Tag: Stummfilmtage Bonn

Programming silent cinema: An interview with Oliver Hanley (1/3)

To start off the new year, I’m doing something a little different. At the end of August 2024, I watched the streamed content of the Stummfilmtage Bonn. In the wake of my series of posts, I was contacted by Oliver Hanley, the co-curator of the festival. He wrote to answer the question I posed about the legal limitations of streaming, and his response encouraged me to ask more questions. Oliver was kind enough to have a longer conversation with me, the transcript of which is the basis of the three pieces that I will post across this week. We spoke about his background, his work at Bonn and Bologna, and about the difficulties and pleasures of curating a silent film festival. In this first part, we talk about Oliver’s route into curatorship…

Paul Cuff: I want to start with a quite basic question. How did you get involved in festivals and programming, and did you always have an interest in silent cinema in particular?

Oliver Hanley: We have to go a bit back to answer that question. I’ve always been interested in things from the past, from before my time. I think I first got into silent film through comedy, the big names like Chaplin and Keaton, etc. Then from there, I somehow progressed to German expressionism. I’m not entirely sure if that came from an interest in German culture or it was the other way around.

PC: Were you aware of silent cinema in broader culture when you were growing up?

OH: Being born in the mid-1980s and growing up in the UK, I was fortunate enough to catch the last of the Channel 4 silents on UK television. I remember the first one I watched was The Phantom of the Opera [1925/1929] in 1995. And then they brought out Nosferatu [1922] the following year with the James Bernard score. I was lucky to see these films when I was reaching my late teens, which also corresponded with more and more silent films being available on DVD in decent quality. For example, I’d already known Metropolis from truly, truly awful VHS copies, so when I got a chance to see the (then) most recent restoration [from 2001], it was really a revelation for me.

PC: And at what point did you realize that you wanted to become actively involved with film culture?

OH: It was clear I wanted to devote my professional life to cinema. Naïvely, I initially wanted to be a filmmaker and thought I would become rich and famous. And either through ignorance or lack of good advice, I came to the conclusion that if you wanted to be a filmmaker, you need to do film studies! That’s how I ended up in Canterbury at the University of Kent doing the film studies programme there.

PC: Did experiences at university shape your ideas about a career?

OH: It was a combination of different factors. In the first instance, I didn’t have a good experience in the practical courses that I was doing. They put me off that for life. Second was that I volunteered at the campus cinema, which gave me the opportunity to see films there for free. They would show a lot of the BFI touring packages, for example new prints of Visconti and Fellini films, and a big Michael Powell season on the occasion of the centenary of his birth. But I was quite surprised that I would very rarely see my fellow film studies students at the repertory screenings. They would all go to see the contemporary art house stuff that was all the rage at the time. Films like Donnie Darko and Mulholland Dr. would be quite well attended, but not older stuff. I remember sitting in this empty theatre, watching masterpieces in beautiful prints, and wondering why no one was there. I really thought that this was a shame.

PC: Did you experience any silent films through these kinds of screenings?

OH: No, there was very little silent programming. But I had a very sympathetic lecturer on one of the courses who was also passionate about silent cinema. At this point in time, my main outlet for exploring silent cinema was DVD, and I would collect them like mad.

PC: Did this also give you an interest in the archival side of things?

OH: Yes, I read and watched a lot about how complicated it can be to restore film. I loved the idea of scouring the whole world and tracking down all the different elements and putting them together. I was fascinated by what Robert A. Harris did for Lawrence of Arabia, for example, and by what Photoplay Productions was doing for silent films. That was really what I wanted to do. But there was always that element of wanting to do it so that people would actually see the final result. Like you, I was at the screening of Napoléon [1927] in the Royal Festival Hall in December 2004. That was really, really something!

PC: After your undergraduate degree, what did you decide to do?

OH: All these early experiences shifted my focus towards wanting to devote myself more to making sure that the film heritage – especially the silent film heritage – would survive. It was the lecturer at the university who pushed me to do what was then the relatively new specialist course at the University of Amsterdam: the professional masters in Preservation and Presentation of the Moving Image. This was my stepping stone to continental Europe. I had said that I really wanted to focus on German film and asked if there would be a way I could do an internship or some unpaid volunteer work at a film archive somewhere. She recommended me to do the masters programme instead, because that’s where people will be sought after. I can’t necessarily say that this was exactly how it turned out, because jobs in this field are few and far between. Certainly, it’s an advantage to have this kind of background, but you still have to fight. Every year there are new graduates on the market, and the market is always getting smaller.

PC: If Amsterdam was your stepping stone, where did you go from there?

OH: Via the Amsterdam programme I ended up interning in Frankfurt at the Deutsches Filminstitut and helped with various tasks in the film archive, including a restoration project, and various contributions to DVD editions. What was important for me was that it changed my perspective. Before, I had been what you might call very canon-oriented: Lang, Murnau etc. This is all great, but my experience in Frankfurt opened my eyes to what was beyond the canon. I learned to appreciate the unknown, what film history really has to offer. At this point, I changed tack and started questioning why we are so focussed on the classics, when there is all this great other stuff around. This is something that continues to influence me in my work right up to this day, for example in our Bonn programming. Particularly with German films, we try to push the lesser-known works rather than the big names. This can also tie in with the restorations being done by certain institutions.

PC: Did your time at the Deutsches Filminstitut encourage you towards curatorship?

OH: Actually, I wanted to go more into the technical side of things and do laboratory training. This didn’t work out, which I think was for the best because I’m not really a technician. I understand a lot of the technical processes and have been quite fortunate to get into the scene before analogue was being phased out. When I started, digital technology was up and coming in the archival and restoration fields, but no archive could really afford it. The big studios were going digital, but no one else. Now it’s completely different. At the time, I gained background experience with analogue, which is good because I think it’s important to know both.

PC: If you didn’t end up going into laboratory work, where did you want to go?

OH: After graduating from my Masters studies, I moved to Berlin and managed to get on board a project at the Deutsche Kinemathek. I came expecting to stay only three months – and ended up staying three years, moving from project to project wherever there was funding and work needing doing, but my dream was to become a film restorer. Back then,I think my idea of a film restorer was still Kevin Brownlow, who is actually more of a historian who restores films. But that is still what interests me most about the process: the research, comparing different versions, putting together what might be a representative edition of a film. When it moves into the technical procedure, I’m a bit more hands off. Obviously, I supervise the grading and transfer etc, but the most exciting part is over for me.

PC: After your experiences in Germany, you went to Vienna. How did that happen?

OH: At that time, there was very little money for film restoration in Germany. In 2011, I got an offer to start working at the Film Museum in Vienna. I was brought in to take over the task of curating their DVD series, which was something that had always fascinated me. DVDs had been my gateway to the film heritage, and I loved watching the extras. So, the Vienna job was a dream come true. But I also helped build up the museum’s streaming presence. We had very, very limited means, so we were looking to see how to get parts of the collection online without it costing any money. For example, we digitized newsreels that had been transferred to U-matic video tape in the 1980s. You didn’t have to worry about it being 4K or anything like that, it was just a case of dusting off our old U-matic tape player to get these films transferred and put online for the sake of access.

PC: Did you envision doing this kind of work permanently?

OH: I was more and more keen on getting into the restoration process. The museum had a complete digital post-production workflow in house. It was very small, very artisan level – we were just doing a couple of projects each year. But it enabled me to become more involved in selecting some of the films or supervising projects at a managerial level. The museum had quite an interesting collection of nitrate prints of obscure German silents, but the films didn’t really fit the museum’s curatorial profile. (They have a very strong connection to the avant-garde experimental film scene, to Soviet cinema, to American independent cinema, and so on.) Nevertheless, we were able to do some very cool projects at that time, including one with funding from the World Cinema Project, and some of these restorations then ended up on the DVDs I was producing. At the same time, whenever I could, I would investigate their nitrate collection. But it was difficult for the museum itself to restore this material. By this period, around 2015-16, money was finally being made available in Germany to digitize the German film heritage.

PC: So there more opportunity for the kind of work you wanted to do in Germany?

OH: I was in Vienna for five years. By the end of my time there, I had reached a point where I had done everything that I could with the means that were available. I was worried that I was just going to start repeating myself. But in 2016, I got the offer to come to work at the Film University in Babelsberg, where I still live, just outside of Berlin and home to the famous film studio. The Film University – Germany’s oldest film school – had set up a heritage programme at the end of 2015, modelled somewhat on the one I had taken in Amsterdam, and I was brought in to teach at Babelsberg in 2016.

PC: After all your experiences in archives and museums, was it strange going back to teaching?

OH: I felt like a change. And years of being involved with practical work, I felt – in an idealistic way – that I was returning to teach the next generation. I was able to bring my experience into teaching, but also my network that I had built up over many years.

PC: How did your earlier experiences shape your teaching?

OH: In the first instance, we did visits to archives and yearly excursions to Il Cinema Ritrovato in Bologna. But I also got some wonderful people in the industry to come to us and do guest lectures: Jay Weissberg, who runs the Pordenone Silent Film Festival, for example.

PC: It sounds like a very rewarding combination!

OH: Of course, working for the university also had its less glamorous side, and there were several administrative duties. I did the website, the newsletter, and so on. But you had a lot of freedom and a lot of access to resources, especially for academic events and various collaborations. We have our own film museum here, Filmmuseum Potsdam, with its own cinema, and we would regularly do events together. These were linked to my classes, so it was a requirement for students to attend.

PC: What kind of events were these?

OH: In my case, it was almost always a silent film event. I would get the funding through the “ZeM”, the Brandenburg Centre for Media Studies, and that would cover the cost to do a silent film screening with live music, and a guest speaker who would then do a lecture during the day. The first such event we did was Das Cabinet des Dr. Caligari [1920]. We brought over the restorer, Anke Wilkening, to talk about her work on the film, and Olaf Brill, a German film historian. Brill’s book about the film, Der Caligari Komplex [2012], does an amazing job using primary written sources to try to quash the legends that had built up over time, and to reconstruct who was responsible for what during the writing and production.  Yes, the film is a German classic, we’ve seen it a million times, and we all think we know it inside out. But both his research and her restoration enabled us in different ways to see the film in a completely new light. That was kind of the focus, and every second semester we would repeat this concept as much we could.

PC: What other events stick out for you?

OH: The year after Dr Caligari, we did Der Golem [1920]. This was a curious case because two different institutions in Germany, the Friedrich-Wilhelm-Murnau-Stiftung and the Filmmuseum München, were doing two different restorations concurrently. But that was extremely interesting because the two restorations followed completely different concepts. Filmmuseum München’s restoration benefitted from the major discovery of the film’s original score by Hans Landsberger. Landsberger only did four film scores, and I think all of them were at that time considered lost. But Richard Siedhoff, a silent film accompanist over here, came across the score for Der Golem in a German archive (seemingly no-one had thought to look before!). It wasn’t the complete orchestral score, but a reduced conductor’s score that Siedhoff then re-orchestrated. This version was shown recently on German television.

PC: How did you try to use archival material – familiar or otherwise – to engage your students with film history?

OH: Just before Covid hit, we did our biggest event – a series of lectures and screenings in about five parts. It took a completely alternative approach to the idea of the canon. We’re completely oversaturated with these “definitive” restorations, so I wanted us to look at the (by now) lesser known and – in some cases – quite bizarre re-release versions of German silent classics from different periods in German history. For example, we showed Die zwölfte Stunde [1930], which is a re-release of Nosferatu essentially as a sound film. The soundtrack doesn’t survive, but the rest of the film remains complete. We showed this version because it contains interesting changes, including some extended sequences with footage that was shot for the re-release. When you watch it as a silent film – and we showed it with live music – it can be a bit weird, but it still works. Something else we showed was from 1932-33, the crossover from the Weimar Republic to Nazi Germany. At this time, they re-released the first part of Die Nibelungen [1924] with a soundtrack. The significant thing about that soundtrack is that Gottfried Huppertz, who did the original score for Nibelungen, for Metropolis [1927], and for Zur Chronik von Grieshuus [1925], personally rearranged and conducted the recorded version for the re-release. The other interesting thing about it is that it was created not as a precursor to what was going to happen in Germany, but to mark the fiftieth anniversary of the death of Wagner. And so Huppertz incorporated Wagner’s themes into his original composition. It’s a bit of a mix of Wagner and Huppertz, but it’s a fascinating document.

PC: How easy was it to get hold of prints of these non-canonical versions?

OH: We had to put a lot of effort into screening Die Nibelungen because there’s no screenable print available of the 1932-33 version. The FWMS had done a preservation on film, but they had not made a screenable print. But we convinced them to send the preservation negative to our university to be scanned (since we were working for a state-of-the-art film school, naturally we had our own film scanner!). From the raw scan files, I then prepared the digital version for our little screening, knowing that it wasn’t restored – or even graded properly – but at least we could see the film this way. We also showed Die weiße Hölle vom Piz Palü [1929] in its “talkie” re-release version of 1935.

PC: What about more recent re-releases? Did they feature in this series?

OH: Yes. There was this company called Atlas in the 1960s that began by distributing art house films in Germany (Bergman, Antonioni, etc.). But they also re-released old films and they did a series of silent films in the mid-1960s with synchronized scores. We showed one of these because they’re very of their time, especially with the music. There is a version of Dr Mabuse [1922] with music by Konrad Elfers, from 1964, which you could imagine being a score to a kind of Euro James Bond rip-off! We also showed a television version of Dr Caligari from the 1970s with a score by Karl-Ernst Sasse, a very well-known composer who scored a lot of DEFA films, among other things. Inevitably, we crowned the series with Giorgio Moroder’s Metropolis [1984], which – I must admit – is a guilty pleasure of mine. And not just mine, it seems, as there wasn’t an empty seat in the house!

PC: Did organizing this series influence what you subsequently did at festivals?

OH: In my professional career, I had always straddled the preservation and access side of archival work, but up until this point I had mainly focused on providing access through digital media, DVDs, online. When I started doing these live cinema screening events, it was the shape of things to come for me, because it’s more or less what I do now with the festivals. I still have one foot in the preservation side of things, because I supervise a limited number of digital restorations. It’s good to be on both sides of the process.

PC: Do you think you would always have ended up as a programmer of films for festivals?

OH: In a way, I think it’s very logical that I’ve ended up where I am. From that early experience in the university cinema, right the way through to Bonn and Bologna – it’s all been about getting films to people. It was a long time before I got to where I am now. What’s the famous phrase? It took me fifteen years to become an overnight success! But I’ve been very fortunate.

Bonn from afar (2024, day 10)

Day 10 already! (To be fair, it was about ten days ago now.) Our final film from Bonn comes from France, and it’s one that I confess to have had on my shelf for three years, unwrapped and unwatched. I suppose one of the functions of a festival is chivvy you to see things you’ve never quite got round to watching at home. (Even if, thanks to the miracle of streaming, I am still watching it at home…)

La femme et le pantin (1929; Fr.; Jacques de Baroncelli)

The film is one of several famous, and not-so-famous, adaptations of Pierre Louÿs’ eponymous novel (1898). The plot is inspired by a Goya painting (“El pelele”, 1791-92) of four women capriciously throwing a man-size doll into the air. In the film’s opening scene, we see this painting come to life. After this little prelude, we are introduced to Don Mateo (Raymond Destac), a Don Juan-ish figure “known throughout Spain”, who is travelling by train when he meets Conchita (Conchita Montenegro). She catches his eye when she fights with another woman and Mateo helps separate them. Months later, the pair meet again at a party thrown by Don Mateo at his “palace” in Seville. Conchita flirts with him and invites him to find her at home with her mother. Mateo does so, tries it on, is rejected – and then invited back another time. He falls in love but is jealous. He wins favour with Conchita’s mother by giving her money, saying he will marry Conchita. However, Conchita sees the money changing hands and tells him never to come again. Mateo tries to distract himself from the memory of Conchita, but their paths cross again in Conchita’s new home in Seville. She tells Mateo that she loves him, and he swears by the Madonna that he will never leave her. But no sooner are these words spoken than a rival suitor turns up, the very man who made Mateo jealous before. Another rift, another reconciliation. Conchita arrives chez Mateo and he shows her around (she wants to see the bedroom first). But then she leaves him a note saying that he doesn’t love her so she’s leaving. Mateo goes travelling, arriving in Cadiz – which is where Conchita happens to be, along with her rival suitor. Mateo watches her dance, then Conchita approaches and flirts. He threatens to kill her, and she laughs him off, telling him that she no longer loves him. But a note of tenderness suggests that she may still have feelings. It’s enough for Mateo to hope once more. But soon he realizes that she is performing a naked dance for select clients upstairs. He watches, furious and entranced, from the window – but then he bursts in, chases out the clients, and threatens Conchita. Once again, she accuses him of not really loving her. She demands that he make her rich, to be “worthy” of him. So they get engaged and he smothers her with finery. He buys her a palace and she wishes to be the first to enter to receive him. But when he arrives at midnight, she shows off her finery through the bars of the gate – and then, laughing, tells Mateo to leave. “You’re not worthy to kiss my foot!” Mateo claws at the gate, his hands bleeding, until he sees Conchita embrace another, younger, man. She tells him that this man is worthless, but she adores him. Mateo retreats to a dance hall. The old rival turns up and boasts of the money Conchita gave him. But it turns out that the “rival” is already engaged, and he was being used by Conchita to make Mateo jealous. “All Seville is laughing at you!” Conchita turns up again, flirting, laughing, contemptuous. Mateo knocks her down, but she draws a knife. He hits her repeatedly. She laughs, says she’s sorry, says she’s his.  A year later, at the Seville cabaret. Mateo reports that his happiness lasted two weeks, that Conchita was “a devil” and he left her six months ago. But there she is again, dancing. He sends her a note, saying he forgives her and will kiss her feet. She gives the note to her new suitor. Mateo’s gesture of fury dissolves into that of Goya’s doll. The doll is thrown, then plummets to earth in a heap. FIN.

At the end of my teens, Pierre Louÿs seemed very exotic and risqué. I encountered him first through Claude Debussy’s various adaptations of his 1894 collection Les Chansons de Bilitis (composed 1897-1914). To someone who had led a sheltered life in the countryside, Louÿs’ louche, sensual work was at first appealing – and faintly sinister. The 1920s edition of his complete works that I bought was replete with lurid art deco illustrations and an aura of faded decadence. Faced with this veritable brick of a book, I soon realized that the contents were not my cup of tea. I trudged through a chunk of it, but eventually gave up. It sat on respective generations of shelving before I sold it, as though to cleanse myself of Louÿs. Since then, though never consciously, I’ve avoided all other incarnations of his work: from songs (Charles Koechlin) and opera (Arthur Honegger) to cinema. Though there have been several adaptations of La femme et le pantin, Josef von Sternberg’s The Devil is a Woman (1935) and Luis Buñuel’s Cet obscur objet du désir (1977) are famous independent of their literary source. I confess that I’ve never been particularly drawn to either (in terms of stardom) Marlene Dietrich or (in terms of mid-twentieth century European auteurs) Buñuel, which I’m sure condemns me for all eternity in the eyes of many. (I think the sheer fact of their centrality to the cinematic canon lessened my interest. As someone who always wants to write about what they love, I always feel put off by stars or directors who have already accumulated generations of literature. I never feel at home in a crowd.) Nevertheless, I preface my comments on Baroncelli’s film by this admission because it means that I come to La femme et le pantin with eyes undazzled by later adaptations. It was even with a faintly guilty sense of familiarity that I recognized in this film both the old attractions and the old frustrations of its source material. I realize how odd it sounds for someone my age (still, just, under 40) to feel more familiar with Pierre Louÿs than with Luis Buñuel, but such is my bizarre cultural pedigree.

So, the film. Firstly, it looks sumptuous. The opening exteriors of the train crossing the snowy mountains are stunning, and there are some gorgeous glimpses of Seville and the Spanish coast. But the rest of the film is overwhelmingly set within complex interior spaces. Baroncelli goes to great lengths to provide windows, doors, grilles, bars, ironwork, glasswork to frame (and frustrate) Mateo in his encounters with Conchita. His two “palaces” offer fantastical décor, replete with fountains outside (a crucial motif, as Conchita literally and figuratively washes her hands) and luxurious dens within. It all looks like some fabulous art deco fantasy, with endless open halls, vanishing corridors, skin-lined floors, tapestry-lined walls, Moorish columns and arches… The first party we see at his palace features the women wearing Velasquez-inspired dresses, which are extraordinarily eye-catching. Yes, indeed, this is an exquisitely mounted film. The photography, too, is absolutely superb. The lighting is impeccable, the shadows and framing and compositions are incredible – just going through the film again to take some captures, I find myself purring over all the beautiful images.

The two stars of La femme et le pantin were unfamiliar to me, and glancing at their filmographies neither seems to have featured in too many well-known productions – or had especially extended screen careers. Appearing as her namesake, I found Conchita Montenegro very appealing. She’s as charming, lithe, and sensuous as one could wish for – and quick to smile or laugh or change her mood and slip away from one’s grasp. If there are very few moments of empathy or emotion in her performance, it’s because that’s what her character dictates. I did not, ultimately, warm to her because I’m not meant to – she is (per Buñuel’s later title) that obscure object of desire. As for Raymond Destac, I likewise admired him in a somewhat distant way. Like Conchita, Don Mateo is an opaque character. We’re not meant to like him, he’s a kind of cipher for the masculine desire to conquer and possess. He’s perfectly good, but he has absolutely no depth. The trouble is, he’s not even interesting as an opacity or a surface. He fulfils his dramatic function admirably. Am I damning with faint praise? I don’t mean to, but this is precisely the kind of film that has never appealed to me. (See my previous efforts to like the films of Marcel L’Herbier.) La femme et le pantin is a lucid dream, or nightmare, in which nothing can be attained or achieved. I recall again those pages of Pierre Louÿs. Shady narrators telling stories of ungraspable women in luxurious, sinister nocturnal haunts. Well-appointed interiors and frustrated desires… Like I said, not my cup of tea.

Oh dear, oh dear, is this all I have to say? Am I simply failing as a critic? As an exercise in controlled style, I gladly acknowledge that La femme et le pantin is an exceedingly good film. Everything about it works. I could see and understand what it was doing and why, but at nearly two hours it’s quite a sustained exercise in disappointment. There are only so many variations on the theme of “man stands in ornate mise-en-scène while being unable to access woman” that I found interesting. The narrative is deliberately repetitive and inconclusive. I suppose the point of it all – and the novelty – is that the spectator is as curiously unsatisfied as the male protagonist within the film. The story is essentially that of Carmen, but without the literal and symbolic penetration of the woman at the end – the final, fatal stabbing that ends the original story, together with Bizet’s opera and the multiple film versions. (I write about Ernst Lubitsch’s adaptation of 1918 here.) Louÿs’ version of this story removes all the dirt and sweat, distinguishing itself by an aura of exquisite refinement and controlled perversity. So too with Baroncelli’s film. It’s cool, detached, stylishly aloof. No doubt it is simply my own taste that sits at odds with the film. Just as I wearied of page after page of exquisitely elusive suggestiveness with Louÿs, so did I ultimately with Baroncelli’s highly competent adaptation.

Finally, a word on the restoration of La femme et le pantin, which was undertaken by the Fondation Jerome Seydoux-Pathé in 2020 – and released on DVD/Blu-ray in 2021. The music for the Bonn presentation of La femme et le pantin was the original score by Edmond Lavagne, Georges van Parys, and Philippe Parès, arranged and orchestrated (for a small ensemble) by Günter A. Buchwald. (Thankfully, this same score is also presented on the DVD/Blu-ray.) It was a lovely, elegant, Spanish-inflected score, which follows the rhythm of the film fluently and convincingly. In a curious way, its charm and easy functionality suited the cool tone of the film. I wonder what the original composers made of the film’s tone, and to what extent they consulted Baroncelli. I could easily imagine something sharper and crueller being composed, especially for a full orchestra, which would have been a more fully engaged (more interpretive, interventionist) accompaniment.

Since seeing this restoration, I have also tracked down a previous restoration by Pathé Télévision from 1997, which was broadcast on ARTE and released on DVD in France as an extra on an old edition of Cet obscur objet du désir. This has a score by Marco Dalpane for similar forces to those used by Lavagne/Parys/Parès, and with a very similar language and tone. Title font aside, the 1997 and 2020 restorations are virtually identical – save for one significant difference. The montage of Conchita’s naked dance sequence is slightly more elaborate in the 1997 restoration, and – most crucially – climaxes with a shot that appears only briefly in the 2020 restoration. In the 1997 restoration, Conchita appears superimposed within a champagne bottle, turning around and showing her entire body (i.e. front-on) to the viewer. Having the unreachable form of her naked body appear in the bottle seems to me a much more satisfactory climax (though both “satisfactory” and “climax” are, of course, the opposite of what the vision represents for the on-screen spectators) than in the 2020 restoration. How odd that the shot should be cut, and the montage of the sequence subtly different. The 2020 restoration credits cite “an original nitrate negative” in the Fondation Jerome Seydoux-Pathé collection, but the status of this print in relation to the film’s release history is (to me, anyway) unclear.

Despite this question of completeness (or censorship), this is indeed a beautiful restoration with excellent music. My own reservations about the film should not prevent anyone tracking down the film on home media. This sumptuous, cold, and cruel film isn’t my cup of tea,* but it might be yours.

Paul Cuff

* I see that I have used this phrase three times, which is a failure of linguistic imagination. It’s also misleading, since I don’t even drink tea.

Bonn from afar (2024, days 8 and 9)

Days 8 and 9 and… oh, well we have a problem. Two problems, actually. One is the fault of my past, the other the fault of my present. By way of explanation, let me detail what films were seen by the good folk in Bonn – but not by me…

Day 8: Der Berg des Schicksals (1924; Ger.; Arnold Fanck)

Anyone who does the festival circuit each year must end up encountering the same new restorations in multiple line-ups. Even if you are, like me, limited to online festivals, this can still happen. A case in point is Der Berg des Schicksals. I first saw this film in August 2022 via the (streamed) Ufa Filmnächte that year, complete with orchestral score by Florian C. Reithner, performed by the Metropolis Orchestra Berlin. It was a superb presentation with music that fitted the scale, ambition, and scope of Fanck’s film. Lo and behold, I saw it again in October 2023 as part of the (online) Pordenone festival. On that occasion, the film was shown (both in live and streamed formats) with a solo piano accompaniment. I was glad to see the film in better quality than in the version streamed in 2022, but sad that the marvellous orchestral score was not part of the presentation. Come the Stummfilmtage Bonn in 2024, here once more is Der Berg des Schicksals. As at Pordenone, this live/online presentation is not performed with the orchestral score but with piano accompaniment – this time via Neil Brand. Having seen the restoration in both good visual and audio quality (sadly not on the same occasion), I decided I would save my time and skip this film. I know, I know – my first post for the festival even said you (that is, I) must always rewatch a masterpiece when possible. But I miss the orchestral score, and I was already behind schedule. If I was attending in person, this is a film that I would gladly encounter again and again: I would love to see it on the big screen, regardless of accompaniment. But at home, I’m just not interested enough to watch this epic film on a small screen without orchestra. I can only apologize for the snobbery and lack of dedication this attitude represents.

Day 9: Shooting Stars (1928; UK; Anthony Asquith/A.V. Bramble)

Missing Day 8’s film was the fault of past choices, but missing Day 9’s film was the fault of present circumstances. In all honesty, I would possibly have skipped watching Shooting Stars as well. Not that I don’t like the film, but I had seen the film before and my schedule was already overloaded by the time I got to Day 9. However, the choice was taken out of my hands when I read the notice on the Stummfilmtage Bonn streaming page. For legal reasons, this film would be available only to audiences watching (and, I presume, streaming) in Germany. How peculiar. There was no stated reason for this legal restriction, so I’m left to wonder if it was to do with the music or the film itself. (If anyone reading this happens to know the answer, do comment and let me know.) The music that accompanied the BFI DVD/Blu-ray edition of 2016 was by John Altman and I recall it being excellent. But I would have been curious to hear the music performed for the Bonn screening by Meg Morley and Frank Bokius. As it stands, I have neither seen the film nor heard the music. Oh well.

I can promise you that I have indeed seen the content of Day 10 – and I will post my piece about it tomorrow…

Paul Cuff

Bonn from afar (2024, day 7)

Day 7 and we’re off to Portugal for a heady blend of documentary and drama. As is often the case, the films that I’ve not heard of by directors I’ve not encountered turn out to be the best…

Maria do Mar (1930; Pt.; Leitão de Barros)

So then, the plot. Part 1 establishes place (Nazaré and its beach) and characters: Falacha, skipper of the boat Maria do Mar; his wife and his daughter Maria (named after the boat); Ilheu and his wife Aurelia (known as “Ilhôa”) and their son Manuel; the fishermen “Peru” (“the Turkey”) and “Lacraio” (“Scorpio”). Part 2 starts with news that the sea has broken the lines to the nets. Falacha decides his crew must set out in dangerous conditions. The local population gathers on the shore to urge them back, but it is too late: the Maria do Mar is wrecked. Part 3 reveals that Falacha is the sole survivor. He is dragged from the waves but then set upon by the families of the lost crew: they blame him for their unnecessary deaths. He goes to pray, but the widows pursue him: “God will never forgive you!” In despair, Falacha walks into the sea and drowns himself. In Part 4, Maria is now working in the fields and sells her produce in the market of Leira. Thanks to his mother’s intervention, Manuel avoids being conscripted and goes to celebrate with his friends. In Part 5, Maria and her friends from the fields encounter Manuel and his friends on the beach. Maria gets into trouble while swimming, but Manuel rescues her. The incident enflames local tensions, with Ilhôa clashing with Falacha’s widow. Ilhôa consults Patareca, a midwife conversant in witchcraft who places a “curse” on her rival’s doorstep. Falacha’s widow and Ilhôa fight in the street, only to be separated by Manuel and Maria. Part 6 sees Maria defy her mother’s ban and thank Manuel. They meet again, and then every day. Part 7, and the lovers marry. Manuel takes Maria home, but his mother ignores her. “She is the daughter of the man who killed your father! You can keep her – I’m leaving!” In Part 8, Maria’s mother in turn ejects the lovers. They find their own place and transform it into a home. Whereupon, in Part 9, Maria gives birth to a girl. Months later, when both parents are working, the infant is attacked by a rabid dog. Ilhôa refuses to care for it, as does Maria’s mother. At the same time, a girl of the same age is being buried, and the two rivals see the tiny casket being borne past them. Manuel and Maria rush home to find their mothers and all their neighbours gathered in prayer around the cot. The child was not harmed, and a “miracle” of reconciliation takes place. FIM.

This was a superb film. A masterpiece, in fact. It’s a document of a time and a place, and of a people – and it’s a romance, a fable, a beautiful fiction. Filmed entirely on location and featuring numerous extras drawn from the local population, this was an absolute joy to watch. It has a documentary-like sense of life and movement, plenty of handheld camerawork, enhanced with some dynamic editing – from overlapping dissolves to rapid cutting. The opening shots of the town and sea are hypnotically beautiful. I loved seeing the town and the beach, the physical effort of fishing, the manual labour of pulling in the boat, the sweat and sun-darkened skin of the people. When Falacha’s boat heads out into the storm, there are stunning shots of locals, all dressed in black, standing on the cliffs. And when the rescue mission begins, there is an extreme long shot, looking down at the paths toward the beach. The inhabitants of Nazaré are tiny specks against the spectacle of coast and sea. We see them pouring down the hillside, rushing along the beaches, dark silhouettes against the vast white waves.

But Maria do Mar plants us right in the middle of the population, not just at a distance. During the day of the fiestas, for example, we mingle among the crowds for the fireworks, dances, bullfighting. Though the film boasts some sequences of complex montage, here there is a spontaneity to the way the cameras move among the crowd. Barros isn’t afraid to record the shadows cast by the camera or crew, just as he allows some of the children to walk right up to the camera and grin into the lens. Here, and throughout, it’s the faces that are most striking. Ordinary working people, young and old, populate the film – you can read the lives in their clothing, on their faces.

The central cast – mostly professional actors – are plunged into a sea of reality. Such is the lack of artifice in the costuming and make-up that the actors hardly resemble actors. And the way they interact with each other strikes me as being true to life, surprisingly so. For example, when Falacha observes that his daughter “is a woman now”, he touches her breasts and gives her a playful flick around the cheeks, asking her if she has a boyfriend. It’s a startling moment but has the potency of a particular time and place. (I hesitate to say “custom”, but “culture” might fit the behaviour – the way the men touch the women, both in familial and familiar terms.) It also lends the tragedy an air of reality. I believed, absolutely, in the way Falacha prays for forgiveness – and in the furious reaction of the grieving widows – and in the way Falacha kills himself. The latter scene is like something out of ancient tragedy, of myth. Falacha walks towards the sea as his wife and daughter try to grab hold of him by the legs. He wrenches free, the camera hurls itself at the women, screaming, lying in the sand, imploring, and then watches Falacha walk into the surf. The whole town watches. It’s a grim spectacle. No-one stops him, yet everyone grieves – seems to look on in awe at the gesture, at the sacrifice. It’s like a scene from Greek tragedy.

It’s quite something that a film that starts like this can turn into a romance, or that a romance can burgeon from this kind of despair – and that it does so organically, realistically. It helps that the two leads, Maria and Manuel, are such naturalistic, unpretentious performers. They are very striking on screen, without any sense of artificiality – the aesthetic whiff of stardom. The sequence in which they meet is extraordinary. Already the women have stripped off to their underlayer of plain linen skirts and top, while the men have rolled up their trousers and jettisoned their tops. In the women’s boat, the camera emphasizes the labour of rowing while also drawing attention to the sweat and bared skin of the rowers. When Manuel rescues Maria, the sense of danger quickly becomes erotic. He is half naked, and her top is half torn away, by the time he carries her out of the water. The film eroticizes them equally, perhaps him a little more – for the camera lingers on his wet, glistening torso as he pants. Their first encounter is both a brush with death and a kind of physical consummation. It points to the violence that their relationship triggers between their respective mothers, and is even reflected in their domestic life. Their first argument ends with Manuel giving Maria a slap: Manuel clearly embodies the way we have seen other men treat their women. But all their scenes together have a kind of physicality, a touchiness, that builds a strong sense of their relationship. Their kisses are real, their embraces strong. We see Manuel pull down Maria’s top to plant a long kiss on her back – and their final, lingering kiss at the end of the film sets the seal on this physical closeness.

The music, by Stephen Horne (piano, accordion, flute) and Elizabeth-Jane Baldry (harp) was the most striking thus far among the streamed films from Bonn. I love the sonorities of the harp, the way it can produce such a range of textures and tones. Working in the company of the other (solo) instruments, it produced a lovely soundworld – evocative, dramatic, touching. The film was, it seems, originally released with a synchronized soundtrack, since the opening credits mention the two featured songs being available for purchase via Columbia records. I wonder if that version survives? Not that I have much fondness for synchronized soundtracks of this period, but I’d be curious what kind of tone it struck.

A final word on the restoration of Maria do Mar, which was completed by the Cinemateca Portuguesa in 2000 – and subsequently digitized. The print was damaged in placed in places but looked very good overall. However, I did think that it was transferred here at slightly too slow a speed. (I have seen online databases give this same 2000 restoration a shorter runtime.) Regardless of this slight reservation, this was a very pleasing film to watch – just the kind of wonderful discovery you hope to make at a festival. I’d love to see more by the same director…

Paul Cuff

Bonn from afar (2024, day 6)

Day 6 and a trip to Sweden for what I might call a drama of the conscience. Everything in this production is as might be expected from the “Golden era” of Swedish cinema. Superb photography? Check. Naturalistic performances? Check. Drama with strong moral centre? Check. Overall satisfaction? Read on…

Thora van Deken (1920; Swe.; John W. Brunius)

Let’s get straight to the plot. Divorcee Thora van Deken (Pauline Brunius) returns to her dying ex-husband Niels Engelsoft (Hugo Björne). Niels’s will provides a generous annuity for his lawyers, as well as the establishment of a nursing home for women to be run by the brother of his deceased fiancée, Sofie. What it doesn’t provide for is Esther (Jessie Wessel), the daughter of Niels and Thora. Thora demands that Niels cater for Esther, but Niels says that Thora is as embittered and hateful as ever. Thora recalls her mother being “tormented to death” by her father, and how Niels himself was a spoiled youth. Their romance is told in brief flashback: revealing how Niels’s affections were entirely for Esther and not her mother, who was trying to teach their child to look after herself; how Niels betrayed Thora with Sofie (Ellen Dall) at a party; how Esther was the one thing that Thora asked to be hers. As Niels lies dying, Thora steals the will. After the funeral, Thora lies about the will being voluntarily withdrawn and has taken charge of the estate, much to the disgruntlement of the locals and the lawyers. She receives threatening letters, calling her a murderer. Pastor Bjerring (Gösta Ekman), who is in love with Esther, tries to placate Thora’s anger with the world. But Thora denies the law of God, saying there is only the law of the heart: for her, God is dead. Thora secretly adds a postscript to the stolen will, saying that after her death Esther will understand the wickedness of Niels and her own actions to rectify his injustice. Justice Sidenius visits. He recalls his childhood friendship with Thora, and his unspoken love. He warns her of the moves to launch an official investigation, so Thora agrees to a hearing and lies under oath – despite the thought of being damned in the eyes of God. Meanwhile, Bjerring weighs up his fondness for Esther with his desire to join a mission in Asia. Seeing this burgeoning romance, Thora secretly sends the funds necessary for his departure to Asia. When Esther chooses Bjerring over her mother, Thora renounces Esther – who then elopes with Bjerring. In despair, and prematurely ageing with grief, Thora confesses her crime to Sidenius. As Esther and Bjerring sail for the east, Thora prepares to face the consequences. END.

This film belongs to Pauline Brunius (wife of the director), who is simply superb. This is one of the finest, most convincing, and most perfectly judged screen performances you could hope to see. There is such immense depth of emotion to the slightest gesture or move of the eyes. Nothing is overplayed, but everything is crystal clear. A remarkable performance around which the entire film revolves. If none of the other actors are quite on the same level, all are more than capable. There is great sincerity in all the main players and the drama carries tremendous conviction through their combined efforts.

The whole film looks superb in that way that Swedish films of this period tend to: locations are perfectly chosen and perfectly photographed. The warmth and depth and texture of every scene is aided by the tinting, which enhances the mood of the film throughout. This film looks beautiful – and is technically impeccable – in a way that is entirely unshowy. There is some beautiful low-key lighting, as well as some gorgeous early morning exteriors, but even these most (technically) impressive moments are there for a dramatic purpose: enhancing the feeling of the scene. Everything is where it should be, everything contributes to mood and drama.

So how do I feel about the drama itself? (Perhaps this is another way of asking why I didn’t love the film more than I did.) I have pondered this for a while and have rewritten the remaining paragraphs twice over. My only reason is the tone of the narrative and the way it treats Thora. She is by far the most interesting and sympathetic character in the film. She has been wronged by her ex-husband, yet despite this everyone in the community (apart from the lovelorn Sidenius) gang up against her. Though the film clearly puts us – to a degree – on her side, I am unsure if the moral “lesson” of the film remains that she deserves punishment, and her conscience must condemn her. Films can and do find ways of mobilizing our sympathy towards transgressive women, even if the narratives punish them. Is that the case here?

I am curious to know how contemporaries took the tone of religiosity. When Thora prepares to perjure herself under oath, the repeated cutaways to the passage in the Bible about being judged and condemned by God lay on the consequences pretty thick, so when Thora has a vision of her hand being withered by divine wrath it’s genuinely horrifying. Of course, she lies anyway – but are we invited to admire the bravery of her decision to favour her daughter (and herself), or to condemn her actions? This is complicated by how much sympathy we might have for the plight of Thora’s daughter, who wants to run away from her (transgressive) mother. The fact that Esther runs away with a pastor seems to underline the fact that Thora is not on the right side of the moral code. When Thora quite rightly asks why the pastor is willing to risk his life and that of Esther to join a mission he knows is riddled with malaria, the pastor replies: “God will protect me”. How are we meant to feel about this statement? To me, over a hundred years later, it smacks of absurd arrogance and a disregard for his or Esther’s safety. But does the film invite even the possibility of a critical attitude toward the pastor? He is otherwise a very sympathetic character, trying to find a way of understanding Thora. He doesn’t even contradict her when she tells him to his face that God doesn’t exist – though his later statement of belief in divine protection is an implicit counter to Thora. How far does the film (together with Esther) internalize the logic that compels Thora to wrathful judgement? I longed for the film to deliberately court my outrage over Thora’s mistreatment, only to give her some kind of victory at the end. Does the film agree – tacitly if not explicitly – that Thora should be punished, and the daughter and pastor should be free to run away together? Does the film share the pastor’s view that the lovers will find happiness in Asia, and that they won’t succumb to the disease that struck down his predecessors?

Having written the above, I wonder if I’m not asking unnecessary, if not impossible, questions of the film. After all, the existence of my own attitude – my scepticism – is evidence that one can read, or desire to read, Thora van Deken contrary to its apparent religious moralism. But it’s always possible to do so, with or without the intentions of the film. Other than the fact of Pauline Brunius’s performance, there is no reason to side with her. Is her performance enough to persuade an audience (contemporary or otherwise) that the film is a criticism of the society that condemns her? I’m not sure. If this were a film by Victor Sjöström, for example, I think there would be a clearer sense of siding with Thora – and a clearer indication that she was the victim, not the perpetrator, of injustice. Think of the astonishing power of Sjöström’s Trädgårdsmästaren (1912), for example, or Ingeborg Holm (1913), which famously provoked such outrage that the law was changed in favour of women’s legal power. In these, or in something much later like The Scarlet Letter (1926), it’s evident – but never crude – that the film is on the side of the woman wronged, and that the societies that condemn her are at fault. All these films are more melodramatic than Thora van Deken, which perhaps allows them more freedom to signal their (feminist) sympathies. But what is the attitude of the film – of John W. Brunius – towards Thora? I’m not sure. Perhaps this ambiguity (neutrality, even) makes it successful, but it left me oddly unsatisfied. I suppose what was missing was tears – mine or Thora’s. The tension was so restrained, the film never quite let go – and so nor did I. If I had cried, I might have more confidence in the emotional tenor of the film – and thus its sympathies.

These final paragraphs have been written with the benefit of a night’s sleep. I actually think I dreamt about the film, which proves that it rather got under my skin – even into my brain. I have now gone through it again to take some image captures, and I find it even more beautiful to look at. And every shot of Pauline Brunius – and I do mean every shot – reveals an extraordinary intensity in her performance. I think it absolutely remarkable that she maintains such restraint and yet reveals so much depth of feeling, of psychology, of a character’s past and inner life. Every time she appears on screen, she instantly draws your eye – I really couldn’t stop looking at her. Reading what I wrote yesterday, I find myself more convinced of the film’s sympathy towards Thora. If the film offers us no evidence that it condones her actions, it offers constant evidence for Thora’s motivation – and Pauline Brunius’s performance absolutely demands that we see the world from her perspective. This does not mean we support her actions, but we know why she acted as she did. Only the mob and the (quite unsympathetically portrayed) lawyers actively hate her, and we are clearly not on their side.

At the end of the film, Thora is ready to mount into the carriage to be taken to face charges. As she steps forward, she stumbles, then straightens herself. There is a cut to a medium shot. We see her hand raised to her chest. Is she about to grip her heart? No, not quite. As her hand approaches her heart, she clenches it into a fist. Her face tenses, almost hardens. She is not courting sympathy but summoning her inner strength just to stand here. Thora stares past us – far past us – and into a kind of imagined distance. The iris slowly closes in on her face, the darkness encroaching, about to swallow her. How can we not feel for her, admire her? And when the film cuts to the final shot of the steamship bearing Esther and Bjerring on board, it is surely far from a happy ending. A powerful film, an extraordinary performance, and much food for thought.

Paul Cuff

Bonn from afar (2024, day 5)

Day 5 of the Bonn festival takes us to Germany, and an exploration of jealousy and marital strife. Described by its opening titles as “A tragicomedy between man and woman”, I was expecting – well, I suppose I was expecting something very much akin to what I got…

Eifersucht (1925; Ger.; Karl Grune)

Act 1 establishes what might be called the rules of the game for the remaining film. The opening scene of a husband strangling his wife is revealed to be a stage performance, and the playwright (Georg Alexander) comes on stage to take the applause. He then returns home with his two friends, a husband (Werner Krauss) and wife (Lya De Putti) whose marriage seems to be ideal. But the playwright keeps questioning whether either of the couple feels jealousy, while trying to flirt with the wife. Act 2 sees the first signs of jealousy: the wife receives flowers and refuses to tell her husband the sender; the wife finds a lock of blonde hair in the husband’s pocket watch. The playwright then arrives and flirts with the wife and convinces them to go to the palais de dance. There, the wife makes both men jealous by dancing with a stranger. The husband ends up striking the stranger and the night ends with husband and wife sleeping in separate beds. In Act 3, after a frosty breakfast the wife becomes intrigued by her husband’s correspondence – reading and then stealing his latest letter. She goes to the playwright, then lies that she has been to her friend Lola’s – and is confronted by her husband. In Act 4, the wife gets Lola to lie for her, covering her absence from home both in the past and on future nights. The husband follows her to a giant apartment store, then loses her and blunders about town in search of her. The wife arrives home, still fuming over the husband’s mysterious letter. The husband tells her how much he loves her and begs to know what she has been doing. She asks for his trust, but he insists on knowing the truth. She demands the truth from him and says he would be ashamed to know the truth from her. He raises his hand to strike her but doesn’t land the blow. In Act 5, the husband follows the wife, this time to a strange building on the outskirts of town. He sees his wife kissing a child who address her as “mummy”. Back home, the husband demands (via a note passed via a servant) that the wife leaves the house. Infuriated by her refusal of the truth about the child, he hurls his wife to the floor. The violence is interrupted by the arrival of the playwright, and the truth is eventually discovered. The letter the wife has stolen from the husband refers to his child, whose carer cannot afford it any longer. The husband falls at his wife’s feet and the two are reconciled. ENDE

As I said, a plot that doesn’t offer any real surprises. It’s well-written, well-mounted, and well-played. I admired the numerous nice touches that shaped the drama, like the repeated detail of the couple’s shoes: hers next to his at the start, then separate from his during their fallout, then reunited in the final images; or the way their first breakfast scene has them sat side-by-side, but the second has then say on opposite sides of the table. Technically, the film was also well executed. There are also some neat moments of superimposition. Some are simple, like the wife imagining the lock of hair in the watch, or later seeing his imagined lover superimposed over her book. Some are more complex, like the husband seeing his wife dancing with another on the crowded dancefloor – only for the other dancers to fade into ghost-like transparencies, revealing his wife and her partner at the centre (a really lovely effect). Though I liked some deep focus compositions in the apartment, it was the exterior scenes that really stood out. There are several big sets/matte painted night cityscapes, which are reminiscent of Grune’s Die Straße. Particularly effective is the apartment store, with a double paternoster lift and a view across to a multistorey wing illuminated from within. You sense the husband’s fear becoming faintly nightmarish in these surroundings, just as you did with the central character in Die Straße.

But what interested me particularly with Eifersucht was its script by Paul Czinner. (I have a longstanding project on Czinner that I have kept delaying for various reasons.) I was struck by how many details in Eifersucht match traits from his other films. There is the jealousy over a bunch of flowers (cf. Der Geiger von Florenz (1926)), conflicts spelt out over a breakfast routine (cf. Ariane (1931) and Der träumende Mund (1932)), the woman reflecting on her image in relation to men (Fräulein Else, 1929), the nods to luck and fate (like the spilling of salt) and life’s reflection of art that haunt numerous of Czinner’s other films. Czinner’s authorship is often overshadowed by the two figures with whom he collaborated: his frequent leading actress, Elisabeth Bergner, and his screenplay collaborator, Carl Meyer (often uncredited). In this sense, it was curious to feel how strongly Eifersucht felt like a Czinner film without either of these two influences at play. But also, this made me like Eifersucht less. The marital strife in Grune’s film is more interestingly played, and played out, in Czinner’s Nju (1924), just as the sense of life imitating the tragedy of art is more potent in Czinner’s Der träumende Mund. And Bergner is an infinitely more subtle, complex, and sympathetic performer than De Putti. Werner Krauss’s character, too, is at the very least equalled by Emil Jannings’s character in Nju, for example, and Georg Alexander’s rather underdeveloped character is a pale shadow next to that of Rudolf Forster in Der träumende Mund. (Der träumende Mund, if you’ve not seen it, is a masterpiece.)

More broadly, in fact, my problem with Eifersucht was precisely this sense that what I was watching I had seen done better, and with more dash, elsewhere. Czinner’s films aside, I also thought of E.A. Dupont’s contemporary Varieté (1925), which features De Putti in a much more powerful drama, and one which allows for more complex, stylish cinematic storytelling. (Dupont’s film was also, confusingly, released under the title “Jealousy” in some regions.) Eifersucht’s theatricality is ultimately a kind of limitation. It is, if anything, too neat and tidy, too precisely organized. (Even the dance hall feels oddly well-mannered to sense the wife’s desire for freedom express itself. Think of how many other Weimar films have great party scenes!) Eifersucht feels like an exercise more than a living, evolving drama. Even the interesting outdoor sets and moments of technical skill didn’t lift the film into something more complex or moving. Indeed, I still await being really moved a Karl Grune film: his are films that I admire without truly liking. (See my pieces on Am Rande der Welt (1927) and Die Straße.) The fact that Eifersucht describes itself as a “tragicomedy” rather sums it up: it is neither comic enough nor tragic enough. (All Czinner’s films are much sharper in their comic touches and more tragic in their outcomes.) It is a good film, but not a great one.

The music for this performance was by Richard Siedhoff and Mykyta Sierov. Their combination of piano and oboe worked well, though its emotional register could never make the film more moving than it was. I must also highlight the excellence of the detailed restoration credits at the start of the film: we are given a history of the film’s release, the location and qualities of surviving prints, the ethics behind the restoration choices, and the precise lengths in metres of various copies, as well as the speed used in the transfer. It should be mandatory to have such information at the outset of all films, especially silents. (Yes, the latest restoration Napoléon, I’m thinking of you.)

Paul Cuff

Bonn from afar (2024, day 4)

Another day (not) at the Bonn festival and another country to visit. Today we journey to India for the recreation of ancient religious drama. I outlined the context for Franz Osten’s German-Indian co-productions in my piece on Shiraz (1928). To recap briefly, these films were the brainchild of Himanshu Rai, who was instrumental in partnering Indian writers and performers with European filmmakers. Their first collaboration was Prem Sanyas, originally released as Die Leuchte Asiens in Germany in 1925 and The Light of Asia in the UK in 1926. Made with the support of the Maharajah of Jaipur (now in Pakistan), the film was shot entirely on location in India with (as the film’s opening titles remind us) no “studio sets, artificial lights, faked-up properties or make-ups”.

Prem Sanyas (1925; Ger./In./UK; Franz Osten/Himansu Rai)

The plot? Well, the film begins with a lengthy section of quasi-documentary footage around contemporary India. Some western tourists visit the Buddhist temple complex at Gaya. There, they encounter an old man who relates the tale of how Buddha achieved enlightenment below the Bodhi tree… The film then follows the story of Prince Gautama (Himanshu Rai), who is adopted by the heirless King Suddodhana (Sarada Ukil) and Queen Maya (Rani Bala). As the boy grows, he becomes increasingly conscious of the suffering of animals and the world around him. His father is warned by a sage that it is the boy’s destiny to renounce the throne, leaving him heirless. The king therefore tries to shelter the boy from all sight of suffering. When this doesn’t work, he finds him a consort. The prince falls for Gopa (Seeta Devi), who likewise is smitten with him. However, the prince is overwhelmed by the knowledge of suffering outside his pampered life and perfect marriage. Hearing the voice of God, he abandons his wife, his palace, and his family to live as an impoverished teacher. He converts crowds to his new conception of the world, and when Gopa encounters him again, she becomes his disciple. The flashback ends with the old man concluding this tale, then (very suddenly) the film ends.

Such is the narrative. And as a drama, it is a failure. The story is very thin, with characters barely sketched and with neither the interest nor the ability to suggest real, human psychology. (Hey, it’s a religious story, so I suppose expecting a real drama is a bit wishful.) As the story of one of humanity’s great teachers/enlighteners, it’s surprisingly inert. But because the characters are picture-book cut-outs, there is barely any ordinary human emotion to engage with either. It’s a very simply parable told very simply.

I say simply told, for there is no showiness to the film’s direction. This is a polite way of saying that the film isn’t very dynamic, let alone dramatic. There are few really telling close-ups (as if the film is afraid of exploring the reality of its human characters), and the editing between wider and closer shots is often rather clumsy. Few scenes use montage to create a sense of rhythm, and there is a kind of roughness to the way the film’s narrative is shaped. In part, of course, this is the fault of the original story: it’s a very simplistic tale and doesn’t offer a real “drama” as such. But I do wonder about the intentions of the filmmakers. Is the simplicity of the style – I am tempted to say the lack of style – a deliberate choice, or simply a limitation of means?

All this said, I didn’t care that the film wasn’t awash with stylistic flourishes or deft pieces of editing or camerawork. I didn’t care because this was one of the most beautiful films I’ve seen in a long time. Restored from a contemporary print released in the UK in 1926, Prem Sanyas is exquisitely tinted and toned and simply glows. For all that I have criticized (or at least, damned with faint praise) the lack of “style”, this film has no need to be showy when it uses real locations so well. So many views make you want to gasp, to spend time gazing at the frame. From ornate temples and elaborate palaces to dusty streets and overgrown gardens, this film is as astonishing document of time and place. I could rave for hours over the photography, the way the tinting seems to make you feel the heat and the haze and the dust and scent of the locations. I’ve taken a large number of image captures, but I could have taken any number more. The drama might have been inert, even inept, but I was captivated by the film itself – by the sheer aesthetic gorgeousness of the image.

To return to something of the dramatic substance of the film, I must discuss the performers. I must begin by repeating what I said in my piece on Shiraz: I simply don’t think Himanshu Rai is an engaging screen presence. I found him stiff and awkward in Shiraz and I find him stiff and awkward in The Light of Asia. Given that he’s meant to be playing a religious prophet and visionary, I find him utterly unconvincing. He is both oddly stylized (holding poses, holding glances) and oddly restrained (not doing anything!). I would welcome a down-to-earth prophet, a recognizably human figure who connects to the sufferings of man. But Rai is neither a magnetic divinity nor a vulnerable human. He’s an oddly inert prophet and an oddly inarticulate teacher.

Rai’s limitations are shown up by the fact that everyone around him – and I mean everyone – has such great presence on screen: from the non-professional actors who play the minor characters to the real beggars and street performers who populate the world at large. Their faces and bodies are immensely interesting to behold. Here are real faces, real lives, real sufferings embodied for us to see. If I can’t see what the fuss is over the Buddha himself (or at least, Rai’s Buddha), I can absolutely see the fuss over the suffering of the world. The real locations and real extras are remarkably tangible, remarkably vivid.

As the king and queen, Sarada Ukil and Rani Bala are pleasingly unpretentious. Free from any posturing, gesturing, or theatrics, they are as real as figures from a mystery play – ordinary and extraordinary at the same time. Then there’s Seeta Devi, who was by far the most striking presence in Shiraz. Here, she looks scarcely more than a child – indeed, she was thirteen at the time of filming. A real child to play the prince’s child bride. In my piece on Shiraz, I remarked that she was the only performer to offer a really defined performance, i.e. someone who was palpably playing for the camera, for us. Her role, as a manipulative figure wishing to shape the drama, perfectly suited her performance style. In Prem Sanyas, she is free of mannerisms, of technique. True, she is not given much of a character to embody, but nevertheless there is a naturalness to her embodiment of Gopa that is moving in itself. And though she has yet to grow into her adult body, or adult confidence as a performer, she is still radiant on screen.

The soundtrack for this performance was compiled by Willy Schwarz and Riccardo Castagnola. It consists of (what I take to be) prerecorded sections of music, historical recordings, and ambient acoustic sound. Most of these sample the sounds of India, through instrumental choices or the sound of crowds/prayers/chanting etc. I found it a little distracting to hear recorded effects during silent scores, even in the vaguest form like the sounds of praying and general bustle offered here. While it certainly fits the setting of the film, it doesn’t suit the period of the film’s making – i.e. its silent aesthetic. The film is so overwhelmingly visual, I didn’t want a composer trying to “complete” the pictures with real sounds. I much preferred the sections of instrumental music, which felt much more in keeping with the period and setting – and the film’s historical and aesthetic origins. That said, I’ve heard infinitely worse “acoustic” soundtracks, so I’m not complaining too much.

Overall, Prem Sanyas was an excellent experience. I wrote recently about another religious parable, The King of Kings, and when watching Prem Sanyas I was reminded of the many reasons I disliked DeMille’s epic. Despite all the awkwardness of Prem Sanyas, the absolute reality of its mise-en-scène, of the places and the people who inhabit it, make it a far more rewarding viewing experience than time spent in DeMille’s artificial holy land.

Paul Cuff

Bonn from afar (2024, day 3)

Day 3 of the Stummfilmtage Bonn takes us to Czechoslovakia in 1929. Both the film and its director were new to me, but I’d seen this restoration doing the rounds at various festivals and wondered if it would ever come my way. I was therefore very happy to see its inclusion at the Bonn festival – it’s exactly the kind of film I’d hope to encounter…

Varhaník u sv. Víta (1929; Cze.; Martin Frič)

The plot is a marvellously strange melodrama. The organist of St Virus cathedral in Prague is an old man whose only joy is his music. One night, his solitary evening is interrupted by an old friend who has escaped from prison. The friend has a daughter, for whom he has a bundle of cash and a letter. After entrusting these items to the organist, the friend shoots himself. The scene is witnessed by a neighbour, Josef, who manipulates the organist into burying the body in his basement while he makes off with the letter. Later, the organist visits his friend’s daughter, Klara, who lives as a nun. He gives her the money and tells her of her father’s death. Shaken, Klara wants to know more – but the organist refuses to explain. Dreaming of a different life, and haunted by her father’s mysterious death, Klara leaves the nunnery and finds shelter with the organist. The organist becomes a kind of surrogate father, but he is tortured by the presence of the body buried in his basement. While Klara pursues a romance with Ivan, a handsome painter whom she has seen outside the convent, the organist is confronted by Josef, who tries to blackmail him. Josef then tells Klara that the organist was murdered by the organist. Klara flees to Ivan, while the organist has a mental breakdown and finds his right arm paralysed. Unable to settle with Ivan unless she knows the truth about her father, Klara returns to the organist’s home and finds her father’s grave. Horrified, the organist locks her in – but Ivan rescues her. Josef witnesses the torment his lie has caused, so sets out to right his wrong: he tells Klara the truth and apologizes to the organist. A miraculous cure enables the organist to recover the use of his right arm, and the film ends with him playing music at the wedding of Klara and Ivan. KONEC (The End).

Though it has taken a lengthy paragraph to explain the convoluted plot, the film itself is far from novelistic. Titles are kept to a minimum, and the film is an overwhelmingly visual experience – its lush photography and vivid set pieces doing all the heavy lifting. I absolutely loved the panoramas of Prague and the cathedral. These would have a documentary beauty of their own, but Frič overlays them with superimposed images and subtle gauzes/mattes to transform these views into something stranger, more lyrical and evocative. We see Prague and its streets and monuments the way characters do. Thus, the cathedral space and the organ become spaces of monumental splendour and majesty – the site of the organist’s only creative and spiritual freedom. And the monastery interiors are seen through Klara’s eyes: forbidding, geometric, imprisoning networks of arches, bars, grilles. When she gazes outside, the fields are luminous, shimmering visions, the sky’s soft-focus glow shaped through subtle matte painting into dreamy, sunbeamed expanses. The streets around the organist’s cramped home are an expressionist maze of bright streetlights and thick shadows, with figures negotiating sheets of rain and glimmering cobblestone roads.

The interiors are no less splendid. In particular, the organist’s cramped house is often filmed from a low angle, the camera crouching at floor level to observe the space. The effect of this is to create a sinister and foreboding feel to the setting – as if we were an illicit observer, half-concealing our presence. But it also serves to makes the viewer conscious of the floorboards and think of what lies beneath. Even if the scene itself is not directly concerned with the fate of Klara’s father, the camera position reminds us of his body lurking below stairs.

There are some superb close-ups, too. The organist’s white hair is turned into a sinister halo around his darkened face. Josef’s plotting eyes flash from wreaths of smoke. Klara’s eyes brim with tears in the centre of her pale, pale face. Even on a small screen, these images are strange, powerful, mesmerising. I love the way Frič dissolves slowly between shots, so that images linger over one another. He often overlays a close-up of a character looking with an image of what they see. The effect is both startling and immersive, subjective and objective. It’s a rich, lush, entrancing visual language.

The performers are all highly engaging and I enjoyed spending time with their faces. As Klara, Suzanne Marwille begins the film framed in white wimple and habit. She’s a vision of isolation, but her eyes shine in the middle of her pale face in her white clothing. She then transforms into a homely, traditional figure of a young women when she lives with the organist: summer dress, a head scarf containing her long hair. Then she lives with Ivan and is transformed again into a modern woman of the 1920s, with a Louise Brooks style bob and shimmering black dress. (She even sports her nun’s outfit to model for Ivan, as if to remind us of the sartorial and spiritual journey she’s traversed.) While I never warmed to the slightly smug character of Ivan (played by Oskar Marion), their romance amid the glowing, soft-focus splendour of bucolic exterior spaces was gorgeous to look at – and entirely took my mind away from how much I liked or did not like Ivan as a character. As the relatively minor character of Josef, Ladislav H. Struna brought surprising depth. It was much to his and the film’s credit that this very sketchy character went on an emotional journey that was in any way creditable. By the end, as Ivan weeps at his guilt and falls on his knees to beg forgiveness of the organist, I was surprisingly touched. It was nice to see a villain genuinely moved to reform (and sweet to see him cleanly-shaven and well-dressed to go to tell Klara the truth!). Of course, as the lead character of the organist, Karel Hašler had the most dramatic weight to bear. He has a superb face, and you could read every emotion in his eyes and on his mouth. If the melodrama threatened always to overboil into camp, Hašler always seemed to bring it back from the brink.

In sum, this was a highly enjoyable film, aided by a solid musical accompaniment on piano and organ by Maud Nelissen. A splendid slice of late silent cinema.

Paul Cuff

Bonn from afar (2024, days 1 and 2)

Not going to silent film festivals is becoming something of a habit, if not a hobby. In October I don’t go to Pordenone, and now in August I’ve begun not going to Bonn. As with Pordenone, the Stummfilmtage Bonn (aka the Bonn International Silent Film Festival) offers a “streamed” festival for viewers like me who, for various reasons, cannot attend in person. (I consider not going to Bonn a kind of pre-season training for not going to Pordenone.) Unlike Pordenone, however, the online content of the Bonn festival is free. Each film is available for 48 hours after each screening. No fees, no obligations – just a (quite generous) time limit. I aspire to one day having the kind of lifestyle that enables me to go to some, any, or all, of the wonderful festivals partially or wholly dedicated to silent film across the summer months – Bristol, Bologna, Bonn, Berlin (the “Ufa filmnächte”), Pordenone. But until this magical surfeit of time and budget is forthcoming, I shall remain at home, eagerly scrambling to fit in at least a couple of weeks’ worth of cinema into my free time. So, this week (or rather, last week) I’m not going to Bonn, and can share my experience of staying at home. First up, days one and two (and spoilers galore)…

Day 1: Du skal ære din hustru (1925; Den.; Carl Th. Dreyer)

I must admit that I considered not watching this film simply because I knew it well from previous viewings. (And have its BFI release on my shelf.) I further admit that if this film had been part of the streamed content of Pordenone (i.e. if I had to pay for it), I would have been annoyed that something so readily available should be chosen over something not otherwise accessible. It’s a film that I have seen before, but never on a big screen and never with live music. If I was actually at Bonn, I would be delighted to see it again – and to see it for the first time in such circumstances. I can understand why festivals put on films that are well-known or made by well-known filmmakers. But the appeal is much less for a viewer who is streaming the film remotely and not gaining anything new from the process.

That said, I still watched Du skal ære din hustru. I’d not seen it in years, possibly not even on Blu-ray. (The copy on my shelf is, now that I think about it, unwrapped.) So why not join in, however tepidly?

Do we all know the plot? Well, just to remind you: Viktor and Ida have been married for years, but Viktor is a domestic tyrant – ungrateful, unthinking, inconsiderate, rude, and subtly cruel. Despite their three children and former happy times, Ida is convinced by her mother and by the family’s old maid, Mads, to leave home. Mads plans to turn the tables on Viktor and make him realize how lucky he is, and how unjust he has been. Seeing the hardship of housekeeping firsthand, Viktor begins to realize his guilt – and eventually the couple are reunited on a firmer basis.

Of course, I was a fool to have thought of skipping this film: it’s a masterpiece. I’d forgotten how perfect it was. I fell all over again for the exquisite photography, those soft yet dark irises – like curtains around the frame, that distance the mid-shots of husband and wife. And I’d forgotten the first real close-up of Viktor, and the extraordinary depth of his eyes – and the way the light catches them and seems to magnify their life and feeling. This shot comes almost exactly halfway through the film, and I was unprepared for its power. So too, I was struck by the minimal number of moments when characters touch each other gently, with kindness. That close-up of the fingers of Viktor’s oldest daughter shyly reaching over to his, the way his respond – and you realize that he has a heart, and a past that was loving, and a future that might rekindle that love. An exquisite moment. So too the skill of rendering Mads teaching Viktor a “lesson” both funny and touching: the reversal of his cruelties, but also the desire to find his goodness. I’d forgotten, too, the embrace of Viktor and Ida: the way it’s a private moment, with Viktor’s back to us, and we see Ida’s hands move over his shoulders. Perfect.

By the end, I felt like Viktor: I had taken something for granted and was glad to be taught a lesson. You can and should always rewatch a great film. It has plenty still to teach you.

Day 2: Jûjiro (1928; Jap.; Teinosuke Kinugasa)

Right, now we’re back on track. A real rarity! Unavailable in any other format! Kinugasa’s film seems to have been released under multiple English-language titles. It’s listed variously as “Crossways”, “Crossroads”, and “Slums of Tokyo”. The dual German-English intertitles of this print gave the title as “In the Shadow of Yoshiwara”. There were no restoration credits to clarify the source of this print, which made me wonder about its provenance. There are evidently some missing titles, if not other material. (For example, one title announces “end of fourth act” despite no other “act” titles appearing in the print.) Furthermore, the English text is often awkward and rife with spelling errors. (The wording offers some very literal translations of the German text.) When and where was this print made?

This reservation aside, the film was excellent. The plot is simple, the drama concentrated – claustrophobic. In c.1850 Tokyo, a brother and sister live in a poor flat near Yoshiwara, the red-light district. The brother hangs out amid the frenzied atmosphere of gambling, stealing, and whoring. He is obsessed with O-Ume, who works in a brothel. He fights a rival for her affections, but the rival blinds him with ash. Believing he has killed his opponent, the blinded brother finds his way home. But the sister needs money to help him, so she is faced with selling herself either to her creepy neighbour or to the procuress of the brothel. The brother’s blindness is lifted in time to witness his sister stabbing the neighbour in self-defence. The pair flee to the city’s outskirts, but the brother is drawn back to O-Ume. He sees her with the rival he believed he had killed. His blindness returns; he collapses and dies in a fit of madness. END.

If the plot is mundane, the realization is superb. There are multiple flashbacks, which makes the narrative more complex – more subjective, more strange – than the above synopsis suggests. But it’s the world of the film that is so compelling. The whole story seems to take place at night, or else within a kind of contained nightmare. That might be a starless sky overhead, but it might as well be the void of any reality beyond the comfortless tenements and cacophony of the gambling dens and brothel. It is a forbidding, studio-bound world. It rains (and often you can see the characters’ breath) but there is no sense of the natural world beyond the dark streets, the grimy interiors. The characters who inhabit this place are, apart from the sister, forbidding and grotesque. From the frenzied brother, forever clutching his face, his throat, his blinded eyes, to the creepy, toothless neighbour, the sinister procuress, the bandaged rival and the cackling O-Ume – everyone is unwelcoming, exploitative, angry. The sets in which these characters live, or struggle to live, are marvellous. There are realistically threadbare walls, tattered paper doors, broken windows, forbidding staircases. The world of Yoshiwara is more complex, with multiple interior spaces joined by ornate panels, blinds, windows within windows. Kinugasa turns this space into a bewildering, overwhelming maze: swinging lanterns, spinning umbrellas, tumbling betting balls. And all filled with the mad bustle of drinking, gambling, laughing crowds. The combination of studio-bound sets, dim spaces, and claustrophobia feels very expressionist. (The theme of a wayward man abandoning a homebound woman – not to mention its moody rendering – made me think of Die Straße (1923), shown at Pordenone last year.)

This transformation of physical space into psychological space is heightened by Kinugasa’s superb camerawork. There is a wonderful array of dramatic lighting, sudden close-ups, creeping tracking shots, sinister high-angle viewpoints. Just see how the first montage of the Yoshiwara gambling dens is rendered more effective by the prowling camera, the hallucinatory superimpositions, the leering close-ups. There is a fascinating balance between subjectivity and objectivity in the way the camera shares and/or observes the way characters experience the world. When the brother is blinded, for example, there is a dazzling flurry of pockmarks and lightning bolts that bubbles over the screen: we share the brother’s onrush of terror and bewilderment. But immediately afterwards, as the brother stumbles back and forth through the cackling crowd of gamblers, the camera pitilessly tracks back and forth, keeping its distance, watching him fall apart. The shock of subjectivity is followed by the chill of detachment.

The film’s blend of melodrama and expressionism comes to its climax in the final scenes. The brother recovers from his blindness, and we see the world as he sees it: darkness distorting, weird patches of light, solid objects rippling. But the reality he wakes to is like a living nightmare: the toothless, dishevelled neighbour assaulting his sister, the body falling before him. A series of dissolves transform the scene into a kind of vision, as though these images were also emerging from the brother’s former blindness. The siblings’ rush through the dark and rain is equally nightmarish, and the hut in which they shelter hardly comforting. Their bodies are soaked, and the marvellous detail of steam rising from their shoulders is both realistic and expressive. The titular crossroads of the film appears at the end like a slice of another nightmare. It’s two pale streaks of pathway, crisscrossing a despairingly black landscape. Dim, bare trees in the foreground, dim, distant houses in the distance. The brother crosses this otherworldly space to reach Yoshiwara, where he sees O-Ume and the rival he imagined he has killed. With a rapid montage of hallucinatory images, superimpositions, and distortions, he clutches his eyes and collapses – “This is the end!” he screams. And it is. There’s just one last scene: here is the sister, alone at the crossroads, hesitant, afraid. It’s a superbly disquieting ending to this bleak and gripping film. With touches of German expressionism ala Fritz Lang and French impressionism ala Abel Gance, Kinugasa’s Jûjiro still holds its own – it’s a concentrated, nightmarish, unsettling film.

I must finish by praising the musical accompaniment, which performed on piano and violin by Sabrina Zimmermann and Mark Pogolski. Their score was atmospheric, dramatic, and perfectly in keeping with the mood and tempo of the film. Bravo.

Paul Cuff