Journal of Film Preservation - FIAF

A Feud in the Kentucky Hills, D. W. Griffith, 1912. Source: Le Giornate del
Cinema Muto 2002
The Mitchell and Kenyon retrospective. Source: Mitchell and Kenyon BFI
Collections / Le Giornate del Cinema Muto 2002
Le programme principal de la 21ème
édition des Journées du cinéma muet
de Pordenone abordait un thème
léger ; “Les femmes comiques”. Il
couvrait largement la filmographie de
ces femmes comiques tant au niveau
chronologique que national, certaines
étant encore dans les mémoires,
d’autres malheureusement tombées
dans l’oubli. Les points forts de ce
programme étaient particulièrement
divertissants et très appréciés du
public, on retiendra notamment la
reconstitution d’un spectacle
Nickelodeon des années 1910
comptant plusieurs numéros sur
scène. Tout comme l’année dernière,
la présentation des films produits par
les Britanniques Mitchell et Kenyon a
également attiré les amateurs. Les
séances étaient chaque jour ouvertes
66 Journal of Film Preservation / 65 / 2002
emanated, were on hand to pitch an unusually
ambitious project, dedicated in memory of the
Luxembourg Cinematheque’s Fred Junck: to
restore the 1919 serial “The Wolves of Kultur” as a
collaborative venture between 15 archives
worldwide. Nobody, least of all Lobster Films, is
claiming “Wolves” is a masterpiece. On the
strength of the episode screened, one can say
that it seems typical of its genre and period. The
collaborative restoration, should Lobster succeed
in its plan, will be its least conventional aspect.
The national cinema explored this year was that
of Switzerland. Given the French and German
influences and connections involved, defining the
retrospective’s boundaries seems to have been a
major question for the programme’s curators.
Opening with La Vocation d’Andre Carel, directed
by Jean Choux, helped to dispel, as promised, the
purely Alpine, William Tell-ish fare one might
have been led to expect (though that was also
forthcoming as the programme progressed).
Earnest, sometimes even turgid, Andre Carel
remains a challenging film, with motivations
frequently less clear than its memorable imagery.
Heavier and less ambiguous, in this writer’s
opinion, was Hanns Schwarz’s Petronella,a
dramatic saga involving a missing church bell
and a grimly determined performance by
Wilhelm Dieterle. The better-known non-fiction
aspect of Swiss filmmaking was well-represented
with numerous newsreels that pleasantly
decorated each of the sessions.
The major question facing viewers of the Italian
Avant-Garde programme was whether, as the
programmers themselves had mused, it was
appropriately named. To put it another way, was not all early cinema
avant-garde by definition? Or, to ask it in yet another way, do D.W.
Griffith’s experimentation and innovations in film language not qualify
as avant-garde only because they ended up as the dominant film
grammar? Leopoldo Fregoli’s early film records of acts he performed on
stage, must, for all their freshness, still be considered within the
context of other early exploitations of theatre by film. La Storia Di Lulu
and Amor Pedestre, both of which told their stories exclusively through
shots of feet, may come closer to what is more usually perceived as
avant-garde in their obvious determination to strike out in a new
direction, but can the same be said of Lucio D’Ambra’s whimsical Le
Moglie e le Arance or Febo Mari’s lyrical Fauno? That the question has
been asked is surely, in and of itself, not a bad thing.
More like Ol’ Man River with every passing year, Griffith keeps rolling
along. By 1912, it seems safe to say, he is shaping up into a director who
may indeed one day be worthy of such a complete retrospective. The