Happiness is no Lark

Last full day of Il Cinema Ritrovato — I gave it a gentle start with Borzage’s STREET ANGEL at 11.15, entering Fox’s studio “recreation” of a smoky, crumbling Naples — 100% unlike the real thing but unbelievably beautiful. This was with a Movietone soundtrack, which at first seemed to impose a distance between me and the film, though having sat near the entrance I was also getting a distancing effect for free from all the latecomers stumbling in. (Cinema etiquette at Bologna is not quite as exemplary as one might hope.)

But, as with SUNRISE and TABOO, the music and film seemed to come closer together as the film went on, and the miraculous climax saw sound and image in perfect harmony.

Also: I think that was Josephine the capuchin monkey, star of THE CAMERAMAN and THE CIRCUS, nestling in Janet Gaynor’s arms, making this a hat-trick for the celebrated simian.

Lunch was followed by Dick Cavett’s Show — having failed to read the programme, we expected this to be a documentary about the eminent talk show host, but it was actually the episode where John Cassavetes, Peter Falk and Ben Gazzara turned into the Marx Bros. to promote HUSBANDS, which was screening in a new restoration. I think the sales tactic didn’t work because we didn’t rush over to the Cinema Arlecchio to see it, instead dropping in to three shorts by Franju, which seemed a nice circular way to more or less end a festival that began for us, more or less with his NOTRE DAME, CATHEDRAL DE PARIS.

I’d seen EN PASSANT PAR LA LORRAINE and found it weirdly boring — being an English-language version and a ratty print didn’t do the uninspired travelogue any favours. Joseph Kosma’s music was the only poetic element.

LES POUSSIERES, a short film about DUST, was not as dry as you’d expect. Jean Weiner, the reappearing pianist of Rivette’s NOROIT DUELLE, provides a spooky, beautiful soundtrack which I want to rip off someday. The subject is broad enough to allow Franju some room to be strange and poetic.

LE THEATRE NATIONAL POPULAIRE was a bit flat by comparison, but we got to see an extract of Maria Casares playing Lady Macbeth — every bit as intense as you might expect, and a revelation to me since my main references for the role are the Welles and Polanski film versions. In the hands of a powerhouse professional, the role is transfigured.

We SHOULD have stayed in our seats for SANGEN OM DEN ELDRODA BLOMMAN, a 1919 Mauritz Stiller with Lars Hansen, but we were fading, so we went out into the blazing sun, ate at the flat, and separated, Fiona finally managing to stay awake through WAR OF THE WORLDS (not an easy one to fall asleep in, you would have thought, but then have you experienced Bolognese weather?), me heading to the Piazza for LE PLAISIR, a favourite Ophuls now magnificently restored — the grain was imperceptibly fine, the images radiant and impossibly detailed. Each time I see it I’ve seen more French films, so actors like Gaby Morlay, Madeleine Renaud and Paulette Dubost mean more to me.

This was sort of the last Piazza Maggiore screening of the fest, so I forgave the loquacious Gianluca Farinelli his tendency to talk, untranslated, for twenty minutes at a time. A movie like LE PLAISIR makes up for a lot.

Maximum Effort

We started yesterday with King of the Movies — a 1978 BBC special in which the nonagenarian Henry King reminisces about his career. This accompanied an extensive BBC2 series of his films, an astonishing event to think of now. Unwisely, the show was programmed opposite an actual King film, which meant we had, for once, a relatively sparsely attended event in which the air-con could really roll up its sleeves and get down to business. The show itself was highly enjoyable, with King a terrific raconteur.

THE WARRIOR’S HUSBAND (1933) is a startling Fox film, from a Broadway play which had been a hit for Katharine Hepburn. Elissa Landi, in the lead, seems to have modeled her performance on KH, with lots of thigh-slapping and chin-jutting.

The story deals with gender war — Amazons versus Greeks — but the style is pure Loony Tunes, with “You Great Big Beautiful Doll” played on the soundtrack as Ernest Truex admires himself. Warrior women include Marjorie Rambeau and Maude Eburn (her helmet visor forever slamming shut with a cartoon twang), and David Manners turns up to show us what a real man looks like (!). Also two quick moments of interest amid the generally cheesy jokes: two black male dressmakers put their arms around each other — the comedy is blurring the lines between 1933 servant class and ancient slave class, between men performing women’s roles and men being gay, between men as female dressmakers and men as camp tailors. And then there’s Landi’s bath scene, resting chin and elbows on the brim of a huge raised bath, before throwing herself backwards into a backstroke, affording a few frames’ glimpse of what DeMille framed out in her milk bath scene with Claudette Colbert in SIGN OF THE CROSS.

Well, Fiona fell asleep in this film, which is not a distinguished picture but a very odd one. And then she did it again in TWELVE O’CLOCK HIGH, which is a very good Henry King picture with Gregory Peckory cast against type and compelled to do some real acting.

The early scenes contain the boldest stuff — violence, blood and dismemberment are not shown, but they’re DESCRIBED in graphic detail. Based on what I saw in MEMPHIS BELLE and THE COLD BLUE, the depiction of the US Air Force’s activities in Britain is fairly accurate. Unusually, there’s no flying stuff until near the end, when sadly the movie becomes a fruit salad of model effects, studio process shots and footage from Wyler’s aerial documentary and additional material courtesy of the Luftwaffe.

Peck’s mission is to discover what “Maximum Effort” really means — how much a flight crew can take without falling apart psychologically. Well, we had reached Maximum Effort at Bologna, after eight days, so we staggered through Buster Keaton’s MY WIFE’S RELATIONS — a version incorporating both Cohen Media’s restored footage and Lobster’s newly-discovered ending, which may never be shown again — and then collapsed back at our Airbnb.

I’m still convinced the film would work better if you put BOTH endings together, but there’s no evidence it was ever screened that way…

Today’s the last FULL day of Il Cinema Ritrovato but there are more screenings tomorrow and our flight back is on Monday. More to come.

Giovedi 27

So, yesterday, as I mentioned yesterday, I got up late and saw INDISCREET — it was a close-run thing, though. One gets used to being able to squeeze into any screening, even nabbing the last seats in the house (we haven’t been forced to stand this year, and in the current heatwave it’s doubtful we could pull it off). But there was a big crowd gathered outside the Arlecchino and it seemed all to possible that the audience for MOULIN ROUGE, the previous screening, might all stay in their seats rather than brave the solar barrage. But it was OK.

The movie was slow going at first — what seemed like an hour of expository set-up of the “After all, you’re a famous actress!” variety, a rather stodgy play opened out, rendering it stodgier. But then the plot kicks in and the laughs start coming thick and fast, and anyway, we have Cary and Ingrid to look at. Cary’s entrance is a good bit of “female gaze” filmmaking, with the camera simply feasting its eyes on him while the music soars. And we get Maurice Binder titles, too, though without the customary nude silhouettes cavorting.

We once asked the great Bond film production designer about Binder. “Maurice Binder was a very nice man, who liked, very much, to photograph naked women in silhouette,” he said.

On to THE BRAVADOS, in an incredibly pristine Cinemascope print — it started and I thought it was a DCP, and then the projectionist had to adjust the framing. A vivid blue Technicolor day-for-night sky with a silhouetted Gregory Peckory riding against it and slashed red titles superimposed.

Fantastic Mexican locations and you can see where Leone nicked some of his ideas for FOR A FEW DOLLARS MORE (also playing in Bologna) — Lee Van Cleef even plays a major-ish role. Peck is good early on, his natural stoicism turned into a more interesting noirish intransigence. At the end, having taken a revenge which didn’t satisfy and left him morally compromised, he visits the spiritual laundromat — a nice big Mexican church, and emerges SMILING, an appalling choice by Peck which confirms his tendency — demonstrated also in PORK CHOP HILL — to screw up endings with banal, platitudinous decisions. A well-poisoner.

We stayed in our seats — the sweltering heat was such we’d have had trouble leaving them — and saw COLLEGE, beautifully accompanied by Neil Brand on the piano, the only thing in the room capable of being upright. Fiona thought she’d never seen it before, and relished all the footage of Buster in shorts.

Then we ate and dragged our sodden carcasses to the Piazza Maggiore to see THE CIRCUS, which I don’t believe I’d ever seen from beginning to end, and certainly not in such a magnificent restoration — watch for a Blu-ray soon — in such a setting, under the stars. Timothy Brock conducted Chaplin’s score, and afterwards we all discussed our favourite bits over ice-cream. It wasn’t elevated film criticism, it was just “The monkeys!” and “The piglets!” and “The lion — and the little dog!”

A better film than I’d expected, even as a Chaplin fan — I’d been too influenced by Walter Kerr, who objected to the premise of the accidental clown. I think perhaps the true significance of the tramp’s success in the ring is that he’s only funny when his clowning HAS NARRATIVE CONTEXT.