Swiss Role

I’ve never seen the Shirley Temple HEIDI, that I can recall — I certainly saw and enjoyed some of her films as a tiny, but I don’t recall that one. I saw, I think, some kind of dubbed European TV version of the Johanna Spyri book (which I’ve also never read) but apart from a blonde kid and Alpine scenery I don’t remember it at all, except that I was riveted by it, as I was by most outpourings of the new miracle drug, television. (The BBC drama Kizzy made a stronger impression, though — it seemed to be about stuff.)

So here I am with the unremarked Luigi Comencini version of 1952. Heidimania seems to have been at its height in the fifties, with a TV movie the following year, a sequel or quasi-sequel in 1955, another in ’58, and TV series in ’56 and ’59.

Comencini made a lot of films about children, but this is the only one he made in Switzerland, in German and about a girl. Always in Comencini’s many films about kids, there’s only one parent. Here it’s a grandfather. I think LA STORIA is the only one where it’s a mother. I wonder if this has something to do with his own life experience, but I am unable to find out much. He did have a father, I know that.

LC’s HEIDI is good. Early on, you sort of feel he might have more interest in Peter the goatherd as potential protagonist, Heidi herself being treated rather as a counter in a game, but when she gets to Frankfurt and is oppressed by adults, it’s much more conducive material for this master of child-adult dynamics.

The movie may have been an assignment of sorts — I don’t know what led Comencini to be filming in a language devoid of tra-la-las. And, though my memories of the TV version are faint, there was an impression here of being whistled breathlessly through a fat book at the speed of sound. But the big emotional moments still work. And, as I’ve come to expect from this maestro, the kids more than are all right.

The Silent Movie Day Intertitle: A Little Ray of Darkness

It’s Silent Movie Day! So I am watching CUT IT OUT – A DAY IN THE LIFE OF A CENSOR, a burlesque by Adrian Brunel.

Brunel was quite an original mind, his weird little film comedies tend to focus on the art of film as a subject, as in the mockumentary CROSSING THE GREAT SAGRADA. Though he had a career of sorts, the industry didn’t seem to know what to do with him, or he with it.

There aren’t really any laughs in Brunel’s film — his attempt to parody the censor’s rules is probably hampered by his inability to really break them, but he is genuinely mean towards his censor character, and ends the film by hitting him with a train.

Speaking of trains, the San Francisco Silent Film Festival are celebrating the day by making available, for 24hrs only, a lovely restoration of THE SIGNAL TOWER directed by Clarence Brown, starring Virginia Valli, Rockliffe Fellowes and Wallace Beery. Here.

Up Owl Creek Without a Paddle

I don’t THINK I ever posted Charles Vidor’s THE BRIDGE before… been a long day’s editing so I’m looking for a quick solution to today’s blog post. If you haven’t seen this silent adaptation of Ambrose Bierce’s An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge then you owe it to yourself to take ten minutes and do it now.

The story is a winner, but what Vidor does with it is remarkable, as when he superimposes the drumsticks beating on the skin with the condemned man’s breast, so that the rapid tattoo becomes a racing heartbeat. As a means of visualising sound, it goes beyond Hitchcock’s X-ray shot of the ceiling in THE LODGER, to create an emotional linkage between two images.

The whole thing is ace. Robert Enrico’s three Bierce adaptations are stunning, but I’m still slightly aware with them that there are parts of the source story which just can’t be reached with camera, sound and cutting. Not so here.

Vidor becomes one of those baffling filmmakers who is sometimes a genius (GILDA), sometimes a plodder. In fact, after GILDA he seems to take a rapid downward turn, as if he’d shot his bolt, and even reuniting with the same actors doesn’t revivify his talent.

It just occurred to me that the fine pre-code TWO SECONDS is an uncredited remake of the Bierce yarn. Don’t know why I hadn’t quite noticed that before.