Catalogo Giornate del Cinema Muto 2012 - La Cineteca del Friuli

new Law for Combating Venereal Diseases in 1927 had decriminalized
prostitution, and it is reported that Berlin had no fewer than 100,000
streetwalkers. As if to tease the viewer, the film draws away from the
encounter between prostitute and potential customer, and instead
tracks in on the newspaper he holds up to shield his lecherous glances.
After scanning many pages and pictures, the camera comes to rest on
a brief news item, a mysterious story about an old man who was pulled
out of the water, obviously the victim of a crime. The first intertitle
had asked: “Millions of newspaper copies every day. Hundreds of
thousands of notices … every day. Hundreds of thousands fates …
Who gives these any thought between coffee and cigars?” The film
answers the question by cutting from the newspaper to a bustling
street, the home of the old man, a beggar, whose death occasioned
the report. Investigating his fate, the film presents the man’s life as
a story that is already past. The end is revealed at the beginning –
a narrative technique that reinforces a sense of immutability and
predetermination, but also a rhetorical device that encourages a
sociological, critical-analytical spectatorial position.
At the conclusion of the extended flashback, the film returns to the
street scene from the beginning as if no time had passed. The man with
the cigar puts the newspaper away and finally makes eye contact with
the prostitute (whom we recognize from the crime story). Both leave
the café without exchanging a word. Shot from an angle that makes
her slim body disappear behind the man’s grotesquely protruding
abdomen, the film ends with the prostitute and her customer simply
walking out of the frame. One final shot shows trash drifting down
an empty street. No suicide or melodramatic redemption: the film
refuses closure. The prostitute remains a prostitute, and life goes
on. The film coolly registers the fact that the forces of the capitalist
market are stronger than any desires for change because the desires
are themselves defined by capitalism. The critic of the Communist
paper Die Rote Fahne rightfully wondered why the film didn’t
provide a glimmer of hope, at least for the unemployed worker, to
find solidarity in organized class struggle. Harbor Drift, in contrast to
Mother Krause, shows no marching towards a new future.
The most remarkable feature of this film is Friedl Behn-Grund’s
innovative camerawork, which appropriates experimental and abstract
film techniques and invents new expressionist ways to manipulate light.
Dark shadows punctured by splotches of light and eerily lit wind-swept
trees set against a black background create a nightmarish atmosphere
of fear and premonition. An often unsteady camera seeks unusual
angles to display distorted perspectives, and out-of-focus close-ups
conjure up a sense of panic. (Stylistically, Harbor Drift has much in
common with Ernö Metzner’s experimental short Polizeibericht
Überfall, which appeared in April 1929.) The film’s rapid-cut montage
sequences follow the Russian School of editing that had become
customary for all proletarian filmmaking since Battleship Potemkin’s
Berlin premiere in 1926. Harbor Drift uses sex and crime to draw
attention to the human cost of capitalism, but in line with the tenets of
New Objectivity, it rejects any romantic hope for a social revolution.
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Its disillusioned and hardened look at the world foreshadows the dark
and gritty universe of 1940s American film noir, which unsurprisingly
became a haven for Weimar cinema in exile. – ANTON KAES
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Premio Jean Mitry – Pierre Étaix
RUPTURE (C.A.P.A.C., FR 1961)
Regia/dir: Pierre Étaix, Jean-Claude Carrière; prod: Paul Claudon;
mus: Jean Paillaud; f./ph: Pierre Levent, asst. Jean-Jacques Flori; mont./
ed: Léonide Azar, asst. Madeleine Bibollet; sd: Jean Nény; cast: Pierre
Étaix, Anne-Marie Royer, Anny Nelsen; 35mm, 376 m., 13' (24 fps), sd.;
fonte copia/print source: Fondation Technicolor pour le Patrimoine
du Cinéma / Fondation Groupama Gan pour le Cinéma, Paris.
Restauro/Restoration: Studio 37, Fondation Technicolor pour le
Patrimoine du Cinéma, Fondation Groupama Gan pour le Cinéma.
Per festeggiare l’assegnazione del premio Jean Mitry 2012 a Pierre
Étaix – nel suo duplice ruolo di maestro della commedia muta e
di restauratore della propria opera – presentiamo Rupture, il suo
primo cortometraggio muto, scritto e diretto nel 1961 con un altro
debuttante dello schermo, Jean-Claude Carrière. Nato nel 1928, Étaix
lasciò la nativa Roanne per lavorare a Parigi dapprima come illustratore
e in seguito anche come attore solista di cabaret e di music-hall, con
sporadiche incursioni nel circo come partner del clown Nino Fabbri.
Nel 1954 incontrò Jacques Tati, con cui avrebbe lavorato per quattro
anni consecutivi come pittore di scena, gagman, e aiuto-regista di Mon
oncle, dove apparve anche in un piccolo ruolo non accreditato. Nel
periodo trascorso con Tati collaborò con il giovane scrittore Jean-
Claude Carrière alla novellizzazione di Les vacances de M. Hulot e di
Mon oncle, scritta da Carrière e illustrata da Étaix. I due trovarono
un’intesa immediata e s’imbarcarono insieme nella loro prima
avventura cinematografica, Rupture. La loro seconda collaborazione,
Heureux anniversaire (1962) vinse sia l’Oscar che il BAFTA per il
migliore cortometraggio.
La partnership tra Étaix attore-regista e Carrière sceneggiatore
continuò anche quando il secondo intraprese la sua storica
collaborazione con Luis Buñuel (e, inter alia, con Forman, Malle,
Wajda, Brook e Schlöndorff); insieme realizzarono i lungometraggi
Le soupirant (1962), Yoyo (1965), Tant qu’on a la santé (1966) e Le
grand amour (1969), dove Étaix ebbe al fianco la sua prima moglie,
Annie Fratellini (1932-1977), l’erede di una grande tradizione di artisti
circensi che fu la prima donna clown di Francia e la fondatrice, con
Étaix, della prima scuola nazionale di circo.
In virtù del loro parco uso dei dialoghi, questi film furono un miracoloso
revival dell’arte della commedia muta, e, ospitati nei maggiori festival
mondiali, accolsero ovunque i favori unanimi di pubblico e di critica.
Étaix fu considerato da molti un artista dello stesso rango del suo
primo maestro, Tati.
Poi, all’improvviso, dopo un quinto titolo, Pays de Cocagne (1971)
sia Étaix che i suoi film sparirono praticamente dallo schermo. Solo
in seguito si saprà che a causa di un improvvido vincolo contrattuale
aveva perso i diritti sui film e che il nuovo proprietario aveva deciso
di toglierli dalla circolazione. Étaix riprese la sua attività di clown
e scrisse numerosi libri; ma due generazioni di cinefili non hanno
conosciuto neppure il nome di questo grande maestro della commedia
muta. Il suo è stato un fenomeno di singolare drammaticità nella
storia del cinema. Poi, per fortuna, è arrivato un seppur tardivo lieto
fine. Nei primi anni del secolo corrente, la questione dei diritti si è
risolta e Pierre Étaix è riuscito a ottenere il sostegno della Fondation
Groupama Gan pour le Cinéma e della Fondation Technicolor pour le
Patrimoine du Cinéma. Il materiale era stato mal conservato per oltre
quattro decenni e le due fondazioni hanno intrapreso il restauro dei
film in collaborazione con Studio 37 e con la costante consulenza dello
stesso Étaix. Il risultato – cinque lungometraggi e tre corti – è stato
finalmente editato in DVD nel 2010, con un delicato e significativo
documentario sul cineasta curato dalla moglie Odile Étaix.
A oltre mezzo secolo di distanza, l’impeccabile Rupture non appare
per nulla datato (se si esclude l’apparizione dell’ormai estinto uso di
penna e calamaio). La comicità è puramente visiva, accentuata solo
dallo score musicale di Jean Paillaud e dai brillanti effetti sonori. E
anche se il bel volto scarno e l’espressione assorta di Étaix invitano
al facile paragone con Keaton, le similitudini sono del tutto irrilevanti.
Étaix è preziosamente unico nella sua solitaria e coraggiosa battaglia
contro gli impicci che affliggono questo universo sotto forma di incroci
stradali, inchiostro, pennini, amore, francobolli, attaccapanni, morte,
lembi di buste che non stanno attaccati, sedie a dondolo e forza di
gravità. – DAVID ROBINSON
To mark the presentation of the 2012 Jean Mitry Award to Pierre
Étaix – in his dual role as a master of silent comedy and as restorer of
his own oeuvre – the Giornate is screening his first comedy short, cowritten
and co-directed with another screen debutant of 1961, Jean-
Claude Carrière. Born in 1928, Étaix left his native Roanne to work
in Paris as an illustrator and in time solo performer in cabaret, music
hall, and circus, where he partnered the clown Nino Fabbri. In 1954 he
met Jacques Tati, with whom he was to work for four years as artist,
gagman, and assistant director on Mon Oncle, in which he makes an
uncredited appearance. Working with Tati he collaborated with the
young writer Jean-Claude Carrière on novelizations of Les Vacances
de M. Hulot and Mon Oncle, written by Carrière and illustrated by
Étaix. The two found an instant rapport and embarked together on
their first film venture, Rupture. Their second collaboration, Heureux
Anniversaire (1962), won both the 1963 Oscar and the BAFTA award
for Best Short Film.
Their partnership as actor-director and writer continued at the
same time as Carrière embarked on his historic collaboration with
Luis Buñuel (he was also to work, inter alia, with Forman, Malle,
Wajda, Brook, and Schlöndorff); together they made the features Le
Soupirant (1962), Yoyo (1965), Tant qu’on a la santé (1966), and Le
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Grand Amour (1969), in which Étaix was partnered by his first wife,
Annie Fratellini (1932-1997), who came from a great circus dynasty
to become France’s first female clown and the founder, with Étaix, of
the country’s first circus school. With their sparse use of dialogue, the
films were a miraculous revival of the art of silent comedy. They were
all festival favourites and hugely popular with critics as with audiences.
Étaix was seen by many as the peer of his first master Tati.
Then abruptly, after a fifth feature, Pays de Cocagne (1971), both Étaix
and his films virtually disappeared from the screen. Later it emerged
that through some improvident contractual deal he had lost control
of the rights, and the eventual owner chose to suppress the films.
Étaix returned to live clowning, and wrote many books; but two
generations of cinephiles were not even aware of the name of this
great master of silent comedy. It was a unique and tragic phenomenon
of film history. But it was to have a late happy ending. In the early
years of this century, the rights situation was resolved, as Pierre Étaix
secured the support of Fondation Groupama Gan pour le Cinéma
and Fondation Technicolor pour le Patrimoine du Cinéma. The film
material had been badly kept over four decades, and the Fondations
undertook the restoration of the films, in collaboration with Studio
37 and with constant consultation with Étaix himself. The result – five
features and three shorts – were finally issued on DVD in 2010, with
a sensitive and revealing documentary on the filmmaker by his wife,
Odile Étaix.
Rupture is undated after more than half a century (apart from depicting
such extinct usages as pen-and-ink) and faultless. The comedy is purely
visual, only enhanced by Jean Paillaud’s score and the witty sound
effects. Though Étaix’s lean and handsome face and self-absorption
inevitably invite comparisons with Keaton, they are irrelevant: Étaix
is himself and unique, as he battles, brave and alone, with the hazards
that afflict this universe, like road-crossings, ink, pen nibs, love, postage
stamps, coat hangers, death, non-adhering envelope flaps, rocking
chairs, and the force of gravity. – DAVID ROBINSON
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THE SPANISH DANCER (La gitana) (Famous Players-Lasky Corp.,
dist: Paramount Pictures, US 1923)
Regia/dir., prod: Herbert Brenon; pres: Adolph Zukor; scen., ad:
June Mathis, Beulah Marie Dix, dalla pièce/from the play “Don César
de Bazan” (1844) di/by Adolphe d’Ennery & Philippe François Pinel
Dumanoir, basata su personaggi di/in turn suggested by characters
from the play “Ruy Blas” (1838) di/by Victor Hugo; f./ph: James
Howe [James Wong Howe]; mont./ed: Helene Warne; scg./des:
George Hopkins(?); cost: Howard Greer; cast: Pola Negri (Maritana),
Antonio Moreno (Don Caesar de Bazan), Wallace Beery (il re/King
Philip IV), Kathlyn Williams (la regina/Queen Isabel), Adolphe Menjou
(Don Salluste), Gareth Hughes (Lazarillo), Edward Kipling (marchese/
Marquis de Rotundo), Dawn O’Day [Anne Shirley] (Don Balthazar
Carlos), Charles A. Stevenson (ambasciatore del cardinale/Cardinal’s
R & R