Sunrise in Rain

Saturday saw me trudging through dark and rain-slicked streets to Stockbridge Parish Church, to see SUNRISE: A SONG OF TWO HUMANS with a glass of wine and musical accompaniment by the Jane Gardner Quartet. I’d only seen them in their trio form, I think — adding a cello made their always excellent music even richer.

What to say about this film? It had been some years since I’d seen it, and it held up brilliantly. By any rational standard, Janet Gaynor’s character is a bit of a drip in a bad wig, and George O’Brien is an irredeemable lout. But if we take it as a fable — or a song — that doesn’t matter. Both stars are luminous and have some of the best closeups of the silent era — shots in which lighting, performance, physiognomy and the mysterious quality known as photogenie combine to form animate icons.

Oh, I can declare that I finally made sense of the plot. Various persons over the decades have asked why O’Brien even thinks he needs to murder his wife. And why does the girl from the city require it of him?

I’d never paid much attention to the stuff where the villagers gossip about O’Brien selling off his livestock to moneylenders — one shouldn’t pay attention to village gossip — presumably to buy gifts for the city girl. So, let’s assume that this vamp’s intentions are not to settle down in the suburbs with her hunky farmer, but to strip him of assets and move on. She’s already begun this. There must be compelling reasons why O’Brien is unable to sell off the farm entire. It may be in his wife’s name, or partially so. We might also imagine that he’d have to pay alimony (and child support, but he seems to have wholly forgotten his infant child). To make this completely clear, we’d only need an additional intertitle, but in the process of adapting Hermann Sudermann’s theme into Carl Mayer’s scenario and explicating that via Katherine Hilliker and H.H. Caldwell titles, the explanation evidently got dropped.

It doesn’t much matter, because again, this is a fable (or song) and normal people watching it don’t wonder about that stuff.

What else? I’d forgotten that Arthur Housman, comedy drunk from several Laurel & Hardy films, is in this, as an “obtrusive gentleman,” i.e. a masher. At least he’s sober this time. Proving that all things connect to Laurel & Hardy if you look hard enough. Also, pre-code mangargoyle hybrid Clarence Wilson in one shot (below right image, left of frame).

There is also a dog. He comes bounding after the protagonists as they set sail on their fateful voyage, attempting a bit of Rin Tin Tin rescue business, driven by some canine sixth sense. And I wondered, is he Zimbo? Zimbo the dog who plays Homo the wolf in the same year and studio‘s THE MAN WHO LAUGHS? Both dogs are Alsatians and both swim. I guess it ought to be possible to compare their markings (though the role of Homo may have required a bit of strategic dyeing as part of the lupine drag) but I’m not going to do that. I’m just going to say Probably Zimbo, and also, can a proper film historian confirm this?

I chatted to Jane beforehand about the movie and its original Fox Movietone score, which we both said we liked, especially the oboe which stands in for O’Brien’s voice as he searches the waters for his missing wife. Jane did not reveal her secret plan.

When the scene appeared in the film, shivers ran up, down and across my spine, as percussionist Hazel Morrison let out a plaintive wail in synch with O’Brien’s onscreen cry. The effect of a man calling for his wife, voiced by a woman (in the magnificent reverberant acoustics of the church) was stunning. Exact enough to make sense, oblique enough to be poetic rather than literal. The very thing all artists are all after, all the time, probably.

The Sunday Intertitle: Positively the Same Monkey

Home from Bologna and once more among my DVD collection, I can frame-grab Frank Borzage’s sublime STREET ANGEL and prove that, though I maybe have monkeys om my mind as many allege, Janet Gaynor’s simian sidekick is indeed Josephine, also featured in THE CIRCUS and THE CAMERAMAN, an Il Cinema Ritrovato hat-trick for the little capuchin.

A great intertitle: it applie s to Janet’s character, but Josephine illustrates it to perfection. Her Harlequin costume make of her face-markings a mask, which cannot be removed because it’s part of her. Just like the invisible mask Charles Farrell detects on Janet.

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.