Journal of Film Preservation - FIAF

Como habitué de los festivales, el autor nos
propone, una vez más, su crónica apasionada
y crítica, subjetiva pero justa, parcial y
a la vez global, de la experiencia que significa
participar, durante ocho días, en un
festival único en una ciudad singular: Il cinema
ritrovato en Boloña. Al ritmo propuesto
por los programas, el paisaje urbano,
la buena mesa, los reencuentros y las limitaciones
impuestas por Hipnos, Peter von
Bagh nos incita a compartir su felicidad en
festivales futuros.
“the only text”. Some less known faces were not less interesting than the
icons of the century. What about the chance to see Machaty as an actor
and think about the “Eigenart” of Czech films emerging already in the
late 10s, or to see the all too forgotten Harry Liedke (Ich küsse Ihre
Hand...) doing things that we probably suppose were only initiated by
Lubitsch with Chevalier as a privileged intrument of his?
Who then were the privileged shadows of Bologna? Marlene Dietrich –
as Joâo Benard da Costa whispered knowingly beside me, only one detail
separated her from immortality, and that was that her elbows were
shown. Conrad Veidt in his very first role – the hypnotic Furcht (which
stars Bruno Decarli and throws light on the mystery of the independent
creative powers of Robert Wiene), Alla Nazimova and her troubled face
in a double role of Capellani’s Red Lantern (1922), the fabulous Lyda
Borelli in Rapsodia Satanica, Gabriel Gabrio in the midst of the dark mysteries
of Le Juif errant, shown in four sequences and thus a true chance
to experience a “ciné-roman” of glorious or almost cosmic dimensions...
Mozzuhin and the strong, near-intolerable psychic suspense of
Protazanov’s Justice d’abord (1922), and the most moving of all, the great
Solomon Michaels, the assassinated martyr, here such a profoundly
humorous and tender person in the unforgettable Yiddishe Glikn (1925).
Rudolph Valentino inspired another suggestive theme – “viaggiosotto le
stelle del cinema” – a definition suggestive enough to hold the suspense
for the eight very long days, as were also the films of Rodolpho himself.
Perhaps this retrospective – dedicated to a local boy who made it – is
something to be lived only in Italy. Again, it was not only the masterpieces
(Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, Son of the Sheik and the unexpected
jewel among them, Moran of the Lady Letty) that mattered. The
rest was full of suspense, great melodrama and fantastic boudoir behaviour
(a fully convincing Armand Duval) and “realist” (a lad from the
Lower East Side) and proofs of convincing versatility, moments of love
and hate, tenderness and sensualism, pain, masochism and cruelty – and
in the midst of it a man with dark problems (the earliest glimpses of him
are especially precious) with his role, thus an enigma in the way the
“eternal” ones are... Some single images stick to mind, as the extremely
rare shots from the weeks following the Russian revolution: nothing very
special in them, and that is exactly the point – enough for a correction of
the Oktjabr shots that made their way to more than one documentary. Or
– INRI – hungry people devouring the guts of a horse in the street –
simple images of the cruelty of world war’s aftermath as a ghostly
reminder of Rossellini and Germania anno zero... The constant surprise
element was essential, along with the gratitude to so many inspired
archives. This time the background work of La Cinémathèque Suisse was
impressively strong but many others were present as well, with of course
La Cinémathèque Française whose contribution in the very last showing
of the last evening came like a heaven-sent gift – a restoration of King
Vidor’s Family Honor (1920).
I mentioned notes. I make them, endlessly, rather like Dr Mabuse in his
hospital bed. What happens to us in the dark? It’s again Eric de Kuyper,
62 Journal of Film Preservation / 53 / 1996