the sole provider for her little sister Jeanne, they now become poor and eventually homeless. Jeanne begs money from strangers, one of whom turns out to be Dr. Humbert, an eye specialist, who offers to operate on Cécile’s eyes. The surgery is successful, and by the time Cécile has regained her sight the doctor has desperately lost his heart to his beautiful patient.
    The Association Cinématographique des Auteurs Dramatiques (ACAD) was established in 1910 in Paris, with the stage actor and director Émile Chautard (1864-1934) as one of its founding partners. A subsidiary of Éclair, the company was meant to compete with Film d’Art and S.C.A.G.L., and similarly aspired to make film adaptations of celebrated literary classics and popular works by contemporary authors. This film is an adaptation of a popular novel of the same title by the prolific author Pierre Sales (1854/56?-1914). Elif Rongen-Kaynakçi
    AA: A love story. Startling images of eye surgery in a story of love as healing. "Restoring light in eyes you restore the heart". A mirror introduces the shot-countershot effect without cutting.

[MESSTER-WOCHE:] MODESCHAU IM ZOO, ? (DE, ca 1915), prod: Messters Projektion, copy: fragment, 35 mm, 60 m, 2’56” (18 fps), tinted; titles: GER.
Printed in 2009 at Haghefilm, from an internegative made in 1988.
    This short fragment of a Messter-Woche newsreel item doesn’t really contain anyone blind or otherwise visually impaired. Instead, it features a charity fashion show held for blind war veterans. Kriegsblindenheim, a home for the war blind, was established in 1915 at Bellevuestrasse 12 in Berlin by Mrs. Ernst Von Ihne, the wife of an acclaimed architect, who reportedly spent her entire fortune on helping the war blind to reintegrate into society. After the passing of her husband in April 1917, she also started a library for the war blind.
    The fashions shown in the film include designs by Christoph Drecoll in Berlin. The headwear is from the Seidenhaus (Silk House) of the Gebrüder Frank (Frank Brothers) in Munich. The models strolling and posing in the single parlour set are also credited, as “Misses Tönnessen, Liebe, Hansen and others”. The “Misses Tönnessen” may possibly refer to models hired by the pioneer American commercial art photographer Beatrice Tonnesen (1871-1958) to pose for the earliest advertising pictures using live models; her business spanned 1896-1930. Elif Rongen-Kaynakçi
    AA: Newsreel. An intriguing fashion show.

Water Lilies (US 1911). Irmgard von Rottenthal (Albertina).

WATER LILIES (De Waterlelie), ? (US 1911), scen: ?, cast: Irmgard von Rottenthal (Albertina), ? (Maurice), ? (Aunt Mary), ? (Maurice’s mother), prod: Vitagraph Company of America, filmed: 1910, rel: 13.1.1911, copy: incomp., 35 mm, 282 m (= 925 ft; orig. 991 ft), 14’51” (18 fps), col. (tinted, Desmet process); did./titles: NLD. Preserved: 2010 (lab. Haghefilm).
    Even in 1911, commentators scoffed at the idea of someone being permanently blinded by merely looking at a flash of lightning: in his largely positive review of Water Lilies, the critic for The Nickelodeon singled out just such a scene for his complaint: “No stage trickery could have made it convincing anyhow, because it seems to be inherently impossible.” Apparently, he hadn’t been reading the newspapers, which not infrequently featured just such stories. It’s true the scene in Water Lilies is weakly staged, but clearly the unidentified director and writer were more interested in the consequences of Maurice’s loss of sight rather than the cause. For without an ability to see, the young man couldn’t take in the terpsichorean magnificence of the film’s raison d’être, its star Baroness Irmgard von Rottenthal.
    She was born in Croatia circa 1890, the daughter of Baron Josef von Rothenthal, an illegitimate son of Prince Heinrich XX Reuß – why she changed the spelling to Rottenthal remains a mystery. By 1906 she was in the U.S., where she became a pupil of Rita Sacchetto and Mrs. Richard Hovey, the latter a leading teacher of the Delsarte technique, a theory of movement and expression whose profound influence on modern dance is well known. Only recently however has the impact of François Delsarte and his acolytes on silent film acting been explored, and watching Rottenthal in Water Lilies offers a fascinating opportunity to see Delsartean technique brought whole to the screen. The Baroness is all about gesture, even when not dancing: her hands and arms are ultra-expressive in an almost pantomimic way, reflecting her moods and the beauties of nature. As poetically stated by Moving Picture World, she’s “like a thistle-down wafted by some gentle zephyr.” In the film she plays Albertina, a dancer for high society (not unlike herself) who falls in love with Maurice while she’s recovering at her aunt’s from heart trouble. When he’s struck blind, he claims not to love Albertina, so as to spare her the burden of looking after him; however, true love will out. Not everyone was enchanted – the critic for Moving Picture News grumbled, “The young lady should never have been allowed to run at large. Her place was in a padded cell.”
    In the early-to-mid-1910s, she was high society’s preferred artiste at charity functions, performing her interpretive dances in the mansions of Manhattan, Newport, Chicago, and beyond. Among her most popular roles were “Temptation of Eve,” dressed in two giant fig leaves, “Schmerzen,” performed (incredibly) with 30 pounds of chains on her wrists, and “Gold Fish,” praised for its fidelity to nature. In 1914, Rodney Lee of the Toledo Blade enthused, “The Baroness possesses to an unusual degree the power of expressing various emotions by a glance of the eye, a turn of the head, and the use of her long, shapely hands.” The self-same hands, it was said, which had been admired by Rodin himself.
    Rottenthal’s film appearances are few: after Water Lilies, she was absent from screens until Kalem’s Midnight at Maxim’s (1915), where she does two specialty numbers; later that year she was seen in Hearst-Selig News Pictorial No. 61, dancing in New York’s Central Park. By late 1916 Rottenthal disappears from the press entirely, most likely because her German surname wasn’t the best calling card in the lead-up to America’s entry into the War. Rottenthal died in New York in 1935, three years after the death of her second husband. My research into the life and career of this fascinating figure is ongoing. Jay Weissberg
    AA: A romantic drama. A lovely sense of nature is a major feature in this lyrical and elegiac story of healing and sacrifice. The man goes blind during a thunderstorm and pretends that he does not love her anymore. But inevitably they find each other again.

MR. MYOPE CHASSE (The Sportsman), ? (FR 1910), cast: ?, prod: Pathé Frères, 35 mm, 115 m, 5’06” (18 fps), col. (tinted, Desmet process); main title: ENG; no intertitles. Preserved: 2011 (lab. Haghefilm), from an original print from the collection of the Archive Film Agency, London.
    Over the years it has become a tradition to include in our Desmet selection a breakneck-style chase comedy, where the action builds and everything comes crashing down in the end. In order not to break with tradition, we present Mr. Myope, a short-sighted hunter. Poor eyesight can be employed as a natural comedy element when a main character is unable to see what is right in front of him. Believing to have found game, Mr. Myope shoots at a young calf that has been tethered by two farm workers. They start to chase him with the calf, and mayhem ensues. He knocks down an apple picker with a ladder, a washerwoman, a shopkeeper waiting on her customer at a vegetable stall, a worker with a wheelbarrow, a china salesman, and two men carrying a basket of birds, and they all join in the chase. The sportsman finally heads home to his wife for safety. After paying off all the damages he adopts the calf, and he and his wife are left petting and feeding the animal (now wearing spectacles!), from a baby’s milk bottle via a tube. Elif Rongen-Kaynakçi
    AA: A funny catastrophe farce where the myopic hunter is a peril to the world, as detailed above. A fine sense of escalation, and a droll denouement.

Le Mensonge de Jean le Manchot (FR 1911). D: Michel Carré. Photo: Collection EYE Filmmuseum, Amsterdam.

LE MENSONGE DE JEAN LE MANCHOT (Door bedrog voor een treurig leed bespaard) / [The Lie of Jean le Manchot], (FR 1911), dir, scen: Michel Carré, cast: Adrien Caillard (Jacques Reynaud), Paul Capellani (Jean le Manchot), Marie Ernestine Desclauzas (the mother), Charles Mosnier (the father), Blanche Albane (Jeanne Sabourée, Reynaud’s fiancée), prod: Pathé Frères – S.C.A.G.L. [Société Cinématographique des Auteurs et des Gens de Lettres], 35 mm, 256 m, 12’29” (18 fps), col. (tinted, Desmet process); titles: NLD.
    Captain Reynaud is engaged to the pretty schoolteacher Jeanne. Following unrest in Yunnan province, Reynaud is called to fight in Indo-China. Two years go by, during which everyone waits for the captain to return to France, including his best friend, the one-armed Jean. In the meantime Reynaud’s old father goes completely blind. After Reynaud dies heroically during an attack, his belongings are sent home. While the others know the sad news, Reynaud’s blind father believes his son is back when he discovers his trunk has been brought in. In an attempt to protect the old man’s feelings Jean puts on his dear friend’s uniform, leading the father to believe that his son has returned from the front, having only lost an arm, and Jeanne and Jean are compelled to pledge their troth, joining hands in a silent alliance.
    This is one of the few films starring the influential French stage actress Blanche Albane-Duhamel (born Blanche Alice Sistoli, 1886-1975), who was the wife of the acclaimed author Georges Duhamel (1884-1966) from 1909 until his death. She was greatly admired by André Gide and Jean Cocteau among others, as recalled by her husband in one of his books. Elif Rongen-Kaynakçi
    AA: Drama. That the father would not know: this film is theatrical but expressive in the blind father being deceived to believe that his son has come home from the front. A lively mise-en-scène.

BLINDENINSTITUUT EN OOGLIJDERSGASTHUIS TE BANDOENG [Istituto per ciechi a Bandung / Institute for the Blind Home in Bandung], J. C. Lamster (NL, 1912-1913), Prod: Koloniaal Instituut, Amsterdam, 35 mm, 139 m, 6’45” (18 fps), col. (tinted, Desmet process); titles: NLD. Preserved: 1999 (lab. Haghefilm).
    This documentary from the Colonial Institute Collection shows the Ooglijdersgasthuis, the Institute for the Blind facility at the Dutch colony of Bandung in Indonesia, which was established by Doctor C. H. A. Westhoff in 1901. The film shows the patients’ daily life at the Queen Wilhelmina home and clinic, including making brooms, basket weaving, and schooling. It ends with rather graphic footage of an eye operation performed by Dr. Westhoff – not for those of a weak disposition!
    C. H. A. Westhoff was born in 1848 in Nijmegen, and died in 1913 in Sydney, Australia. He first went to Indonesia in 1872 as young doctor. After going back to the Netherlands in 1884 to specialize in eye surgery, in 1900 he returned to Indonesia, where he established the Ooglijdersgasthuis. Elif Rongen-Kaynakçi
    AA: Straight non-fiction about the blind being taught to earn a living in Bandung as detailed above. There is an unflinching account of an eye operation. The composition is fine. Very watchable although with a soft visual quality.

A Flash of Light (US 1910). D: D. W. Griffith. Stephanie Longfellow (the older sister who truly loves John), Charles West (John Rogers, chemist), Vivian Prescott (Belle Rogers, the younger sister who is John's wife and wants to pursue her stage career). Photo: EYE on YouTube.

A FLASH OF LIGHT, D. W. Griffith (US 1910), scen: Stanner E. V. Taylor, photog: G. W. Bitzer, prod: Biograph.
    C: Charles West (John Rogers, chemist), Vivian Prescott (Belle, the younger sister), Stephanie Longfellow (the older sister), Verner Clarges (dad); George D. Nicholls (surgeon), Wm. J. Butler (family doctor), Grace Henderson (Mrs. Walton, society hostess), Joseph Graybill (Horace Dooley, stage impresario), Tony O’Sullivan (lead servant), W. C. “Spike” Robinson (2nd servant), Kate Toncray (nurse), [Charles Craig, Gertrude Robinson, Alfred Paget, George Siegmann, Mack Sennett (wedding guests), Edward Dillon, Claire McDowell, Dorothy West, John Dillon, Guy Hedlund (at Mrs. Walton’s soirée), Guy Hedlund, Ruth Hart, John Dillon, Henry Lehrman(?) (at theatre party)].
    Filmed: 14-17.6.1910 (Biograph Studio, NY), rel: 18.7.1910, 35 mm, 973 ft (orig. ca 998 ft), 17′ (16 fps); titles: ENG, source: BFI National Archive, London.
    "In one of his most tortured Biographs, Griffith saves his wildest moment for his final shot, where his immovable plot meets the irresistible metaphors that go with blindness and light. In the front parlor of his home, the bandages of a blinded chemist are about to be removed. He is flanked by the two women in his life – his frivolous wife, who is ready to leave him because she finds his blindness stifling; and his long-suffering sister-in-law, who secretly loves him and who, thanks to his blindness, has fooled him into thinking she is his wife. The bandages come off and he sees – i.e., understands – who has been caring for him. But his wife, recoiling, knocks down the heavy parlor drapes and the blaze of sunlight blinds her husband again – this time permanently. Aghast, the wife runs out, leaving her re-blinded husband with the woman who will now be his eyes for the foreseeable future. Overwhelmed, he kneels down and kisses the hem of her dress."
    "In a single amazing shot, Griffith (with his prolific writer Stanner E. V. Taylor) manages to jam together the time-honored connections between moral, emotional, and physical blindness. What starts as a story about a chemist blinded by one of his experiments develops as a tale of two sisters: one who basks in the bright lights and glitter of high society; the other whose selfless devotion makes her literally invisible, playing off her would-be lover’s multiple forms of blindness by masquerading as a wife with the help of her sister’s discarded ring."
    "For post-moderns (and who among us has escaped?) what leaps out is the tension between the overt moralism of the film and the medium in which Griffith is working. As Scott Simmon notes in his first-rate chapter on the Biograph woman’s film in The Films of D. W. Griffith, the movie takes an unambiguous stand against the corruption of superficial sight and gaudy entertainment. In case we miss the point, the intertitles are there to help, as is Griffith’s intercutting between scenes of parties and receptions with scenes of care and nurture. But as a commercial filmmaker, Griffith inevitably traffics in exactly the world of display and glamour he disparages. As Simmon writes, “‘A flash of light’ twice blinds the chemist, but the phrase also defines the silent film apparatus, and the wife [in all her finery] is put on display for us, come what may.”"
    "This light-obsessed film culminates in a wonderfully compressed and sublimely silly coup de thêàtre that brings the contradictions to the fore, and arguably lets in more than Griffith knows. The dazzling burst of sunlight that the celebrity sister (by now a comic-opera diva) dramatically exposes is a moment bristling with ironies and multiple meanings. Like the Cooper Hewitt lights (which in fact produce the flamboyant ultra-theatrical “sunlight” effect), the sun that re-blinds the chemist also puts the other sister in the spotlight, making her stand in stark relief from the other characters. However, the exposé of the noble sister (who in this single moment shines brighter than her sister) is mainly a way to dramatize the superiority of the shadows. The re-blinding brings with it both insight – the chemist’s recognition and appreciation of true virtue – and a means for matching the noble heroine who prefers to work unseen with a partner whose blindness gives her the perfect opportunity to continue her self-sacrificing mission." Russell Merritt
   
AA: Tragedy. Last seen at Le Giornate in 2000 in Sacile, probably in the same print in The Griffith Project marathons, this DWG opus 272 startles in a new way in this context. Having lost his eyesight the man never finds out who his true lover is. A tragic surprise leads us to a Russian ending.

Another of Elif Rongen-Kaynakçi's curated thematic shows from the Desmet Collection of the EYE Filmmuseum. Inspired film programming of the highest order.

Seeing and blindness have multiple and complex meanings in the cinema, from the literal to the philosophical. "I see". But sometimes it is blindness that makes us see beyond the surface.

Fante-Anne / Gypsy Anne (2011 restoration Nasjonalbiblioteket)

Fante-Anne (NO 1920). Photo: Garden of Silence.

Fante-Anne (title in Finland) / Mustalais-Anna (another title in Finland) / Tattar-Anna (original Swedish title) / [Anna la vagabonda / Gypsy Anne]. NO 1920. D: Rasmus Breistein. Based on the short story by Kristofer Janson (1878), photog, des, ed: Gunnar Nilsen-Vig, cast: Aasta Nielsen (Anne), Einar Tveito (Jon), Lars Tvinde (Haldor), Johanne Bruhn (Haldor’s mother), Henny Skjønberg (Jon’s Mother), Edvard Drabløs (the magistrate), Dagmar Myhrvold (Anne’s mother), prod: Kommunernes Filmscentral, première: 11.9.1920.
    DCP (from 35 mm, 2171 m), 75 min (transferred at 15 fps), tinted; titles: NOR, subt. ENG.
source: Nasjonalbiblioteket, Oslo / Mo i Rana.
    Le Giornate del Cinema Muto, Pordenone: The Swedish Challenge
    Music: Günter Buchwald, Frank Bockius.
    Teatro Verdi, e-subtitles in Italian, 2 Oct 2017.

Bent Kvalvik (GCM 2017): "Fante-Anne is the first Norwegian feature film set in a distinctly Norwegian milieu, and the first Norwegian film adapted from a literary work. The story is an archetypal instance of Norwegian peasant tales, which often deal with love across boundaries of class and wealth. It follows a foundling, Anne, who grows up on a wealthy farmstead with Haldor, the son and heir of the owner, but is cast out when she and Haldor as adults fall in love and wish to marry. Haldor’s strict mother has found a more suitable match for her son. But Anne, with her vagabond blood and fiery temper, takes revenge by setting fire to the farm’s new building, a house built for Haldor and his new bride. The farmhand Jon, who loves Anne, takes the blame for the arson. After he serves his prison sentence, Anne and Jon are united, and the couple emigrate to America. The story presents a clear religious allegory of sin expiated by a loving saviour, with the saviour bringing the sinner to paradise. But in spite of the superstructure of Christian morality, it is also a story about a woman who rebels against her fate, makes dangerous choices, and remains undaunted by tradition and authority."

"As the first Norwegian romantic national film, Fante-Anne became the starting point for an important genre tradition in Norwegian film history, dominant in the silent period but also important for the sound cinema of the 1930s and 40s, long after contemporary and more urban stories had found their place in the repertoire. The turning point that came with Fante-Anne was openly inspired by two Swedish film adaptations of works by the Nobel Prize-winning Norwegian novelist Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson from the previous year, 1919: Synnöve Solbakken and Ett farligt frieri (A Dangerous Wooing). During its uncertain infancy before 1919, Norwegian film had mostly produced catchpenny melodramas without any specific national colour; but now people realized that they could get a much larger and more dedicated audience by giving Norwegian moviegoers pictures and stories that confirmed their own national identity. Following these two Swedish successes, filmed in Norway and in Norwegian nature, Fante-Anne came as a worthy and natural sequel. The film’s authenticity in its treatment of environment and character remains striking, as does its beautiful cinematography, and is all the more impressive considering that the vast majority of those involved in the production were making films for the first time. But the director, the cinematographer, and the actors all had a solid knowledge base in Norwegian music, literature, and peasant culture."

"The director Rasmus Breistein (1890-1976), the son of a peasant, had a theatre background as an actor and folk musician. After watching the Swedish Bjørnson films, he presented his own film plans to the production company Kommunernes Filmscentral. He received their support and was teamed with the already experienced cinematographer Gunnar Nilsen-Vig. The collaboration between these two would be fruitful; Nilsen-Vig would shoot 9 of Breistein’s 14 feature films, and the director often praised his cinematographer for his valuable knowledge and efforts. The success of Fante-Anne paved the way for further film projects in the same genre, and Breistein actually made three more films from works by Fante-Anne’s author Kristofer Janson: Brudeferden i Hardanger (1926), Kristine Valdresdatter (1930), and the sound film Liv (1934), all great successes. A writer popular for his portrayals of rural life, Kristofer Janson was also a minister who worked  for many years among Norwegian-Americans in the United States. This gave Breistein’s movies a large audience there as well when Breistein himself went on tour in the U.S. with them, accompanying them on the fiddle. With a 30-year career that encompassed the transition from silent to sound, and on to colour film, Rasmus Breistein stands out as one of the real pioneers of Norwegian film history."

"Aasta Nielsen (1897-1975) was a Norwegian stage actress and singer, mainly active in operettas. (She was a first cousin of the legendary Wagnerian soprano Kirsten Flagstad.) Her film career was very brief, with only three titles. After Fante-Anne she also starred in Jomfru Trofast / The Maiden Faithful (1921) and Felix (1921), both also directed by Rasmus Breistein."

The restoration

"The original negative of Fante-Anne is lost; all surviving copies are based on a duplicate negative from an old release print with Swedish intertitles. The National Library of Norway embarked on a new restoration in 2011, when the reconstructed film was printed in its original silent film format (1:1.33) for the first time, and the images were coloured according to tinting notations in the duplicate negative. New title cards were made based on those in a previous Norwegian version which had been translated from Swedish. Scanning and printing of the newly restored viewing copy was performed at New Digital Filmlab in Copenhagen." Bent Kvalvik

AA: I saw for the first time this foundation work of Norwegian film art.

Roles are reversed in the beginning of the story where we meet Anne and Haldor as children. Anne the foundling is the wild rascal, the daredevil, the tomboy, climbing high trees, spying on lovers, and seducing Haldor to a kiss. When Haldor, the tranquil boy, slips into the water Anne's advice is "just run till you dry".

The backstory reminds us of Der gelbe Schein screened yesterday. The mother is not allowed to stay, and she dies having given birth to the baby Anne in the barn.

Next, Haldor and Anne are a young man and woman. Anne is a milkmaid at the mountain summer hut. Haldor's mother is worrying as Haldor is constantly heading for the mountains. Haldor tells Anne that he is building a new house for them. But mother has her own suggestions. "Stop playing this game. Do not marry a girl of unknown origin".

A month goes by without Haldor visiting the summer hut, and Anne hears that Haldor is to marry Margit Moen. She overhears Haldor's cruel words of "how an unknown waif could become the mistress of the mightiest house of the village". Jon, Haldor's best friend, who has always loved Anne, warns: "there is no knowing what Anne might do".

Anne leaves the hut to confront mother and Margit: "I'm not well. Send another girl to the hut". In agony she spies Haldor letting Margit inspect the new house. Anne cannot stand Haldor's faithlessness. Having wandered desperately in the night Anne puts the new house on fire. Jon sees Anne wandering in the night. Anne plans to throw herself into a waterfall.

At the arson trial nothing is confirmed. Anne's gives cheeky answers to the district recorder. Then, startling everyone, Jon takes the guilt and is sentenced to prison. Anne confesses to Jon's mother.

Having suffered his sentence Jon joins Anne, immediately to leave for America "where every man can be himself without prejudice". There was heartfelt laughter in the audience in this year of Donald Trump.

A question of mine about the narrative: where are the fathers?

The film is impressive enough in its stately, stolid manner of storytelling. Unnecessary flashbacks were a scourge of Nordic films since The Song of the Scarlet Flower, and that is the case here as well.

Norwegians were discovering their mightly landscapes for the cinema, following the model of the great Swedes. There is a sense of the sublime in the magnificent views from the mountains, as seen by Anne from her summer hut, or as witnessed by farmers plowing fields on slopes.

The sense of composition is often very fine.

Beautiful visual quality in the clean digital copy, with a beautiful sepia toning simulation, a sometimes stuffy tinting, and an appropriately alarming red tint for the conflagration.

Massaiernes menn og kvinner / Maasai Men and Women

[Uomini e donne Masai] (?, ca 1920), prod: ?. DCP (from 35 mm), 10’05”, tinted; titles: NOR.
    Le Giornate del Cinema Muto, Pordenone: Silent African in Norway
    Music: Günter Buchwald, Frank Bockius.
    Teatro Verdi, e-subtitles in English and Italian, 2 Oct 2017.

Tina Anckarman (GCM 2017): "These three ethnographic shorts were produced around 1920-21 and depict three tribes in East Africa: the Nilotic Kavirondo (Luo), the Kikuyu of Mount Kenya, and the Maasai of southern Kenya and northern Tanzania. Traditions and manners are described in words and astonishing images, such as dances of the Kikuyu and Maasai; the Kavirondos’ skill in making and using fishing tools; and Maasai women’s knowledge of house-building. The members of the communities are beautifully portrayed, from Kikuyu dressed in customary clothes and jewelry for the harvest feast, Maasai displaying their decorated weapons, and Kavirondo women on the shore of Homa Bay on Lake Victoria, smoking while awaiting the catch, wearing their traditional “tail” made of banana fibres."

"The provenance is known for two of the films, Massaiernes menn og kvinner and Kavirondonegrene paa fiske, but it’s assumed that the third one also derives from the same collector. Per Kviberg (1881-1960) was a schoolteacher, local politician, and a strong, early voice for the use of film for educational purposes. Kviberg and Kommunernes Filmscentral cooperated with like-minded instructors at home as well as in other Scandinavian countries, looking to Germany for films they could distribute and for useful ideas on how to organize screenings in educational institutions. There are documents verifying that Kviberg brought footage, adequate for teaching, back to Oslo (then called Kristiania) following a journey to Berlin in 1921. Fragments from Kavirondonegrene paa fiske and Kikujunegrene danser are also in the catalogue of the Kungliga biblioteket (Royal Library), Stockholm."

"The production company for the titles is not identified, nor is the country of origin. The Norwegian intertitles in all of them are similar: the frame on the title cards and the fonts are close to identical, as are the tinted colors. The original footage is partly fragmented due to decomposing nitrate. The three reels were incorporated in the collection of the Norsk Filminstitutt and moved to the nitrate vaults of the Nasjonalbiblioteket (National Library) in 1994/2002." Tina Anckarman

AA: An account of Maasai life on East-African steppes. Previously, the Maasai were courageous warriors, now they are peaceful. Hamites have blended with the Maasai.

Polygamy is common. Home is the responsibility of women. Women build huts from rice and cowdung.

The Maasai women's dance is not lively; it is monotonous swinging. Children learn to dance before they walk. Men's solo dance is more energetic. They are even dancing in couples.

Spiral iron rings are the most valuable jewels.

Frank Bockius's mighty drums dominated the introduction of the live music score.

There are many beautiful images in this documentary, and the visual quality is mostly good, although there are also damage marks.

Der gelbe Schein / [The Yellow Ticket] (1918), film concert by Alicia Svigals and Marilyn Lerner (2013 restoration supervised by Kevin Brownlow)

Der gelbe Schein (DE 1918). D: Victor Janson, Eugen Illés [+ Paul Ludwig Stein?]. Photo: Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences - Margaret Herrick Library. Please click to enlarge the image.

La tessera gialla / The Devil’s Pawn. DE 1918. D: Victor Janson, Eugen Illés, [+ Paul Ludwig Stein?], scen: Hans Brennert, Hanns Kräly, photog: Eugen Illés, des: Kurt Richter.
    Cast: Pola Negri (in a double role as Lea Raab and Lydia Pavlova, her mother), Harry Liedtke (Dmitri, a student), Victor Janson (Ossip Storki, Lea’s teacher), Margarete Kupfer (“Dance Palace” Proprietress), Werner Bernhardy (Astanow, a student), Adolf Edgar Licho (Professor Schukowski), Marga Lindt (Vera), Guido Herzfeld (Scholem Raab, Lea’s father).
    Prod: Paul Davidson, Projektions-AG “Union” (PAGU), Berlin, for Ufa, Berlin, filmed: Ufa-Union-Atelier, Berlin-Tempelhof; Warszaw (Nalewki), censor date: 9.1918 (BZ.42333), première: 22.11.1918 (U.T. Kurfürstendamm, U.T. Friedrichstrasse, Berlin).
    DCP (from 35 mm, 4426 ft [= 1349 m]; orig. 6 rl.), 65′ (transferred at 18 fps); titles: ENG, source: Alicia Svigals, NYC.
    Le Giornate del Cinema Muto, Pordenone.
    Score composed by Alicia Svigals.
    Music performed by Alicia Svigals, Marilyn Lerner.
    Teatro Verdi, 1 Oct 2017.
   
Kevin Brownlow, Caroline Buck (GCM 2017): "This print of a lost film was discovered by the late Jan Zaalberg in a private collection in Holland. Had the Nazis found its hiding place under the floorboards, they would have seized it for its Jewish subject matter. As it was, they almost destroyed it when they flooded Holland at the end of the war. Although badly water-damaged, enough survives to tell the story."

"Set in Tsarist times, the film was intended as anti-Russian propaganda before Russia was taken out of the war by the Bolshevik revolution. It features Pola Negri as Lea, a Jewish girl who blames her foster-father’s death on her lack of medical knowledge. Determined to study medicine, she leaves for St. Petersburg. But since she is Jewish, the police insist she apply for “The Yellow Ticket” – the “badge of shame” inflicted on prostitutes. She accepts, and a friendly prostitute finds her lodgings. (The melodrama was not entirely fictitious; the revolutionary Rosa Luxemburg took the Yellow Ticket. The Bolsheviks rescinded the law.)"

"SPOILER ALERT. Lea is reluctantly drawn into St. Petersburg’s nightlife, while studying at medical school by day. At graduation, she is hailed as the university’s brightest pupil – but is recognized by a man in the audience, who reveals her nocturnal activities to her Russian suitor, Dmitri. When he confronts her, she tries to kill herself. She is rescued by an operation performed by her professor – who, in true melodramatic style, turns out to be her long-lost father."

"While it is not as accomplished as one would expect from associates of Lubitsch, it is of exceptional historical value. It was filmed on location in Warsaw in 1918 while the German army was still in occupation. Some scenes were filmed in Nalewki Street, in what would become part of the Warsaw Ghetto – created by a later German army that would then blow it up, along with the rest of the city, in 1943."

"Warsaw stands in both for a town in the Pale of Settlement and for St. Petersburg. (Although for a high angle of St. Petersburg, with its famous waterways, the filmmakers resorted to a stock shot of Florence.) Note that while the English titles translated from the Dutch print give Lea’s year of birth as 1899, they refer to “St. Petersburg”, though by the time Lea would have been of university age, the town had been renamed Petrograd."

"In her autobiography, Negri talks at length about the story, her part in it, and the vivid impression filming in the Jewish quarter made on her. But what she refers to is another film entirely, supposedly of the same subject, supposedly made by Polish producer Aleksander Hertz and his company, Sfinks, in the mid-1910s, and traditionally referred to as Czarna książeczka (The Black Book), or even as Żółty paszport (The Yellow Passport), Ufa’s Polish distribution title."

"This film is a figment of her imagination. But since Negri puts Hertz’s connection to this story so firmly at the centre of her recollections, was Hertz, who had been her early mentor and director (and had reportedly kept on the good side of the German authorities), possibly PAGU’s local facilitator in 1918?"

"In any case, the story was unusually popular with filmmakers. Under various guises, it was filmed four times in the silent era alone, and there were at least three sound versions. Tsarist Russia produced Gde Pravda? (What Is the Truth?, 1913), probably shot in Riga, which survives in Gosfilmofond (and on YouTube)."

"Then there were two American films: Edwin August directed Clara Kimball Young in The Yellow Passport (1916), from a 1911 Yiddish stage melodrama, Afn Yam un “Ellis Island” (At Sea and Ellis Island), by Abraham S. Schomer, and William Parke directed The Yellow Ticket (1918) starring Fannie Ward, from the 1914 Broadway play by Michael Morton. (Some Polish historians hold that August’s The Yellow Passport was so well received in the Polish territories that Ufa simply remade it locally.)"

"(Note: Fyodor Otsep’s film Earth in Chains (Zemlya v plenu, 1928), starring Anna Sten, shown at the Giornate in 2012, carried the international title The Yellow Ticket, but had a different story.)"

"A few days after the Armistice, Der gelbe Schein had its premiere in Germany. Pola Negri stayed on there to become one of Europe’s leading stars, acclaimed for films like Lubitsch’s Madame Dubarry and Carmen. In 1935, with Negri back in Germany after years in Hollywood, Hermann Goering told her that her portrayal of the Jewish student had so moved him he had never forgotten it. In her autobiography Negri makes this the phantom film by Hertz – referring to it disparagingly as “this Polish 2-reeler”, rather than the feature by Janson and Illés, neither of whom is mentioned."

"Variety, reviewing Der gelbe Schein in 1922 under its U.S. title, The Devil’s Pawn, considered it “an exceedingly poor picture from all angles… Pola Negri makes you think of Theda Bara playing Juliet”. Photoplay said, “Foreign … not good enough to be dangerous to home product.” Could this be because Pola Negri, signed by Famous Players-Lasky, had recently arrived in Hollywood?"

"Anxious not to antagonize Gentile audiences, the scriptwriters give Der gelbe Schein an ending where Lea turns out not to be Jewish at all. Ironic coda: at Hitler’s orders, rumours that Negri herself was Jewish were “investigated” in 1935, and dispelled – “She is Polish and thus Aryan.” Victor Janson, despite the sympathy his film expresses for the Jews, didn’t balk at signing up to the Reichsfilmkammer in 1933, and voluntarily became a National Socialist party member as early as April that year."

"Der gelbe Schein was last shown in Pordenone in 1990." Kevin Brownlow, Caroline M. Buck

The music 

Alicia Svigals: "In writing my score for Der gelbe Schein I tried to bridge the gap between the film’s time and ours – a gap that might deprive us of the emotional response the original audience would surely have had. The mores depicted are a little mysterious now; the pressures driving the characters not as self-evident as they would have been then. The narrative conventions of film, now a second language to us, were only just forming. I felt my task was to clarify the story’s structure through the music, and arouse in the viewer the profound feelings depicted onscreen."

"The score is influenced by klezmer and Slavic folk forms, Béla Bartók and Ernest Bloch, café music, cantorial singing, and my particular fiddling style. I chose improvising pianist Marilyn Lerner as my partner, knowing both her ability to take a melody and twist it into surprising shapes, and her deep connection to klezmer." Alicia Svigals

AA: It was illumating to watch within a few days Der gelbe Schein and Ernst Lubitsch's Carmen, both produced in the same year 1918 by Paul Davidson's Projektions-AG Union (PAGU) and starring largely the same cast (Pola Negri, Harry Liedtke, Viktor Janson, Margarethe Kupfer), co-written by Hanns Kräly, and designed by Kurt Richter. Lubitsch was not yet superior in everything he did, although it is interesting to speculate on how he might have realized Der gelbe Schein.

This movie shares the title but not the narrative of Raoul Walsh's The Yellow Ticket (1931) with Elissa Landi and Laurence Olivier. Still, the central outrage is the same: in Czarist Russia, a Jewish woman was obliged to acquire a yellow ticket, that of a prostitute, in order to travel. Also in both films there are sympathetic prostitutes who help the leading lady who never prostitutes herself.

Viktor Janson and Eugen Illés's Der gelbe Schein is a vehicle for Pola Negri who appears in a double role. It is a growing-up tale of Lea who is talented in learning, and an account of the ordeal she has to endure to move from Warsaw to the Saint Petersburg university to study.

The plot of the film written by Hans Brennert and Hanns Kräly is incredible. Early on Ossip Storki learns the truth of Lea's parentage but does not reveal it to her although it would save her from humiliation. When Lea's yellow ticket is exposed she attempts suicide and is rescued by her professor, the Gentile doctor Schukowski, who turns out to be her biological father. Although Schukowski always keeps on his desk a photograph of Lydia Pavlova, a dead ringer to Lea, he has never suspected anything. Lea has grown up Jewish but is thus of entirely Gentile parentage.

Memorable: soulful images of Lea in her childhood home (see above), authentic imagery of orthodox Ashkenazi life in Warsaw, Lea visiting her parents' graves at Warsaw's Jewish graveyard, deeply moving footage of poverty and poor children, emotionally charged close-ups of Lea, and the infinite agony of the professor in the finale.

The composition in depth is impressive (see also above, and click to enlarge the still).

The passionate music, full of Jewish sounds, has been composed by Alicia Svigals. The heartfelt performance by Svigals together with Marilyn Lerner made this event special.

From challenging sources a digital copy has been created with loving care. Much of the footage looks duped or in high contrast, but the result is very watchable all the same.

Kavirondonegrene paa fiske / Kavirondo Tribe Members Fishing (2017 digital transfer Nasjonalbiblioteket)

Kavirondo che pescano. ?, ca. 1920. prod: ?, DCP (from 35 mm),  11’11”, col. (tinted); titles: NOR, source: Nasjonalbiblioteket (Norway).
    Le Giornate del Cinema Muto, Pordenone (Silent Africa in Norway).
    Grand piano: Daan van den Hurk.
    Teatro Verdi, 1 Oct 2017.

Tina Anckarman (GCM 2017): "These three ethnographic shorts were produced around 1920-21 and depict three tribes in East Africa: the Nilotic Kavirondo (Luo), the Kikuyu of Mount Kenya, and the Maasai of southern Kenya and northern Tanzania. Traditions and manners are described in words and astonishing images, such as dances of the Kikuyu and Maasai; the Kavirondos’ skill in making and using fishing tools; and Maasai women’s knowledge of house-building. The members of the communities are beautifully portrayed, from Kikuyu dressed in customary clothes and jewelry for the harvest feast, Maasai displaying their decorated weapons, and Kavirondo women on the shore of Homa Bay on Lake Victoria, smoking while awaiting the catch, wearing their traditional “tail” made of banana fibres."

"The provenance is known for two of the films, Massaiernes menn og kvinner and Kavirondonegrene paa fiske, but it’s assumed that the third one also derives from the same collector. Per Kviberg (1881-1960) was a schoolteacher, local politician, and a strong, early voice for the use of film for educational purposes. Kviberg and Kommunernes Filmscentral cooperated with like-minded instructors at home as well as in other Scandinavian countries, looking to Germany for films they could distribute and for useful ideas on how to organize screenings in educational institutions. There are documents verifying that Kviberg brought footage, adequate for teaching, back to Oslo (then called Kristiania) following a journey to Berlin in 1921. Fragments from Kavirondonegrene paa fiske and Kikujunegrene danser are also in the catalogue of the Kungliga biblioteket (Royal Library), Stockholm."

"The production company for the titles is not identified, nor is the country of origin. The Norwegian intertitles in all of them are similar: the frame on the title cards and the fonts are close to identical, as are the tinted colors. The original footage is partly fragmented due to decomposing nitrate. The three reels were incorporated in the collection of the Norsk Filminstitutt and moved to the nitrate vaults of the Nasjonalbiblioteket (National Library) in 1994/2002." Tina Anckarman

AA: A beautiful and dignified account of great ethnographic value of the Kavirondo fishing in the shallow waters of Lake Victoria. There is a sense of melancholy watching this today, as Lake Victoria, one of the greatest lakes in the world, the source of the Nile, is now also infamous for its many ecocatastrophes, including that of the predatory Nile perch, as documented in Darwin's Nightmare.

We observe Kavirondo ways with their cattle and focus on the weaving of fishnets. Nets are produced from papyrus, their stalks braided together. A team of dozens of fishers, consisting mostly of men but also including women, participates in dragnet (seine) fishing. There are different approaches for shallow water and deep water fish. The account of the esprit de corps is engrossing.

The Kavirondo are famous for their glorious nudity, amply on display in this beautiful film, perhaps especially for those interested in male physical beauty as God intended. Tom of Finland might have appreciated the well hung fishermen. But Kavirondo women are often more passionate, we hear.

Also on display are beautiful Swahili boats, and Hindus always clad in white.
 
A fine copy of a movie well made by unknown film-makers.

Victorian Cinema (1898–1901) (2017 restorations from 60 mm and 68 mm from the BFI National Archive / Bryony Dixon)

Source of all the films in this programme: BFI National Archive, London. Copy: DCP; total running time: 14 min.
    Le Giornate del Cinema Muto, Pordenone.
    Introduced by Bryony Dixon.
    Grand piano: John Sweeney.
    Teatro Verdi, 1 Oct 2017.

Bryony Dixon (GCM 2017): "For five years the BFI National Archive has been working on a project to make freely accessible 10,000 titles from the U.K.’s film collections. As part of this we decided to digitize all of our Victorian films – that is, British films from 1895 to 1901 (up to the end of the year in which Queen Victoria died), a total of some 700 or so titles. As part of the project we are also restoring our large-format early films from this period, in 60 mm and 68 mm (whether British-produced or not), and the unique nitrate copies in the collection not yet preserved."

"Prior to the launch of the completed project we are pleased to offer the audience of the Giornate a little preview of these “in progress” restorations. The large-format restoration work is being overseen by Bryony Dixon, Ben Thompson, and Kieron Webb of the BFI, with scanning work by the expert team at Haghefilm Digitaal, who are of course well known to the Giornate audience."

"The project is an exploration of the technical possibilities which a return to the original 60 mm and 68 mm elements in the digital era can offer, and builds on the excellent analogue restoration of Biograph films originally led by the Nederlands Filmmuseum (now EYE Filmmuseum) at Haghefilm in the 1990s, when the films were reduced to 35 mm for preservation and viewing purposes (in fact, they were screened at the Giornate in 2000: see that year’s catalogue, pp.81-98, and Griffithiana no. 66/70)."

"The research for the project has revealed some new identifications, despite this being a well-documented era of film history. Among the unique nitrates are a wonderful panorama taken by Charles Urban and George Albert Smith on a trip around Italy for the Warwick Trading Company and another new R. W. Paul discovery!"  Bryony Dixon

All film notes by Bryony Dixon.

68 mm, British Mutoscope and Biograph Company

FEEDING THE PIGEONS IN ST. MARK’S SQUARE (1898) 42″ (30 fps).
W. K. L. Dickson himself with a female companion and a little girl feeding the pigeons.
    AA: Fascinating to witness them here, not far from we are watching this show. Low contrast. The speed could be higher?

GRAND CANAL, VENICE (1898) 30″ (26 fps).
A fragment of a panorama of the Grand Canal from a boat.
    AA: A tracking shot like the famous pioneering Lumière Vue N° 295, Panorama du Grand Canal pris d’un bateau. Low contrast.

PANORAMIC VIEW OF THE VEGETABLE MARKET, VENICE (1898) 34″ (28 fps).
Taken from a boat passing the crowds of vendors on a busy market day.
    AA: Also a tracking shot from a moving boat, now recording the lively bustle of the market. Low contrast.

NEAPOLITAN DANCE AT THE ANCIENT FORUM OF POMPEII (1898) 32″ (26 fps).
A folk dance, staged in the ruins of Pompeii. With the Arch of Tiberius in the near distance and Arch of Caligula in the far distance.
    AA: A fascinating view, could run faster, low contrast.

PANORAMIC VIEW OF FRERE CAMP TAKEN FROM THE FRONT OF AN ARMOURED TRAIN (1899) 26″ (20 fps).
“Phantom ride” showing the British encampment at Frere in South Africa during the Boer War. W. K. L. Dickson apologized for the unavoidable vibration, in his account of the filming.
    AA: A thrilling glimpse of the Boer War, low contrast.    

MENAI BRIDGE: THE IRISH DAILY MAIL FROM EUSTON ENTERING THE TUBULAR BRIDGE (1898) 38″ (24 fps).
Glorious view of the express train going across the famous Britannia tubular bridge across the Menai Strait in North Wales.
    AA: A train going into a tunnel and another train emerging from it on the parallel rails.

WARSHIPS AT SUNSET (1900) 22″ (30 fps).
View of four warships cruising with a superimposed “sunset”. It’s possible that this “day for night” print was intended to be coloured.
    AA: At sea: a tracking shot, a travelling arrière photographed from the ship's stern.

AMANN THE GREAT IMPERSONATOR (1899) 38″ (20 fps).
The famous quick-change artist Ludwig Amann impersonates Emile Zola and Alfred Dreyfus.
    AA: Another Fregolinade: the quick-change artist's lightning-fast impersonations.

60 mm

[PRESTWYCH PLATFORM SCENE] (c.1900) 47″ (16 fps).
Unidentified 60 mm film directly taken from a 68 mm negative – probably shot at Wood Green station in north London around 1900. The man walking along the platform must be known to the cameraman and may be a British pioneer filmmaker, but we are still working on identifying him.
    AA: Another train arriving on a station. There is also yet another train arriving. Low contrast.

FAT OX 1897. CAR OF THE ‘SHE-CATS’ – THE HATS (1897) 1′ (10 fps).
prod: Gaumont Company.
A contender for the most bizarrely named film in the BFI National Archive, Car of the ‘She-Cats’ was one of several scenes filmed by Gaumont of the “Promenade du Boeuf gras”, part of the famous Paris carnival, a centuries-old “mardi gras”celebration held in February.
    AA: There is much to see in this lively record of the mardi gras party.

VIENNA STREET SCENE (1896) 42″ (14 fps).
prod: Gaumont Company.
A typical early street scene taken by the Gaumont Company using the Demenÿ 60 mm system, which gave excellent resolution and registration, and allowed for more projection light.
    AA: Heavy traffic in Vienna.

Unique Nitrates

PANORAMA OF POMPEII (1901) 345 ft., 6′ (16 fps).
prod: Warwick Trading Company.
A 360-degree pan of the ruins at Pompeii with Vesuvius in the background. The film was one of a series taken by Charles Urban and George Albert Smith for the Warwick Trading Company on a tour of Italy.
    AA: An impressive 360 degree pan. Smoke emerges from the Vesuvius. Sheep graze in the meadow. Another pan takes us 360 degrees in reverse. Stern ladies. Excavation workers. Very low contrast. The volcanic Etna: intrepid visitors scale the volcano. There are sedan chairs for the distinguished visitors. Very low contrast.

FUN ON A CLOTHESLINE (1897) 75 ft, 1’15” (16 fps).
dir: Robert W. Paul.
A nitrate that had never been duplicated from the BFI’s collection, listed with a “given” title, [Gypsy Camp Drama], and dated 1896, turned out to be one of my “most wanted” lost R. W. Paul films. Fun on a Clothesline, from 1897, stars Harry Lamore, the famous slack-wire walker.
    AA: One of the earliest comedies in film history, simple tightrope-walking acrobatic fun on a clothesline. Bryony revealed that the man sporting a beard on the left is probably R. W. Paul himself.

AA: Bryony Dixon announced that the agenda of this great project of the BFI is "to put the smile back on the Victorian face". I have seen appetizers now both in Bologna and in Pordenone and look forward to more.

This is a wonderful show, but I was puzzled over the visual quality. I saw almost all of the 11 "Wonders of the Biograph" shows in 2000 at Le Giornate in Sacile, curated by Nico de Klerk with his colleagues. I admired BFI's new large format appetizers this summer in the Anno Due screenings in Bologna. They conveyed a sense of that ancient grandeur which I failed to perceive in today's show.

L'emigrante

L'emigrante (IT 1915). D: Febo Mari. Antonio (Ermete Zacconi) is surprised to discover his daughter Maria (Valentina Frascaroli) as a "piccola mondana" at the Count's mansion. Photo: Museo Nazionale del Cinema, Torino. Please click to enlarge the image.

IT 1915, dir, story, scen: Febo Mari, photog: [Natale Chiusano, Segundo de Chomón], cast: Ermete Zacconi (Antonio, the emigrant), Valentina Frascaroli (Maria, his daughter), Enrica Sabbatini (his wife), Felice Minotti (a workmate), Amerigo Manzini (the Count), Lucia Cisello (the procuress), prod: Itala Film, Torino. dist: Lombardo. censor date: 16.8.1915 (n. 10276).
    Copy: incomp., 35 mm, 486 m (orig. 1182 m), 24 min (18 fps); titles: ITA.
    Source: Museo Nazionale del Cinema, Torino.
    Le Giornate del Cinema Muto, Pordenone.
    Grand piano: Antonio Coppola.
    Teatro Verdi, e-subtitles in English, 1 Oct 2017

Claudia Gianetto (GCM 2017): "A fragment of film, as is the case with L’emigrante, can contain traces of the many stories behind a movie, starting from how it was made. Adapting one of his short novels for the screen, Febo Mari directed the great stage actor Ermete Zacconi as the lead in a drama not devoid of clichés but set in a historical context of vibrant realism: the emigration of poor Italian peasants to South America. A later film of his, the celebrated Cenere (1916), in which Mari matched up against the divine Eleonora Duse, once again featured humble protagonists."

"A study of the sources (nitrate fragments, censorship certificates, Itala Film production records, photographs, and intertitle plates) reveals that this copy, probably the only one to survive, is a synthesis put together after the film’s initial release. In this version the attention focuses almost completely on the old emigrant – the departure from his miserable home and separation from his wife and daughter, leaving his village and crossing the ocean, and the harsh reality awaiting him in Latin America, up to the discovery of the fraud to which he falls victim after an accident. Antonio learns in a letter that his family is in serious trouble; declared unfit and unable to find work, in the last scenes the emigrant is shown as a defeated man on board a ship taking him back to Italy."

"Documents of the time, however, testify that the complete version of the film devoted more space – paralleling events in South America – to life in the village, in particular a decidedly squalid intrigue involving a love affair, which can be partly pieced together from sources outside the film itself. Antonio’s wife falls ill and his daughter cannot earn enough to pay for the treatment her mother needs. Their predicament is exploited by a vulgar procuress who inveigles the girl – played by the charming Valentina Frascaroli – into leaving her fiancé, an honest young workman, to become the lover of a Count who has had designs on her for some time. Having returned to Italy, Antonio is working in the city as a porter; making a delivery by chance to a rich man’s house he comes across his daughter, transformed into a “piccola mondana” – which in modern-day terminology would be a high-class prostitute. In defiance of the Count and all those present, the old father orders his daughter to leave the house, offering his forgiveness. As she returns to his tender embrace the stage is set for the family’s reunion and a happy ending."

"As documented in the two 1915 censorship certificates and the different versions in the Itala Film titles register, L’emigrante was also seen by its maker as ground for experimentation. Mari initially conceived the film without any intertitles, in the conviction that – thanks to the power and eloquence of the images alone – this innovation could represent an evolution in the art of silent film. But after a few months distribution problems compelled Mari and Itala Film to add the customary intertitles and re-release L’emigrante, renouncing their bold initiative." Claudia Gianetto

AA: Febo Mari's L'emigrante was screened together with Il fauno, in a coup of programming that displayed in sharp contrast two completely different sides of the master director. The screening even brought to mind Count Visconti's movement from neorealism to Dannunzian excess.

Il fauno is a Symbolist visual poem with explicit affinities with Stéphane Mallarmé's poem and Claude Debussy's composition, also well-known as the basis for ballets.

L'emigrante is a stark realistic account of poverty, eviction, unemployment, and emigration. In South America the ageing Antonio faces a ruthless labour market. He even has to pay bribes to receive a humble job at a construction site, carrying heavy loads. Part of the pay is paid in food consumed on site. After lunch break, a scaffolding collapses on Antonio in what looks like a lethal accident. At the hospital the illiterate Antonio is asked to sign a document in which he refrains from compensation. He is declared healed but unfit for work. With every door shut, Antonio faces a humiliating return home. Extremely depressed at first, he finds happiness ahead.

There is stark simplicity, lively realism and almost documentary authenticity in scenes of family life, thieves at the market (the technique of the two thieves is the same as in Ladri di biciclette and Pickpocket), Antonio's miserable luggage, telling looks of sorrow, the huge passenger ship plowing the sea, the bustle of the deck passengers (qf. Chaplin's The immigrant), a family's dinner time, and the common lodgings of the poor.

The visual eloquence is evident although the print is not very good. Febo Mari has a fine sense of mise-en-scène, blocking, and composition.

Less than half of the film survives. A watchable print with a soft image quality has been produced from sources with stability issues, high contrast, and splices, cuts, and jumps.

Le Contremaître incendiaire / The Incendiary Foreman (2009 restoration Cineteca Italiana)

Le Contremaître incendiaire (FR 1907). Photo: Cineteca Italiana, Milano.

Capo operaio incendiario. FR 1907. D: ?, cast: ?, prod: Pathé Frères, rel: 21.12.1907 (Le Cirque d’Hiver, Paris), 35 mm, 250 m (orig. 270 m), 14 min (16 fps), col. (tinted); titles: ITA, source: Cineteca Italiana, Milano, restored: 2009, from a 35 mm nitrate print.
    Le Giornate del Cinema Muto, Pordenone.
    Grand piano: Antonio Coppola.
    Teatro Verdi, e-subtitles in English, 1 Oct 2017.

Luisa Comencini (GCM 2017): "Synopsis: Following a dispute with one of his subordinates, and envious of his wealthy employer, one night the foreman of a film factory steals the money from the company safe and sets fire to the factory in such a way as to throw suspicion on the worker he argued with, who meanwhile has been sacked from his job. The intervention of the fire brigade and the police investigation bring the matter to an unforeseen conclusion."

"This unusual short, a police procedural docu-fiction before its time, has a combination of features which makes it an exemplary compendium of silent film, both aesthetically and thematically. Its main event, a fire, is not staged – the Pathé cameramen evidently were on the scene to film a real fire as it occurred. The fire wagons pulled by galloping horses, the frantic firemen busy around the hydrants, the fearsome black smoke, the devastation – all combine to create a dramatically realistic atmosphere which contrasts with the fictional mechanism of the culprit’s discovery."

"Generally remembered as the “primary collective trauma” of cinema history is the tragic blaze (over 120 dead) at the Bazar de la Charité, a charity fair which was being held in a temporary wooden structure with canvas stalls in the 8th arrondissement in Paris on 4 May 1897. The fire started in a small room used for the projection of moving pictures with technology invented by the Lumière brothers. Remarkably, it was caused not by the spontaneous combustion of nitrocellulose film, but the explosion of ether in the lamp ignited by the unfortunate projectionist. Henceforth fires in picture houses and film factories caused by nitrate combustion were the occurrences the most feared (and not infrequent) by people who had to work with that dangerous material. It was no coincidence that Charles Pathé advocated the development of cellulose acetate “safety” film in those days. In his 1937 autobiography he wrote, “…the entire cinema world had its eyes fixed on our workshops, our processes, our equipment”."

"This short film thus stands as a specimen of metacinema, locating the basic story in a film factory, and alternating shooting in real exterior locations with interior scenes in sets depicting the factory office and the wealthy employer’s house. With scenes recalling the Lumières’ historic Sortie d’usine (Workers Leaving the Factory), it is also one of the first films to bring to the screen waged human labour and its hierarchies, and the potential effects of the industrial powers of modernity."

"The film’s restoration has brought the vivid original colours of the blazing fire scenes back to life – a further quality that places it among the Cineteca Italiana’s unacknowledged gems." Luisa Comencini

AA: There is little to add to Luisa Comencini's remarks on this fascinating account of circumstances at the workplace 110 years ago. First there are the little slights: the foreman is not invited to the lunch table. Then there is a fistfight between the foreman and a worker. Finally the foreman takes up to robbery, trying to conceal it with arson.

The arson leads to a formidable conflagration as nitrate film is involved. A fireman rescues a child from the flames. The horrible fire sequence has been spectacularly tinted in red.

The thieving contremaître is discovered and fired, and the worker harassed by him is promoted.

The word "fire" carries all its meanings here: circumstances at the workplace are combustible, people get fired, and the factory is burned down. The foreman is a case of "a walking disaster".

Thrilling action, lively gesticulation, visual eloquence and natural movement are among the qualities.

A very watchable print from duped sources.

Synnöve Solbakken (1919) (2010 print)

Karin Molander (Synnöve Solbakken) and Ellen Dall (Ingrid Granliden, Thorbjörn's sister). Photo: Flickriver / European Film Star Postcards. Please click to enlarge the images.

Synnöve Solbakken (SE 1919). D: John W. Brunius. Thorbjörn Granliden (Lars Hanson) learning to work. Photo: Svenska Filminstitutet, Stockholm.

Synnöve Solbakken (1919): a revival meeting of the Haugeans. Photo: Flickriver / European Film Star Postcards.

Synnöve gives Thorbjörn a Midsummer fan bird. Photo: Flickriver / European Film Star Postcards.

Thorbjörn's reconciliation with his rival Knud Nordhaug (Gösta Cederlund). Photo: Flickriver / European Film Star Postcards.

Synnöve Solbakken: filmskådespel i sju akter / Päivänrinteen Synnöve / A Norway Lass. SE 1919. D: John W. Brunius, scen: John W. Brunius, Sam Ask, photog: Hugo Edlund, Arthur Thorell, des: Gustaf Hallén.
    Cast: Karin Molander (Synnöve Solbakken), Lars Hanson (Thorbjörn Granliden), Egil Eide (Saemund Granliden), Svea Peters (Ingebjörg Granliden), Hjalmar Peters (Guttorm Solbakken), Ingrid Sandahl (Karen Solbakken), Einar Rød (Aslak), Ellen Dall (Ingrid Granliden), Gösta Cederlund (Knud Nordhaug).
    Prod: Filmindustri AB Skandia, rel: 20.10.1919.
copy: 35 mm, 2162 m (orig. 2235 m.), 95′ (20 fps); titles: SWE, source: Svenska Filminstitutet, Stockholm.
    Le Giornate del Cinema Muto, Pordenone (The Swedish Challenge).
    Grand piano: Donald Sosin.
    Teatro Verdi, 1 Oct 2017.

Magnus Rosborn, Casper Tybjerg (GCM 2017): "Synnöve Solbakken and Thorbjörn Granliden are children from neighboring farms, one wealthier than the other. Despite the attempt of the devious farmhand Aslak to convince Thorbjörn that Synnöve is in league with the trolls, the two become friends. They grow older and fall in love. Synnöve’s parents belong to a very conservative denomination, and they find Thorbjörn unsuitable for her, especially since he has a reputation as a rowdy, and his rival Knud does what he can to get him into more trouble. At the midsummer celebration Synnöve makes Thorbjörn promise to change his ways. While Synnöve is up in the mountains working at her family’s summer pasture, however, the schemes of the evil Aslak will threaten both their love and Thorbjörn’s life."

"Synnöve Solbakken is one of two films based on works by the Norwegian Nobel Prize Laureate Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson produced by Skandia in 1919 in order to compete with its rival Svenska Bio. Not only does the film fit well within the commonly used “Golden Age” criteria as a prestigious production based on an acclaimed literary work, but its filming on location (in the Gudbrand Valley in Norway) is extremely effective, creating an authentic atmosphere as well as playing an active role in the plot. Maybe this is not as clear as in the other Bjørnson film, A Dangerous Wooing (Ett farligt frieri, Rune Carlsten, 1919), where a mountain wall literally stands between the hero and the girl he loves, but in Synnöve Solbakken the landscape also separates Synnöve and Thorbjörn from each other during a critical part of the story."

"Compared to the other Brunius film presented in this program, Thora van Deken, Synnöve Solbakken (GB: A Norway Lass) relies on a more static tableau style. A possible explanation for Synnöve Solbakken’s different cinematic style may be found in Brunius’s visual inspiration from and recreation of paintings by the 19th-century Norwegian artist Adolph Tidemand. The most obvious example is found in the scene of the prayer meeting at Midsummer Eve, which is modelled in detail after Tidemand’s famous painting Haugianerne from 1848, but other scenes in the film also bear a close resemblance to Tidemand’s pictures."

"The direct recreation of famous paintings was a device Brunius would deploy again in his monumental historical films Karl XII (1925) and Gustaf Wasa (1928), in which he reproduced some of the best-known Swedish national romantic history paintings of the 19th century. While these later epic historical dramas impressed with the huge scale of their production, they are overlong and unimaginatively filmed, giving Brunius a partly undeserved poor reputation. His earlier films, both from the early years as Skandia’s main director and also those made after the formation of Svensk Filmindustri in 1920, prove him to be both talented and capable of mastering different genres. While both Synnöve Solbakken and Thora van Deken can be characterized as serious dramas, Brunius’s directorial debut, Mästerkatten i stövlar (“Puss in Boots”, 1918) is a witty comedy, with Gösta Ekman in the title role."

"Despite its title, the main focus of the film’s story (just as in Bjørnson’s novel) is not on Synnöve, but on Thorbjörn, portrayed by Lars Hanson. At the time of Synnöve Solbakken, Hanson was one of the most popular stars of Swedish cinema. Synnöve is played by Karin Molander, who today is better known as a comedienne in four surviving comedies by Mauritz Stiller, notably Erotikon (1920). Lars Hanson and Karin Molander married in 1922. Her film career essentially ended when she followed Hanson to Hollywood in the late 1920s, although she did later appear on stage in Sweden, and while he acted in several Swedish films after the transition to sound, she would appear in only one sound film, in 1954."

"The print: A duplicate negative, downsized to Academy ratio, was made from a nitrate positive source in 1981. In 2010 new intertitles made from text cards in the collection of the Swedish Film Institute were spliced into the negative, from which this viewing print was struck the same year." Magnus Rosborn, Casper Tybjerg

AA: It was a great pleasure to see at last Synnöve Solbakken. Although highly regarded in histories of the Swedish cinema, in recent decades it has not been screened much. Probably it has been neglected because it belongs to the Sjöström-Stiller school. Their presence has been so dominant that they have occupied the territory.

In Pordenone's 1986 Nordic retrospective Schiave bianche allo specchio the focus was on early cinema. In the 1999 retrospective Nordic Explorations the mission was to go outside the canon, also avoiding the rural mainstream, although a sidebar of well-known titles was added as an afterthought (and The Song of the Scarlet Flower was included because of the plan to perform the original score as a concert with a full orchestra). In 2000 there was a retrospective dedicated to Georg af Klercker, and in 2006 a Nordisk centenary retrospective. In 2013 discoveries were made of the rarely seen late Swedish silents by Gustaf Molander and his contemporaries.

Synnöve Solbakken is a key film of the Sweden golden age, based on a novel of the Nobel laureate Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson. The drama is based on tensions between two big farms. Granliden is in the shadow, and life there is driven by harsh discipline and hard work. Solbakken is literally on a sunny hill, a place of religious engagement to the tune of the Haugeans, a current or radical pietism.

Thorbjörn of Granliden is a young man of hot temper, the most fearsome fighter of the district. Since childhood he and Synnöve Solbakken have felt a mutual attraction. A memorable image is of Thorbjörn and Synnöve as children just staring at each other during church service, ignoring the surroundings.

The sense of landscape is based on the aesthetics of the sublime. The mornings at the mighty fjords, the bonfires of the Midsummer night (Sankt Hans in Norway), the midnight sun, the freedom at the summer pasture (sätern), and the wild mountains rivers are among the delights of the milieu.

Synnöve Solbakken is a Bildungsroman of Thorbjörn, parallel to The Song of Scarlet Flower in that the boy must grow up to a man before he is worthy of the leading lady. Thorbjörn has been growing up between a stern father and a good-for-nothing farmhand who is finally fired. The éducation sentimentale spans many years. Thorbjörn is banished from Solbakken, but Synnöve remains cold towards her many other suitors.

One day the lazy Thorbjörn starts to carry heavier loads than his father, but while he is driving his cart downhill his horses are scared by the deranged ex-farmhand, and the cart is broken. Visiting a wedding party to ask for help Thorbjörn is provoked to a fight and stabbed on the back by his rival Knud. Surviving from a nearly lethal wound Thorbjörn is not seeking for vengeance. Instead, he rises above the circumstances and volunteers reconciliation with Knud. All obstaclesnow overcome, Synnöve can finally accept Thorbjörn whom she has always loved.

There is a genuine and powerful emotional charge in the resolution.

During the narrative we observe a community in which one family is celebrating the joys of the Midsummer night while another family focuses on studying the Bible even on that special night.

An interesting feature is the prominence of illusions. Synnöve is introduced in the beginning as a children's fairytale figure. In different moments of the story we see mendacious and slanderous accounts as "filmed lies". Like in The Song of the Scarlet Flower there are needless flashbacks.

A memorable detail in the costume design is the peculiar cap worn by Thorbjörn and others. A significant motif is the elaborate Midsummer bird amulet carved from wood. (In Finland we know this decoration as the Karelian lastulintu, fan bird, a popular Christmas tree decoration. The elaborate feathers are not glued together but carved with a special woodwork technique). Given to Thorbjörn by Synnöve it becomes an emblem of the better angels of his nature.

The print is watchable, and it seems to have been created from uneven sources, ranging from good visual quality to low contrast.