Journal of Film Preservation - FIAF

par un film d’animation de “Jerry the
Tyke” (séances qui se sont terminées à
deux reprises par des films
pornographiques de Lobster Films, qui
restaure actuellement la série “The
Wolves of Kultur”).
Cette année, la rétrospective
nationale était consacrée à la Suisse,
ce qui donna au public la possibilité
de non seulement découvrir des longs
métrages surprenants, mais aussi de
redécouvrir la production plus connue
de documentaires suisses. L’avantgarde
italienne et Griffith étaient
également à l’honneur, tout comme
l’étaient les films plus récents projetés
dans le cadre du projet “Saving the
Silents”. Hiroshi Komatsu et Donata
Pesenti Campagnoni ont reçu le Prix
Jean Mitry et Haghefilm a présenté
les films préservés dans le cadre de
son Prix et de son “Fellowship”. La
deuxième salle, le cinéma Ruffo, a
abrité le Collegium Sacilense et les
projections videos. Neil Brand a
prononcé le premier d’une longue
série de discours à la mémoire de
Jonathan Dennis, fondateur de la New
Zealand Film Archive.
Le coup de coeur de l’auteur de cette
critique, Hillel Tryster, est sans
conteste la performance hilarante de
Marion Davies dans The Patsy.
Clara Bow in It /
Cosetta, Clarence
Badger, 1927. Source:
The Kobal Collection /
Le Giornate del
Cinema Muto 2002
number of titles that are still well-known has increased, while
abominable print quality appears to be on the wane. Griffith’s own
artistic confidence, emerging through the many banal plot elements,
also appears to be markedly on the increase, a point vividly brought
home when he permits his camera to pan beyond his protagonists and
rest unhurriedly on a space empty of human beings. The benefit of the
ongoing retrospective is that when we see him take such a step, we’ve
also seen all the more tentative and primitive work that led up to it.
A favourite from this year’s “Saving the Silents” programme was The
Mollycoddle, with Douglas Fairbanks and Wallace Beery. Packed with the
best Fairbanksian spirit and featuring an unusual animated expository
sequence, it will certainly be much in demand wherever silent films are
shown. It was preceded by a bizarre short, The Ageless Sex, that can
scarcely have had more appeal in 1914 than it does now. Is it a “modern”
film? Probably not. It’s just that some things apparently never change.
Some regular Festival features cannot be omitted. The Jean Mitry
Award was received by Japanese film historian Hiroshi Komatsu and by
Donata Pesenti Campagnoni, who was surprised by some just-restored
early footage of Turin, screened unannounced before the award was
presented.
Longtime Festival supporter Haghefilm was again represented by the
Haghefilm Award (Jeno Janovics’ highly melodramatic Transylvanian
feature The Last Night) and the Haghefilm-Selznick School Fellowship
(Sonia Genaitay’s restoration of Camille de Morlhon’s sentimental
L’Histoire d’une Rose), as well as a digitally-assisted preservation of the
1910 Edison A Christmas Carol from the rare three-strip 22mm format.
The digital buzzword was also in evidence in the restoration of Carl
Theodor Dreyer’s charming, though incomplete, fairy tale Once Upon a
Time and in a special session of the
Collegium Sacilense given by Giovanna
Fossati and Paul Read that vividly
demonstrated just how much can
already be done, as well as how it is
also possible to do too much.
The “Out of Frame”
preservations/restorations included
Gerhild Krebs’ surprising 1911
Hepworth find, Exceeding His Duty, and
Nachtgestalten, an Anglo-German coproduction
directed by Hans Steinhoff
that contained all the elements
required for a cliched underworld
melodrama, but turned out to be a lot
better.
Meanwhile, over at the Ruffo (the
second venue, considerately used this
year for more repeat screenings), there
were also video presentations, notably
among them Rick Schmidlin’s
reconstruction (using stills) of the
67 Journal of Film Preservation / 65 / 2002