Le Giornate del Cinema Muto 2005 Sommario / Contents

Davide Turconi, Prophet of the Silents
Davide Turconi, founding father and first director of the Giornate del Cinema Muto, and doyen of Italian cinema historians, died on 27 January 2005,
at the age of 94 (he was born on 17 January 1911). His name was known internationally, above all for the first-ever monograph on Mack Sennett,
which remained for many years the only specialist study dealing with “the King of Comedy”; for his pioneering 1984 retrospective dedicated to Thomas
H. Ince – one of the directors dearest to him; and for a monumental filmography of the Vitagraph Company, published by the Giornate in 1987. There
were few close friends at his funeral, but such a farewell was in a certain sense appropriate to the personality of a modest and retiring man,
indifferent to ephemeral fame in a discipline which, as far as he was concerned, did not attract the attention of the mass media.
I had the great fortune to know Davide a long time, from 1978, when Angelo R. Humouda, director of that cultural forge that was the Cineteca Griffith
of Genoa, took me in his green Volkswagen van to the tiny locality in Pavia where Turconi had inspired a new course in the study of silent cinema
and taught many – including myself – the difficult art of researching the documents of the period, as well as the passion for silent cinema. His
experience in the appreciation of silent cinema went back many years, at least to the Incontri Cinematografici di Grado (1970-1972), a first essay in
the formula which would subsequently find its full realization in Pordenone, and even before that, at the Venice Film Festival (with retrospectives of
Sennett in 1961 and Keaton in 1963). I often recall two of his favourite expressions. The first was a reply to the incredulity of Americans who could
not understand how an Italian could establish filmographies more precise and comprehensive than their own. “It’s simple,” he said, modestly. “I look
in all the correspondence columns of the magazines, where readers ask for information on actors and actresses in tiny roles in films.” The other was
his constant caveat, hic sunt leones (“here are lions”) – the Latin motto drawn from early cartographic descriptions of unexplored exotic lands –
which he loved to use when talking of the innumerable lacunae in our knowledge of the beginnings of cinema.
I consider myself even more fortunate to have passed long and thrilling hours on the night train between Genoa and Pordenone, where Le Giornate
del Cinema Muto had begun to develop under his guidance. With hindsight, I wish I had had a recorder to capture the endless stories Davide told me
during these sleepless journeys through the Lombardy plain, after the meetings of the board of directors of the festival. Stories of the cinema, of
course, of the editorial adventures of the Italian magazine Cinema, of the discovery of the Joye Collection in Switzerland, in great part restored thanks
to his influence, of his sense of the need to give life to an Italian Association for Studies in the History of Cinema (established thanks to him in 1964);
but also personal and sometimes intimate stories, like his participation in the Resistance, his passion for French literature, the day-to-day activities
of the tourist office in Pavia which provided him with a livelihood. Between one station and the next, Davide displayed his talent as a first-rate
raconteur. In between comments on the pages of Moving Picture World and trenchant judgments on many histories of the cinema written without
adequate recognition of period sources, there would be observations on the role of the Catholics in the struggle against fascism, fascinating anecdotes
about the cinematheques of the immediate post-war period, and ideas for retrospectives to be organized for Pordenone in the years to come.
When the Pordenone silent film festival was in its novice years, and its young organizers did not know well which fish to catch, everyone went to
Davide. It was like catching trout by hand, because we knew quite well that we would find ourselves again on the bus from Montebello della Battaglia
to the railway station at Voghera with a notebook full of notes, ideas, initiatives which only waited to take tangible form. As well as ideas, Davide was
a prodigy of information. To call him generous (which is what is always said about a deceased person) is an unpardonable understatement: while
others were concerned to maintain personal control of knowledge in the terra incognita which was early cinema, he thrust into your hands photocopies
of rare documents, volumes of old magazines, books which no one else could have found in Italy at that time. And he never asked for anything in
return, except to share with him the enthusiasm which always animated him and which guaranteed him a long and serene existence.
With the onset of old age, Davide gradually transformed himself from primus motor of cinema history into an object for graduate theses and interviews.
Then he cut out these also. Preoccupied with the health of his wife, who died a year before him, his excursions to Pordenone grew less frequent and
then ceased. He had handed over his incomparable library of books on cinema to the Provincia di Pavia, which had promised to make it available to
the public. In justice to Davide, the ethical standards he endeavoured to promote are now a mandate we are committed to fulfill. Davide has given us
not only the necessary instruments for the study of the cinema with scientific criteria; in showing us so many paths to follow, he has also and above
all given us a lesson in intellectual honesty. The moment to repay him has arrived. From this point of view, the death of Davide does not represent
the end of an epoch as much as the start of a new mission. We do not feel the burden of a debt to a master, so much as a responsibility to honour
it in the name of a friend. – PAOLO CHERCHI USAI
On Tuesday 11 October the Giornate presents a special tribute to Davide Turconi, remembering his pioneering explorations of the Joye Collection (see “Special Presentations”, pp. 32-34).