Category: Film review

The silent version of La Fin du monde (1931; Fr.; Abel Gance)

One of the pleasures of writing about film history is how often you are proved wrong. When in 2016 my book about Abel Gance’s career during the transition to sound was published, I stated that there were no known copies of Das Ende der Welt, the German version of his first sound film. As I wrote here two years ago, this was not the case: a significant fragment of this version does survive in the collection of the Eye Filmmusem. In 2016, I also wrote that no known copy survived of the “international” (i.e. silent) version of La Fin du monde. Thanks to some propitious searching and corresponding, I have now discovered that this too is not the case. An excellent copy is held by Gosfilmofond in Moscow. As you may appreciate, a visit to this archive is currently impossible. However, thanks to Alexandra Ustyuzhanina and Tamara Shvediuk and their colleagues in Gosiflmofond, I have been able to see a digitized copy of this print.

First, a little context for this film. Gance’s first sound began production in 1929. Intended as an epic moral fable about the need for universal brotherhood, and starring the director himself as a prophet, it soon became clear that Gance’s ambitions far outstripped his material resources. By the summer of 1930, Gance’s personal and professional life had virtually collapsed. In debt, reliant on cocaine, his marriage ruined, and his film in chaos, Gance surrendered control of La Fin du monde to his producers. Gance had allegedly assembled a print of 5250m (over three hours) in late 1930, but the version released in early 1931 was 2800m and bears only a distant relationship with his intentions. The director refused to attend the premiere and publicly decried the versions shown in cinemas. (For the full story of this poisonous production, I refer interested readers to my book on the subject.)

La Fin du monde was intended as a multiple-language production. Initially planned to be shot and/or dubbed in French, German, English, and (so some sources state) Spanish, Gance eventually produced just two sound versions: one in French (La Fin du monde) and one in German (Das Ende der Welt). For the latter, only one member of the cast was changed, the rest either reshooting scenes in German with direct-recorded sound or else being dubbed via post-synchronized sound. La Fin du monde was premiered in Brussels in December 1930 and was released generally in France in January 1931. Das Ende der Welt premiered in Zurich in January 1931 and the film was released generally in Germany from April. (It says something of the oddity of this film that its two major sound versions premiered not in France and Germany but in Belgium and Switzerland.) An English-language version was released in the US in 1934, but The End of the World uses the French version as its basis – using subtitles and intertitles to present a version comprehensible to anglophone audiences. Given a new prologue and additional newsreel footage throughout, this is the most severely bastardized of all the versions released in cinemas in the 1930s.

However, one other version of the film was prepared for release in Europe. This was advertised as an “international” version, i.e. a silent version (often with a “music and effects” soundtrack, but no dialogue) prepared for the numerous cinemas still unequipped for sound exhiubition. It was purportedly prepared by Eugene Deslaw (Le Figaro, 2 August 1931). Deslaw had evidently worked as one of a great many official and unofficial assistants for Gance during the production. During this time he assembled Autor de la fin du monde (1931), a curious short film that contains both behind-the-scenes footage and scenes cut from the version released in 1931. (Including one shot, of Antonin Artaud, that is one of the most astonishing close-ups Gance ever filmed.) However, the history of his editing of this film and of the “international” version of La Fin du monde is unclear. As far as I can ascertain, the premiere of Autour de la fin du monde was February 1931, in a gala evening hosted by Gance. But I can offer no such detail for the distribution of the “international” edition of the feature film. Adverts do not usually state any details of length or soundtrack, so it is very difficult to trace what – if anything – became of this version. Back in 2016, I could find no evidence that any copy of the film survived. But, as ever, I was to be proved wrong. Gosfilmofond’s print runs to approximately 2484m, just under ninety minutes, and features a synchronized music-and-effects soundtrack without dialogue. Whether this represents a “complete” copy of this version is difficult to know, but it is certainly shorter than the 2800m version that was released in 1931 – and shorter than the c.2600m restoration of the French sound version that was released by Gaumont on DVD/Blu-ray in 2021. So, what does the international version look like? And sound like?

While the (surviving) French sound version opens with text superimposed over some jerkily assembled aerial shots, the credits of the silent version unfold over a blank screen and are clearly complete. The opening music cue (Tchaikovsky’s Francesca da Rimini [1877]), curtailed and abrupt in the sound version, is here complete and ends just as the opening images begin. These first shots, too, are entirely missing from the French version. Rather than open on the interior of the church hosting the performance of the Passion, we see the exterior and the poster for the play. Geneviève’s name is on the poster, which rather neatly serves as her introductory title – for the film now cuts straight to her in close-up in the play, as Mary Magdelene. There are several extra shots of the Passion group before we reach the point at which the French version begins (at least in the Gaumont restoration). The music and sound effects for this whole opening sequence are the same as in the sound version, though the montage is briefer and there is no dialogue between the various characters we meet in the audience.

In the following scene between the brothers Jean and Martial Novalic, there is the first (of many) music cues that are not in the sound version. Here, we hear the ‘Largo’ from Handel’s Serse (1738), as arranged for piano and cello. This scene plays very differently than in the sound version. This scene plays very differently than in the sound version, with the dialogue is conveyed through intertitles. I confess that I found this scene weirdly moving. Perhaps it was the music, which gave a wonderful sense of intimacy and solemnity to the scene; certainly, it was in part due to the sheer novelty of seeing this scene for the first time in silence, which saved me from hearing the very thin sound design of the dialogued version – and Gance’s peculiarly bathetic vocal performance.

Another factor is that the montage is totally different from the sound version. Not only is the editing different (regardless of the inserted titles), but so too the camera angles and the performances. Deslaw is clearly using not just material from a different camera but from different takes. (This material was clearly shot at 24fps, the speed for synchronized sound, unlike the material visible elsewhere in the film that was shot silently at a noticeably slower framerate. Presumably, therefore, this material was taken from takes that originally had a soundtrack – not from takes shot silently.) Even the inserted close-up of the book that Jean shows Martial is different. The text is slightly shorter in the sound version, while the silent version shows the wider page and the page number. The silent version of the scene is longer, more smoothly edited, and ends differently – with the two brothers walking arm-in-arm from the scene. The sound version has an awkward insertion of a close-up of Jean and ends with a sudden fade to black before their discussion ends. The montage in the sound version is awkward, the composition tighter – next to the silent version, it looks almost cropped.

The same pattern is evident in the next scene. These are different takes of the same scene, shot from a different camera position. Again, the silent version has the camera placed slightly further away. I think the composition of the scene is improved, with the blocking of Geneviève, De Murcie (her father), and Schomburg clearer and more effective.

In scene after scene, this continues to be the case. Everything is subtly different in the silent version. It follows the same narrative line but uses different takes and different editing. Sometimes, the sound version has an extra scene, sometimes the silent version has an extra scene. But the overall shape is the same. (You could easily use the scenes in one version to plug gaps in the other.) But again and again I am struck by how awkwardly framed and edited the sound version looks in comparison with the silent version. Even when the content of sequences is shot-for-shot the same, the choices in the silent version look more balanced, more carefully chosen, and better put together. The sound version consistently looks far too tightly framed, with the tops of characters heads just out of shot, or characters standing just off-centre, or floating oddly at the edge of the composition.

The more bravura scenes of editing are also significantly different. The rapid montage of Jean’s madness is more neatly handled in the silent than the sound version, and it reaffirms my longstanding impression that the montage in the sound version is clunkily curtailed at the end. Likewise, the rapid montage in which Schomburg plummets to his death in the lift of the Eiffel Tower is longer, more dramatic, and more coherent in the silent version.

More broadly, there are significant gaps are that either version fills in for the other. While Schomburg’s rape of Geneviève is missing from the silent version, the scenes of journalists spying on the scientists as they confer on Martial’s discovery are missing from the sound version. Later, there is a more significant scene where Martial and his team return to the control centre where they had formerly had their headquarters. The centre was raided and damaged (a sequence we see in both version of the film) but now, after Schomburg’s death, the team reassembles. Martial is despondent, but Geneviève arrives and encourages him (in Jean’s name) to resume the struggle for humanity’s salvation. The pair embrace and Martial then gives a speech to his team that reinspires them to begin broadcasting their universalist message. (I had spotted one shot from this sequence in the Eye Filmmuseum print of the German version, and had assumed it came from a later (also lost) sequence, but here I saw it again – and now I understand its proper place.) This whole sequence is only in the silent version, and makes the finale make more sense. Seen with titles and no dialogue, accompanied on the soundtrack by the opening movement of Franck’s Symphony in D minor (1889), I found Martial’s stirring address (“Victory lies in your work, in your enthusiasm…”) oddly moving. (And this is a film that has never moved me!)

Curiously, there are also other scenes that appear in different places in either version. In the silent version, we see Martial’s attempt to warn the press of the impending collision of the comet, and then Werster’s agreement to support Martial, much earlier in the narrative than in the sound version. I think this actually makes the narrative clearer, even if the surrounding subplot of the press war is not well developed in either version of the film. (In Gance’s screenplay, as ever, everything is given much more time to unfold coherently.)

The final minutes, including Martial’s declaration of the “Universal Republic” and the surrounding impact of the comet, is the one section of the silent version that is less convincing. The montage leaves out much that is crucial to understanding Martial’s gathering of world leaders. And while there is certainly different footage of the worldwide panic, it is no more convincingly put together than in the sound version. In both silent and sound films, the film falls apart in an orgy of incoherence. The finale ends on the same imagery, with minor differences in editing, and is equally unconvincing – and not what Gance intended. FIN.

What to make of the Gosfilmofond copy, and of this silent version of Gance’s first sound film? Firstly, I think it’s a better viewing experience than the sound version. When the narrative is the same between versions, the framing and editing in the silent version is usually superior. That said, the silent version is not as coherently edited as a true silent production. The use of intertitles is not consistent. No character is given an introduction through titles, and there are few narrational titles to explain what is happening. Sometimes, indeed, the fragments of recorded sound on the soundtrack take the place of intertitles. This “international” version is not a sound film, but nor is it a true silent film. Though it is unfortunately missing many important scenes from the sound version, it adds other important scenes of its own. Put together, you might have a more coherent narrative. It reaffirms just how shoddy is the assemblage of even the more coherent scenes in the sound version.

But these very qualities also raise more questions than they answer. What kind of control did Eugene Deslaw have over this silent version? What material was he allowed to use, and why? When was this version assembled, and on whose instruction? Per my comments above, Deslaw clearly had access to footage from different cameras and different takes. He also must have had access to parts of the soundtrack before they had been mixed with the direct-recorded dialogue elements. (In the scene of Jean’s madness, for example, he uses the same section of music per the sound version but without the latter’s added dialogue.) Yet despite the presence of some extra scenes, Deslaw doesn’t include any of the dozens of more significant scenes that Gance shot in 1929-30 which were cut by his producers prior to the film’s release in 1931. Fragments of this mountain of extra material may appear in Autour de la fin du monde, but it is nowhere to be seen in the “international” version of La Fin du monde.

In summary, the Gosfilmofond print is a document of major importance in our understanding of La Fin du monde. I long to know more about the history of this particular print, and about the “international” version it represents. While I think many aspects of it are superior to the sound version (at least to the French version that survives), it remains very far from the version that Gance assembled in 1930. But its survival is itself a small miracle, and raises hope that other miracles are out there in archives, waiting to be discovered…

Finally, I offer my deepest thanks to Alexandra Ustyuzhanina and Tamara Shvediuk, and to their colleagues, for their help with accessing material in the Gosiflmofond collection.

Paul Cuff

British Instructional Films: Three documentary dramas, 1925-27

As promised last time, I have been watching more recreations of Great War battles produced by British Instructional Films. Unlike The Battles of Coronel and Falkland Islands, these films focus on the land battles of the Western Front. Like Walter Summers’s naval production of 1927, they offer “reconstructions” of real events using as much military personnel and equipment as possible. The exact genre of the productions is difficult to state. The BFI liner notes for their DVD/Blu-ray edition of The Battles of Coronel and Falkland Islands calls them “docudramas”, while the DVD edition of Ypres (discussed below) refers to them as “documentaries”. I’m sure a worthwhile but ultimately tedious (or tedious but ultimately worthwhile) debate exists in critical literature about what exact term refers to what exact kind of film. Shall I employ “docudrama” here? I’m not sure. I think simply “film” is best, since they appeared in cinemas per any other form of feature-length presentation, and I’m interested primarily in what kind of experience they offer rather than what label to pin to them.

Two of these films I have watched via the BFI Player. The third, Ypres, I watched via a DVD edition released by Strike Force Entertainment (now there’s a name). This is the only film that has received a physical media release. Since I’m a sucker for physical media, and did not wish to pay the BFI £3.50 to “rent” a video file, I cheerfully spent £3.48 for the DVD on eBay. As much as I wish to support the BFI, I’m also an immensely stubborn and immensely cheap human being. Thus, I price-watched the DVD for nearly a month until it fell below the BFI rental price. All to save two pence, and to make sure I had a copy of the film to keep for as long as I wish. That said, I am still relying on the few sentences of the video description available (without paying £3.50) via the BFI Player to contextualize the films. Thus, I learn that the BIF films of the 1920s were “released annually around Remembrance Day” (11 November) and were hugely popular records of wartime events. So, what kind of films are they? And how comparable are they to the one BIF film that the BFI has given a physical media release?

Ypres (1925; UK; Walter Summers). I suppose I must begin with a few facts, for anyone not familiar with this particularly resonant piece of British history. Ypres is a town in Belgium that the British army and its allies defended for almost the entirety of the war. There were three major battles (in 1914, 1915, and 1917), the first being a German effort to capture Ypres and the second and third being Allied attempts to throw the Germans back. The Allied frontline bulged around the town in what became known as the “Ypres salient”, and the Germans occupied the scant higher ground to the east, from which they could observe and bombard the British lines and the town itself. Ypres was reduced to rubble, and the salient around it to a nightmarish wasteland of rotting flesh and filth. The first battle cost around 220,000 casualties, the second 100,000, the third somewhere over 500,000. Between late 1914 and late 1917 the frontline, it need hardly be added, moved barely more than four miles. Since the British and Commonwealth armies spent most of the war occupying and fighting for the salient, the name “Ypres” has a particular resonance in their collective culture. This is also my culture. Certainly, I have been fascinated by the war and by the horrors of this place in particular since I was a child.

The figures I have cited above are not mentioned in Summers’s film of 1925. Made to commemorate the tenth anniversary of (at least) the first two battles, it announces its emotional (and cultural/political) tone in the opening credits: “Dedicated to all those who fought and suffered in the Salient and to the memory of our comrades who sleep beneath that ‘foreign field that is for ever England.’” The citation of Rupert Brooke, famous both for his enthusiasm for the war and for his early death (en route for Gallipoli) in 1915, indicates the tenor of what follows. How immortal is this film’s story? Well, very immortal, according to the first narrational title: “The immortal story of the Ypres Salient begins in October 1914. Indomitable Belgium, wrested of all save her immortal soul, resounds to the heavy tread of the invader’s heel.” Yes, we’ve got a double helping of immortality, plus a side portion of indomitability. Let’s just hope the invader’s heel doesn’t step on our metaphor! Come on, chums, let’s up and at ’em!

The tone of intertitles suggests how the film seeks to humanize the Allied soldiers (and nurses) and demonize the Germans. The Germans are “field-grey hordes” while the Belgian civilians are “the innocent and helpless victims of War’s ruthlessness” (see also “Sister Marguerite and her band of heroic nuns”). The British Expeditionary Force (BEF) arrives “laughing and singing” in Ypres, while the Germans are reduced to often distant ranks of fodder for their guns and cold steel. The first time we see much of the Germans at close quarters, they are in their dugout boozing and raucously playing the accordion – while outside brave Tommies with blackened faces launch a deadly raid on their position. “Is anybody in there?” a British soldier yells down the staircase to the dugout. “Nein – nein!” the accordionist shouts back. “NINE did yer say, well share this amongst yer!” Tommy throws a grenade into the dugout. It explodes inches from the group of Germans. It neither kills nor wounds any of them, but up they come to the trench, trembling like lambs.

The film is bloodthirsty while being curiously reticent to show us any actual blood. In this way, the film recreates many heroic deeds, often those that earned the Victoria Cross (the highest military award) for bravery. For example, we see a Canadian officer lead his men forward with sword in hand. He is shot down (without spilling a drop of blood), whereupon a title announces: “His is no wasted death. Spurred to vengeance by their leader’s fall, the Canadians surge forward in one headlong rush, capturing their objective and bayoneting every defender.” Lovely, though we don’t see the orgy of bayoneting the title promises. Likewise, we see heroically outnumbered British machine-guns blaze away at point blank range but nobody German falls down dead in front of it. (Later, another heroic machine-gunner’s frightful toll is unseen apart from three or four hapless Huns.)

The film also has a curious interest in immortalizing “unknown” deeds. Thus we see a chaplain making a brave crossing of a shelled road, after which a title says: “The Padre received no reward for his action, but like countless others he had the satisfaction of knowing that he had done his duty.” Elsewhere, there is a similar incident of a cook bringing rations to a company through shot and hell: “You won’t read of their deeds in the History books, / But they’re deuced fine chaps are the Company cooks.” Of course, we are privileged to see these unseen events. The film is allowing us both a public history (of celebrated heroes) and an obscure one (of uncelebrated heroes).

Other methods to humanize the nameless Tommies come in the form of comic scenes. There is a bustling bathing scene, complete with comic asides from plucky lads keeping their spirits up in hard times, as well as scenes of behind-the-lines entertainments. There is also one scene of a soldier going home to his little house, his little wife, and his little blonde child. It’s all weirdly uninvolving. That is, except for the lovely image of the soldier’s house: here are the flowers and trees of a century ago, blowing in the wind. It’s beautiful, captivating – and the film takes no time to emphasize it.

The third battle of Ypres was (in)famously fought over waterlogged terrain in which men frequently drowned. How does the film handle this most famous of features? “With the night the weather changes and the fighting is continued in heavy rain”, we are warned. But there is no rain on screen. The opening phase of the battle skips over such details thus: “In spite of all handicaps, a considerable advance is made, and over 6000 prisoners taken.” No maps show us just how “considerable” this advance was, nor are the “handicaps” shown. Immediately, though “the weather grows steadily worse, and despite superhuman efforts the advance is laboriously slow.” What do we see of this? Well, there is some inane and unconvincing hand-to-hand combat by a small stream. (A self-contained stream that has not burst its banks.) We see tanks easily crossing the battlefield, the only water a couple of puddles. To skip to the end, the last title sums it all up thus: “In a war of heroic deeds, Passchendaele will rank among the most heroic struggles. On 7th December, after five months of gruelling fighting, the crest of that tragically famous ridge is gained.” (The film does not over the fighting of 1918, in which the right was lost again – then rewon, all at the price of many tens of thousands more casualties.)

If all I’ve done is point out the crudeness of the film’s tone and dramatic method, I must conclude by saying that cinematically it is well put together. The photography is strong with frequent and effective use of soldiers silhouetted against large northern skies. There are few close-ups, which makes the use of anything closer than medium or long shots striking. More often than not this is used for the comic scenes, which are less interesting. But there are some effective uses of single soldiers positioned away from the massed ranks/groups that work well. (The image of an exhausted soldier with cigarette in mouth, standing in the foreground while ranks march past behind him, is very striking – it’s not surprisingly that the image is used by the BFI to advertise the streamed version of the film.)

There are also various models and matte painting used to good effect, though nothing very complex. The first glimpse of Ypres is a matte painting, nicely framed, while there are some models to use for the destruction of a zeppelin. For the latter, Summers wisely chooses to stage his aerial fight at night, the dark lending a hand to make the lack of real footage or locations less obvious. Summers also uses plenty of men and materiel to good effect, always filling his frame with people – or else masking portions off with the scenery or smoke and explosions. He also uses some limited amount of newsreel footage shot during the war. But he’s also canny enough not to use any of the real battlefield: it would entirely upstage and undermine the simple heroics of his own “docudrama”. You can’t show the horrors and destruction of the real battlefield if what you’re selling your audience is a boy’s own adventure version of history – albeit a well-equipped one. It’s a very clear and logical film, well put together. But it isn’t reality.

Finally, a note on the DVD edition by Strike Force Entertainment. Unlike the version on BFI Player, this presentation has a soundtrack. The back of the box announces: “The original silent documentary has had an all new soundtrack created from digitally enhanced recordings of the period as well as the addition of evocative sound effects.” Without digital enhancement, anyone nearby would have been able to hear my heart sinking as I read these words. However, the end result is not so bad. It’s a mishmash of musical fragments, united only (I assume) by the fact that they are free of copyright and can thus be chopped and changed per the arranger’s wish. There are also plenty of sound effects, which are far too “new” to my ear, so they stand out a mile from the aesthetic (and historicity) of the film and the acoustics of the musical samples. But I can’t deny that it’s better than I feared. It’s serviceable.

Mons (1926; UK; Walter Summers). On to Mons, which was one of the pivotal early battles of 1914. The BEF was retreating across Belgium, pursued by the much larger German forces. Mons was a “fighting retreat” in the last glimmers of “open warfare” that would soon be replaced by the static trench warfare. It was seen as a test of the strengths of Britain old, professional army – the army that was soon to be worn out and replaced by the waves of volunteers and conscriptions. The original BEF became known as the “Old Contemptibles”.

“Dedicated to the memory of the Old Army which came triumphant through a great ordeal and gave a new and noble meaning to the word ‘Contemptible’.” Thus the opening title. There follows a confusing and ill-explained (actually, entirely unexplained) scene between (unnamed) old politicians arguing about the validity of war. Cut to a mix of newsreel and fictional footage of British troops embarking for the continent. From this point, the action is better narrated. The progress of the armies is described in enough detail to follow, though (unlike Ypres) there are no detailed maps to put everything in place. In a way, it suits the hectic nature of the mobile front to be unbalanced in this way.

And the representation of the fighting? Well, there are cavalry charges and unconvincing firefights and scores of German prisoners, helpless at the sight of cold steel. There are heroic deeds and selfless sacrifices. There are cutaways to Germans admitting how they’ve underestimated their enemy. (“Why not admit it? Our first battle is a heavy – a very heavy – defeat. And that defeat inflicted by the English, the English whom we laughed at.”) There are endless contrasts between the smallness of the British and the masses of the Germans. (“Shatter their ranks, they are filled again. Mow them down in thousands, from the dragon’s teeth spring more.”) There are fewer overtly “comic” scenes than in Ypres, but there are several vignettes to concentrate on individuals. There is “the straggler” who gets marooned with a wounded comrade in a windmill and fights of German uhlans. There is an officer who buys a child’s drum and fife from a local shop in order to rouse his men with any kind of martial music. (The scene ends with a vision of a Victorian band in full regalia playing them on.) Then there’s the scene where a lone British soldier encounters a lone uhlan at rest. The soldier is armed but is too chivalrous to take the German’s possessions without a fight. So they take off their tunics and box, until the German is (of course) knocked out cold.

By dint of its setting in open warfare, and in summer, Mons has more chance for wide, expansive images of the landscape than in Ypres. Summers again makes great use of horizons and silhouettes, of great masses of troops, of racing horses, of mobile batteries, of bridges and brooks, of explosions filling the screen. There are one or two tracking shots, and even a rapid panning shot, which help variate the rhythm of the scenes (many of which are much of a muchness).

And the meaning of it all? According to the last title: “The Great Retreat is ended – the Great Advance, which is to end in ultimate victory, begins.” Describing the onset of static warfare and years of unimaginable suffering and appalling losses as “the Great Advance” is… well, what is it? I genuinely can’t think to express my feelings at this point. They grow more complex, and I will reserve judgement until after the next film…

The Somme (1927; UK; M.A. Wetherall). Right, the final film, and the one that covers one of the bloodiest battles in human history. Between July and November 1916, the British & Commonwealth and French armies launched an offensive on either side of the river Somme. In five months of attritional fighting, the Allies advanced barely six miles and lost over 600,000 casualties. The Germans lost somewhere over 500,000 casualties. The BFI Player notes for this film begin: “This sophisticated retelling of the Battle of the Somme includes an outstanding montage ‘over the top’ sequence.” Fine. What else? This production was “principally the brainchild of Geoffrey Barkas and writer Boyd Cable (Ernest Ewart), both of whom were at the Somme”. Barkas was the original director, but he fell ill and was replaced by M.A. Wetherall. So then, a film produced by veterans with an outstanding over the top sequence. Bring it on…

Hmm. Well, the quality of this print is by far the worst of the BIF films that are offered by the BFI.  (The clips from The Somme included in Brownlow’s documentary series Cinema Europe are clearly from a better source print (and tinted, too), and the episode that covers the film also include an interview with one of its cameramen, Freddie Young.)

What enthusiasm I can still muster for such a grotty copy of the film is steadily quashed by its treatment of war. Here are the Germans in their dugouts, laughing at the image of the Britishers. Here are comic asides by the British tunnellers, planting tons of explosives beneath the laughing Huns (“He’ll want an aeroplane for a hearse when this lot goes up!”) The Somme is filled with deeds without drama, with soldiers without subjectivity, with action without aftermath. This is not to downplay the film’s technical sophistication. Some striking images are achieved through double-exposure/matte painting combinations that mimic the explosions on the horizon as troops march towards the front. (Tinted, the effect would be much better.) But my interest in all this bustle on screen is without heart.

The “over the top” sequence is perhaps the only real effort to create dramatic tension through a complex use of imagery. We see the final minute of time before the whistle blow unfold in real time. Superimposed over the image of a clockface, we see images of the waiting men: biting nails, tapping feet, poised at the ready. It’s an oddly protracted scene of tension. What it undoubtedly possesses in cinematic flair it lacks in dramatic design. This period of waiting is not associated with any particular character or characters. We do not know any of the people we see waiting: they are unnamed figures that we have not met before don’t meet again. We can’t feel anything more than a rather abstract or generalized feeling of tension. Despite the realities the film attempts to show, and despite the reality of the seconds ticking by to Zero-hour, these aren’t real human beings on screen – and I simply didn’t feel properly involved.

Finally, the text “ZERO” grows in size to occupy the screen. Over the top! But what happens next is a quite shamelessly whitewashed depiction of the first day of the battle. To remind you all, the British & Commonwealth forces lost nearly 60,000 men for almost no ground gained. Instead, The Somme provides us with reassuring text about territorial gains and advancing guns – and no mention of objectives, casualties, expectations, consequences. The battle goes on. There are scenes of senior officers discussing plans, scenes that are stiff and awkward in the extreme. They are there for illustrative purposes, but what – really – are they illustrating? The figures aren’t named, they don’t have identities, motives; they have no function other than to gesture towards a chain of command and a strategic process that the film has no ability or interest to explore.

The film is more interested in the lower ranks, but what kind of justice does it do to their struggles? We see heroic deeds, lone pipers playing under gunfire, the wounded being rescued. But where are the bodies? We’re told in one title that two waves of an attack were mown down by machine gun and rifle fire. Instead of showing us this, the title immediately dissolves onto a second title, reassuring us that the third wave – inspired by an officer’s hunting horn – went over the top and succeeded.

The film knows it cannot deny the sacrifices made, but it also cannot bear to show them or name them. We are shown maps of the battle, but they do not show the objectives in relation to the initial timetable (positions that were meant to be taken on day one were still out of reach months into the battle). A later title implies the difficulties the Allies faced without making them explicit. Here, the text mentions Beaumont Hamel, “where our attacks had broken down with such appalling losses on 1st July” but where “the enemy still remained secure”. Where were these “appalling losses” in the relevant part of the film? Where even was anything shown to “break down”?

The film then blames the weather for stalling an inevitable victory. Here, we see some of the few instances of the troops occupied not with heroic deeds or plucky comedy but with forbearance – and even, in one scene, expressing something like fury. This comes in the form of a remarkable shot of a soldier lying in mud, delivering an untitled monologue; but anyone who can lipread even slightly will pick up phrase like “fucking war” and “fucking mud”. What to make of this? It is the only voice (but “voice” is somehow an inappropriate term in this silent scene) in the entire film raised against the tone of patriotic success. But the film cannot, dare not, follow it up or elaborate on it. Another soldier witnesses this outburst, but he carries on without comment. So does the film. A title later states: “the weather closed down like a curtain upon a glorious tragedy”. Glorious tragedy is it, now? Well, the film manages to win a victory nevertheless by skipping forward to the German tactical retreat to the Hindenburg Line in early 1917. “The sacrifice had not been in vain.” These words are spelled out over a vision of a scarred swathe of land, the remains of an advance scattered over the torn ground. But there are no bodies, no victims, in the frame. It is as if the “sacrifice” is too great to show and has already been tidied away.

I suppose by this point I had grown weary of these BIF films. But there was something in the evasiveness and hypocrisy of The Somme that especially irritated and upset me. The film retrospectively mentions horrific casualties and abject failures yet never once depicts them. It depicts heroism without placing it in the context that makes it heroic. We see just one blinded soldier, fumbling in a crater. We see just one voice raised against the appalling conditions, but his voice is un-transliterated. Nothing is questioned; everything is justified. The Somme is a film that has neither the interest nor capacity to think about what it shows us, let alone to feel something. It is a spiritual and moral vacuum.

To conclude this overlong piece, I do not regret going through these BIF films. They form an important genre of popular commercial filmmaking in the UK in the 1920s. But in all honesty, I cannot wait to watch something else, something more honest – in whatever genre. To repeat what I said in my earlier piece, these BIF films offer exciting visions of the Great War that may impress by their scale and vigour but frustrate by their utter disinterest in real human beings or real human emotions. For films dealing with industrialized slaughter, it is quite staggering how little there is on screen of genuine consequence. It is also worth repeating the citation I offered last time from Bryher, writing in in Close Up in October 1927. Illustrating that even people at the time might feel queasy watching these films, Bryher attacked these BIF productions for their dishonest treatment of war:

There are plenty of guns and even corpses in the British pictures but the psychological effect of warfare is blotted away; men shoot and walk and make jokes in the best boy’s annual tradition and that some drop in a heap doesn’t seem to matter because one feels that in a moment the whistle will sound and they will all jump up again…

I am likewise left deeply uneasy about these films. Indeed, I also take it that the way the BIF productions have been treated by the BFI suggests some similar qualms about the rationale for their restoration and exhibition. Of course, The Battle of the Somme (1916) – made while the battle was still raging in the summer of 1916 – is a famous example of wartime reporting that has been restored more than once and has long been available. It may not show the full horrors of the battle, but it has enough glimpses of real injury and real death to make it shocking – then and now. The Battle of the Somme is an extraordinary document of its time, but the reality of those faces still reaches out to us in the present; the film is naturally much seen and studied. Conversely, the BIF films – despite being more numerous and just as popular – are relatively obscure. Asthe only such production to have been fully restored and released in the modern era by the BFI, I wonder how many university courses include The Battles of Coronel and Falkland Islands? Of all the BIF films, it strikes me it is the one most palatable to modern audiences. In treating a sea battle in which the total losses were less than 4000 lives, it is less likely to seem an inappropriate mode of representation. With Mons, there is an appealing vigour in its treatment of a series of dramatic encounters in the open warfare of 1914. But with Ypres and The Somme, I cannot imagine the propagandist treatment of the bloodiest battles in British & Commonwealth history going down so well.

Of course these films are “of their time”. But is that also an excuse to avoid looking at what they represent, or at what uncomfortable resonances they might still have? As Bryher’s review makes clear, some critics could and did feel differently even in the 1920s. She herself made the link to the rise of nationalism and fascism across Europe, forces that relied on images of a glorious military past and of war as a heroic pursuit. One might also look to France and to Léon Poirier’s Verdun, visions d’histoire (1928), which is a far more melancholy look at another critical battle of the Great War. As it happens, for all its cast and resources, Verdun is an absolute bore of a film – like an illustrated lecture, only weirdly portentous. Yet it still transcends the jingoist tone of the contemporary BIF productions. Poirier’s film even tries to address the spiritual aftereffects of war, to acknowledge that the millions of men who fought and died had value beyond their actions on the battlefield – that they were all, equally, human beings. There is more to be said about films like the BIF production in comparison to Soviet “history” films of the 1920s, as well as with more straightlaced films like Verdun, but frankly I’ve had enough of this genre for a while.

Paul Cuff

The Battles of Coronel and Falkland Islands (1927; UK; Walter Summers)

To begin, a confession: the Blu-ray of The Battles of Coronel and Falkland Islands has been sat on my shelf for ten years. Yes, ten years of being shuffled from house to house, from shelving unit to shelving unit. Ten years of being saved for tomorrow. Well, tomorrow has arrived – today! I’m not sure why the existence of the film and its convenient BFI home media edition slipped my mind for so long, nor why the notion of watching it suddenly popped back into my brain. But regardless of why, I have now watched it.

The Battles of Coronel and Falkland Islands was directed by Walter Summers for British Instructional Films (BIF), a company that made documentaries and features through the 1920s. Among their larger productions were a series of historical recreations of battles from the Great War. Alongside naval dramas like Zeebrugge (1924) and The Battles of Coronel and Falkland Islands were others about the western front like Ypres (1925), Mons (1926), and The Somme (1927). The Battles of Coronel and Falkland Islands is the only one of these films to be fully restored, though others are available via the BFI streaming service. Summers’s film is the flagship production (forgive the pun) among this series because of the scale of its recreation and because it has been seen as a companion piece to Sergei Eisenstein’s Battleship Potemkin (1925). I will discuss this more later, as the discourse around this comparison is almost more interesting than the act of comparing the films itself.

The Battles of Coronel and Falkland Islands is set in 1914 and recreates two successive battles in the Pacific and Atlantic, fought by British forces against the German fleet under Admiral Graf Maximilian von Spee. The Battle of Coronel, in November 1914, was a defeat for the outclassed British ships, during which the Germans lost three wounded against British losses of 1600 killed (and two ships sunk). The Battle of the Falklands, in December 1914, was a total reverse of fortunes: for only a handful of casualties, the British sunk four German ships – killing over 1800 men and capturing another 200. The opening narrational title of Summers’s film puts it this way: “This is the story of the Sea fights of Coronel and the Falkland Islands – of a victory, and a defeat as glorious as victory – a story of our Royal navy, which through storm and calm maintained for us the Freedom of the Seas.”

The tone of this summary is revealing. Yes, the credits thank the Royal Navy for their cooperation, and boast of the many resources put at the production’s disposal; but it is not just historical recreation, it is a depiction of “glory” and empire. Rather sweetly, the credits list which (historical) ships are played by which (real) ships of the Royal Navy. None of the human cast get mentioned, which epitomizes the balance between the recreational/historic aspects of the film and its dramatic/human aspect. For while Summers takes care to humanize the leading protagonists, especially the various commanders, it is in the naval operations themselves that the film is principally concerned – and best at handling.

Here, he has an impressive array of ships and materiel to play with. Most obviously, he has several Royal Navy ships to film – from sea, from land, from high on deck, from the depths of the hold. He finds lots of interesting angles, though the commanders at their respective helms are always framed in the same way. In part this helps anchor the spaces, as well as draw parallels between the opposing commanders – all of whom are treated sympathetically.

Most impressive, however, is the sequence (called “The Effort”) in which the British prepare their ships to sail out to the Falklands to intercept the German fleet. There is a long montage (about seven minutes) of preparations. We see a dock’s worth of activity: moving equipment, welding iron, stockpiling ammunition, loading supplies. Since the crew is working day and night, there are some striking scenes in the dark of the activity illuminated by flashes of light. There is also a marvellous tracking crane shot, filmed (I presume) from one of the dock’s mobile platforms suspended over the loading bay. It’s a great shot and I wish there had been more moments of such camera movement. But Summers reserves one of his very few other mobile shots for a similar tracking shot that moves up the food-loaded expanse of von Spee’s victory banquet table in Valparaiso. This is one of the only moments in the entire film that struck me as a truly incisive, analytical use of camerawork, for it is not used simply to show-off space but to comment on the action. A contrast is being drawn between the parallel preparation of both sides: while the British are working night and day to rebuild their fleet, the Germans are feasting and drinking. It’s a nice touch, but noteworthy for the rarity of its… well, stylishness. It’s the move of a dramatic director rather than a documentary reconstructionist.

Indeed, I am tempted to say that Summers is better at directing objects, and cutting between spaces, than he is at directing people. His choreography of the various crowd scenes is quite repetitive: too often, everyone on screen is doing exactly the same thing. Thus when the militia at Port Stanley spot the German navy approaching, they all go to the cliff edge and they all point at it. When the Royal Navy closes in on the disabled German vessels at the end of the film, the curious crew all go to the railing, and they all point at the vessels. Summers is a bit better in the action scenes, with crews rushing around or dying. But even here, at the end of the battle, when the Gneisenau is scuttled, there is a shot of the German crew all gathered in various degrees of stiff, unnatural poses. (Really, what are those gestures supposed to be? Are they mimicking Mr Muscle?)

Beyond the crowds of sailors, Summers also tries to humanize his set pieces by having little vignettes of individuals or pairs among the crew. Thus, we see HMS Canopus being painted by a comic sailor who gets paint on his comrade; or we overhear conversations of sailors in-between or just after bits of action, making comic asides. I say, “comic”, but what I really mean is “tedious”. The performances are stiff, the rhythm is slow, the supposedly colloquial dialogue clunky and contrived. I suspect the humour may have gone down better in Britain in 1927 but suffice it to say that a century later these scenes do not work. (Thinking back, I recall similar scenes in Powell and Pressburger’s naval war drama The Battle of the River Plate (1956), which are likewise cringeworthy efforts to show jolly working-class sailor folk maintaining their plucky British spirits.)

All of which brings me back to the comparison with Battleship Potemkin. There are striking parallels and striking contrasts. Both films alternate between drama on land and sea, depicting history as a kind of spectacle. But while both films don’t have characters so much as collective groups, there is a vast difference in its attitude toward hierarchy. Summers has a great respect for officers of both sides – they are all represented in strikingly similar ways, with an emphasis on calmness, stoicism, and honour. This is a striking contrast to the sadistic, violent officers and priests of Battleship Potemkin. Summers is very much invested in the class system as embodied in military ranks. Eisenstein is interested in revolution, Summers in the maintenance of class and Empire.

In this sense, Summers’s film is as implicitly propagandistic as Eisenstein’s is explicitly so. The Battles of Coronel and Falkland Islands is a defence of British imperialism: the film begins and ends with references to the defence and glory of Empire, with Britain as the guardian (if not the owner) of the “seven seas”. But Summers is also careful not to dehumanize, let alone demonize, his enemy. Though there are plenty of sneering, triumphalist looks among the German officers, Spee himself is a very sympathetic (one might also say tragic) figure. He refuses to gloat or condemn the British at the victory feast, and his acceptance of the bouquet is tinged with a self-conscious defeatism: Spee says the flowers must be kept in case they should prove useful at his own funeral. (Summers makes sure to show Spee brooding on them later in the film, as defeat looms.) The film clearly admires stoicism and bravery on both sides: the suicidal courage and flag-waving defiance of the British ships in the opening battle are echoed in the actions of the doomed German crews in the second battle. There is nothing like this in Eisenstein’s depiction of the tsarist military of any rank in Battleship Potemkin.

In terms of naval spectacle, Summers’s film boasts greater resources. While Eisenstein makes do with what is clearly a single docked ship, Summers has a small fleet that is clearly filmed at sea. The scenes in which the refitted ships set sail to the Falklands are excellent and I wish there had been more scenes like this. Summers seems very concise, which is to say limited, in his use of this footage. He does not explore the interior of the ships in much detail (a cabin, a canteen, a galley), and the upper deck is likewise limited to a small number of set-ups (a couple of gun positions, the bridge). What is missing is the sense of a ship as a lived-in space, occupied by a real crew. I wonder if it was either difficult or even prohibited to show too much detail onboard the Royal Navy vessels. (I wish he had used more mobile camerawork to explore these spaces. Apart from one very brief tracking shot in the canteen when action stations are called, the camera remains static.) Nor does his montage, or his image-making, ever quite produce a true sense of drama. (The best sequence is one of preparation, not of action.) Not only does Summers explain what’s about to happen in his narrational titles, but I always feel that he is at one remove from the reality being depicted. For all its recreational efforts, you feel that The Battles of Coronel and Falkland Islands is ultimately history in the past tense. Battleship Potemkin has a far greater sense of events happening before your eyes, disorienting you, sometimes terrifying you. And, it should go without saying, Summers does not have Eisenstein’s extraordinary eye for composition, for sudden bursts of impactful imagery – nor for his playful subversiveness. The Battles of Coronel and Falkland Islands is very effectively composed and edited, but I suspect that I will struggle to remember its imagery. But with each shot of Battleship Potemkin, Eisenstein seems to smack you round the head – every image is gripping, dramatic, dynamic. (Even the slogan-like text of the titles is punchily effective.) For all Summers’s resources and skill, and for all the similarities between these films, Battleship Potemkin is in a different league than The Battles of Coronel and Falkland Islands.

On this theme, I find myself thinking about the first time I heard of The Battles of Coronel and Falkland Islands. This was a reference and clip in Mathew Sweet’s feature documentary Silent Britain (BBC Four, 2007). I have very mixed feelings about this documentary. On the plus side, it offers a valuable trove of clips from a host of interesting films, many of which are still not publicly available. On the downside, the tone of Sweet’s narration is sneeringly dismissive of anyone who has ever dared to doubt the glory of British cinema in this period.

When I first saw Silent Britain in 2007, I felt that the countless digs at “some historians” was aimed (at least in part) at Kevin Brownlow, whose episode on British cinema in Cinema Europe (1995) (“Lost Opportunity”) offered a very sober account of this same period and subject. Comparing the two documentaries, it’s striking how many of the films and historic interviews used by Brownlow are also used by Sweeney. But Sweeney doesn’t discuss the struggles of the British film industry, nor reflect on the fact that many of the films he cites from the late 1920s were not only influenced by continental filmmakers but directed by them. Brownlow’s focus, as the title of Cinema Europe indicates, is to offer a wider perspective on the relationship between national cinemas across Europe – and to highlight their successes and struggles to compete with Hollywood. As such, Brownlow’s is a more complex project than simply rediscovery – although it is also one of the great documentaries on (re)discovering silent cinema. This is not to say that Sweet is wrong to champion the films he chooses (they are too little seen), but that he offers an incredibly one-sided interpretation of the period. Watching it again, nearly twenty years later, I find Sweet’s endless sniping about critics and historians incredibly irritating. (I sincerely hope that I never strike my readers this way.) The content of the documentary is superb, but the tone of the narration is too much like tabloid journalism.

In addressing (and criticizing) the Film Society (1925-39), where otherwise rare or censored films were shown to paid subscribers, Sweet mentions Battleship Potemkin and The Battles of Coronel and Falkland Islands together:

Everyone at the Film Society was astounded by the technique of Eisenstein’s film, but it wasn’t really so far removed from what a director called Walter Summers was doing closer to home. […] For all Summers’s ambition in a field we would now call “drama documentary”, this film would have been passed over by the Film Society. It was certainly given a rough ride by the cinema intellectuals writing in the influential magazine Close Up. Close Up’s critics wrote gushy fan letters to foreign directors while dismissing the work of British filmmakers as third-rate and uninspired.

Well, excuse me! I’d forgotten how snide Sweet was in addressing one of the most important English-language film publications of the period, and their wide-ranging efforts to engage with and analyse foreign cinema. I’m well aware of the reputation of Close Up as a hotbed of snobbishness, not to mention sexual experimentation, and I know some people who have little time for their writers and editors as a whole. But I can only roll my eyes at Sweet’s setting up of these straw figures to knock down with such contemptuous ease. The point of the Film Society was not to show big commercial hits like The Battles of Coronel and Falkland Islands, a film that was readily accessible in cinemas across the land, but films that were otherwise censored, cut, or prohibited. This inevitably meant an emphasis on foreign films and those of the avant-garde. And as for the way Sweet sneers at the notion of “cinema intellectuals” and their continental tastes…

Anyway, noting that Sweet didn’t bother quoting what Close Up actually wrote about Summers’s film, I bothered to look it up. The review (“The War from more angles”, from October 1927) is written by Bryher, one of the most interesting figures in British modernism of the interwar years. (I could write much on Bryher, but this is not the space…) Bryher states at the outset that she doesn’t think The Battles of Coronel and Falkland Islands is a bad film, but she does take issue with its tone – and that of similar recreations of the Great War. “The trouble is not so much what they represent as the way they represent it”, she says. “What I and many others (according to reviews) object to in the Somme [the BIF film of 1927] and the Battle of The Falklands is that war is presented entirely from a romantic boy-adventure book angle, divorced from everyday emotions”. Sensitive to the growth of fascism across Europe in the late 1920s, Bryher worries that “the ‘We Want War’ crowd psychology may destroy a nation” – and that films ought not to encourage it:

By all means let us have war films. Only let us have war straight and as it is; mainly disease and discomfort, almost always destructive […] in its effects. Let us get away from this nursery formula that to be in uniform is to be a hero; that brutality and waste are not to be condemned, provided they are disguised in flags, medals and cheering.

For Bryher, The Battles of Coronel and Falkland Islands repeated a trend common to other BIF films: “there was not a single suggestion that war was anything other than an elaborate and permissible adventure; or that there were thousands of men and women whose lives were broken and whose homes were destroyed.” She then offers her own vision of what a more sensitive film might convey, conjuring a kind of impressionistic montage in prose. In Summers’s film, the Scilly Isles stand in for the Falklands, and Bryher uses this as a springboard for her own memories of the war there:

[N]o gigantic spectacle is needed but a central theme worked out perhaps in a little outpost and related to the actual experience of people during those awful, hungry years. Scilly for instance (as I saw it in 1917) with the long black lines of the food convoy in the distance. A liner beached in the Sound with a hole as large as a room where a torpedo had hit it; the gun on its deck trained seawards in case a submarine dodged the patrol. Old men watching on the cliffs. An old fisherman rowing in slowly with a cask of brandy—wreckage—towing behind his boat and a smuggler’s smile on his lips. (How he must have enjoyed bringing it in legitimately in broad daylight.) Shipwrecked sailors from a torpedoed boat stumbling up the beach. Letters: —“If the petrol shortage continues it is doubtful how long the country can hold out” and down at the wharf the motor launches letting the petrol hose drip into the water because, between filling tanks, they were too bored to turn it off. The war as it affected just one family. Rations, rumours, remoteness.  A film could be made of trifling impressions seen through the eyes of any average person. It would be valuable alike as picture and as document. But this glorification of terrible disaster is frankly a retrogression into the infantile idea of warfare, as a kind of sand castle on a beach where toy soldiers are set up, knocked down, and packed up in a pail in readiness for the next morning.

Bryher also contrasts BIF productions with The Big Parade (1925), which she sees as a far more honest depiction of war – and the dangerous lure of false notions of what war is. In the BIF films, war is “[h]eroic and nicely tidied up”, “[p]leasant to watch but completely unreal”:

There are plenty of guns and even corpses in the British pictures but the psychological effect of warfare is blotted away; men shoot and walk and make jokes in the best boy’s annual tradition and that some drop in a heap doesn’t seem to matter because one feels that in a moment the whistle will sound and they will all jump up again; a sensation one never had for a minute in The Big Parade.

Bryher praises the extensive dock montage sequence in The Battles of Coronel and Falkland Islands precisely because it was more honest:

Here the director touched reality, and the different machines, the darkness, the hurrying feet, and the long yard gave a feeling of preparation and activity that marked a great advance on anything previously seen in an English film. That was authentic England. Dirty and full of noise and right. The men were working the right way. Directly the atmosphere of the picture changed and the attention held.

To return to the comparison with Battleship Potemkin, it’s worth noting that Bryher never mentions Eisenstein in her review of Summers’s film: the British censors had banned it from being exhibited in the UK and it was only shown by the Film Society in November 1929. She places The Battles of Coronel and Falkland Islands in the context of other contemporary war films, especially those by BIF. Bryher sees it as part of a genre, and criticizes it as such. For all Sweet’s outlandishness, I can’t help but take his comment (I can’t call it an argument) that Battleship Potemkin “wasn’t really so far removed” from The Battles of Coronel and Falkland Islands as quite a cautious statement. Even he knows it’s absurd to claim it as a work equal cinematic, let alone cultural or historic, significance. Claiming it as “not really so far removed” is about as far as one might reasonably push it, though even here I would say that this is a gross simplification. As Bryher suggests, it’s not a matter of setting but of tone and style that distinguishes the BIF films from films like The Big Parade or Battleship Potemkin. The essays in the BFI booklet that accompanies the Blu-ray of The Battles of Coronel and Falkland Islands are rather more balanced than Sweet, arguing that it is a great film within its particular context. Bryony Dixon says that the dockyard montage is surely “one of the best pieces of filmmaking in British cinema” (Bryher says something similar), though she is also careful to shield the film from the kind of outlandish comparison that Sweet is keen to make.

Finally, a word on the score for the 2014 restoration of The Battles of Coronel and Falkland Islands. This was written by Simon Dobson and performed by the Band of the Royal Marines, together with the strings of the Elysian Quartet. Dobson uses the brass, winds, and percussion of the Band to create a marvellous sonic world – it has a great variety of rhythm, texture, and tone. I was curious to hear the way the strings are used to underscore certain parts of the film. They sounded to my ears more like the way a synthesizer is sometimes used to create a kind of acoustic wash beneath a dominant rhythm. The liner notes to the Blu-ray reveal that these strings were recorded separately from the Band and later mixed in to the soundtrack. This perhaps helps explain my sense of their slightly artificial placement. This is not a complaint, however, as the effect is certainly novel on my ear – and the whole score must rank as one of the more interesting and imaginative uses of orchestration that I’ve heard for a silent film. It sounds both akin to its period and genre, as well as sounding original. A perfect balance, and an enjoyable soundscape.

After going through the above, I feel some nagging sense of guilt that I should do more homework. Sweet’s complaint about most historians not being as familiar with British silent cinema as with foreign productions is surely true of me, if not others. In terms of availability, the situation Sweet observed in 2007 is rather better in 2025, but many important British silents are still maddeningly difficult to see. Half of the BFI’s “10 Great British Silent Films” (compiled in 2021) are not available either on DVD/Blu-ray or on the institute’s streaming service (and the DVD for Hindle Wakes (1927) is long out of print). And this list, of course, is but a tiny selection. Nevertheless, can we start by getting releases of The Lure of Crooning Water (1920) and The First Born (1928)? In the meantime, I promise to do my patriotic duty and watch not one, not two, but all three available British Instructional Films on the BFI Player service. None of this continental muck for me, just good ol’ British fare. (But after that, can I please resume writing “gushy fan letters to foreign directors”?)

Paul Cuff

Live cinema at the BFI: Gösta Berlings saga (1924; Sw.; Mauritz Stiller)

On Sunday I went to London to the BFI Southbank. The reason? To see the UK premiere of the new(ish) restoration of Mauritz Stiller’s Gösta Berlings saga. Having known the film only on its old DVD incarnation, I was excited to see the differences that extra material and tinting/toning would make. I also have memories of being mildly irritated by the Matti Bye score present on the old restoration, so looked forward to hearing the live piano accompaniment from John Sweeney. Delightfully, the presentation took place in NFT1 – Stiller deserves the biggest screen on offer! With an excellent view in the centre of the auditorium, I took my seat…

Where to begin? I suppose with a synopsis. But with Gösta Berlings saga this is something of an undertaking. As he had done with Gunnar Hedes saga (1923), Stiller simplified the Selma Lagerlöf novel on which the film is based – by my god it’s still a complex affair with a shedload of characters. Later I will discuss a few aspects of the plot through its characters, but a brief summary might go as follows: Gösta Berling is a defrocked priest who joins a band of revelling “cavaliers” on the Ekeby estate. He variously attracts and is attracted to a series of women, resulting in much heartbreak and ruin – including to the Ekeby estate. Can Gösta Berling rebuild his reputation and restore the estate to its rightful owner?

The new Svenska Filminstitut restoration was completed in 2022 and adds some sixteen minutes’ worth of footage to the longest previous edition, though it is still another fourteen minutes (approx.) short of the original two-part version from 1924. The restoration credits at least acknowledge this history, unlike those of the recent Svenska Filminstitut version of Stiller’s Sången om den eldröda blomman (1919), which (as I wrote when I saw it) omits any mention of the significant amount of material that remains missing. In terms of viewing the film, the missing scenes from Sången om den eldröda blomman cause less of a problem than the material missing from Gösta Berlings saga. With the latter, the plot is so complex that a summary of what happens in missing scenes (if this information is available) would have enhanced the experience. I remain entirely unclear as to whether the narrative gaps are an issue with Stiller’s skill as a screenwriter or with the gaps in the restoration. (More on this issue later.) As the restoration credits also admit, the pictorial designs for the intertitles of Gösta Berlings saga were not able to be recreated even if the text and font have been. This is a shame, but entirely understandable – and at least the credits flag this absence. But the most obvious difference to the new restoration is the revival of tinting (for the film) and toning (for the intertitles). The film colours are based on a positive copy of the film preserved in Portugal, and the intertitle colour on a contemporary written description, so the overall scheme is likely not identical to the copies presented in Sweden – but this is not a major issue. The main point is that the tinting, in combination with the picture quality, looks stunning. Gösta Berlings saga is a fabulous film to look at. As I’ve written on previous posts about Stiller films, one of the main reasons to watch them is the photography. For Gösta Berlings saga, Julius Jaenzon captures the landscapes in winter and in spring with equal skill. The level of detail, the subtlety of the lighting, the richness of the textures, the artfulness of the composition – it all makes for a great watch. Though I always prefer Stiller when he’s outside, the interiors of this film are also excellent. The well-appointed rooms of the big houses are grand in scale, but more interesting and more complex are the ramshackle spaces of the cavaliers’ “wing” and the various poor houses in which characters end up at various stages.

The cast of Gösta Berlings saga is led by Lars Hanson, who is superb in the title role. As well as being a strikingly handsome star, Hanson is an engaging and sympathetic screen presence – and Stiller knows just how to frame him, to light him, to capture his performance to its best. His character swings wildly from mood to mood, but Hanson can also be disarmingly reflective and vulnerable. It is these moments of stillness, often at the end of a sequence, that win you over to him. I must say that I find Hanson’s Don Juan-ish character in Sången om den eldröda blomman more comprehensible, and thus his highs and lows more moving than in Gösta Berlings saga. But Hanson is still striking on screen, and committed in his every scene of Gösta Berlings saga – whether channelling divine inspiration, drinking himself half to death, making promises he can’t keep, leaping into blazing buildings, or riding across frozen lakes. He has a lot to do and does it all with great aplomb.

Then there is Greta Garbo as Elizabeth, his Italian love interest and the not-quite-for-legal-reasons wife of the comic Henrik Dohna. I must be honest and say that I never really understood or engaged with Garbo’s character. This is partly an issue of performance, or of direction of performance. Stiller doesn’t quite know how to get the best out of Garbo, either in terms of her look or her gestures – and thus nor does Garbo. For me, Garbo is the least successful of the film’s major performances. But I think that the real issue is that her character is not well developed, and her relationship with Gösta a little unconvincing. We never see Elizabeth meeting Gösta for the first time, nor do we learn that he was tutoring her until later in the film, when we get a flashback to her Swedish lessons with him in the park. We see this same scene in flashback twice, but never the original scene or its context. I imagine this is a matter of missing material from the restoration, but if this is the case couldn’t we get a “missing scene” title to help explain? But even with this theoretical scene in place, I remain uncertain about the development of Elizabeth’s love for Gösta – and vice versa. Everything points to Gösta ending up with Marianne (they are attracted to each other, they clash, he rescues her from the snow, then from the fire), and Jenny Hasselqvist’s outstanding performance as Marianne makes her a far more appealing and comprehensible character than Elizabeth. Marianne’s smallpox aside (and are we to assume that a night out in the snow is the cause of this viral disease?), I was confused by the fact that she and Elizabeth are (so a title claims) good friends at the end of the film. This seems like a title doing a lot of work to fix quite a glaring dramatic tension, and to help us overcome any doubts about Marianne getting hard done by. The result of all this is that Garbo may look beautiful, but her character often doesn’t provide her with a clear and convincing set of motives or emotions to express or shape into a coherent performance. Don’t get me wrong, it’s still fascinating to see Garbo so young and not-quite-there-yet, but this is absolutely not her film.

For me, the real star is Gerda Lundequist as Margaretha Samzelius. When she has her first major scene with Gösta in the “wing” of the cavaliers, she suddenly brings a degree of emotional depth and complexity that the film has not yet plumbed. She narrates her past, puts his troubles in perspective, and sets up the personal trauma that comes back to haunt her later in the film. It’s a great scene, and she commands attention in everything she does. She is both naturalistic and expressive, superbly controlled without ever seeming mannered. What a great screen presence she is – you really can’t take your eyes of what she’s doing. This is the case even when the saga around her gets confusing. Dramatically, her relationship with the “cavaliers” that live on her estate goes through several total reversals of attitude that I find hard to comprehend. It’s an issue with the cavaliers more than with Margaretha, but she must bear the brunt of the dramatic topsy-turviness. Her most devoted cavalier (for reasons I don’t fully grasp) suddenly turns on the woman he has repeatedly said he loves, then feels devastated with guilt, then calls her an old witch, then (at the end of the film) feels remorseful once more. But whatever strange twists the film puts in the path of her character, Lundequist is there to embody the emotional resonance of the consequences. It’s a great performance.

Around the leads are a host of other strong, characterful performances. I have no reservations about any of the rest of the cast, but in discussing them I must work through some of my reservations about how the film knits together their various characters. For example, there is the scheming Märtha Dohna (played with relish by Ellen Hartman-Cederström). I can grasp her desire to disinherit her stepdaughter Ebba by (mis)allying her to Gösta: the film explains that this will enable Märtha’s natural son Henrik to inherit the Borg estate. But why at the end of the film does Märtha start taunting her prospective daughter-in-law, Elizabeth? Having tried so hard to get Elizabeth to sign the documents that would finalize the marriage, why does she suddenly turn on her and imply that the marriage would be a mistake? Seriously – why is she doing this? She also starts an argument with Gustafva Sinclaire about the history of her family and the identity of Henrik’s father. Given that the film has produced a dozen paintings (portraits of historic owners of Borg) to show on the walls of this very set, the faces of which are all clearly based on the features of the actor playing Henrik (Torsten Hammarén), we are given a clear visual answer (and a marvellous piece of design) – if no verbal answer in the dialogue of the scene. But this does not clarify the history of Märtha and her deceased(?) husband, nor the context of Henrik’s conception – nor the legal standing between the legitimate Ebba and the illegitimate(?) Henrik. God, what a confusing plotline – couldn’t the film make this clearer? Or at least not throw in last-second complications to make something relatively simple unnecessarily confusing?

I do not feel that I am merely nitpicking. It’s not unreasonable to want to know what is at stake in a drama and what motivates characters to act in the way that they do. For such a long and convoluted film, which has ample time to create complex narrative strands, I honestly don’t think Gösta Berlings saga is as coherent as it could be. At some point I will read the Lagerlöf novel, but my suspicion is that the film doesn’t go far enough in simplifying the original story. I often get the sense that far more has happened, and needs to be known, than I am being told in the film. Stiller creates a marvellously rich world on screen – but as impressive as the enormous sets and set-pieces are, I’m not wholly convinced in the coherence of the drama and its characters.

But I regret having to spend so much time on my reservations about this film. Despite all the above, I still think Gösta Berlings saga is tremendously pleasurable to watch – especially on a big screen with a full house and live music. In these circumstances, the film absolutely works. Indeed, one of the remarkable things about Gösta Berlings saga is that the way scenes can by be baggy or confusing yet somehow pack an emotional punch. Again and again, Stiller finds a way of pulling things together and providing you with a pay-off that works – even if the preceding material doesn’t.

In Act 2, the long flashback to Berling’s time as a priest is a case in point. The chapel scene, in which the hungover Gösta Berling delivers a knock-out sermon, doesn’t quite work on screen: intertitles have to do too much summarizing, to convey too much dramatic weight, to be convincing. (Stiller cannot quite find the cinematic means of expressing the content of the speech. Even Hanson’s performance, committed though it is, isn’t enough to substitute for what I presume is a lengthy chunk of prose in the novel.) Yet if the scene doesn’t quite come off, it is followed by a truly excellent realization of the aftermath of the sermon, as Gösta insults his parishioners and is run out of town. (We’ll pass over quite why he does this.) There follows a simply stunning image of him at night on a snowy, tree-lined road. It’s an image of amazing resonance, the very picture of dejection, isolation, loneliness, defeat. It’s beautiful to look at, with amazing low-level lighting, and expresses everything you need to know in a single shot. Perfect. Absolutely perfect. And it somehow redeems the rather uneven earlier part of the act. It gives you the emotional pay-off to what preceded it so effectively that the whole act makes more sense. This kind of thing happens many times across the film. Though I wasn’t convinced by Garbo as the main love interest, I was still moved when she got together with Gösta at the end. As I said, Stiller finds a way of ending things so effectively that your reservations (or at least mine) melt away.

Another factor must be mentioned, which is the terrific musical accompaniment by John Sweeney at the BFI screening. He kept up an amazing stream of lush, beautiful musical scenes and sequences that knitted together the drama into an effective whole. The race across the ice sequence in the penultimate act of the film, for example, was wonderfully handled. As elsewhere, I found the character motivation in this scene, and even the basic plotting, very confusing. (Dramatically, the whole sequence is oddly organized. Elizabeth heads off across the ice from Borg to Ekeby because she believes that her father will attack Gösta, but the audience has already been shown the father forgiving Gösta entirely. Fine – at least we know, even if it makes her journey less dramatically effective. But then why does Gösta seem to overtake Elizabeth rather than encounter her? The point of the scene is that they should meet each other coming from opposite directions, yet here he is catching up with her from behind. This isn’t just a matter of a different continuity pattern in Stiller’s editing, but a matter of dramatic staging. And when Gösta gives Elizabeth a lift, why does he steer away from Borg and admit that he is abducting her – not just from Borg but from Sweden? A fit of pique? Genuine passion? If so, from whence has it sprung? Only when Elizabeth asks him what the hell he’s doing does he mention the fact that they’re being chased by wolves. When did he realize this?) Yet during the screening, when Sweeney started pounding out a terrific refrain for the race across the ice, all these questions faded away: you’re left to marvel at the technical brilliance of the way the race is filmed, and the mad melodrama of it all. Even the faint sense of incoherence or (at least) incomprehension is somehow suspended, or transcended, in the thrill of such a gloriously cinematic scene. Later, when Ekeby has been rebuilt (but how?! and by what means?!), and Gösta and Elizabeth enter their new home, Sweeney’s grand, pealing chords were the perfect way to end the film. The final notes had hardly faded when the audience burst into applause: for the film, for the stars, for the music. Bravo!

I do hope this new restoration is released on DVD/Blu-ray, or at least made available online per other Swedish silents via the Svenska Filminstitut digital archive. Sadly, there is no guarantee that even the most important restorations ever get a commercial release. I still find it staggering that Sången om den eldröda blomman is not available on home media: you can buy the complete recording of Armas Järnefelt’s beautiful score on CD, but you cannot buy the film on DVD! Let’s hope something more happens to Gösta Berlings saga. I imagine that the old Matti Bye score will be expanded/reworked for any media release, but I do wish any original arrangement from 1924 would be investigated. Evidence of the music clearly survives, as Ann-Kristin Wallengren (in her thesis on music in Swedish silent film) mentions some of the cues used. (This included parts of Järnefelt’s score for Sången om den eldröda blomman, as well as of the Louis Silvers/William F. Peters score for Griffith’s Way Down East (1920).) It’s curious that the musical legacy of Swedish silent cinema has received so little attention, especially compared to the numerous original scores and arrangements that have been researched and restored for films elsewhere in Europe and in Hollywood.

Gösta Berlings saga is a big, baggy, beautiful film. I’m so glad I saw it in such wonderful circumstances at the BFI. And as much as I would welcome it on DVD/Blu-ray, I also cannot help think that I wouldn’t have been as moved – nor would my reservations have been so effectively overcome – if I had seen it on a small screen instead. Live cinema allows silent film to attain its maximum impact: audiences and music are an essential element of exhibition, and thus of understanding, that cannot be replicated at home. So if you ever get the chance to see Gösta Berlings saga this way, seize it!

Paul Cuff

O Destino (1922; Pt.; Georges Pallu)

This week, I return to Portugal. Having been exceedingly impressed by Maria do mar (1930) at the Stummfilmtage Bonn in August, I tracked down the DVD of the film from the Cinemateca Portuguesa. Finding that the Cinemateca has produced a whole series of DVDs of recent silent restorations, many with the original scores, and all with English subtitles, I took the plunge and placed a large order… Within a few days, I had a mouthwatering pile of films in beautiful presentations. Where to start? Why not with the film that the notes describe as “the most beautiful use of colour tinting and toning in Portuguese silent cinema”? A bold claim. But having watched O Destino, I can well believe it…

Let’s begin with the plot. (Yes, obviously, there will be spoilers.) The bereaved Maria da Silva de Oliveira returns from Brazil to her native home of Sintra to visit her daughter, who is also called Maria. After a road accident knocks her unconscious, she wakes in the palace of the Marquesa de Souzel. Here, the scheming Luís de Noronha has recently become the Conde de Grazil and thus has taken charge of the family estate. He has his eyes on Maria’s daughter, but so does his young nephew André. Meanwhile, the old housekeeper, who went blind with grief after his daughter was “disgraced” and left home twenty years earlier, wanders the estate mourning his past. These two stories are brought together when it becomes clear that Maria is the lost daughter, and that the man who disgraced her was none other than Luís. Maria decides to confront Luís, whom she – with the aid of the supportive de Souzel family – finally exile, enabling the engagement of her daughter Maria with André. FIM.

O Destino is directed by Georges Pallu, a French director whose five years in Portugal makes him one of the major figures of Portuguese cinema of this era. This film marks the only cinematic appearance of Palmira Bastos, a celebrated theatre actor. I had only the sketchiest knowledge of Pallu as a name, and none of Bastos as a performer. I therefore went into O Destino blind and was intrigued by the dramatic set up of the opening half hour or so. Pallu lets most scenes play out in long takes, with sparing use of medium and medium-close shots – and no true close-ups. I wondered if there were some missing titles in the opening, since only a couple of the characters were properly introduced – so it took a while for their relationship to sink in. What intrigued me was the fact that, despite minimal editing during scenes, Pallu kept longer sequences interesting by parallel cutting. In the opening reel, the family tensions of the de Souzels take place parallel to Maria’s arrival by steamer from Brazil. Pallu cuts between the estate and the approach of Maria (by boat, by car, and ultimately by foot) – building a kind of slow-burning tension as to when the two stories will finally meet. They do in marvellous fashion – quite literally colliding on screen when Maria’s taxi smashes into a truck, hurling her into the road. She is then carried into the palace, and she wakes up in the very site of her childhood. It’s a terrific way of introducing Maria into the drama.

That said, I found the first half of the film dramatically slow going. The relationships are carefully established, but I was never gripped by the emotional tenor of the drama. Maria spends too much of the film inert in bed, carefully avoiding contact with the man who impregnated and then abandoned her twenty years ago – and with her father. This means that the only on-screen conflict is between uncle and nephew over Maria’s daughter, which is a little uninteresting.

What saves this half of the film, lifts it indeed into the realm of the extraordinary, is the photography. Seen on my television screen, I thought the exterior scenes in O Destino among the most beautiful I have seen in years. Every new shot brings some astoundingly lovely vista of backlit trees, sparkling water, sun-dappled road, or rich parkland. The lighting is equally impressive in the large interior of the house, where Pallu allows natural light to create superb, rich, shadowy spaces inside the architecture. The lush pictorial beauty is enhanced by the tinting and toning, which creates a new mood for every scene. It’s stunning, just stunning. The cameraman was Maurice Laumann, whom I had not heard of – whoever he was, he did grand work here. I longed to see this film on a big screen. It’s simply wonderful to look at.

(A small footnote to this enthusiasm is that the lighting looks less effective when I went through the film and took captures from the DVD. The settings on my monitor are surely different from that on the television. I have the latter on “cinema” mode, so the contrast is not too exaggerated – but it has clearly made a difference. This clearly raises all sorts of questions about home viewing, but I must be loyal to my initial reaction: I was incredibly impressed by the way the landscapes looked on screen.)

As I said, I confess that I wasn’t much gripped by the drama of O Destino until about halfway through. At this point, Maria is alone in the palace and, instead of joining the household at the fireworks in the park, she decides to walk round the gardens of the estate. It is here, in the still, dim light – tinted a kind of dusky green – that we see her truly express herself, and where the film really taps into the emotional depths of her character and past. As she wonders alone through the gardens, Pallu once again uses parallel cutting to heighten the effect of Maria’s loneliness. We see her slow, quiet walk intercut with the sudden bursts of colour (pink, gold, green) of the fireworks, together with the boisterous crowds. These scenes are magnificently tinted and toned, enhancing the amazing chiaroscuro lighting of the dark park. But they also function to make Maria’s scenes seem quieter, more isolated. The film has much in common with the kind of “diva” films produced in Italy in the 1910s, and these scenes of a female protagonist walking in black veils through gorgeous surroundings had very much the same aesthetic feel. Bastos’s performance grows in stature across the film. I didn’t quite get the fuss over her status to start with, but by now her control and dignity on screen attained its full emotional weight. I found this sequence, and the climactic encounter between father and long-lost daughter, very moving. It also helps that the motif in Nicholas McNair’s piano score is a slow, gorgeous, memorable sequence of romantic chords. The whole sequence has a magical, dreamlike effect, which the music captures and enhances perfectly. What a gorgeous piece of cinema this is. Even the sudden way it ends – with Maria planting a kiss on her father’s head, his gesture of astonishment, and the end of the reel – is perfect. It’s a great, great sequence – and from this point to the end, the film really works.

One of the reasons it works is that Maria assumes greater agency. She finally deals with the legacy of the past, confronts Luís, and speaks to her father. The way she lifts her veil to reveal herself to Luís is a fabulous moment. It’s one of the many scenes that belongs in an opera by Verdi. I could easily picture scenes and sequences being transposed into arias and duets. The fact that it gives this sense of big emotion through such economic, silent pictorial means, is a marker of the film’s success. I love the way the film ends, too, with Luís being cast into exile. The film begins and ends with lone figures, silhouetted against the dazzling waves. That Maria is now at the heart of her family, and Luís is banished from Portugal, is deeply satisfying.

If O Destino is slow to get going, by the end I was totally absorbed by it. I can see why this was “the biggest commercial success” in the silent era in Portugal. It looks preposterously good. I can’t emphasize enough how hypnotically beautiful these exteriors look. The depth of shadow, the lustre of the light. I think I would be overwhelmed by this on a big screen. Nicholas McNair’s piano score was very good, and he brought out some lovely themes for Maria’s scenes. As I say, by the halfway point I was won over. Bravo to all involved in restoring this film. I can’t wait to dig into the rest of the Cinemateca Portuguesa DVDs – including more films by Pallu…

Paul Cuff

The Coronation of King Peter the First (1904; UK/Srb.; Arnold Muir Wilson/Frank S. Mottershaw)

Having written last time about films featuring the Emperor Franz Joseph I of Austria-Hungary, this week we turn to a rival power in the Balkans: Serbia. In 1904, Peter Karađorđević was crowned as King Peter I of Serbia. His reign is seen as a kind of golden age of Serbian development in the region, as well as the locus of tragedy and triumph in the Great War. I had seen plenty of images from Serbia in the war, but the existence of footage taken at the time of Peter’s coronation was new to me. Thanks to a DVD from the Yugoslav film archive, we can see the surviving material filmed by Frank S. Mottershaw in 1904. Mottershaw’s father, confusing also named Frank Mottershaw, had founded his Sheffield Photo Company in 1900 and the spent the next decade making a number of inventive short films that experimented with new forms of editing, especially the “chase” format – as exemplified by the marvellous A Daring Daylight Burglary (1903). In 1904, Frank’s son journeyed to Serbia in the company of Arnold Muir Wilson, a lawyer and journalist – and honorary Consul of the Kingdom of Serbia. They went to film events around the coronation of Peter I. Though the film’s title implies a record of the actual coronation, Mottershaw and Wilson did something rather more interesting. The film’s subtitle in more accurate, and more revealing: “a Ride through Serbia, Novi-Bazaar, Montenegro, and Dalmatia”. This, then, is what we get…

Street views of Belgrade, April 1904. The past walks past us, gazes back at us. Children, as they do everywhere in the past, stop and stare, grinning, waving, poking their noses into the frame. Here is the world as it was before the Great War, populated by the faces of those who would live through it. There are soldiers and officers and priests and march pasts. But there are also ordinary people, civilians going about their business, or waiting, or mooching aimlessly.

The royal procession, captured at an arrestingly odd angle: the camera is tilted, as though craning its neck to see the dignitaries. There they go, in splendid full-dress uniforms: caped, and plumed, and epauletted. There are carriages of women in big hats. Men raise their own hats in salute. Dignitaries in top hats, in bicornes. There is no view of the coronation, not even a glimpse of the cathedral. We wait outside, in the streets, with the crowd. We see the parade returning from the cathedral. It is less grand, and curious dogs, oblivious to the progress of state history, dart out amid the lines of slow-marching men and horses. There are long shadows and pennants and musicians (and lumps of horseshit on the cobbled street). A man who may be the king rides past. Others are more arresting, since they pass close by to the camera, momentarily filling the frame with their presence. Who are they? What became of them? More carriages roll past. The crowd mills about. The pleasures are slow. No-one is in a hurry. It’s a free show. Just stop and stare at it all. The cavalry glance guardedly to their right. The musicians are no longer playing, they examine their instruments as they pass. Now the crowd breaks up and the street fills with the bustle of everyday life.

Another parade, this time celebrating the “development of the Serbian army” across history. So a historical parade about the history of historical parades. The camera watches as it passes. Rank after rank, often just gaggle after gaggle, of soldiers in historical dress, growing more modern. Here comes the first artillery, then marching bands, then modern guns, smarter ranks, better-drilled ranks.

Views of Belgrade port and fortress. The past seeped in a golden haze, the haze of a distant spring, a spring of empty expanses, cold light. Now views of the Serbian army on parade. The army has room to stretch its formations, out across the muddy plains. The camera watches. There they go, the men, the horses – and the little dogs who once more run after the moving ranks. Odd figures wander in front of the camera then vanish. The past stops and restarts and vanishes. The guns roll along, but there is no chronology here, just a series of unending and thens… And then the officers dismount. And then the carriages appear. And then the priests scratch their beards. And then…

And then, Žiča monastery. A beautiful snapshot of an eastern Europe I know from innumerable books and photographs of the war-torn century. Here are the whitewashed walls (a little greyed), the Romanesque arches, the rounded cupolas topped with Orthodox crosses, the priests in their long dark robes and tall hats. (And the curious youths.)

Studenica monastery. The camera turns its head to follow the progress of a carriage. A stunning valley stretches out toward the hazy horizon. The walls, the doors, the shadows. I can see spring warming up. The sun is brighter, casting darker shadows across the forested valley and steep slopes. Horses stand around. The world is sometimes stunningly empty, sometimes observed only by us.

Kraljevo market. Pigs and sheep, an array of carts. The camera pans nearly 360-degrees, and everywhere it turns are people who stop and stare. Is this the first moving picture camera they have seen? Novi-Bazaar, and everyone stares again. The camera turns on its axis, and every frame is filled with curious life, streets I want to walk down, houses where the past resides. The people on the streets here are more casual, just as curious, more liable to smile, to mill around, to ask questions – finally, to bring their wives and children and approach. (The children are smoking.)

The Montenegrin army. I recognize their uniforms from the endless books about the Great War that I collected as a child. (Yes, this corner of the world is somehow more familiar to me in its past form, more known to me in its old clothes, as this generation and the next.)

Views of Šibenik. A large ship, the dock, and smaller sailboats. Women carry huge barrels on their heads. The water glimmers in the sun. the camera turns to marvel at the houses, shoulder-to-shoulder, then suddenly floats aboard a ship. We go to Zadar, we float past ancient walls, we drift… THE END.

This film is on DVD via the Yugoslav film archive, and its material history – passing from the UK to Serbia in 1937, being shown sporadically until its restoration in 1995 – is summarized in the opening titles. The main intertitles were based on Wilson’s notes, so are a modern interpolation into the film. It has no soundtrack, but the images speak for themselves – or rather, they remain stubbornly, eternally silent. As such, they are all the more evocative. I’d love to know more about how and when it was shown in Serbia, and what kind of audiences saw it. The opening credits inform us that the film was exhibited in the UK as part of Wilson’s lecture series on Serbia, then in April 1905 shown at the National Theatre in Belgrade in the presence of King Peter, royal family, and other dignitaries. How was it presented there? With music? With narration? And was it shown outside of this one projection? Where? And when? Did the people on screen, the men and women and children who gaze back at us, ever get to gaze back at themselves?

The Coronation of King Peter the First is a great curiosity. It’s not in great shape, it shows its age, it bears the marks of its material history. It’s awkward and faintly shabby. But it’s also very beautiful and very suggestive. It has a tremendous aura of its past, of Serbia’s past, of Europe’s past.

Paul Cuff

Pordenone from afar (2024, Day 8)

Our last day of streaming from Pordenone. We begin in Germany (or possibly Istanbul) for an Anna May Wong vehicle, then make our way to America for some Harold Lloyd. Two chunky features to digest, so here goes…

Song. Die Liebe eines armen Menschenkindes (1928; Ger./UK; Richard Eichberg). On the outskirts of an “eastern” town. John Houben (Heinrich George) encounters Song (Anna May Wong), one of “Fate’s castaways”, and rescues her from a gang of roughs. He leaves, but she follows him back to his poor home in town. He is a knife-thrower and, after some initial hesitation, she moves in with him and joins his variety troupe. Posters advertise the arrival of Gloria Lee (Mary Kid) to the city. We see her with James Prager (Hans Adalbert Schlettow), a rich patron. Meanwhile, we see in flashback that John once fought and killed a man over Gloria – and John was presumed lost overboard, but survived when washed up on the beach where he met Song. At the Blue Moon café, Gloria sees Song dance and John throw knives. Gloria offers John money, while Prager flirts with Song. The next night, John goes to see Gloria at the ballet and visits her backstage – and confesses his love. Prager arrives and the two men exchange violent looks. John wants more money to impress Gloria so joins a gang of train robbers. The plan goes awry and Song rescues John from the rail tracks. But his sight has been damaged by the accident and during his knife-throwing act he wounds Song. John suspects Song of having betrayed the gang to the police. He attacks her and falls in a stupor: he is now blind. Song goes to Gloria to ask for help. Only Doctor Balji can help, but this will be expensive. Song comes again to beg for money but is offered only Gloria’s old clothes. Song sees money in her dressing room, so steals a couple of notes and leaves. Song returns to John in Gloria’s clothes. Blind, he mistakes her for Gloria, which devastates the lovelorn Song. She lies and says the money was from Gloria, so they go to the doctor. Gloria leaves the city, but Prager stays. He once more crosses paths with Song and says he knows she stole the money. He promises her a big engagement in one of his shows. She accepts and some time later she is star performer at more upmarket venues. Meanwhile, John is cured but must not remove his bandages for three days. He asks after Gloria, so Song says she will go to fetch her. She re-enters dressed in Gloria’s clothes. He rips off his bandages, sees Song, and furiously hurls her from the house. She mournfully heads off, while John discovers that Gloria long ago left the city. Song returns to Prager, who is angry she has been with John. He tries to force himself upon her and says she must decide between John and him. Song performs a sword dance, just as John enters. Started, she falls onto a blade. He takes her home. She opens her eyes in time to see that he is recovered and has brought her back – then dies. THE END.

An odd film. Made in Germany with a mostly German cast, Song was released as “Show Life” in the UK, and this English-language print is the one that survives. The restoration, by the Filmmuseum Düsseldorf, relied on what the credits tells us was a very limited amount of original 35mm material. But the result, while missing a small amount of material, is gorgeous to look at. The photography is superb, the tinting adding a lovey atmosphere to the exteriors of Istanbul, the cramped sets of John’s house, and the elaborate stage sets for the café, ballet, and salon. In particular, the opening shots of the coast around Istanbul (or wherever, doubtless, substituted for it) are gorgeous.

George and Wong are also captivating presences on screen. This was one of Anna May Wong’s most successful silents, and the film lavishes lots of close-ups on her. She is clearly a star, magnetic and fascinating, and even if the psychology of her character in this film is very sketchy, she gives a committed performance. But I was equally taken with Heinrich George, who made such an impression in Manolescu (shown at Pordenone in 2022). The man is a hulking physical presence – always gruff, always strong, always dangerous. When his character tries to be charming, he exudes a kind of over-keenness that threatens to become violence. He’s a fierce, brooding, never-quite-pitiable figure.

All that said, I don’t think this is a great film. As much as I like all the above aspects, the film as a drama is less than the sum of its parts. I simply didn’t care enough about the characters, or believe in the depth of the feelings they supposedly had for each other. Everyone feels rather like a stock character, which the performers all do their best with – but there’s only so far you can go with such a thin story. There are plenty of intensely concentrated shots (especially some close-ups of George and Wong), but these images don’t add up to anything of psychological depth or dramatic conviction. It’s lovely to look at, but I was underwhelmed with the drama. And although I like Wong and George, I never bought her love for him. (I think back to Manolescu, where George’s love-hate relationship with Helm was visceral on screen.) I can imagine that, looking just at the image captures here, Song may well look like a better film than in fact it is. It really does look good, but it needs more than that.

And so, to our final film: Girl Shy (1924; US; Fred Newmeyer/Sam Taylor). What can I say? This is a masterpiece. I’ve not been so moved and so delighted by a comedy feature in years. My god, where has this film been all my life?!

In the obscure small town of Little Bend, trainee tailor Harold Meadows (Harold Lloyd) lives with his uncle, Jerry Meadows (Richard Daniels). Harold is “girl shy”, helplessly stammering whenever he talks to a woman and recoiling at any intimacy. But he is also fascinated by women and has written a novel – “The Secret of Making Love” – in which (as we see via fantasy scenes) he imagines himself dominating them and winning their devoted admiration. On his way to the publisher with his manuscript, he encounters the heiress of the Buckingham Estate, Mary (Jobyna Ralston), and rescues (and then hides) her dog on the train. He describes the novel, and she is fascinated by it and by him. In Los Angeles, they must part – but Mary soon keeps driving through Little Bend in the hope of encountering Harold. However, she is being pursued by the louche Ronald DeVore (Carlton Griffin), a womanizer with a cynical eye for money. When Mary and Harold meet on the river in Little Bend, their romance is interrupted by Ronald, who also clashes with Jerry. The young couple are parted once more but agree to meet in town when Harold goes back to the publisher. In town, Harold is laughed at by the publisher and the entire publishing staff. He leaves, utterly crestfallen, convinced he is unworthy of Mary. When he meets her, he pretends that their romance was all an act for the sake of his new chapter. They part, and soon Mary reluctantly accepts Ronald’s proposal. But the publisher realizes that he can sell Harold book not as a drama but as a comedy: he sends a $3000 cheque. Harold, believing this to be the rejection note promised by the publisher, tears it up without looking – only for Jerry to spot the error. Realizing he is now able to marry Mary, and being told that Ronald is already married to another woman, he hurries to break up the marriage ceremony in town. After a madcap chase from Little Bend to Los Angeles, he arrives in time to rescue Mary and propose. THE END.

I’ll say it again: this film is a masterpiece. For a start, it looks beautiful. The photography is superb, the lighting excellent. The scene by the river, where Mary re-encounters Harold, is absolutely perfect: the evening light, the gentle softening of the background, the framing and composition of the bridge and reflections… oh my word, what a beautiful scene. It’s charming and funny and deeply touching. It’s rare in a comedy feature to be quite this moved, and not to feel grossly manipulated, but Lloyd somehow keeps the emotional tone perfectly balanced. His character is a foolish fantasist, but he is also capable of real kindness. When the publisher tells him to his fact that he’s a complete failure, I confess that my heart broke a little. The extended close-up of Lloyd offers enough time to let the impact of the words sink in for the viewer while we watch it sink in for Harold. His performance isn’t sentimental, it’s realistic – and that’s why its so effective. It lets you believe in him as a real person, and the memory of his fantasies of domination are left far behind. I cared for him here, just as I cared for Mary in the scene where Harold lies to her and breaks her heart. Again, the moment is so well pitched, so restrained, it’s simply heartbreaking.

It’s also a film of incredibly subtle visual rhymes and gestures. See how the uncle has on his knees a child whose trouser rear he’s mending; then how Harold is introduced likewise (rear first) through being bent over backwards; then how the gesture of sewing/intimacy is carried into Harold’s first encounter with the girl with the split tights. In these moments, the easy intimacy of the uncle for the child is awkwardly mirrored in the hoped-for-but-rebuffed intimacy of the girl and Harold. Harold is figuratively childlike but – unlike the actual child – cannot cope with the adult implications of intimacy. His introduction, bent over backwards, is a kind literal rendering of how he’s got things all backwards. (More crudely, you might say he’s introduced as an arse.) Then see how, in the novelistic fantasy, Harold spanks the flapper in the same posture that the uncle repairs the trousers. Here, Harold enacts a comically violent revenge on his inability to feel easy around women and their bodies: far beyond his real self’s shunning of all contact, this is not the consensual middle ground of intimacy but the extreme of physical possession. It’s funny, certainly, but a little unsettling. Here is the loner fantasizing about smacking a woman for pleasure.

But the film’s visual rhymes also signal that Harold knows in principle, and will learn in practice, how not to treat women. In the first novelistic fantasy, we see Harold put his hat and cane over the outstretched arm of the vamp; in the real world, we see Ronald put his hat and cane over the arm of the Buckingham’s maid. The latter situation reminds us of the callowness of Harold’s alter ego, but in reality, the situation is more sinister. For Ronald’s gesture with the hat conceals (to the lady of the house) the fact that he’s groping the maid’s hand. So too, the placement of the cane over her arm makes it an extension of his own touch. The maid clearly feels uncomfortable and so, surely, do we. It’s a marvellous indication of how the fantastical scenario of Harold and the vamp becomes troubling when we see it enacted in real life. The maid, unlike the vamp, is a woman without power or recourse to self-defence. Then see how the gesture with the cane appears again as Harold, seeing Mary’s beloved dog left behind off the train, uses his cane to hook the animal from the ground onto the moving train. Here the cane is used for comic effect, but it’s also a gesture of sympathy, of kindness: he’s performing a good deed, a selfless one. (Perhaps there is an unconscious desire to use this act to make contact with the girl – but Harold is too shy to follow through, and spends the next scene desperately trying to avoid Mary.)

The rhymes are also there with Mary and Harold. They are forced to sit next together when the train takes a bend and Harold falls into place next to her, just as (later) on the river Mary falls into Harold’s boat. Their two treasured mementos of the train journey, the box of biscuits (hers) and the box of dog biscuits (his) are objects of veneration, things to hold in the absence of the real person. On the river, seeing the other person with their token of love indicates to the pair that their feelings are reciprocated, just as – in the first variation on this rhyme – the devaluation of the token is a rupture of their relationship. This occurs when Harold, having been rejected by the publisher, decides it’s best that someone destined to be a failure should not disappoint Mary. He breaks up with her and claims that all his words were a mere scenario for his book. He immediately hooks up with a passing girl, who had shown interest in him a few minutes earlier. They link arms and he then buys her a box of biscuits – the same brand as he had given to Mary on the train. The replication of this gesture is deliberately hurtful, a kind of parodic rhyme that devalues (while also re-emphasizing) the initial parallel of the lovers’ tokens. Later, when Harold receives the publisher’s cheque but (believing it to be the promised rejection note) tears it up unopened, the very next scene creates a poignant rhyme. Here, Mary contemplates the cover of the biscuit box that she has torn up and now reassembles. The rhyme between torn cheque and torn box suggests the inopportune rupture of something that would bring success and happiness – and (in Mary’s scene) the desire to repair the damage. Harold will soon piece together the cheque, matching the image of Mary’s reassembled package. With both halves of this parallel repairing achieved, Harold sets off on his race to the rescue. It’s such a brilliantly organized, beautifully staged use of props and gestures. God, what a good film this is.

Of course, I’ve hardly said just how funny a film this is. The long sequence on the train, when Harold first avoids Mary then has to sit next to her, is exquisite. I particularly loved the series of gags involving his (real) stammer and (feigned) cough. Lloyd manages to make these essentially acoustic jokes work perfectly for the silent screen. His stammer involved him contorting his mouth: first his mouth hardly opens, he purses his lips, the breath fills his cheeks; then his mouth his fully open, stuck in a different register, and still no sound emerges. It’s the physical movement of speech, its physical articulation, that works so well: here is speech visually arrested in its various stages. The coughing gag – where Harold has to mask the sound of the dog’s barking – works so well because Lloyd must express the cough purely visually: he has to attract the guard’s visual attention, not just aural attention, so his whole body performs the cough. The sheer extension of this sequence is part of the delight: it runs and runs, forcing Harold to keep finding new ways of doing the same thing. (In this, it foreshadows the far greater physical effort of his race to the rescue, where he must once again keep finding new ways to overcome essentially the same problem.)

The final sequence – all thirty minutes of – is astonishing. I can’t possibly go through all the gags, but the one that made me laugh the most was the “Road closed: diversion” gag. Lloyd’s car goes over a bumpy road that makes the vehicle buck and bounce. The particular framing of the medium-close shot of Harold at the wheel, bouncing helplessly along, is wonderful – but it’s the moment when the car finally regains the main road that rendered me helpless with delight. Here, the car has been shaken so badly that the entire vehicle is now a shaking wreck. Like the sensation of seasickness after returning to dry land, it’s like the car and its driver are now unable to cope with the smooth tarmac. Within the wider context of the chase – in simple terms, one damn thing after another – it’s such a bizarre image, and such an unexpected twist, that I was rendered almost insensible with laughter.

The major stunts – Harold unwinding the fire hose, hanging off the cable car cable, the near-crash of the horses – are superb. The moment when one of the horses slips and slides along the road is genuinely breathtaking, and the tracking shot of Harold riding hell-for-leather are as remarkable in their own way as some of the chariot race footage from Ben-Hur (1925) – Lloyd’s film even foreshadows many of the same dazzling camera positions. And to conclude this finale with Harold’s inability to actually say why the marriage is invalid is such a brilliant pay-off to the preceding derring-do, I was won over again by his character, and by the film’s sense of comic timing. What an astonishing sequence, and what a brilliant film.

The music for the film was the first and only orchestral soundtrack offered for the streamed Pordenone programmes. The Zerorchestra provides a jazzy beat throughout. It keeps things moving along, although its default mode of extreme busyness sometimes lost interest in the very precise, varied rhythms of the scenes. What I admired most was the way the score knew when to keep quiet and reduce its forces for the piano alone, or even silence. The moment when Harold is rejected by the publisher was rendered all the more moving by the pause in the music. The feeling of dejection sinks in so perfectly here, the choice to pare the music back to virtually nothing works so well. The (I think , entirely necessary) use of sound effects – for the whistle, the typewriter, the dog – are subtly done, becoming a part of the music rather than intrusions into the silent world. A strong score, well executed. (Since seeing the film yesterday [actually, by the time you read this, the day before yesterday], I have dug out the version released on DVD some twenty years ago, which features an orchestral score by Robert Israel. This is a more traditional score than the Zerorchestra’s, as the latter mode of jazz certainly postdates the era of the film. I also confess that my own taste leans more toward the kind of orchestral tone painting that Israel compiles. He also has the benefit of a full symphony orchestra, so the sound is lovely and rich. I hope the film gets a Blu-ray release, perhaps with both scores as optional soundtracks. This is a film I want to watch again and again.

So that was Pordenone, as streamed in 2024. As ever, I emerge from this week-and-a-bit exhausted, without even having left my house. (Having in fact been practically housebound because of fitting in a festival around work.) Having followed a little of the writing and photographic record of the on-site festival, I am also very much aware that those who went to Pordenone saw an entirely different festival. It’s quite possible that someone there could have missed many, most, or all of the films that I saw streamed. My memory of the content of Pordenone 2024 (streamed) will be entirely distinct to the memory of Pordenone 2024 (live) for those who attended in person. I have quite literally experienced a different festival to those at Pordenone. I also regret that I have not had time (or have not made time) to watch Jay Weissberg’s video introductions, or the book launch discussions, all of which are a significant chunk of the material made available online. I suppose these, in particular, offer a more tangible sense of the festival on location. My relationship with streamed content remains very much limited by time. I fix onto the films and abandon the rest, “the rest” being precisely that content which offers contact with the people and places of Pordenone in situ. But without taking the time off to entirely devote myself to the festival, I cannot see this changing. And why take a week off when all I’m doing is standing before a screen? Oh, the ironies…

Nevertheless, I remain exceedingly glad to have seen what I have seen. Thirty euros for ten generous programmes, shorts and features, is good value, especially given the rarity of most of the material. It’s a further irony that my favourite film of the whole festival – Girl Shy – was the most readily available of all of the ones I saw. But I welcome the chance to see anything and everything, even the passing curiosities and stolid duds, simply because it’s good to explore any culture with which you are not familiar. One day I will go to Pordenone in person, whereupon I’ll probably regret not being able to take image captures and have the time to write. The irony abounds.

Paul Cuff

Pordenone from afar (2024, Day 7)

Day 7 takes us to North America: first, to the Canadian border for a display of childish derring-do, then to the louche confines of a yacht to test the strength of a marriage…

We begin with Peg o’ the Mounted (1924; US; Alfred J. Goulding). Any film where two of the lead cast are credited as “Baby Peggy” and “Tiny Tim the Pony” is sure to raise alarm bells… So, alone in a tiny cabin, Peg, a tiny child, encounters a wounded member of the Canadian Mounted Police. She tries to nurse him back to health, but when this fails, she tracks down, fights, and arrests the gang of smugglers. Nothing more about the plot need be said. The child was charming, I suppose, but it takes a lot for me to be won over by a child performer on screen. I suppose I should be thankful we never had to hear her voice, which I imagine to be unbearably irritating. There is something about the wholesomeness of a particular kind of screen child that makes me instantly take against them. So it’s something of a miracle that I could stomach the sight of Peg in this film for so long. I even found her performance impressive, especially her “speech” at the end. There are some charming enough touches, but it’s such a vapid little film I don’t know what else I can say about it as a drama. What I can say it that the photography is simply superb – the Rockies(?) look absolutely stunning, and the exterior scenes are beautiful, really amazingly beautiful. (Just incredibly pictorial beauty for such a throwaway film!) What are less beautiful are those few titles that have been digital recreated: they stick out a mile from the originals, their style and font looking far too new, too crisp, too digital.

I’ve mentioned it before, but why is it so difficult for restorers to match the style of inverted commas or apostrophes to those given in the original titles? (This seems, overwhelmingly, to be a North American issue.) Clear from the original titles in Peg o’ the Mounted is that all inverted commas (for speech or for apostrophe) should be typographic and not neutral. (Sadly, the format of this blog doesn’t permit me to demonstrate “neutral” inverted commas. In this instance, it’s irritating – but otherwise I’m glad, as they look awful.) Why can’t such a simple thing be got right? Oh well. The photographic images looked beautiful, so I suppose that’s what matters.

Now we’ve got Peggy out the way, on to our more adult feature presentation: Folly of Vanity (1925; US; Maurice Elvey/Henry Otto). Newlyweds Alice (Billie Dove) and Robert Blaine (Jack Mulhall) host Stanley Ridgeway (John Sainpolis), Robert’s client, the famous pearl collector. Alice loves pearls but cannot afford them, so she has bought a fake necklace. Robert begs her not to wear the fake in front of Ridgeway, but she can’t resist doing so. Ridgeway compliments the necklace, but his sidelong looks reveal his sniffy attitude. Ridgeway invites them to a small party, but Robert makes up an excuse not to go. Alice calls him a tyrant. They argue, and she ends up getting it her way. Ridgeway’s party turns out to be a raucous affair, with Bella Howard (a rich widow) at the heart of it. A tableau vivant, frolics, flirtation… Robert shows Alice his collection of pearls, which she tries on. He asks her to wear them for a few days so that they regain their faded lustre. She does so, not telling Robert of the exchange. On Mrs Howard’s yacht the next day, the same cast reassemble. Alice and Robert are given separate rooms, the door numbers of which are damaged. (Hmm…) The yacht descends into drunken flirtation between Bella/Robert and Ridgeway/Alice. Bella and Ridgeway observe the couple bickering over the cut of her dress. Alice retreats to her room, leaving Robert at the mercy of Bella. Ridgeway gets drunk alone and bursts into Alice’s room. She flees to the deck, where she falls overboard. Alice descends to the Kingdom of Neptune (no, I’m not drunk: this is what happens. I know, right?). A series of rather tedious displays of semi-nude bathing (discreetly, from a distance) and diving (from clifftops) in Alice’s honour. But when Alice sees herself in the mirror, both she and one of Neptune’s court see this “symbol of vanity” and Neptune banishes her forever. Alice wakes up in her own bed, sees the necklace around her neck – and returns them to Ridgeway. Owing to the damaged room number, she returns by mistake to her husband’s room and not her own. The newlyweds are reconciled, and Bella and Ridgeway agree to marry. THE END.

What a tedious film. I can’t honestly say I enjoyed any of it in a meaningful way. It has a sense of humour, but it’s rather slight. And it clearly has a desire to titillate, but it’s rather lame. I honestly don’t know if it’s meant to be dramatic, but it wasn’t – nor was it funny enough to be a comedy or charming enough to be a farce. I came close to enjoying the opening scenes between Alice and Robert, but the slightly saucy byplay never went anywhere, either in this sequence or in the rest of the film. She is coy and modest with her husband, but her refusal to show him her body is really for the censor’s sake not his. In a vague sort of way, I could believe in their marriage – but the film pussyfooted around what exactly was at stake. Is it sex? The couple finally end up in bed together (or at least, on it) in the last scene, but sex never quite seems the point – and is even the object of scorn and fear aboard the yacht. Robert remains prudish throughout, and Alice isn’t interested in bodies so much as what they can display, i.e. their jewellery – and this interest is morally dismissed by the film as “vanity”. What is this film actually about?

I admit that the descent to Neptune was unexpected, but the mythical kingdom’s appearance quickly outstayed its welcome. Its coy long shots of nude bathers and soft-focus gymnastics, its pantomime beards and watery wizards… I remember watching the short film La Légende du fantôme (1908), produced by Segundo de Chomón. In that film, we also visit the seabed for a mythical array of gods and goblins. De Chomón’s film has no pretensions whatsoever, no desire to moralize or patronize its audience; it uses two-dimensional sets and fake beards and greasepaint and any number of other nineteenth-century theatrical staples. Yet it has more integrity, majesty, and sheer bloody visual and dramatic impact than anything in Folly of Vanity. In fact, as I wrote at the time, there is something quite terrifyingly strange and surreal about de Chomóns world that will likely remain lodged in my brain for as long as I retain my senses. I promise you that I will soon forget Folly of Vanity and its tepid world of underwater theatrics. Nothing in this sequence is either dramatic enough or funny enough to hold sway.

As for the cast, I can’t honestly express great enthusiasm either. Aside from her fleeting (and uncredited) appearance in The Mysterious Lady (1928), I don’t think I’ve ever knowingly seen Betty Blythe in anything other than stills from the lost J. Gordon Edwards production The Queen of Sheba (1921). I must say that she didn’t leap off the screen as any kind of star in Folly of Vanity. I much preferred Billie Dove, who has the kind of open face and round eyes that immediately draw your attention. It’s an utterly depthless character, but Dove gives her some kind of life. Jack Mulhall has a faint spark with Dove, both nothing that made me care for him, for her, or for them as a couple. John Sainpolis normally has gravitas on the screen, but his character here was neither charming nor threatening. There was so little bite anywhere in this film or its characters.

Aesthetically, the film is decent enough. This copy, clearly based on an abridged export print (with Czech titles), is nicely tinted and toned and it’s interesting to watch the weird shifts in quality from colour to colour, sometimes from scene to scene. Some of the gleaming soft-focus visions of the shores of Neptune are gorgeous bits of photography. But really, the drama was by this point so unutterably naff that it sucked much of the pleasure from the images.

Well, that was Day 7. A strange day. A day that I’ll probably not remember in a few years’ time. A day that began with a silly comedy and ended with an even sillier drama. These are both films that I would never have seen, nor made an effort to see, if it weren’t for Pordenone. So I am, genuinely, thankful for the chance to watch them. But beyond that, I look forward to the final day of features tomorrow – and the prospect of something more substantial for my eyes and the brain…

Paul Cuff

Pordenone from afar (2024, Day 5)

Where next on our Pordenone journey? Day 5 begins on the streets of Paris, before segueing to eighteenth-century Vienna, and finally to Spanish California. We get helter-skelter comedy, brooding artistry, and romantic intrigue. It’s certainly a varied programme…

The first short was La Course aux potirons (1908; Fr.; Romeo Bosetti/Louis Feuillade). This kind of “chase” film was a popular format in the first decade of the twentieth century, and many directors of later prominence will have cut their teeth developing multi-shot narrative form through something similar. La Course aux potirons is a delightful example, with runaway pumpkins being pursued through the streets of Paris. But it steadily becomes more anarchic, more surreal: the pumpkins leap over fences, hurl themselves uphill, leap through buildings, up stairs, up chimneys, plunge into sewers. They are pursued – over every bit of terrain – by an accumulating cast of comic bunglers, as well as the donkey that was pulling the initial pumpkin cart. (The animal is even, marvellously, fed up through the chimney at one point.) Via reverse motion, the pumpkins eventually find their way back to their cart and leap into its back. A real charmer of a film.

Next up is La Mort de Mozart (1909; Fr.; Étienne Arnaud), another Gaumont production – this time deadly serious. We see Mozart at work, the arrival of the “mysterious messenger” (not disguised). It all plays out in a single shot, which suddenly splits in two for an inserted vision Mozart has of his own funeral. Now he collapses and is barred from composing. But his friend plays music from his operas to sooth him, and Mozart sees more visions of scenes from his operas. Finally, Mozart asks for quill and paper to compose the requiem. Musicians enter to help him compose, and continue to sing as Mozart enters his death throes and dies. FIN.

Thus we come to our main feature: For the Soul of Rafael (1920; US; Harry Garson). A tale of Spanish California, of adventure, of “romance whispered through convent windows”, and “a daughter of Spanish dons” who follows the -metaphor-, ahem, the whisper “until it led her over shadowed trails where Tragedy spread a net for her feet.” Marta Raquel Estevan (Clara Kimball Young) has grown up in a nunnery, guarded by Dona Luisa Arteaga (Eugenie Besserer), who wishes her to marry her son Don Rafael (Bertram Grassby). Marta is served “with grim devotion” by Polonia (Paula Merritt), who considers that Marta is adopted by the hill Tribe to which she belongs. They go to the New Year fire ceremony, where they encounter the American adventurer Keith Bryton (J. Frank Glendon) who has been wounded and captured by the tribe. Marta saves Keith’s life by giving him her ring, and he is brought to Polonia’s hut to recover. Marta and Keith fall for each other, the news of which infuriates Dona Luisa. Dona Luisa forces Polonia to effectuate the Americans’ sudden departure – and lie to Marta that he died. Later, Don Rafael – a louche reprobate – is partying with the locals (including Keith) to celebrate the last of his bachelor days. El Capitan (Juan de la Cruz), “the black sheep of the Arteagas”, suddenly arrives, disguised as a padre. Then Dona Luisa arrives with Marta and greets Rafael’s cousin Ana Mendez (Ruth King). Dona Luisa invokes an oath to sweat “by the Holy Cross” to “stand guard over the soul of Rafael”, which Marta joins in – “so long as they both shall live.” (Hmm…) Keith sees Marta making the oath and leaves distraught, just as Dona Luisa dies. Later, at the wedding the “Padre” rescues Teresa and her infant, abandoned by… Rafael! Marta demands Rafael take responsibility for the woman and child, telling Rafael that Teresa is his real wife. Later, Keith arrives with his brother’s widow, Angela Bryton (Helene Sullivan), “an Englishwoman whose ambition has been aroused by the wealth and extravagance about her”. Marta, as a lengthy title explains in pompous prose, is unhappy. She has seen Keith, realized he’s not dead, and knows that Polonia lied to her. Rafael tries it on with Marta, who draws a knife and swears to strike him dead if he does so again. She seeks “refuge from the bestial soul of Rafael” in the home of Ana Mendez. The “padre” turns up with Keith, as does Rafael – on the trail of El Capitan. Keith and Marta are briefly reunited, confess their mutual love, but “for the soul of Rafael”, she must… (etc etc etc). Meanwhile, Rafael pursues Helene, who seethes with jealousy against Marta. At the nighttime fiesta, “fate” intervenes. Keith kisses Marta in the chapel (that’s not a euphemism), just as Helena is stealing Marta’s family jewels (nor is that). Rafael arrives, but so does the “padre”, who finally reveals himself as El Capitan and kills Rafael. Marta and Keith are free to marry and step “at last into the sunlight of perfect joy.” THE END.

Well, it’s about time I watched a dud, and this is it. I didn’t enjoy much about For the Soul of Rafael at all. The silliness of its titles and po-faced tone were never quite silly or po-faced enough to make me laugh at the film, but the banality of its narrative and the stiltedness of its performers never enabled me to get along with the film. It was not especially interesting to look at, with only fleeting glimpses of the much-vaunted (by the titles) beauty and summery fragrance of old California, nor anything beyond some faintly expressionist touches to the convent (with its weirdly warped convent bars) to make the interiors stand out. Just as the titles promised high-flown themes that the film could hardly convey, so the performers struggled to give any depth to the emotions their character supposedly felt. They could offer only generic gesturing and expressions, all perfectly adequate but nothing more – just as the film’s visual language articulated nothing of any depth or complexity.

In terms of its setting, especially its use of Native American characters, I think back to the adaptations of Ramona that I wrote about last year. Like the 1928 Ramona, For the Soul of Rafael casts real Native Americans as extras and a white actress with darkened skin in the main cast. But it also doesn’t have much interest in the idea of Marta as an “adopted” member of a tribe, nor does it use the tribe members outside the initial sequence of their attack on Keith. Indeed, their only function is to act violently in order for the white characters to intervene. Racial issues aside, the film does itself no dramatic credit by turning down opportunities to create a more complex social world on screen. (It doesn’t make much use of Teresa and Rafael’s bastard child, either – nor does El Capitan have any function beyond turning up to move the plot along.) This would be less important, and less frustrating, if For the Soul of Rafael did not make so much of the historical California it claims to show us. The titles’ emphasis on the beauties of California are almost invisible on screen, just as the aura of fate and religious intensity they invoke are entirely absent from the dramatic reality. I’m fine with stock characters if they move and breathe and live intensely on screen, just as I’m happy with cliched plots if they are executed with panache. For the Soul of Rafael had neither dramatic life nor directorial imagination.

That was Day 5, that was. The most entertaining film of the day was the first. I very much enjoyed La Course aux potirons: it had more life, invention, humour, wit, and filmmaking panache than either of the other two offerings. I’m intrigued by the programming of these three films together. The pace and energy of the programme decreased at the same that its earnestness increased. La Mort de Mozart was a kind of transition from the excitement of early narrative filmmaking to a more concentrated drama of character and moral seriousness. I enjoyed seeing this early drama of musical biography, and of musical composition, though its ambitions – to express interiority, creativity, memory, and history – outstrip its abilities. I was not moved by the film, despite the clear entreaties of its performers to produce serious emotion. Yet at only twelve minutes, it is far more compact than For the Soul of Rafael – and, in its own way, less pretentious. For the Soul of Rafael endlessly incites oaths to God, undying bonds of love, and depths of passion and betrayal, without ever convincing me that these notions are real, lived realities for its characters – or that the characters are themselves real people that I might or could or should care about. They all feel like stock characters, moving around in a characterless environment.

But already I feel I have spent too much time talking about this film. Let’s move on.

Paul Cuff

Pordenone from afar (2024, Day 4)

Day 4 and we return to Uzbekistan for “The Leper”. Knowing only the title of this film, I didn’t quite know what to expect. I was prepared from something troubling, and boy did this film deliver…

Moxov Qiz (1928; USSR/Uzbek SSR; Oleg Frelikh). In an old quiet town in Uzbekistan, Colonel Karonin helps oversee the locals with the aid of Ahmed-Bai, his translator. Ahmed-Bai’s only daughter is Tyllia-Oi, who one night dances to entertain Karonin’s guests. She catches the eye of Igor Karonin (the colonel’s son) and of Said-Vali, the son of Said-Murad, the richest trader in town. Said-Vali tells his father that he wants to marry Tyllia-Oi but is told that she is only “copper” compared to the gold and silver of other women. Nevertheless, Said-Vali can buy his way through the problem and the marriage takes place. Tyllia-Oi tries to impress her husband by wearing Russian-style clothing (like him), but he angrily demands if she is a whore or a Muslim – then attacks and (we presume, via an ellipsis) rapes her. Meanwhile, Ahmed-Bai takes a second wife into his home to help manage in his daughter’s absence. His older wife, sad and dejected by her husband’s new bride, visits Tyllia-Oi. Seeing the bruises on her daughter’s arms, she realizes that Tyllia-Oi is being beaten by her husband. In desperation Tyllia-Oi sends a note to the colonel’s wife, but it is intercepted by Igor, who is gleefully delighted by the prospect of her vulnerability to his advances. Igor sneaks into Tylllia-Oi’s room and (again, via an ellipsis) rapes her. Months pass, and Igor must leave for Moscow for a new posting. When Said-Vali tells this news to his wife, he sees her troubled reaction and – accusing her of infidelity – attacks her with flaming brands. The marriage ends up in a religious court, and Tyllia-Oi is forced to leave her husband and return to her father’s home. Ahmed-Bai calls his daughter a slut and blames her for the social shame that ends his job and forces them to move. In their new home, Tyllia-Oi’s mother dies. Ahmed-Bai is now an estate manager, but his authority is mocked by the workers. Tyllai-Oi’s stepmother encourages her husband to beat Tyllia-Oi, but she flees home in search of Igor – whom she finds (eventually) with another woman. Homeless, Tyllai-Oi is pursued by other men and finds herself wandering alone. She eventually reaches an isolated lepers’ “village”: a series of tiny caves in the desert. The lepers surround her, and she flees in terror, only to encounter a party of men who – thinking she is a leper – beat her to death and leave her body in the road. END.

An amazing film. Both brutal and compassionate, it is everything that Santa (Day 2) was not. Having now read the brief essay by Nigora Karimova,  I find that Moxov Qiz is based on a Frech novel by Ferdinand Duchêne, set in Algeria. It was adapted by Lolakhan Saifullina, and her screenplay transposes events to the Uzbekistan of pre-Revolution Russia. The wider context certainly shapes the political drama. This is a small town, with its petty affairs and small briberies, its minor officials who are little kings of their realm. The tension between local (religious) power and central (national) power is everywhere in the film, with Tyllai-Oi at the centre. I wonder how the rivalry between Russian (i.e. outsider) power and the local leaders played to contemporary (especially Uzbek) audiences in 1928? I can easily imagine many of these tensions remaining in place in the Soviet era. Even if the broader political scene was different, people would surely have maintained some of the personal beliefs and behaviours evident here. When Igor asks Said-Vali about his relations with his wife, for example, he replies that their “custom” does not allow any such questions to be asked. How many husbands might say the same in 1928? (Or in 2024…) I admire the film’s willingness, keenness even, to show the male control at every level of society, from the political (the Colonel, the mullahs) to the personal (the father, the husband). The women bear the brunt of much of the manual labour, and we often see Tyllai-Oi’s father lounging around waiting for service from his wife (or wives) or daughter. The political and the personal meet in the Sharia court, where the wider expectations of religious law determine Tyllai-Oi’s fate. The court (rightfully, it must surely seem) grants a divorce to the couple, but in forcing her back to her father this decision ultimately causes even greater harm. (The judgement also gives her condemnation as a woman and a wife the full force of religious taboo.) And beyond the courts, in the wider social landscape, men are only too eager to judge and prey upon Tyllai-Oi once she has left the confines of marriage or family. It’s a grim picture of social stricture.

At the heart of the film is Rachel Messerer as Tyllai-Oi. This is, as far as I am aware, the first time I have seen this actress and she’s superb. She is incredibly striking on screen, and the film knows just how to frame her to make the most of her eyes, her glances over the shoulder, her looking and being looked at. Obviously, the film is silent – but there is hardly any dialogue (i.e. speech-based intertitles) to convey Tyllai-Oi’s thoughts or feelings. Everything therefore relies on her face, her gestures, the rhythm of her body on screen. Her one notable line of speech is that desperate note for help, written on a piece of material. It’s like a title in itself and, ironically enough, it is a message that never reaches its intended destination. She herself becomes a kind of readable text when her mother sees the bruises on her arm. In a film scripted by a woman, it’s interesting that the only people who seem to read each other sympathetically are a mother and her daughter. The men are not willing or able or interested enough to want to understand the women. Superficially, Said-Vali interprets his wife’s troubled look about Igor’s departure correctly: she does have a relationship with Igor. But this “relationship” is itself based on exploitation and abuse. Tyllai-Oi is a victim, not a perpetrator, of a betrayal of trust.

This is all the more moving for the few moments when Tyllai-Oi has a sense of privacy, or solidarity with another. We first see Tyllai-Oi upside-down, laughing, descending a tree, and this rare – even unique – scene of her joy is one shared with her mother, away from Ahmed-Bai. Later, she briefly enjoys the company of children and animals – but it is a fleeting moment of private pleasure, set in the midst of evens that will expel her from family, home, and society. She has no other form of personal expression in the film. Her dance, near the beginning, may make her smile – but it is an activity that is demanded of her by her parents, and it attracts the lusty attention of men, two of whom (Igor and Said-Vali) will exploit and abuse her. The camera seems to shake a little in time with the movements of her dance, as though we are sharing her bodily rhythm – but this, too, is contained within the montage by wider shots of Tyllai-Oi surrounded by the male audience. Later in the film, all her actions are commanded by or interpreted negatively by men. When she tries to dress to please her husband, he beats (and possibly rapes) her. When she is on her hands and knees, dusting his boots before he leaves the house, he doesn’t even look at her. When she writes a letter, Igor uses it to exploit her situation and rape her. All this places our sympathies firmly with Tyllai-Oi, with her mother perhaps being a secondary point of compassion. Everything in the film is geared to expressing the restrictions and limitations being placed on women in general, and Tyllai-Oi in particular.

More broadly, it must be said how good the film looks. Compared to the other Uzbek film this week, Ajal Minorasi (Day 2), Moxov Qiz is much more visually sophisticated and articulate. It also has more to say, and more depth to give to its main female character. Shot on location, it makes brilliant use of the town and the landscape around it. It also makes these spaces mean something. The film opens with a lovely montage of flowers, marshes, trees, streets, sunlight, musicians, people basking in the sun – but this idyll is short-lived, a moment of peace before the intrigues and tensions are laid out. The shady streets become threatening when Tyllai-Oi is fleeing her husband or her family, just as the open spaces of the landscape we see during the falcon hunt become a forbidding wilderness by the film’s end. The last sequence, in the rocky desert far beyond town, is a bleak and forbidding landscape. There is nothing for Tyllai-Oi here, and nowhere else for the drama to go. A sparse, brutal end to this brilliant, disturbing film. A real discovery for me.

Paul Cuff