Le Giornate del Cinema Muto 2006 Sommario / Contents

project – in this case, Way Down East. When one wonders how
Griffith’s reputation as a director of merit suffered such a marked
decline in the 1920s, films like The Love Flower provide ample
evidence.
Placed within the context of 1920 studio filmmaking, The Love Flower
is certainly no worse than the average feature.What is dispiriting is that
those aspects of the film which seem definably Griffithian reside on the
same level of mediocrity as those moments which one might attribute
to any journeyman director of the era. At this point, Griffith’s depiction
of the woman-child as a product of nature was becoming almost
parodic.Watching Carol Dempster gambol in the surf, repeatedly tossing
her arms up in the spray, or demurely posed in a garden, gazing dewily
at bowers of roses, one is struck by the predictable shallowness of
Griffith’s conception of female innocence. The Love Flower reaches its
nadir in this regard when Dempster dresses up the requisite kitten in
baby clothes and then encourages a feline embrace of a tiny goat kid.
Remarkably, this moment of enforced zoological affection is meant to
convey the character’s emerging maternal instincts. More successful at
demonstrating Margaret Bevan’s emotional growth is the brief moment
when she views an obviously enamoured island couple. Rather than
relying on animal substitutes, Griffith here provides undiluted desire
through point of view; coupled with the lush atmospherics of the miseen-scène
and Bitzer’s sense of mood, this relatively straightforward
approach proves Griffith could achieve more contemporary effects.
The slowly developing relationship between Margaret (Carol Dempster,
whose character is referred to in some sources as Stella) and Jerry
(Richard Barthelmess) finds its major obstacle in her belief that he
means to aid in the capture of her father Thomas Bevan (George
MacQuarrie).The fact that Margaret chooses to construe the remedy to
her sexual isolation as a threat to her intense bond with her father
provides a few moments of invigorating fury, most obviously when she
takes an axe to Jerry’s boat and causes it to sink. But the narrative
constantly distracts from the psychosexual frisson her attraction to
Jerry produces by making the figure of Crane (Anders Randolf) the main
object of her anger. Margaret attempts to kill Crane no less than three
times, most spectacularly when she tries drowning him, creating the
opportunity for some exciting underwater filming. But overall, the figure
of Crane is an impediment to the film developing its most intriguing
situation: Margaret’s dilemma in choosing between Jerry and her father.
Rather improbably, the solution ultimately devised is that she need not
make a choice, as the narrative allows her to keep both. (Even so, the
film implies that the threesome can only sustain their relationship by
continuing to live on the island, isolated from “the law”.) But while we
are told that Margaret will return with Jerry to her father, what we are
shown conveys the opposite. The film ends with the police file
photograph of Thomas Bevan (pictured with his daughter, no less)
marked “Dead”, followed directly by the young couple featured alone on
a boat surrounded by the emblem of their relationship: the love flower.
The insistence on imagery associated with Jerry and Margaret’s love
further confirms the negation of the father stressed in the previous shot.
91
The urge to maintain the intensity of the father/daughter bond even as
it is supplanted by the union of the couple results in this strangely
contradictory conclusion, where visual representation refutes the
assurances of the title cards.Were all of The Love Flower as suggestive
as the tensions produced within its final moments, it would warrant a
more extended reappraisal. – CHARLIE KEIL [DWG Project # 591]
Prog. 6
THE IDOL DANCER (L’idolo danzante) (D.W. Griffith, US
1920)
Regia/dir: D.W. Griffith; cast: Clarine Seymour, Richard Barthelmess,
George MacQuarrie, Creighton Hale, Kate Bruce, Thomas Carr,
Anders Randolf, Porter Strong, Herbert Sutch, Walter James,
Adolphe Lestina, Florence Short, Ben Graver, Walter Kolomoku;
35mm, 6818 ft., 91’ (20 fps), Patrick Stanbury Collection, London.
Didascalie in inglese / English intertitles.
Mi sono avvicinato a The Idol Dancer con un atteggiamento di
nobile condiscendenza, cosa che si è rivelata un grosso sbaglio. Era
da ingenui, infatti, pensare di poterlo liquidare come un tipico
prodotto realizzato a fin di lucro, il famigerato “prodigio girato in
quattro giorni” a Fort Lauderdale da Griffith in attesa di occupare
il nuovo studio di Mamaroneck. Ma il film richiedeva comunque una
disinvolta disanima di tipo sociologico. Meglio dunque considerarlo
un prodotto in linea con la moda post-bellica delle avventure
romantiche nei mari del Sud, insaporire il riferimento con una
brillante citazione sulla ukulele-mania, evidenziare lo strano mix di
stereotipi usati da Griffith per impastare i suoi isolani della
Polinesia, osare un ardito parallelo con Pioggia di Somerset
Maugham e forse anche con Verdi dimore di W.H. Hudson, dopo di
che passare subito a un Griffith migliore. Non avevo più rivisto The
Idol Dancer da moltissimo tempo. Ma, se c’era un film di Griffith
immune da ogni redenzione critica, questo pareva proprio essere il
suo caso. E cosa mai poteva redimere una nuova visione del film?
Wando, il capotribù sovrappeso con un osso infilato nel naso e due
grandi teschi penzoloni sul petto a mo’ di reggiseno allentato? La
schiera di interpretazioni assurde? La faccia nera di Porter Strong?
La sanguinante cristianità cui facevano riferimento tutti i
commentari critici?.
Certo, rimaneva il ricordo persistente della sequenza del Flatiron
Building sotto la neve, ancora vivo nella mia mente a 45 anni di
distanza dalla prima volta che avevo visto il film, ma ci sono limiti
oltre i quali non può spingersi neanche un esperto di Griffith.
Le note di presentazione, a cura di William K. Everson, che
accompagnavano una riproposta del film avvenuta presso la
Theodore Huff Memorial Film Society (24 aprile 1959) parevano
stabilire il tono giusto:“Non avendo visto Scarlet Days, One Exciting
Night né Sally of the Sawdust, non posso affermare che questo sia il
GRIFFITH