Two-dimensional chess

Raymond Bernard’s original THE CHESS PLAYER beats Jean Dreville’s remake hands-down, even though the remake has Conrad Veidt and is ace. It’s not because, unlike Dreville, Bernard understands the left-to-right rule and can apply it. But many of the bits of the remake that are faithful to the original but don’t quite work, like the intercutting of two climaxes, work like gangbusters in RB’s silent.

Veidt is a great uncanny presence for Dreville, but Bernard has Pierre Blanchar and Pierre Batcheff, a cheekbones-and-chin combo that could kill at a distance. Plus the creepy Charles Dullin, far less ingratiating than Veidt but very effective in his stealth sympathy. And Édith Jéhanne, very lovely and more interesting than in her other big film, Pabst’s THE LOVE OF JEANNE NEY.

As in the later LES MISERABLES, Bernard breaks out the hand-held camera for his battle scenes, a technique that seems to have been part of the French cinematic pallette — see also LA MERVELLEUSE VIE DE JEAN D’ARC — only to be forgotten until Welles reinvented it for CHIMES AT MIDNIGHT.

Almost certainly the best film about automata and Polish independence.

The Monday Intertitle: Intro

“Let us always remember that the country, our home, is born from the heart of a woman, her tenderness and tears, the blood which she shed for us.”

Intertitle from LA MERVEILLEUSE VIE DE JEANNE D’ARC, directed by Marco de Gastyne, produced by Bernard Natan.

Thanks to Emory University film professor Charles David for introducing NATAN, the documentary by Paul Duane & myself, at the Atlanta Jewish Film festival, and to Brandon of the excellent Deeper Into Movies for recording most of it — you can, as a result, have a listen here.

Bought my tickets…

… which means I am indeed going to Pordenone, Italy for Le Giornate del Cinema Muto, the 32nd Pordenone Silent Film Festival, who are showing NATAN, the film Paul Duane & I made. NATAN is a talking picture, a documentary about a filmmaker mainly associated with talking pictures, but it does deal with Natan’s production LA MERVEILLEUSE VIE DE JEAN D’ARC, and it features Lenny Borger and Serge Bromberg, two experts on silent cinema who are Pordenone regulars, so they’re stretching a point and including us.

It’s also nice because the festival director, critic and Chaplin biographer David Robinson, used to program Edinburgh International Film Festival, so maybe I can interview him and resume my series The Edinburgh Dialogues.

And of course the movies are an exciting lot — Louise Brooks in William Wellman’s BEGGARS OF LIFE, Harold Lloyd in THE FRESHMAN with musical accompaniment by Carl Davis, seasons on Anny Ondra, Swedish movies, silent animation, and very excitingly indeed, the premiere of Orson Welles’ TOO MUCH JOHNSON.

I leave Tuesday.

The following week on Wednesday, the day after I get back, I’m off to Lyon for NATAN’s first French date, at the Lumiere Film Festival in Lyon. Lyon actually appears in the film, in a newsreel where we see Natan preparing the opening of a new cinema. Lyon have homages to Hal Ashby, Studio Ghibli, film noir (with special guest Peggy Cummins), and they have a programme dedicated to experimental filmmaker Germaine Dulac who briefly ran Pathe-Natan’s newsreel department, and they’re showing LE BONHEUR, a spectacular Pathe-Natan production from Marcel L’Herbier starring Charles Boyer. The film’s co-director Paul Duane and producer Paul Duane is also attending, as is one of Natan’s granddaughters, the wonderful Lenick Philippot. Should be pretty special.

It’s going to be a busy and exciting fortnight and I fully expect blog postings to be on the light side… but you never know!