Tag: Stummfilmtage Bonn

Bonn from afar (2025, days 9 and 10)

The final two days of streaming from Bonn provide us with two variety-themed melodramas. The first is more familiar, at least in terms of its cast; the second was a complete surprise, and yet another welcome discovery…

Day 9: Song. Die Liebe eines armen Menschenkindes (1928; Ger./UK; Richard Eichberg). As with Saxophon-Susi on Day 2 of Bonn this year, I found myself in the curious position of having already seen Song – likewise at the (online) Pordenone festival of 2024. As I did last week, I will refer readers interested in Eichberg’s film to my post from that earlier occasion.

In lieu of commentary on the film, I observe in passing that there is a musical connection between Saxophon-Susi and Song: both were originally scored by Paul Dessau in 1928. Though Dessau’s later work (including sound films, orchestral and chamber works, and several operas) is well represented in terms of DVDs and CDs, these two feature film scores do not seem to be extant. As with so much absent silent film music, one wonders if this is a case of genuine loss or simply a case of no-one having been willing or able to look. (The most typical case would be that both films are released on DVD/Blu-ray with a modern substitute, only for Dessau’s scores to be rediscovered and lovingly reconstructed. More typically still, these scores would then be performed just once at a festival I cannot attend and hear about only retrospectively, and forever after remain unavailable due to lack of interest and/or finance for appropriate recordings to be issued with a new home edition. I would then be left with years of regret and frustration, with occasional outbreaks of false hope when a rumoured broadcast recording failed to appear – or one that remained unavailable outside a restricted copyright region of central Europe. Such is often the fate of original orchestral scores, and of those who long most fervently to hear them.)

For the presentation of Song from Bonn this week, Stephen Horne performed on piano (and various other instrumental interpolations) – just as he did for this film at Pordenone. Both iterations were excellent. However, given that the restoration and musical score were from the same sources, I merely dipped in to this presentation from Bonn, finding myself (as before) marvelling at how nice the film looked – but remaining just as ungrabbed by the characters or drama. Not without some guilt, nor without regret at once more not seeing this with an audience, I skipped the rest for the sake of time.

Day 10: Sensation im Wintergarten (1929; Ger.; Gennaro Righelli). The circus acrobat “Frattani” (Paul Richter) returns to Germany after many years abroad. His real identity is Count Paul Mensdorf, and as a child he ran away from home to avoid his new father, the Baron von Mallock (Gaston Jacquet). Presumed dead by his mother, the Countess Mensdorf (Erna Morena), he joined the circus and rose to become “Frattani, King of the Air”. Arriving in Berlin as an adult, Paul re-encounters his childhood sweetheart Madeleine, who earlier left the circus – and now hopes to rejoin. Meanwhile, Mallock has been cheating on his wife and gambling away his fraudulently-earned money. At the Wintergarten, Mallock’s roving eye is caught by Madeleine, whose debut is a triumph. But Madeleine worries about Paul’s dangerous stunts, just as Paul comes to worry that he is endangering their budding romance. (A worry enhanced by the sight of the former “King of the Air”, who is now one-legged and unemployed.) Paul recognizes Mallock and strikes him down when he tries to grope Madeleine. Revealing his true identity, Paul’s reappearance is a joy to his mother but to Mallock a threat to his estate. Threatened by his creditors, Mallock grows desperate and tries to sabotage the trapeze ropes – only to plunge to his death. ENDE.

A very enjoyable film, if a tad generic. Its story might be from any variety- or circus-themed film of the silent era, from the earliest features onwards. Danish producers, for example, made a speciality of them in the early 1910s (Den flyvende circus, 1912; Dødsspring til hest fra cirkuskuplen, 1912), remade some of them in the 1920s (Klovnen, 1917 and 1926), and even directed them in Hollywood (The Devil’s Circus, 1926). Romantic rivalry playing out against a backdrop of circus stunts was clearly an appealing setting. And despite the satisfaction of the narrative in Sensation im Wintergarten, the ending is a bit of a dud. The machinations of Wallock amount to very little and his threat goes instantly awry, killing him before anything has happened.

But narrative ingenuity or dramatic depth is probably not the point here. Sensation im Wintergarten is distinguished by its superb staging and camerawork. Even if this could be a story from 1910, its cinematic realization truly belongs to 1929. The film is impeccably lit, impeccably staged, impeccably edited. From the outset, it is filled with fine sequences. The opening flashback to Paul’s childhood, for example, stages his first sight of the circus performers through the windows the school gymnasium. There is a very nice dissolve at the end of the scene to the same space, now deserted and lit only by the streetlamp. It’s evocative and moody, just as when Paul first enters the circus. Here, we see the clown Barry (Wladimir Sokoloff) is introduced in the centre of the rink, pulling an animal from the wings via a lead. The beast that emerges is in fact a tiny dog, who slides reluctantly across the sand. The camera slides before the dog, making the sight both novel and comic. It is a shot of pure delight, allowing us to share the kind of delight that the child Paul feels as he looks on from the wings.

I single out this moment to emphasize that the mobile camerawork is interesting not just in the obvious examples of trapeze-mounted shots for drama, but the less expected ones. Then there are the beautiful travelling shots through 1929 Berlin, the camera gliding marvellously along the streets towards the theatre. But the interior sequences filmed inside the real Wintergarten are simply dazzling. It’s a glorious space, gloriously filmed – you can really feel the size of it, the buzz of the crowd, the drama of the performers on the real stage.

I love the tracking shot in which the side doors of the theatre open and we glide slowly toward the huge space within. It’s like a more realistic version of the shot in Ben-Hur (1925) in which the camera similarly tracks forward into the huge space of the Roman arena. Indeed, in some ways the shot in Sensation im Wintergarten is more enticing. Unlike half real, half matte-painted space of the Circus of Antioch, the Berlin theatre is tangibly real – and the sense of being inside this real space, with its real stage, real seating, real walls, real ceiling, is itself exciting. The unchained camera – swinging from the trapeze, leaping through the air – is a continuation of this sense of a real space being physically explored on screen.

Director Gennaro Righelli takes advantage of this amazing pre-built set by placing his camera everywhere he can: in the audience, behind the audience, in the wings, behind the stage, in front of the stage, in the orchestra pit, behind the orchestra pit, in the corridors, in the dressing rooms… You really get a sense of this location as a complete world in itself, a life that a performer might long for and not want to leave. The real sets are likewise full and rich and complete. There are fine interiors of the Countess’s home, but I was more interested in the smoky restaurants where the show people meet. The sense of a full reality created by the shots that introduce the real streets of Berlin continue into these interior spaces.

For all this, some may feel that it lacks the aesthetic or dramatic punch of Germany’s most famous vaudeville film of the era: Varieté (1925). I dare say I would agree. But this comparison to the most conspicuously well-known film of its genre does Sensation im Wintergarten an injustice. If Gennaro Righelli is not E.A. Dupont (I admit I had never knowingly heard of Righelli), this is no reason to snub his work. Nor should one snub his cast, even though it does not boast anyone as famous as Lya di Putti or Emil Jannings. But Sensation im Wintergarten does feature a reliable ensemble of familiar(ish) names. As Paul, Paul Richter offers no great emotional depth, but he is believable and likeable. (My familiarity with his face is as Fritz Lang’s Siegfried from 1924: another role of presence without depth.) Believable and likeable are also qualities I might say of Claire Rommer as his love interest. They are a charming couple, if one whose inner lives are only sketches rather than detailed portraits. As Mallock, Gaston Jacquet is perfectly suave, perfectly calculating, perfectly callous – a character designed not to possess any depth whatsoever. As Paul’s circus friend, Wladimir Sokoloff is a familiar face from various small roles in this period (including several Pabst productions), and his distinctive features – warm, kind, expressive, comic – make for an engaging sidekick to the lead. If I find I have little else to add to these sketches, it is because the film makes of its characters little more than sketches. They are entirely effective, but nothing more.

Again, I do not mean to talk down this film. Sensation im Wintergarten is a worthy production, and very entertaining. And it’s always good to widen one’s perspective on lesser-known films and directors. As much as I like Varieté, I’d really rather see something new and unknown. Sensation im Wintergarten is most certainly new and unknown. This presentation from Bonn is in fact the world premiere of the new digital restoration, which also provides detailed credits at the start. Per these very useful notes, the original German version of Sensation im Wintergarten remains lost, so this restoration is based on the version released in Sweden. Various missing scenes and shots have been indicated with inserted text, which is much preferable than leaving out important details for the sake of visual continuity. (I wish restorations would do this more often, as it is otherwise impossible to know the differences between original and restored copies.) Despite some missing material, the film looks great – filled with crisp, rich, detailed images. The music here was provided for piano and various other solo instruments by Günter A. Buchwald and Frank Bockius. Catching the rhythms and sounds of the circus, in particular, makes for a very engaging experience. They caught the drama and its tone very well, and I was entertained throughout.

Stummfilmtage Bonn 2025: Summary. As ever, by the time I have finished writing these festival pieces, the festival itself seems long over. And, as ever, I have mixed feelings about my online attendance. I have not engaged at all with online discussion (let alone in-person conversation) about what I have seen, nor have I explored any related festival material other than the brief descriptions of each film on the “details” sidebar for each video. My body and brain have certainly been having to work hard, though in a very different way from those present in Bonn. My early mornings have been a pell-mell flurry of simultaneous viewing and notetaking, followed by late mornings with an equally pell-mell flurry of rewriting and image-capturing. My wrist aches, something odd happened to my lower back, and I feel like I’ve had to cram more quickfire viewing and thinking into this last ten days than I have in many weeks. But ultimately I do enjoy the feeling that I have been forced to live according to the rhythm set by the festival, even if only via online portals with preset time restrictions. While a solitary pleasure, writing gives me a sense of something that will last beyond the ten days – and will hopefully stick in my memory, if not anyone else’s.

It goes without saying that the Stummfilmtage Bonn is an absolutely superb festival. The programme is always filled with some real discoveries, as well as the chance to review some familiar and very worthwhile films. Impeccably presented and prepared for online streaming, I cannot possibly bestow enough praise on everyone involved. (My conversation with the co-curator, Oliver Hanley, last year only led to a greater appreciation of the mad amount of effort involved in putting this on – especially for both live and online audiences.) I hope I will be able to attend in person one year, and indeed to have the kind of lifestyle that would enable me to do so. Until then, I will happily let my life be taken over by the Stummfilmtage Bonn for ten days each year. Long may this opportunity last.

Paul Cuff

Bonn from afar (2025, day 8)

Day 8 of this year’s line-up from Bonn takes us to Hungary, where we plunge into a crime melodrama…

Rabmadár (1929; Hu./Ger.; Pál Sugár/Lajos Lázár). In the women’s prison in Budapest, the resident doctor (Charlotte Susa) takes pity on Prisoner No. 7 (Lissi Arna), who begs to be let loose just for one night. She explains that she let herself be arrested for the sake of a man. The doctor believes her intentions are noble, so swaps clothes with the prisoner and allows her to escape. Meanwhile, at a hotel in the city, the head waiter Jenő (Hans Adalbert Schlettow) dotes over his pregnant girlfriend Birdi (Ida Turay), while also eyeing up the new maid (Olga Kerékgyártó) – and then the new arrival, the artiste (El Dura). As Jenő forces himself on the artiste, Prisoner No. 7 rushes into the hotel. Spying on the pair from the next room, she sees the artiste turn the tables on Jenő – praying on his vulnerability (his lowly status), she lures him into making more of himself for her sake. The artiste thus inveigles Jenő to distract the hotel manageress (Mariska H. Balla), while she herself empties the manageress’s safe. This she does, but Prisoner No. 7, now armed, confronts the artiste just as she’s about to make off with the money – and without Jenő. Jenő re-enters and now the Prisoner confronts him, too. She phones for the police. The artiste makes a run for it, plummeting to her death in a faulty lift. The prisoner tells Jenő he mustn’t escape this time. Jenő claims he loves her and somehow lures the Prisoner into his arms. The police enter and find the body in the lift shaft. Jenő goes downstairs to becalm the police. Meanwhile, Birdie encounters the Prisoner – and we learn that her name is Annuska. Birdie reveals that she will be married to Jenő, and that she is pregnant. The shocked Annuska leaves, pursued by Jenő. On the riverbank, Annushka asks him to be decent and marry Birdie. He swears he will, and Annushka heads back to prison. ENDE

My word, what a film this is. My experience of late 1920s/early 1930s Hungarian-directed films has, perhaps by accident, tended towards the dramatically and expressively extravagant. If Rabmadár doesn’t quite have Pál Fejős (aka Paul Fejos) levels of emotional and aesthetic intensity, passages nevertheless have an amazing and unexpected potency. The film revels in dark, often sinister or oppressive interior spaces – from the jail cell to the hotel rooms and shadowy niches, and the dark or dawning streets outside. In particular, the prison setting boasts some wonderful imaginative camerawork and editing. As well as finding great angles to frame the prisoners, especially No. 7 – from up above, through grates – there is a superb sequence of Annushka’s claustrophobia. In tight close-ups, we see her eying the walls, the door, the ceiling, and the camera tracks in towards each surface, pressing them slowly into the lens. Multiple superimpositions and ever-closer shots of her face and mouth and eyes make us share the madness of confinement, as the film shoves us closer into its imprisoning world. Later, there are any number of superb close-ups. Even when the artiste is fleeing with the money, the film shows us the chasing figures in facial close-ups as they hurtle through the hotel, shouting and screaming. The set-up and story might be entirely generic, but my word this film makes the most out of the material. A simple story of crime and betrayal becomes a weird chamber piece, draped in a febrile mise-en-scène. This is what impressed me most: the fact that every aspect of design and camerawork gets used to heighten and intensify the emotional tone. Everything in this film seems intense.

But this isn’t merely an aesthetic exercise. The characters are the reason for the intensity, and the cast form a superb ensemble. Lissi Arna’s face carries such amazing fierceness of feeling, from the despair of jail, of shock, of fear, of betrayal, to the heights of gratitude, of longing, of love, of vicious triumphalism. It’s quite a performance, matched by the sultry, moody, dangerous presence of the others in the cast. El Dura is a remarkable presence. She’s such a slight figure, but she moves with amazing purpose – turning what seems to begin as a rape scene into something weirder and unexpected, turning on her would-be attacker and bending him to her will. It’s a mad, uncomfortable twist of narrative logic, but somehow El Dura pulls it off. And Hans Adalbert Schlettow as the superficial Jenő – always seen glancing at himself in mirrors, in glass, in any reflective surface – has just enough fun to make his character a believably engaging narcissism and charm over the women.

But it’s the women in the cast that have the most enjoyable, intense performances to offer. As the manageress, Mariska H. Balla has enormous fun falling for Jenő – proffering him with drink, with frilly sweets, with kisses. Their seduction/distraction scene together is delightful, almost absurdly so. When Jenő gets out his guitar and starts singing, you realize the almost autonomous strength of the scene and its performers – it’s like another, equally good, film is breaking out of the one we’re watching. Then there are the intensely believable performances of Ida Turay as the madly besotted, innocent Birdi, and Olga Kerékgyártó as the maid who, even in a handful of appearances, is somehow realistic, intense, emotional, and wholly believable as a person. Finally, the ostensibly minor role of the doctor is turned, by Charlotte Susa and by the intensity of the mise-en-scène, into a tangible, almost too powerful, emotional presence.

Speaking of the latter, I wondered quite what the connection between the doctor and her prisoner was to be, so febrile and physically intense were their jail scenes together. Even before they are seen together, the cigarettes that the doctor sends to Annushka trigger a dreamy, smoky vision of the doctor on the wall of Annushka’s cell. “Isn’t there someone you can’t live without?” the prisoner asks the doctor, on her knees before her, kissing her hands, pressing her year-stained face into her lap. (There is an implicit scene of mutual undressing, which the film avoids via a swift fade to black.)

Later, when Birdi encounters Annushka in the hotel, it is Birdi who utters Annushka’s name for the first time in the film. It’s the first moment of identification, a form of intimacy. And Annushka embraces Birdi and kisses her several times on the mouth. This, too, is the first sincere kiss of the film. (We have seen Jenő kiss many women, always insincerely.) It is as if only without the central man in the story can any of the women find comradeship, tenderness – even physical tenderness. And at the end of the film, Annushka returns to the doctor – an odd and touching reunion of this couple. But the last image is of Annushka, alone, closing the shutters of her cell. It’s like the whole film has been some kind of nightmare of confinement, release, fear, and anger. No resolution is possible but a kind of sinking back into sultry longing.

A word must also be said about the history of the film and its restoration. A Hungarian-German co-production, boasting cast and crew from both countries, this film made a splash in 1929 but was long unavailable thereafter. The original Hungarian title was Rabmadár (“Slave Bird”), but only the German iteration – Achtung! Kriminalpolizei! (Gefangene Nr. 7) – survived in a print saved in the Netherlands, which was passed to Filmarchiv Austria, thence to the Budapest Film Archive. More cent discoveries enabled a longer restoration to be completed by the National Film Institute Hungary. Given the complex print history, outlined in the excellent restoration credits at the start of the presentation, the film looks sumptuous. Rich blacks, glowing highlights, detailed textures, glorious close-ups… quite simply, a delight to watch. My one reservation about the restoration would be the framerate. To my eyes, it looked like the film was transferred at a slower-than-natural framerate. For a print of 2171m, per the credits, the near two-hour runtime would indicate a framerate of 16fps, which seems unusually slow for a film shot in 1929. I can easily imagine 20fps working better.

Finally, the piano accompaniment for this Bonn screening/streaming was by Elaine Brennan. A rich, attentive score, engaging and sympathetic, perfect for the film. As ever, an excellent presentation from Bonn of a film that deserves to be better known.

Paul Cuff

Bonn from afar (2025, day 7)

On Day 7 of Bonn, we are once more treated to a full feature film presentation. For today, we are off to Denmark with that nation’s most popular comic duo of the silent era…

Krudt med Knald (1931; Den.; Lau Lauritzen Sr). Long and Short (Carl Schenstrøm and Harald Madsen) live in a boarding house, flirting with their young neighbours – a nimble duo of roller-skating dancers (Marguerite Viby, Nina Kalckar) – and making friends with their older neighbour, the Inventor (Jørgen Lund). The latter has invented a proto-televisual system, which is highly prized by a sinister trio of men representing “United Electric”. The trio move into the pension, aiming to steal the Inventor’s drawings and also the girls upstairs. After inadvertently foiling one attempt to steal the drawings, Long and Short are hired as drivers by the trio. Thinking this will get them out the way, the trio take the girls for a drive – but are once more stopped in their plans of seduction by Long and Short. Meanwhile, the Inventor signs a deal to gain half the profits from his invention from United Electric. But the trio from the company want to steal them from their boss to gain all the profits themselves. The trio enlist Long and Short to help them break into the office and the safe where the plans are, and arrange that the duo get arrested in their place. But the duo escape and save the day, catching the trio and saving the Inventor. ENDE

I’ll be honest: I feared that I wouldn’t get on with this film. I have been aware of the Danish comic duo Fyrtårnet and Bivognen for some years. Many of their films, including today’s, have been long available for free via the DFI silent film portal. But without subtitles or music, this little thread of silent film history has never enticed me to battle through. (On this same theme, I have had a deluxe Film Archiv Austria DVD edition of the films of early Austrian slapstick duo Cocl and Seff on my shelf for years. Somehow, I’ve never quite been in the mood to unwrap and investigate.) Yet this is precisely the kind of hesitancy I should overcome. After all, Danish silent cinema is a much more complex and multifaceted body of work than as represented by the canonical films of Benjamin Christiansen and Carl-Th. Dreyer, or the stardom of Asta Nielsen and Valdemar Psilander. The comic duo Fyrtårnet (Carl Schenstrøm) and Bivognen (Harald Madsen) were wildly popular in the 1920s and 1930s, and not just in Denmark. As the DFI page dedicated to their work reveals, under the names “Pat and Patachon” they were also big stars in Germany. Indeed, even the English version of the DFI pages on the duo stick with the Germanified “Pat and Patachon” as their non-Danish character names. “Long and Short” seem to be the English equivalent, and I only know this thanks to the English subtitles available on this presentation from Bonn.

All of which is to say that I was utterly unprepared for how much I enjoyed Krudt med Knald. I was also unprepared for the rhythm of the film, and how this heightened the pleasure of watching it. Though Long and Short (to reinstate their English aliases) are slapstick performers, the timing and execution of their gags do not attempt the speed or sheer breathtaking cleverness of Keaton, Lloyd, or Chaplin. They are a shambling, mostly slow-moving pair. One can follow their thought patterns more readily, watch their logic slowly unfold with everyday velocity. The opening scene is about neither character wanting to get up before the other: the Keaton-esque pulley system to tip one another out of bed is not especially sophisticated. (As compared to Keaton’s house in The Scarecrow (1920), for example.) But it’s character that seems to drive the gags, not the gags that define the character. It’s the mutual stubbornness, and the ultimately comradely and good-natured conclusion of the scene, that comes across – and brings the laughs.

The world they inhabit is also exceedingly well observed. The lengthy meal scene at their boarding house, overseen by the large landlady, is filled with brilliant touches. While the gags about increasingly large/tall/long-limbed neighbours at the table is good, if not necessarily sophisticated, the real laughs come from the manners and mores of the setting. The film cuts from the duo’s resigned efforts to make the most of their miserly portions to wall-mounted slogans about the health benefits of privation: “Keep sound: Don’t eat too much.” “To eat one’s fill is to eat too much.” “The less you eat, the better you feel.” The efforts of Long and Short to fit in (literally and metaphorically) to the pretensions of their petit-bourgeois hostess is marvellous.

Later, there is another rather shambling sequence involving a sleepwalking Short, who walks along the rooftop of the boarding house and frightens the inhabitants. A rooftop sleepwalking sequence is hardly novel (especially for 1931), and it doesn’t pretend to offer the suspense or drama of the stunt work of a Keaton or Lloyd. But what it does instead is take the opportunity to poke fun at the landlady and her friends, who are busy having a séance. When the landlady sees the silhouette of Short, wrapped in his bedsheet, she screams: “It was Napoleon!” It’s a brilliant gag, in which the landlady’s fear also boasts of her pretension at having summoned a mighty name of history to her boarding house séance. The payoff, too, is surprising. For Short’s friends all rally round him and they form a little community, gathered round the Inventor in mutual support.

Time and again, I was surprised by how plot lines or details of character developed in unexpected directions. For example, the Inventor is portrayed initially as a comic figure, inspired by drink. “At the bottom: that’s where the good ideas are!”, the Inventor explains to Long and Short, motioning to his bottle of liqueur. “I’ve never found anything up there”, he adds, pointing to the top of the bottle. It’s a marvellous line. (And the kind of joke about drink and human foibles that still inflects Danish cinema today.) But it also marks the old man as vulnerable and human, facets which foster his friendship with Long and Short, and with the two performing girls.

Regarding the latter, I was also very touched at how Long and Short treat them with almost chaste respect. There is no romance as such, just a kind of comradely innocence and mutual respect. The pleasure of their relationship is not so much the prospect of romantic love as of protective friendship. We first meet the girls on the rooftop of the boarding house, where they are trying out their new “number” on roller-skates. It’s an entirely unnecessary sequence, as far as narrative is concerned, but it’s utterly, utterly delightful. Filmed on an actual rooftop overlooking the city (Copenhagen, one assumes – but I’ll gladly be corrected), there is a real sense of freedom and space – but a freedom and space that are also limited. It’s a moment of joy, demarcated in this small, somewhat precarious space, but set against the bright, open sky and the huge sweep of the cityscape. It’s more than charming or silly, it’s really rather beautiful.

Indeed, there are many moments like this, when the use of location is more than merely incidental but striking and beautiful. The yard where Long and Short are employed to move barrels has some amazing piles of materiel, used to striking effect in some compositions (as when the dup appear right on top of a mountain of barrels) – and for an extended and wonderful sequence involving hiding from the police among the barrels. Here again, it’s not so much the speed of the chase as the sheer extension of the gag: Long and Short popping up and down at random places amid the barrels, while an ever-increasing number of policemen crawl into the maze.

Later, there are also some gorgeous glimpses of the summer landscape. There is a shot of the duo driving through a wheat field in which we see only their heads and shoulders moving through the crop. The sky is bright, the wheat is swaying in the breeze. It’s a surreal sight, wonderfully shot and composed. But there is also great beauty in the way the scene shows us the sweep of countryside. The scene lingers just long enough for the sway of the crop and the treetops to become a subject of contemplation. Even in the middle of a chase sequence, the film is paced and short such as to have an interest that is more than merely narrative.

Krudt med Knald is also weirdly moving. I’ve tried to explain above how the rhythm of the film allows for an accrued sense of emotional engagement – at least with this viewer. So when we see the Inventor, the duo, and the girls join forces and make friends in the boarding house – not just sticking together but living together in one toom – I was genuinely glad that these people – poor, struggling, disappointed, but hopeful – came together. Whenever there is misfortune to any of them, they come together to commiserate or reassure. When Long and Short finally earn some money, the first thing they do is buy food and drink to share with their friends.

That the film successfully mobilizes a sense of emotional connection is really felt near the end. When, near the end, Long and Short have been supposedly caught in the act of stealing the Inventor’s plans to give to the criminal trio, all their friends are present to witness their arrest by the police. The moment when the girls and the Inventor believe that the duo have betrayed them packs far more emotional punch than I expected. It’s not the outrage at false accusation that stings so much as the hurt of betrayal by those they believed were their friends. It’s very subtly played. (One can imagine a Hollywood production laying it on more thickly.) And it’s the subtleness that gives it an emotional reality, an emotional edge. So it’s all the more effective when we see the group all together in the final scene, where a dinner has been arranged to celebrate the Inventor’s success with United Electric. “This is one of the happiest days of my life!”, the Inventor says. “And I am fill of the deepest gratitude… especially towards my two friends…” – and here his hand falls for a moment on Long’s shoulder. His words, and the performances here, make this moment surprisingly touching. Isn’t it nice to feel happy for such characters? It isn’t the neatness of the narrative resolution, it’s the cumulative sense of comradery build up between character, and between them and us, that makes the end effective.

I should also mention that the film’s title Krudt med Knald seems literally to translate as “Gunpowder with a bang”, but is translated in this presentation as “Long and Short invent Gunpowder”. Original and given titles are both somewhat misleading, but this seems to me rather typical of the film’s approach. One subplot is indeed about Short trying to concoct his own brand of gunpowder. He is inspired by the Inventor’s reliance on alcohol to fuel his inventiveness, so starts guzzling bottles to receive inspiration. It’s a silly plotline, one that interacts only tangentially with the main storyline of the Inventor and his drawings. But it is the source of some good gags, especially the postscript to the final dinner scene. Here, Short is ready to show off his own invention to the assembled cast. As he prepares his experiment, the film cuts back and forth from Short’s preparations (the danger of which looks increasingly alarming) to the guests leaving, one-by-one. The time this gag takes to unfold is typical of the film’s rhythm: it’s quite slow, but the sheer elaboration of the single gag attains its own humour. The pay-off is exactly as one would expect: there is a huge explosion, with Long and Short emerging, smoke-blackened and in tatters, from the wreckage of the room. But the pleasure is not in being surprised, so much as in seeing the inevitable conclusion of this plotline, so long prepared and so inevitable that the sheer pointlessness of it – and its stubborn and unnecessary pursuit – is itself the source of humour. By this point, I had already been totally won over by the film. The cumulative silliness had me chuckling throughout Short’s demonstration. And the final shot, of both characters looking directly at the camera, is both funny and touching. Their look is not one of pleading or bafflement or attention-seeking, but a pleasing moment of engagement from character to spectator. And the way Long strokes away the ash from Short’s head – an act of cleanliness, yes, but more a gesture of care and affection – sums up the curious emotional tenor of the film. It’s deadline and funny and moving all at once. A lovely way to end.

The presentation of Krudt med Knald via the DFI portal is with replacement (i.e. modern, digital) intertitles in Danish. There is neither music for subtitle options, so while looking great the video is useful only to the more devotedly interested. As presented here at Bonn, the film has new digital German titles (a sensible option, given that no original aesthetic is being lost) and optional English subtitles. There is also a pleasing musical accompaniment for electric guitar and piano by Tobias Stutz and Felix Ohlert. Like the film, the music has an amiable, rambling quality that suits what I might call the gentleness of the film. While I am curious about the kind of musical accompaniment available in 1931, it was nice to see the film with music that didn’t overstate itself. It’s a curiously subtle film, one that might easily be overpowered by too strident a score.

So, overall, a very pleasant experience. I’m so glad that I’ve finally seen something with Fyrtårnet and Bivognen, as they have been on my horizon for years. While their films have been available via the DFI, this is the first time I’ve had the chance to see one presented in such a way that I gladly seized the chance to sit down and watch it. (As a foot note to the pertinence of programming this film, it was a pleasure to see the Danish director Holger-Madsen playing the small role of the detective. Given that we saw one of his films on Day 4 of Bonn this year, and that I have recently been trying to track down a copy of one of his German films of late, it was rather nice to see the man himself, alive and well and very much not lost from history.)

In sum, Krudt med Knald was a delightful surprise. But that’s rather what I’ve come to expect from the programme at Bonn.

Paul Cuff

Bonn from afar (2025, days 5 and 6)

Day 5: Buddenbrooks (1923; Ger.; Gerhard Lamprecht). I was very excited when I saw this on Bonn’s line-up. A new restoration of an unknown Gerhard Lamprecht film? Yes please! A silent adaptation of a Thomas Mann novel? Yes please! Lavish sets and settings? Yes please! Are you a resident of Germany, Austria, or Switzerland? Y—! Oh… no. Well, no film for me today. No Lamprecht, no Mann, no lavish sets, nor even the comfort of living in an appropriately central European country.

To be fair, I knew this was coming, having seen the dreaded asterisk on the programme that denoted access to the online version was limited by copyright according to region. As the festival’s co-curator Oliver Hanley said to me after the festival last year, there are sometimes occasions when compromises must be made. This is an exciting new restoration of an important work by a major director, so it’s clearly worthwhile being programmed, whatever limitations there are for streaming it. I don’t resent the good folk of Bonn being able to see this film in situ at the price of we folk from afar not being about to see this film online. One really can’t complain: this online version of the festival is still, miraculously, free, and there are plenty of other films on offer. At least I am now aware of the existence of the restoration of Buddenbrooks. Hopefully it will do the rounds, so to speak, and appear somewhere where I can attend or view online. So, on the fifth day I rested.

Day 6: Shakhmatnaya goryachka (1925; USSR; Vsevolod Pudovkin/Nikolai Shpikovsky). Today’s short film takes us to Russia, and to a delightful directorial debut. Pudovkin’s first film is a comic skit about the titular “chess fever” that grips the Hero and distracts him from his impending marriage with the Heroine, only for her to end up in the arms of chess champion Capablanca and be won over to the game – and back to the Hero.

I’ve seen this film before, but so long ago that I felt like I was discovering it for the first time today. I’d forgotten how packed with marvellous gags it is, taking advantage of every kind of space and movement. Though Pudovkin is famous for his later propaganda films, and especially for his dramatic use of montage, Chess Fever shows his playfulness and skill exercising numerous cinematic techniques for comedy. See how the shot/reverse-shot of the feet underneath the chess table creates the impression of two players, only for a wider shot to reveal a single player with mismatched socks swapping sides to play against himself. Or the brilliant use of reverse-motion when the Hero is irresistibly drawn backwards down the pavement into the chess shop. Then there is a deliciously Keaton-esque snowballing of gags when the Hero has his books of chess problems thrown out of the window. An officer arrests a man for stealing a ride on a bus, but is distracted by the unexpected arrival of the chess problem from above. We have already seen other people being pleased to find these papers rain down on them, but here the gag is developed. The film cuts from the distracted officer and the man he’s supposed to be arresting to a shot of another bus. We see another bus passing by, and one, two, three, four, five men clung to the side. This looks like the climax to the gag, but the film delivers one final, knock-out gag: behind the bus is an entire line of punters who have affixed a rope to the bus and are sliding along behind it.

The titular “chess fever” of the film is everywhere. Not only does everyone reveal themselves to be a fanatic, but the feverishness becomes embedded in the patterns on screen. The chess board’s chequer pattern is everywhere about the Hero’s person: his sock, hat, scarf, handkerchief. And this pattern is everywhere around him, too, from the floor tiles that the Hero finds himself moving across like a chess piece, to the series of ever-tinier chequered items of merchandise and apparel that the Hero jettisons in the river. The tiniest board is kept for last, however, when – having thought he had lost all his chess sets and now cannot play with his converted bride – he remembers his emergency set kept in a pouch around his neck. He withdraws this absurdly small board, and the lovers play micro-chess before passionately embracing.

As a side note, I also enjoyed the cameo from the real chess champion José Raúl Capablanca. As it happens, I’m reading Sergei Prokofiev’s diaries at the moment. Prokofiev was a chess fanatic and befriended Capablanca in his teens in St Peterburg, before the Revolution. In fact, Prokofiev actually played and beat this future world champion in 1914 during a chess championship. For this reason, it was delightful to see the opening close-up of Capablanca, looking a little playful, a little awkward, a little amused. (Rather appropriately, my writing of this paragraph was interrupted by the postman, who has just delivered my latest Prokofiev purchase: the sadly out-of-print 1960 recording of Semyon Kotko, which is, I’ll have you know, ladies and gentlemen, the only uncut recording of this opera currently on the market.)

The music for this presentation was by Sabrina Zimmermann and Mark Pogolski on piano and violin. This was tremendous fun. Full of life, wit, melody, irony, and energy. I loved the citations of La Forza del destino when the Hero finally arrives, late, to his fiancée’s side – and later when the Heroine goes to buy poison to end her own life. The operatic behaviour of the characters is itself a kind of parody of the fatalistic Russianness of pre-Soviet cinema à la Evgenii Bauer et al., and the music lives up to the bathos. Throughout, the score kept pace with the film’s sudden shifts in gear, changes of tone, and slights of hand. Though only 25 minutes long, the film demands dozens of swift manoeuvres from any accompanist. Zimmermann and Pogolski produced a little gem of a performance, fully worthy of the film. This soundtrack was recorded live, and I enjoyed hearing the murmur of distant laughter. It wasn’t so loud as to be distracting, but just enough to make me feel I was sharing part of the performance.

What else to say? This is a brilliant film, presented here with a perfect musical accompaniment. Whatever disappointment I had over missing Buddenbrooks was swiftly forgotten in the pleasure of seeing Shakhmatnaya goryachka in such a great performance. Bravo!

Paul Cuff

Bonn from afar (2025, day 4)

After yesterday’s exploration of vagrancy and destitution, today we return to the world of the bourgeoisie and to the genre of light comedy. This film was just as much an unknown to me as yesterday’s, and just as welcome a treat…

Was ist los mit Nanette? (1929; Ger.; Holger-Madsen). Otti (Ruth Weyher) is married to the night editor of a newspaper, Richard Curtius (Georg Alexander). Unbeknownst to Richard, Otti has saved him from bankruptcy by living a double life. By day she is a dutiful housewife, but at night she works as “Nanette”, a successful vaudeville dancer. Richard still believes the money came from the will of Otti’s late aunt Finchen, from Batavia. However, things get complex when Aunt Finchen (Margarete Kupfer) turns up on their doorstep. Otti pretends Richard is deeply unwell, so hides her aunt in the attic, along with her pet monkey and a huge amount of luggage. Richard’s rich friend Toto (Harri Hardt), who has a crush on “Nanette”, also comes to stay. Inevitably, events soon spiral out of control. After various farcical chases and confusions, Richard realizes that his wife has been lying to him. Accusing Otti of disloyalty, he decides to pursue other women. First among them is “Nanette”, whom he invites to a night out at the Trocadero club. There, the truth emerges. Richard learns of Otti’s double life and her sacrifice for the sake of their marriage. After recognizing that they still love each other, the couple reconcile. ENDE.

This was the only film produced by Ruth Weyher-Film, the company founded by the star. (She would quit acting at the start of the sound era.) I have seen and liked Weyher in a few productions from earlier in her career, but she is more striking here in this lead role, which drives the whole film. It is very interesting to think of Was ist los mit Nanette? as the work of a female producer and star, since its central concern is with a woman’s agency in the face of male expectations. Otti is introduced very deliberately as “Frau Dr. Curtius”, which is formally correct, but markedly eliminates her given name altogether. By contrast, her friend is introduced as “Anita Morell” (Maria Mindszenty), a woman “widowed young” and “halfway to being remarried”. It is as if the shedding of the dead husband has already given her back her name, and the possibility of agency. We might wonder if being “halfway” to marriage is rather more satisfying than being married. Weyher herself gives a delightful performance. Yes, it’s a chance for her to show off before the camera. She gets to dance on stage, run around, and don disguise. But she always bristles with intelligence and wit, her eyes flashing with playful cunning. The film also gives her plenty of close-ups in which something deeper is revealed, glimpses of emotion (doubt, frustration, longing) that lie beneath the play.

As her husband Richard, Georg Alexander is perfect. I think I’ve seen him in more sound films of the 1930s, so I am rather familiar with his distinctive voice, but here on the silent screen he makes the perfect foil for Otti. Everything about him is fussy, particular – a little vulnerable, a little defensive, a little rigid. His married life quickly unravels, and we realize how limited is his conception of a romantic union. From being a loving husband, he reveals the smallness of his mindset. He soon draws on cliched images of a “painted and deceitful” woman to describe Otti. “They used to burn people like you!” he cries at one point. Otti replies that she won’t forget that insult, and neither will we. It’s an absurd thing to say, but it is said in earnest and in spite. But since this film is, ultimately, a comedy, Richard gets his chance to learn. When he hears Otti’s true history of sacrifice – and a sacrifice for love of him – we see him realize his mistake. Alexander’s performance has enough reality to it (enough seriousness) that we might just have hope for his future with Otti.

Around these two leads are a number of interesting supporting performance. The most significant is Margarete Kupfer as Aunt Finchen. I thought this was a marvellous creation. Her hypochondria makes for some delightful use of costumes and props. Obsessed with her own glands, she travels with a monkey and an enormous spray-pump to ward off germs. The latter she uses as a splendidly phallic weapon to chase Richard around his own home. The former animal is the source of slapstick, but also of some great lines of dialogue. (“My glandular baboon! Preserver of my youth!” Finchen blubs at one point.) But this comedy also enables something more interesting. It is noteworthy how much of the physical slapstick in the film is driven by the women (the wife, the best friend, the aunt, the maid), who give out as much as they take. Echoing Otti’s use of disguise, the aunt also finds the liberation of being in costume. With the aid of Otti’s theatrical manager, Finchen undergoes a beauty treatment, emerging from her frumpy outfit and curled hair into glamorous eveningwear and tastefully modern bob cut. We have come to think of her as a purely comedic, almost buffoonish, character – but in the last act she reveals her worldly wisdom. It is she who advises Richard to feign illness, take to his bed, and earn Otti’s sympathy. He duly does, and the trick reunites husband and wife. Not so daft and dowdy, after all, these aunts.

I have so far talked about the film’s performers and themes, but more broadly I must praise how nice Was ist los mit Nanette? looks, and how well the action is directed. The sets – the house, the office, the theatre, the nightclub – are great, richly detailed and beautifully dressed. Amid all this, Holger-Madsen provides lots of nice touches, such as the striking high-angle shot of the characters looking up through the ceiling light when they hear the noise from upstairs. The shot emphasizes the shock, momentarily turning this into a moment of suspense. The characters are taken by surprise with a sound, and the film transforms this into a moment of surprise for us through visual means. More imaginative camerawork is involved in a rather brilliant dream sequence in which the drunk and depressed Otti dreams of being judged and condemned by Richard in a court of law. Superimposed over Otti writhing in her sleep, this courtroom scene is a little comic gem of editing and choreography. (Compared to yesterday’s dream sequence in Der Vagabund, also involving a character dreaming of being tried and condemned, the equivalent in Was ist los mit Nanette? is much more technically sophisticated and rhythmically polished.) It also links nicely to the opening scene of Richard waking up, when he drowsily reaches for the alarm clock and we see it spinning in a kaleidoscopic multiplication of itself. Both scenes are about the vulnerability of the two characters, each experienced in scenes by themselves. It’s one of many fine touches in Was ist los mit Nanette?, which is filled with pleasing details to reveal character and emotion. The whole film is well staged, well photographed, and well edited. Though one reel of the film suffers from some bad decomposition, it is a great example of how good a film of this era can look.

Music for this presentation from Bonn was by Maud Nelissen and Mykyta Sierov. Their combination of piano and oboe is playful, sympathetic, rhythmic, and melodic – a great accompaniment to the film. Though the live presentation of the film in Bonn (so the online notes tell me) was prefaced by an introduction and rare footage from the Weyher estate, which I would have loved to have seen, Was ist los mit Nanette? by itself is a great feature with an enjoyable score.

I said at the outset that Was ist los mit Nanette? is a very different world to yesterday’s film, Der Vagabund. But Weyher’s comedy also has an edge and offers, in its own way, a subtle critique of the bourgeois world in which it is set. Socialist drama it ain’t, but it also finds a sophisticated way for us to think about what we’ve seen, and question the assumptions we might have: about gender roles, about performance and disguise, and about our expectations and assumptions of what an equal relationship might be. I very much enjoyed this film, which was a total unknown to me. A delightful surprise, beautifully presented.

Paul Cuff

Bonn from afar (2025, day 3)

After a day of urbane, light-hearted musical comedy, Day 3 of Bonn takes us to the streets for poverty and vagabondage…

Der Vagabund (1930; Aut.; Fritz Weiß). The opening titles tell us that this is a story “taken from everyday lives”, as recounted to a journalist. The prologue begins with the sight of a vagrant’s body being found in a country ditch between Werder and Potsdam. All that’s found with him is a self-penned poem, an enigma that sets the journalist on a journey to the homeless shelter and the underworld of the unemployed and destitute. What follows is both an account of the journalist’s investigation and the stories he hears from the “vagabonds” themselves. What account of the “plot” I can give is necessarily brief: the film frames its narrative with the journalist visiting shelters and listening to personal accounts of vagrancy and homelessness. The main story becomes that of a man’s journey through Austria, where he encounters the uncaring attitude of many in society. Put like this, Der Vagabund sounds prosaic. But the structure and its cinematic realization are very striking, and the film is filled with amazing images of people and places.

From the outset, director Fritz Weiß provides some beautifully composed images of the landscape, the stillness of which is then offset by the handheld camerawork that brings us up-close to look at lived reality. Soon the camera is perched behind the journalist as he speeds into the city, where there are some amazing shots of the bustling streets that whiz past the car. Alongside the journalist, we visit the shelters and inspect the occupants. We see the vagrants strip and get inspected for lice, then shower. The faces and bodies are palpably real. (When the camera tracks past the vagrants as they eat, one of them shelters his face from the camera, as if ashamed or fearful of being seen.) There are powerful, often quick montages of details: the faces, the bodies, the clothes of the vagrants; or the watches, the coats, the hats left hanging in the shelter.  

The film begins to give us some context for these people. We meet Gregor Gog, “the vagrants’ leader”, who gets an amazing introductory close-up in which he stares at – almost through – the camera. It’s a challenging look, one that demands we pay attention; it’s also a kind of question: what are we thinking when we see the vagrants on screen? There is a series of cutaways to the unemployed, drunks, petty thieves. We see their faces, are given little vignettes of their actions and habits. There are scenes in which we see the sign language by which their “brotherhood” communicates – chalked symbols on the walls if houses where they have found, or not found, help or food. The film thus gives us a sense of community, of commonality, between these otherwise isolated, down-and-out individuals.

This leads me to think about the film’s structure, which I found very curious. The first section of Der Vagabund, discussed in my previous paragraphs, is based on articles which (within the film) is deemed “too theoretical” by the newspaper editor. Is this a kind of judgement on the style of the film we have just seen? As if in reaction, the film shifts register. The editor wants “life stories”, and that then is what we are given by the film. Though it is carefully framed via the journalist’s interview, what follows is the story of one man who wandered through Austria. We see his temporary work, his moving from place to place, his interactions with locals in a smith, a farm, and on the road. We also see a glimpse of his time with a woman, of a shelter in Austria for other vagrants. Throughout, the film intercuts between this inner narrative and the framing narrative of the journalist interviewing the vagrants. There is a pleasing tension between the real and the fictional, especially given how real even the fictionalized sequences look. This is also felt in the rhythm of the editing. While earlier sequences have some swift montage of faces and illustrative scenes, when we are on the road with the vagrant in Austria there are more long shots/takes of his travels. It’s always a pleasure to roam about in the past like this, and this film’s rambling itinerary is the perfect way to see little pockets of history that you would other never see. There are beautifully composed images that show us the sweep of mountains and valleys. Though the film always gives us a contrast between the richness of the summer meadows and the rags and dirt of the traveller.

The film’s mode is not solely naturalistic, as there is a trippy dream sequence in which the vagrant character imagines himself tried and executed by the bourgeois bullies he has encountered on the road in Austria. It’s a wonderfully strange interlude, with a bleak edge: he imagines himself being hanged in a kind of forbidding, expressionist landscape. And “naturalist” doesn’t mean this film is so austere that it lacks lyricism or poetry. As I’ve said, there are some beautiful shots – beautifully composed and photographed – throughout the film, especially in the Austrian countryside. There is also a delightful sequence of shadow puppetry, improvised by the main character on the wall of the prison cell he shares with another vagrant, who is ill and lying in bed. The setting is realistic, but it finds a way of expressing something more personal than the set-up might suggest. The scene is silly and sad and touching all at once.

Der Vagabund ends with a montage of people from all classes pouring over the journalist’s articles in the newspaper Tempo. The motage then begins to intercut these scenes of reading with the “march” of the vagrants. To these shots are superimposed a vision of Gregor Gog giving a passionate speech. It was curious to see Gog emerge as a kind of heroic leader in this final montage. Though he is a real figure, playing himself on screen, his appearance at the end of the film is much more like that of a work of Soviet propaganda. Are we to read this as a promise of reform? A threat of revenge? A call to arms? It might be all three, and it is a surprisingly punchy end to Der Vagabund. Like the bourgeois readers of Tempo on screen, the media we consume is coming to life and confronting us with reality – demanding we think, reflect, react. Though the images stand comparison with numerous scenes in Soviet fiction films of this period, it also reminded me – with its confrontational crowd marching towards the camera – of Abel Gance’s J’accuse! (1919). The realization of the imagery is not as developed and sustained in Der Vagabund as in either these French or Soviet counterparts, but perhaps that is to its advantage. In such a film, I’d rather be won over by naturalism or lyricism than lectured or beaten over the head with crude slogans or overly tooled editing.

I should add that since watching the film I looked up Gregor Gog (what a name!), and I see that he led quite the life. From a working-class background, he ended up being drafted into the German army, where he was court-martialled during the Great War for his political activities. Mixing in an anarchist-communist milieu in the 1920s, he came to lead the “Vagabond Movement” (Vagabundenbewegung) and edit their mouthpiece publication, Der Kunde, which we see in the film. After 1933, he was arrested by the Nazis, escaped, fled to Switzerland, was expelled to Russia, spent time there in a labour camp, tried to become a novelist, and ended up dying in a sanatorium in Uzbekistan. Der Vagabund thus gives us a vivid glimpse into this corner of interwar Europe and its political movements. That said, Der Vagabund is not a work of crude propaganda. It certainly has an anti-bourgeois attitude (per the film’s many negative portrayals of monocled officials, hypocritical housewives, and brutish burghers). But it is also poetic and rambling. Its very structure of a narrative within a narrative lends it a picaresque quality, a slightly ramshackle form that loosens any sense of the viewer being lectured. A couple of years ago, I watched another low-budget socialist film, Brüder (1929), which was far cruder in its messaging – and (despite much beautiful location photography) less skilled in mobilizing either its lyrical, naturalist elements or its fictional, narrative elements. Der Vagabund is altogether a more interesting and more successful film.

The music for this presentation was by Filmsirup (Matthias André and Michi Hendricks) on piano and electric guitar. I found this extremely sensitive and sympathetic to the film. The rhythm was perfectly in match with the action, though “action” is often not the right word. Much of the time, the film follows characters who are killing time, mooching or loitering with or without intent. The music finds way of matching these sections very well. The dotted rhythms follow the vagrants as they walk along, slow down, dawdle, come to a halt, and resume again. The plash of water in the shower and the shattering of glass get their own moments in the music, just as the flashes of anger or dips into resignation of the characters are felt. I imagine this might be a difficult film to accompany, but Filmsirup do a very admirable job.

In sum, I found Der Vagabund an extremely interesting and engaging experience. Realistic and poetic, inventive and provocative, it’s a fascinating film. The restoration by Film Archiv Austria, based on a Dutch copy of the film, is beautiful to look at. A rich a rewarding film, with a pleasing musical accompaniment. A rich and rewarding film, with a pleasing musical accompaniment. Just the kind of thing you hope to discover at a festival. Bravo.

Paul Cuff

Bonn from afar (2025, day 2)

Day 2 of Bonn and already I must take a kind of detour from the programme. Today’s streamed film is Saxophon-Susi (1928; Ger.; Karel Lamač), the same restoration of which I saw via the online Pordenone festival last year. I refer readers interested in the film to that earlier post, while today my comments will primarily address the differences in presentation between the two festivals.

The first thing to note was that Bonn offered two versions of Saxophon-Susi. Aside from the version with musical accompaniment (discussed below), there was a version with Germany an audio-description version for the visually impaired. (Though another audio-description video has text and narrator credits, I couldn’t find any for this specific film.) I was curious to know if this was presented with the soundtrack beneath the descriptive text. It was not, so offers a very curious experience – at least for this non-impaired spectator. I would be very curious to know more about the audience for silent films with audio description. When I attended the online HippFest festival earlier this year, I wrote about the audio-description texts offered there. These were very elaborate, intended for live audiences as much as online spectators, and the texts described the music as well as the action. HippFest also offered brail text for the deaf to accompany screenings, though I cannot comment on the content of these. The Bonn audio description is simpler, offering a straightforward description of the action and a rendition of all the intertitles. Obviously, I am not the intended audience for these alternate presentations – but I would be very curious to know more about (or hear from) anyone who has experienced these presentations as intended.

The second thing to note was the version with musical accompaniment. My comments here require some context… Though this 2023 restoration of Saxophon-Susi has not yet been released on DVD/Blu-ray, it has already accrued at least three new scores. The first was presented in August 2024 at the “Ufa filmnächte” festival in Berlin, where it was accompanied by Frido ter Beek and The Sprockets film orchestra. (Alas, the “Ufa filmnächte” is no longer a streamed festival, so I cannot report on how this score sounded.) For the version streamed from Pordenone in October 2024, there was a piano score by Donald Sosin. As I wrote at the time, this was delightful: catchy, rhythmic, playful, and fun. That said, I regretted the fact that the titular saxophone-playing sequences in the club and on stage had no saxophone on the soundtrack. At Bonn, the musical score offered was for piano and saxophone, and was composed/performed by M-cine (Dorothee Haddenbruch and Katharina Stashik, as they are identified on the video details page). It was great to hear a saxophone as part of the musical accompaniment, since this is a film whose very plot demands this instrument by featured. But the score itself was curiously chaste, which is to say that I found it less overtly fun than Sosin’s piano score from Pordenone.

At the premiere in 1928, Saxophon-Susi was accompanied by a jazz orchestra – and the poster for the film’s release in France also includes the promise of a jazz orchestra in the cinema. The film also had a tie-in song, “Die Susi bläst das Saxophon”, composed by Rudolf Nelson. (Both Sosin and M-cine cited this song in their scores, and as I presume did that of Frido ter Deebk in August 2024.) This morning, I dug a little into some contemporary reviews to get more of a sense of the original music. It certainly seems to have been a major part of the value of the live performances. For example, Der Kinematograph (4 November 1928) cites the arranger/conductor Paul Dessau’s “musical wit” and “truly comedic touch” in his score – and live performance at the premiere. The reviewer reports “enthusiastic applause from the laughing, amused audience” at the dance sequences etc. Oh, to see the film with live music and audience…

Lacking an orchestral score in 2025, I spent the rest of this morning listening to the many recordings of “Die Susi bläst das Saxophon” made in 1928 in the wake of the film’s original release. There were various instrumental versions made, such as the peppy version by Efim Schachmeister and his orchestra. The melody was clearly an international hit, as it was exported to the British/US market via The Charleston Serenaders, who recorded a charmingly upbeat rendition outside Germany in 1928. One can also sample a version with lyrics, as sung back in Berlin by Paul O’Montis in the company of the Odeon Tanzorchester. But by far the most pleasing version is the deliciously slow, relaxed instrumental account provided by Marek Weber’s band. I absolutely adore the slow tempo, the way this gives extra space and time for the various soloists to take their turn with the melody. You get the feeling that you’re eavesdropping on a Berlin dance night in 1928. It’s a simply joyous little number in their hands.

Looking up the identities of these various musicians is itself an interesting exercise. The composer of the song, Rudolf Nelson, was a popular cabaret and theatre musician. He was also Jewish, and in 1933 was forced to flee Germany, settling in the Netherlands – where he had to live in hiding during the German occupation. This grim period of history interrupts the biographies of the recording artists of Nelson’s song, too. The Austro-Hungarian Marek Weber was a musician of the old school and purportedly disliked jazz (perhaps this explains his slow tempo in “Die Susie bläst das Saxophon”?), but nevertheless ended up recruiting some of the best jazz musicians in Germany and recording plenty of popular tunes. As a Jew, he saw which way the political tide was turning and left Germany in 1932, ultimately settling in the US. Efim Schachmeister was born in Kiev to Jewish-Romanian parents but made his name in Berlin in the 1920s. He fled the Nazis and eventually ended up in Argentina. Paul O’Montis was Hungarian by birth and made his name on the Berlin cabaret scene. Openly gay, he was forced to leave Germany when the Nazis came to power. Sadly, he was one of many who didn’t flee far enough. After finding refuge in Vienna, after the Anschluss of 1938 he relocated to Prague – but was arrested there in 1939 and, after various relocations, ended up being killed in Sachsenhausen concentration camp in 1940. Such stories are common when researching artists of this period, but somehow the combination of such light-hearted numbers as “Die Susie bläst das Saxophon” in the context of their makers’ lives is especially sobering.

One upshot of this rather divergent morning is my desire to hear a jazz band score for Saxophon-Susi, something in the vein of Marek Weber’s recording of the theme song. If the film gets released on home media, it rather depends on how much effort (i.e. money) someone wants to put into it. What so often happens is that special scores are composed for live show(s), then no money is made available for that score to appear on home media with the film. There are many examples of expensive film restorations released with the cheapest musical option on DVD/Blu-ray. I do hope that Saxophon-Susi gets the score it deserves.

Paul Cuff

Bonn from afar (2025, day 1)

This week, I’m off to Bonn! Well, that’s not quite true. This week, I’m staying home in order to watch the streamed content from this year’s Stummfilmtage Bonn. Last year was the first time I saw the entire online programme, and this year promises another excellent line-up. Day 1 takes us to America for a potent blend of crime, subterfuge, and revenge…

Forgotten Faces (1928; US; Victor Schertzinger). Harry “Heliotrope” Adames (Clive Brook), so-called for his signature fondness for the flower, is by day a loyal husband and caring father – and by night a gentleman thief. His wife Lilly (Olga Baclanova), meanwhile, is busy being a neglectful mother to their infant child Alice and having an affair. Discovering the pair together, and realizing that Lilly has also betrayed him to the police, Harry shoots dead the lover and takes the child away. He leaves the infant Alice (complete with sprig of heliotrope) on the doorstep of a rich married couple, the Deanes, who had lost their previous child. Making his sidekick Froggy (William Powell) promise to remember the name and address of the Deanes, Harry hands himself in to the police. Seventeen years pass. Froggy keeps the imprisoned Heliotrope up to date on his daughter, now raised as Alice Deane (Mary Brian), and on the movements of Lilly, who still hopes to find her daughter. Meanwhile, Froggy is tricked by Lilly into giving her information about Alice. Lilly then visits Harry, and taunts him with her plan to take custody of their daughter. Later, when another convict engineers an escape, Harry assists – but the pair are thwarted. Harry having saved the life of the warden during the ensuing fight, he is given parole – promising not to lay a hand on his wife in the pursuit of his daughter. Outside, Harry and Froggy find Alice in the company of her fiancé Norman van Buren Jr., a rich heir. Hoodwinking his way into Alice’s household by pretending to be a new butler, Harry acts as her guardian. He also threatens Lilly and, in the climax, lures her to the house of Alice in order to get her to commit a crime and die in the escape. Sacrificing his own life for this purpose, he lives just long enough to say goodbye to his daughter. THE END.

Well, well, well, what an excellent slice of crime drama this is. I wondered what kind of genre this might be, since the tone subtly shifts gear in the opening act. It begins as a Raffles-like case of Harry as a gentleman thief. Added by some charming and witty dialogue, I assumed the light touch would continue. However, this film soon starts pulling its punches. The sudden, unapologetic way Harry kills his wife’s lover (off-screen) is startling, as is the way Harry later engineers Lilly’s death. I found the tone a little disconcerting later on, when the film milks sentiment from the father hiding his identity from Alice. Though there are some gorgeous touches – as when Alice calls out to her father, and both Harry and Deane turn to respond – I found myself increasingly unsympathetic to Harry.

This was in part due to the performances of Clive Brook and Olga Baclanova as the estranged couple. For me, Baclanova was by far the most engaging presence on screen. She is wonderful as Lilly, always on the verge of wildness – like her hair, which when uncontained by her hat springs out in a kind of pale mane. By contrast, as the older Harry, Clive Brook’s hair is pasted and greyed into a kind of docile wig – so orderly and so meek that it almost hurts to look at. If Brook maintains a kind of sad father nobility, Baclanova gets to play an increasingly desperate emotional state. Harry plays weird mind games with her (stalking her, sending her threats, luring her from her safehouse), a kind of escalating cruelty that the film never questions – but that Baclanova makes you really feel. Lilly is mentally teased and tortured to the point where she is so desperate to be free that she confronts Harry. When he dies, saying he has kept his word to the warden, I felt much sorrier for Lilly than for Harry. After all, Harry has kept his promise not to touch Lilly but has carefully directed (in every sense) her death – albeit at the price of his own. And even the murder she commits – his – is the result of Harry’s own bluff and entrapment. He has made her commit murder, forcing her to play the part that he has cast. It’s a nasty ruse, one which the film seems to think we accept on the basis that Lilly is a bad mother, a kind of failed vamp, who surely doesn’t deserve to have her child – or even to survive the film. What exactly is the fate that Harry assumes Alice will have under Lilly’s influence? Whatever it is, it’s a fate so bad that he’s prepared to kill Alice’s mother to waylay it before it even happens. Lilly doesn’t have to commit a crime to be deemed a criminal; Harry can commit several but dies believing himself a hero. Though Brook’s performance is good, there is a kind of smugness in Harry’s victimhood (and apportioning of pre-emptive blame on Lilly) that rubbed me the wrong way. Does being a well-intentioned father excuse two murders? Does Harry’s oft-stated belief in the sanctity of marriage justify him being judge, juror, and executioner-by-proxy of his wife? Is Lilly so inherently wicked that she deserves to die? Certainly Harry seems to think so, and the film seems to think so.

I should also mention William Powell, who as Froggy gets to sport a delightful monobrow that is at once comic and sympathetic, marking his character as a sidekick. He doesn’t get much screen time, but Powell nevertheless gets to shape this little character into someone with a past, and with some humanity. (Froggy, it seems to me, is a far more sympathetic character than Harry. I’d rather like Froggy to have been given a gag or a send-off at the end of the film to indicate that things turn out alright for him!)

Whatever I thought of the characters, I was absolutely captivated by the look of Forgotten Faces. The cameraman was J. Roy Hunt, who does some remarkable work. There are some fabulous images of the gambling house at the start of the film. I love the shot from within the roulette wheel, looking up through the dial to the eager circle of faces of the gamblers, and then the roving camera – tracking and panning – that penetrates into the midst of the eager throng. Here and throughout, there are scenes with superb low-key lighting. The nighttime exteriors and interiors (the street, the prison, the Deane house) have some exquisite lighting, moody and atmospheric: this is film noir avant la lettre. (So too, I suggest, is its punishment of the wayward female character.)

This reaches its zenith in the climax to the film, which boasts an astonishing moving camera that seems to glide through the entire house – round corners, up flights of stairs, through corridors, through doors. It’s an outrageously well-orchestrated use of movement, combined with incredibly complex lightning. (Rewatching it again, there is a subtle cut that slightly breaks the spell – but nevertheless, it is wonderful as a whole.) It’s the perfect device for the sequence, which is Harry luring Lilly to her doom. He has him himself acted as metteur-en-scène, using shadows, props, and hired actors to trick Lilly into shooting him then falling to her death on a sabotaged ladder. As a viewer, you absolutely feel as entranced, almost as will-less, as Lilly as she follows Harry to her doom – and his. An amazing sequence.

Finally, a word on the presentation. The film featured piano accompaniment by Meg Morley, which was excellent: melodic, atmospheric, always appropriate. The restored print from the Library of Congress was superb to look at. There was a copyright logo in the bottom left of the screen (as you can see from my images), but its placement and design rendered it unobtrusive. This film is so rich to look at that you quickly forget the logo is there. (Unlike some copyright logos, as I mentioned last week.) All in all, a fabulous way to start the festival.

Paul Cuff

Programming silent cinema: An interview with Oliver Hanley (3/3)

This final part of my conversation with Oliver Hanley covers the role of music in silent film festivals, both onsite and online.

Paul Cuff: We’ve talked so far about the processes of researching, locating, and scheduling material from archives, i.e. the work involved in curating the films themselves. But organizing a festival for silent cinema involves a whole other aspect of presentation: live music. How does the relationship between curators and musicians work?

Oliver Hanley: I’m curating for two festivals that have a long tradition. This year we had the fortieth edition of the Bonn festival, and Bologna is also approaching forty. Both festivals have been screening silent films for several decades, so I, as a curator, have “inherited” a roster of musicians, as it were. In Bonn, it’s usually a given that we will include most if not all of the “regulars” – not just for the sake of their past involvement and long relationship with the festival, but because they’re all great musicians. Neil Brand and Stephen Horne from Britain, for example, or the Aljoscha Zimmermann Ensemble or Richard Siedhoff from Germany. Richard is from a younger generation, but he’d already been playing for the Bonn festival for a good ten years when Eva and I took over curatorial duties.

PC: You’ve talked about wanting to expand the range of films shown at Bonn. Does this hold true about the musical aspect?

OH: Since Eva and I became involved with the Bonn festival in 2021, we’ve been working with the team to expand the range of musicians, particularly with an eye to increasing the number of female musicians. We also wanted to give younger musicians a chance and to involve more musicians who are based locally. In 2024, I think we had the highest turnover since I’ve done this festival.

PC: How do you organize who does what?

OH: When we divvy up the films, we make sure to have every musician or group play no less than twice as a rule, unless there are reasons why they can’t. For example, the Cologne-based group M-cine (comprising pianist Dorothee Haddenbruch and saxophonist Katharina Stashik) performed an original score for Thora van Deken [1920] for our 2024 edition. Since this was an 85-minute feature, and the score was meticulously composed note-for-note in advance, this was a lot of work for them, and it was understandable that they didn’t accompany another film in that year’s programme. The same with Filmsirup, the local group who accompanied The Black Pirate [1926] at the end of the festival. They have quite a complicated set-up because they use electronic instruments as well, so we usually have them play just once. Everyone else played twice, usually a feature and a short. We already found that we were pushing our limits in terms of how many individual musicians and groups we could incorporate with only twenty-one films to go around. We couldn’t include everyone who had previously played at the festival in recent years, and we had no possibility to bring “new” people in.

PC: How do you think you will approach this in future?

OH: I don’t know the answer. I’m sure it will be a discussion point for next year’s festival. In terms of gender balance, I’m quite happy with what we’ve achieved in Bonn so far. We had twenty-one film screenings in our main programme this year. Nine of these (so almost half) had at least one woman playing, which is not bad – though obviously, there’s still room for improvement. I don’t think you should do things purely by numbers, but you should at least have an awareness and try to do better.

PC: Is it difficult having to reject musicians?

OH: It’s very tricky. It’s always unpleasant having to turn down new people, but it’s just as unpleasant, if not more so, when we have to break the news to veterans that they can’t play in a particular year. It’s not the same as having to tell an archive that we can’t screen one of their new restorations in this year’s programme. With musicians it’s much tougher – they’re living people, and this is their livelihood.

PC: Do you choose the films first, or the musicians?

OH: In Bonn, the film selection is usually decided upon first, then we work out who should play for what film in a dialogue between the curators and the management team.

PC: And how do you decide which musician gets which film?

OH: Assigning musicians to films is as much a logistical issue as it is an artistic decision. Of course, we look at who would be suited to what film, and sometimes it’s just super obvious. This year, for example, we knew from the start that Maria do Mar [1930] would be perfectly suited to Stephen Horne and Elizabeth-Jane Baldry. So, to schedule the screening, you need to know when Stephen and Elizabeth-Jane are available. Since we’re bringing them in from abroad, their two performances should ideally be on consecutive nights. This means we can then economize on hotel costs etc. Socially, of course, this is less fun for the musicians. It’s always nice to stay longer and hang out with people and so on, but we always have to compromise. This year I think it all worked out pretty well, and I was very happy with the combinations. There were a couple of films where maybe we should have swapped the order or something, but generally I was very pleased.

PC: Does your timetable allow much flexibility for the sake of live performance?

OH: To a certain degree, we can adjust the screening schedule of our festival in Bonn to fit the musicians’ schedules, but there are limitations. For example, we only have “double features” on Fridays and Saturdays, so there are certain films that can only be screened on those days. Likewise, the films for the opening and closing night screenings tend to be set in stone. For other films in the programme, we’re usually not tied down to a specific date, just as long as the two films are screened the same evening. So, there’s a certain degree of flexibility. For mid-week screenings, we try to remain roughly within a two-hour total runtime, because we’re an open-air festival taking place in summer, so we start very late. When we have introductions to the films beforehand, that automatically extends the duration of the event. Midweek, it’s nice if we can aim to be done before midnight, because then we always have to run tests for the next day and so on. On the weekends, we feel we can afford to go on a bit longer.

PC: Do you try to think of the shape of the week as a whole?

OH: It’s nice if there’s a kind of progression that you can somehow sense, but it isn’t essential. Sometimes, for example, we might pose ourselves the question, what could liven up a quiet Tuesday during the week at Bonn? Then we say, well, maybe let’s put a film by a well-known director that might bring a few people in. With a festival like Bologna, however, programming and scheduling are a bit trickier because there’s much more to consider. You are one piece of a giant jigsaw puzzle. The difference there is that we essentially have all the musicians available more or less all the time. So, then it’s more a case of making sure that the performances are evenly and broadly distributed, making sure that as many different musicians play each day, that no one musician has too much and others in turn too little, and that everyone has a day off at some point.

PC: Do you need to negotiate with other curators at Bologna?

OH: Yes, of course. All the silent film screenings are held in the same venues. But there are several different strands. There’s my “One Hundred Years Ago” strand, and there’s the early cinema strand “A Century of Cinema”, and then there are the new restorations and the rediscoveries, and so on. Many of the issues involved are the same as the ones we have to deal with in Bonn, but on a completely different scale and level of complexity.

PC: At Bologna, there are also larger shows, where silent films are performed with a full orchestra. Are these kinds of events divorced from the rest of kind of programming? I imagine that planning for these performances is very different from what you do when recruiting smaller groups or individual musicians.

OH: Exactly. Those orchestral shows are usually defined way in advance. This is because they involve far more logistics, preparation, and so on.

PC: Beyond these larger aspects of timetabling, do you have a relatively free hand, as far as music goes?

OH: What I personally like about the musical aspect of silent film programming is that it can be seen as a bit of a playground. We can try stuff out and if it doesn’t work, then we know for next time. So-and-so might not be so good with experimental films, so-and-so isn’t very good with challenging psychological dramas, so-and-so isn’t so good with comedy. You learn this kind of thing through experience. Often, it’s just a case of the instrumentation, when you think that a particular kind of sound would be decisive for a particular film. To an extent that predefines who you need – but it doesn’t always mean you get it right. I’m always the first to admit when I was wrong about something, especially when it comes to either the accompaniment or the film itself not working as well as I thought.

PC: Do musicians ever pitch themselves?

OH: Yes, they do. We don’t always bite, sometimes because we know from the outset that it wouldn’t work out logistically (i.e. if the musician or musicians lives too far away for us to be able to cover the necessary travel expenses). What I often find is that people pitch themselves as a package deal, i.e. “here is a film for which I have recently composed a score”. Then we usually have to write back and say that that’s great, but the film was screened too recently at the festival to justify screening it again – or that we’re not interested in screening that film, but would they be interested in doing something else? A notable exception was the screening of Navesni [In Spring, 1929] in Bonn in 2023. We brought over these two Ukrainian musicians, Roksana Smirnova and Misha Kalinin, who had written to us the previous year and had performed their soundtrack to the film at several festivals and venues (they’ve since composed soundtracks for some other Ukrainian silent films). It was a great screening, and they’re great musicians and wonderful people, but like I said it’s the exception rather than the rule.

PC: Do the regular musicians also pitch specific films?

OH: Yes, this can happen from time to time. For example, Maud Nelissen was the one who pitched us Varhaník u sv. Víta [1929] because she had already played for it on several occasions, including HippFest and the San Francisco Silent Film Festival. She contacted us really late on, just as the 2024 programme was nearing completion, but we happened to be one feature short, so it was almost serendipitous. In such cases, it’s clear it would be a massive faux pas to take the film but offer the musical accompaniment to someone else! As a curator, you always want to have good relations with the musicians. Not that we had any cause to even begin to consider the possibility of having anyone else play for this film: Maud’s accompaniment was great, and she (and the film) got a huge ovation at the live screening. was really pleased for her, because silent film audiences can be quite particular, and you can never really be certain in advance how they’re going to react to a specific film or performance, particularly if the film is not well known.

PC: Is that an added pressure?

OH: Oh, yes, and not just for the musicians, also for the curators. The audience always knows best, of course! So when people come up to you after the screenings, it’s always interesting to learn who liked – or, more importantly, didn’t like – what. I always say that if just one person comes up to me after the screening and says something positive, then that’s enough to make me happy. This year, Jûjiro [1928] didn’t go down so well at the live screening in Bonn, I felt, but someone later came and told me it was the best film at the festival. Thank god, I thought! We do it for you, you know.

That was the last of the three parts of my interview with Oliver Hanley. My great thanks to Oliver for taking the time to talk to me, and for correcting the drafts of the transcript of our conversation.

Paul Cuff

Programming silent cinema: An interview with Oliver Hanley (2/3)

This second part of my conversation with Oliver Hanley covers his work as a curator at the film festivals in Bonn and Bologna.

Paul Cuff: Since 2021, you’ve worked alongside Eva Hielscher as co-curator of the Stummfilmtage Bonn. How did you get involved with this festival?

Oliver Hanley: I had a good connection to the festival already. I had attended every year since 2008, and had even brought films to the festival during my time at the Austrian Film Museum in Vienna. So, I was familiar with the programming at Bonn, and when Eva and I took over the curatorship, we tried – and still try – to follow the tradition of our predecessor, Stefan Drößler, whose curatorial work we admired very much. But of course, we also try to bring something new and to show films that would not have been shown previously.

PC: And when did you become involved with Il Cinema Ritrovato in Bologna?

OH: It was already after I became co-curator of the festival in Bonn. In late 2022, I got the offer to curate the “One Hundred Years Ago” strand at Bologna. I was a bit anxious at first at the thought of taking it on, especially being already involved in the Bonn festival at this point, but it seemed like a once in a lifetime opportunity, so I thought: just go for it!

PC: Is doing these two festivals, both taking place during the summer, difficult?

OH: It can be strenuous doing both. There’s about a six-week gap between them, so the preparation for one runs parallel to the other. But in a way, the work is complementary. When I watch films for my Bologna research, I come across films that I think could work in Bonn. Or I take films to Bologna that were shown in Bonn because I know they will work there as well. Besides, I know that my experience at Bonn and Bologna is very privileged. It might be a lot of work, but at the end of the day, I’m programming for two festivals that are approximately a week or ten days long. There are people curating film programmes for film archive cinematheques throughout the entire year! They have to create three shows a day, every day, maybe with a summer break. I can understand that you can’t devote the same amount of care and attention to detail with those programmes that I can when working for the two festivals.

PC: I presume Bonn and Bologna have distinct identifies and aims. Do you need to bear this in mind when curating the material being shown?

OH: Yes. While the festivals have some similarities, they also have their differences and this in turn affects the programming. Bologna, I feel, is very much a festival for cinephiles and specialists, while Bonn is aimed at a much wider and predominantly local public. Bonn is free, it’s all outdoors, and anyone who comes knows it has this forty-year tradition. People will come and watch all the films, but in some cases, these might be the only silent film screenings they attend across the year. In others, you have the obsessive silent film fans from the region who come over to see what they can. At Bonn, we try to go against the grain a little, which has always been the ethos of the festival – but ultimately it must appeal to a wider public. In Bologna, however, I can show things that I would never show in Bonn. For the “One Hundred Years Ago” strand, I need to show newsreel footage for the historical context. At Bonn we sometimes show documentary feature films, but newsreels are very difficult to accommodate. The same goes for things like fragments or incomplete films. The makeup of Bologna, and the existing form of the strand I curate, allows me to incorporate this kind of material more easily. But I essentially apply the same kind of the same curatorial approach to both Bonn and Bologna. You can’t just randomly throw stuff together: you need to have a clear reason for your selections. The films need to work in a kind of dialogue with each other.

PC: Do you always hope to provide clear through-lines across a festival?

OH: This year, more than in previous years, I think it was very obvious in the Bonn programme. Sometimes we made exceptions where we couldn’t really find a connection between the two films we wanted to show each evening and combined them according to other, more pragmatic criteria like running time. But in my Bologna programme the thematic connections between the individual films in the individual screening slots were very evident as well this year.

PC: What kind of programmes work best?

OH: Very simple themes work best because I think they give you the most freedom as a curator to explore things. And it makes the programme varied enough that you don’t have the feeling you’re watching the same film or variations on the same film. In Bonn this year, for example, we had films themed around the mountains or the sea, or films about filmmaking. On the first Friday we had two feature films where one of the main characters is blind, at least for part of the film. Just finding these little connections allows you to put very disparate films together. And in Bologna I had a couple of country-based programmes. For example, I combined a Swiss feature film, which picked up on the hype of the very first Winter Olympics, with an Arnold Fanck short film that was shot in Switzerland, and with a newsreel showing the last Turkish caliph in Swiss exile. I also did a Russian-themed programme, where I started with newsreel footage of the funeral of Lenin in 1924, then some rare footage of Anna Pavlova dancing for Douglas Fairbanks, and finally a completely obscure Russian film, Dvorec i krepost’ (The Palace and the Fortress, 1924). The latter wasn’t an exceptionally good film, but it was very successful in its day. Another major reason to show it was because a pristine print of the German version survived here at the Federal Archives. It was a nitrate print, tinted and toned, which you almost never see in Soviet cinema. So, just because a film may not be particularly good, this doesn’t mean there still isn’t a good reason to show it. The experience is what counts. And I am always grateful when people talk about how well the programme worked afterwards.

PC: Do you always have to consider the specific copies of films you want to show?

OH: Yes. It’s not just a question of curating film titles. You’re really curating film prints. There can be any number of good reasons to show a film. It could be we just really like the film. Or we know that where a particularly good print is located. Or we have determined the film to be in the public domain, so we didn’t have to pay any exorbitant fees to third-party copyright holders to show it. The list goes on.

PC: Does this aspect of organization differ between festivals?

OH: My experiences as a curator are very different for Bologna and for Bonn. Bologna is probably the most important film heritage festival in Europe, if not the world, and I’m just one of many curators. And there are other people on staff that take care of specific things. So, here I don’t book the prints or clear the screening rights myself because there are other people who take care of that. Whereas in Bonn, where we are a comparatively small team, we curators also liaise with archival loans departments or distributors, and negotiate with the rights holders directly. So, while programming for both festivals has a lot of similarities on the one hand, there are also differences. In the case of Bonn, this is particularly because of the hybrid format, live and streamed, which means we are very conscious about finding films that we can stream online without any issues. This form of digital accessibility is very important for the festival because it brings our programme to a much larger audience.

PC: Does digital technology pose extra problems for you, or are there advantages?

OH: There are pros and cons in every case. I’m not one of these dogmatic people who say film must always be shown on film. I think digital is a fantastic tool for making films available. And digital technology has enabled restorations of films that would never have been possible solely through analogue means. So I’m very grateful for that. From a technical perspective for us as a festival, the great thing about digital projection is this ability to record music live, because you’re guaranteed that at the end of the process it will sync up with the image perfectly. Whereas with an analogue projection you never know. So, we haven’t risked it yet – yet! Anything we screen on 35mm, we pre-record the music for the streamed version in the theatre auditorium at the cultural centre where our festival office is based. This usually takes place in the afternoon before the screening.

PC: You mentioned the rights issue being another complicating factor. What are the challenges this aspect poses for curatorship?

OH: For Bonn, we will focus a lot on films that are deemed out of copyright or in the public domain, which can simplify matters somewhat. But we have made good experiences with some copyright holders such as the Friedrich-Wilhelm-Murnau-Stiftung (e.g. for Der Berg des Schicksals [1924]) or the Fondation Jérôme Seydoux-Pathé (e.g. for La Femme et le pantin [1929]). The point is that we need to ensure that we have great films on our programme, but it often takes time until we know for definite that we can present a film on-site and online without any big repercussions. There are always exceptions. This year we closed the on-site festival with The Black Pirate [1926] in MoMA’s beautiful new restoration. We didn’t pass up on it even though it wasn’t possible for us to stream it in the end, because we knew it would work perfectly for our open-air format with the huge screen and live music. Thinking about it pragmatically, I’m sure there will be a Blu-ray release of MoMA’s restoration at some point in time, and people can see it at home then.

PC: As a curator, how do you see the relationship between the festival as offered on-site and the festival presented online?

OH: It’s a difficult balance. This year we streamed ten of the twenty-one films we screened at our on-site festival, so one each day, which I think is manageable, both for us organizers as well as for the viewers. We’ve had more films online in past editions, but at some point it just becomes too much for people to actually sit and follow at home. I think we made a good call when we decided not to stream any of the short films. Because you also want to make sure people come to the live shows, and that only at the live festival do you get the full programme. And of course, online and on-site are just very, very different experiences.

PC: Does the hybrid format of a festival change how the films are received?

OH: Yes. It’s always fascinating when live and online audiences have totally different opinions of the same films. For example, last year we screened Pozdorovljaju z perechodom [Congratulation on your Promotion, 1932], a very obscure Ukrainian children’s movie. We chose it for various reasons, including to show our solidarity with the Ukrainian people. But it’s the work of a completely unknown female director, Їvha Hryhorovyč, so it was a real rediscovery. It also isn’t a great film. Our live screening wasn’t one of the better attended, and the reception was rather lukewarm, but we still had comparatively strong streaming figures. This year, both yourself and Paul Joyce wrote very positive reviews about Jûjiro [1928], the Japanese film that we screened. But I had people coming up to me after the screening in Bonn who couldn’t fathom why we had screened it. Maybe it was just the vibe of the live screening, or maybe the film was just too intense for them. So, I was so glad to read your reviews later where you really praised the film.

PC: Since the easing of restrictions after the various lockdowns, some festivals have cut back on the amount of online content they offer. For example, the Ufa-Filmnächte festival in Berlin streamed their films for free during the pandemic and beyond, until 2023 – but now this service has ceased. What do you think the future is for the streaming of festivals more generally? Is it a sustainable model for the future?

OH: Well, it’s hard to give a kind of all-encompassing answer to that question. I think from the outset that were very different attitudes from festivals toward streaming. For example, on one extreme you had festivals which took the attitude of waiting until the pandemic was over so they could take place as on-site events as normal. Then you had others that went completely virtual. And others which tried to offer the best of both worlds while still respecting the increased health and safety restrictions that were in place at the time. When the restrictions were eventually lifted, several festivals that had been quick to offer virtual solutions just as quickly gave that up.

PC: Pordenone is one of the few major festivals to have continued a major streaming service.

OH: Yes. I think what festivals like Pordenone experienced with the streaming was that it tapped into potential new audiences. When Pordenone staged its “online limited edition” as a replacement for that year’s on-site festival, which couldn’t take place because of the pandemic, they ended up with something like twice as many subscribers as they would normally have accredited guests.

PC: And the Bonn model?

OH: At Bonn, of course, we’re somewhat different to, say, Pordenone, because no one pays any money to see the films, either at the on-site festival or online. This not only means we don’t have any revenue, but can also lead to other obstacles. For example, some people are concerned about piracy, and there’s an attitude that if something is made available for free then that also makes it easier to steal. On the one hand, I can understand the concern, as a lot of money goes into restoring the films and the institutions might be under pressure to try to recoup some of that money, but I also think it’s a bit of a shame as it restricts access to cultural heritage. And, of course, it’s not free for us to make the films available for free. On the contrary. The streaming platform is a major cost factor, but it’s just one of several. There’s also the additional cost of the sound recordist, for example, which we wouldn’t have if we were a purely on-site festival.

PC: Do you hope to be able to keep your hybrid format in the future?

OH: Bonn is maybe a relatively small silent film festival compared to the likes of Pordenone, but our hybrid approach has got us on people’s radars, and this is why we will continue to offer films for free streaming online as long as we can. But there may come a point in time where it won’t be feasible anymore.

PC: Is there a tension between wanting to promote film heritage and the need to restrict access to content?

OH: This is the irony. Just because more and more things are available digitally doesn’t make it easier for us. Actually, it can sometimes feel like the contrary. In addition to the aforementioned concerns about piracy, the additional costs for the provision of streaming materials and rights can sometimes be prohibitive. In others, it’s just not possible to license worldwide. While we strive to make everything we stream available worldwide, we’ve had to make exceptions in a limited number of cases where we could only be granted streaming rights for Germany. In the case of one film we were very keen to show in Bonn last year, we were compelled to drop it in the end because the archive which held the film had just signed a Blu-ray deal with a distributor in the US. This deal ruled out the possibility for us to stream the film. Nowadays, Blu-ray companies are very savvy about acquiring streaming rights for their territories as well.

PC: Given all these factors, I presume that offering a streaming service puts added pressure on the staff and resources of festivals. Is that your experience at Bonn?

OH: It’s a massive strain, not only in terms of the additional man-power and know-how required, but also because it all has to be carried out within the existing budgetary framework, which is still based on pre-pandemic times before streaming became a thing. That’s why for a number of years we had to forego a printed brochure. We only brought it back this year because we ran a successful crowdfunding campaign to finance it. Costs are forever going up, while funding for cultural endeavours is constantly at risk of being reduced or cut altogether.

PC: How does the actual process, the workflow, function for streaming films? Who handles it all?

OH: In the first place, we don’t do live streaming. Films are not streamed online simultaneous to live screening. We have everything planned out and prepared in advance, and when the music recording is ready, I put audio and video together and we upload the films to the streaming platform’s back-end server. It helps that I had a background working a lot with digital file wrangling and AV mastering and so on. I do all that myself, which I suppose is a bit crazy. But it’s also a bit of a guilty pleasure, so I don’t complain about it too much! It’s also positive in the sense that it helps build trust with the lending institutions. I can guarantee them that the video files don’t leave my hands until the point in time when they are uploaded to the platform’s server. The musicians and the subtitler receive heavily compressed screeners with a big fat time code rendered into them. No-one gets the clean video image apart from the server. So, it’s useful, particularly when we were dealing with new institutions, to be able to show them the workflow and demonstrate that we take active steps to restrict the possibilities of things being pirated as much as we can.

PC: From a different perspective, there are now major archives – like the Danish Film Institute or the Swedish Film Institute – that offer a lot of their holdings for free online. But these versions are often entirely without soundtrack or accompanying material. They’re not offering a full aesthetic experience, they are just offering access. Is this an entirely different model to that of festival streaming?

OH: What these institutes offer online is an unmediated form of access, at least in comparison to a cinema or festival screening. Of course, as a research tool, these platforms can be considered veritable goldmines, and I have benefitted a LOT from them in my own curatorial work. It’s a fantastic service, but not always a pleasurable viewing experience due to the lack of music or English subtitles in applicable cases. Putting silent films online without music might be good for certain formats – non-fiction, short form – but not for features. My dream would be that we make as many of the films that we have presented in the Bonn programme available online permanently – with the music. The problem is that, while the films have already been digitized and the soundtracks have already been recorded, there are still additional expenses involved in making the films available online outside of the festival streaming period. And unfortunately there are next to no funding opportunities for such endeavours.

PC: Again, I wonder how satisfying this model would be. Do you feel Bonn should have this kind of permanent presence, this recorded archive of live events? Isn’t there something uncapturable about a festival? How do you look back at what you achieved each year?

OH: As soon as the festival’s over, your mind is usually already pre-occupied with the next festival. But there’s a period of a couple of weeks where I do the digital housekeeping, backing up the master audio files and deleting all the huge video files amassed in the run up to and during the festival, but not before running off low quality reference videos to send to the musicians and to the archives for posterity. Doing this puts me back in the festival for a little while. I listen to the music again and think how nice it was, and that it’s really a pity that this material can only be experienced by audiences for a fleeting moment – and then it’s gone. But that’s cinema, right?