Journal of Film Preservation - FIAF

internationale suite à son exil en
France au lendemain de la Révolution.
En plus de films célèbres et justement
célébrés (Feu Mathias Pascal, Kean), la
rétrospective incluait plusieurs
surprises magnifiques en provenance
du Gosfilmofond et de la
Cinémathèque française.
2. L’École de Cooper et Schoedsack :
sous la responsabilité de Kevin
Brownlow, ce projet très original pour
lequel Bologna et Sacile font équipe
(les films muets à Sacile, les parlants à
Bologna), s’attaque a l’intraduisible «
factual film » et incluait, entre autres,
cette année, Grass (1925) et Chang
(1927) de Cooper et Schoedsack et
Stark Love (1927) de Karl Brown.
3. The Griffith Project : quelque 500
films ont déjà été projetés dans le
cadre de cet ambitieux projet
poursuivi par Pordenone depuis huit
ans, avec l’aide exceptionnelle du
Museum of Modern Art de New York
et du Library of Congress de
Washington. C’est l’année 1913 qui
était au programme cette année :
dernière année de Griffith à la
Biograph, riche des interprétations de
Lilian Gish et de la beauté lyrique d’un
cinéaste qu’il faut absolument
découvrir en copies 35mm (et à la
bonne vitesse : 14 i.s., et non pas
l’habituel 16 i.s.).
4. American Saving the Silents :
l’occasion de découvrir le film le plus
ancien qu’on connaisse de Raoul
Walsh (The Mystery of the Hindu
Image, 1914), retrouvé par le George
Eastman House de Rochester, et
plusieurs autres trésors.
Signalons qu’à travers ces
programmes, on put découvrir
plusieurs films appartenant à ce qu’il
est convenu d’appeler le «
cinéfantastique », notamment le
rarissime Frankenstein (1910) tourné
par Searle Dawley pour Edison.
Natalia Noussinova on the exile of the Russian film-makers, Kogda my v
Rossiju vernemsja, focusing on Mosjoukine, was published to coincide
with the tribute.
A novel project on the school of Cooper and Schoedsack was launched
as a collaboration: the silent era was covered in Sacile, to be continued
with films of the sound era in Bologna. Kevin Brownlow, the
retrospective’s curator, challenges established notions: “The factual film
is the cinema’s most noble endeavour. The desire to inform and to
educate, as well as to entertain, is the highest aspiration of the filmmaker.
Yet how seldom do such films rise above the level of the dull –
and a word that invariably follows – documentary?” Great
programming to test such philosophic questions of the cinema was
offered around the Cooper and Schoedsack classics Grass (1925) and
Chang (1927): Karl Brown’s surprising Stark Love (1927), shot among the
mountain people cut off from the modern world, White Shadows in the
South Seas (1928), the W.S. Van Dyke masterpiece unjustly neglected in
film histories, and The Silent Enemy (1930), a powerful dramadocumentary
about the Native American before the arrival of the white
man. Also included was The Viking (1931), an important work of
Canadian cinema on the struggle for existence of the people of
Newfoundland. The ambitious retrospective was built from many
sources.
After seven years of the Griffith Project, we reached the year 1913 and
DWG’s last Biograph films: his last short, The Adopted Brother, and his
first feature, Judith of Bethulia. Included were some of Griffith’s best:
Death’s Marathon, The Yaqui Cur, and The Battle at Elderbush Gulch.
Many other films were remakes or otherwise treading familiar ground.
Impatient with the format of the short film, DWG packs them, even
slowing camera speed. Many of the 1913 should be screened at 14 fps as
compared to the 16 fps valid until then! As the last of the film
companies, Biograph starts to announce the names of its stars, and
Griffith, himself, launches a campaign of self-promotion as the father
of inventions. Of the
stars, Lillian Gish
blossoms in films
such as The Lady
and the Mouse and
The Mothering
Heart. It is an
important year for
Harry Carey, who
appears in The
Sheriff’s Baby, the
first film adaptation
of The Three
Roberto Roberti‘s Napoli Che Canta, 1926
Courtesy: George Eastman House
Godfathers, so
important for John
Ford. In The
Sorrowful Shore,he
co-stars with Olive Fuller Golden, the future Olive Carey. In films such as
If We Only Knew we see his signature gesture, later paid homage to by
John Wayne. Also films not directed but maybe supervised by Griffith
59 Journal of Film Preservation / 67 / 2004