Jan-Christopher Horak

Despite fears that the Pordenone Silent Film Festival would be up-ended by a combination of financial debts, the threatened loss of the Verdi Theatre, and an endless struggle for hotel rooms occupied by Nato Troops flying missions over Bosnia, this year's Giornate del Cinema Muto (8-15 October) once again sent film historians, archivists and collectors home with happy faces. Everyone had made personal discoveries and engaged in the kind of discussion and reevaluation of film history for which this festival is justifiably famous. And while the momentous rediscoveries of other years (pre-Caligari, pre-Revolutionary Russia) were absent, outright flops like the disastrous John Cale performance were also few and far between.

This year's main theme was dedicated to “ Forgotten Laughter ”, unknown American silent film comedians, including Billy Armstrong, Billy Bevan, Charley Bowers, Chester Conklin, James Finlayson, Louise Fazenda, Oliver Hardy, Lupino Lane, Hank Mann, Al St. John, Snub Pollard, Sid Smith, Ben Turpin, and Billy West. Certainly this program was an important opportunity to re-evaluate the second string comedians who almost never made it beyond the nether regions of short film program fillers for third run houses, but there was much discussion about their ultimate importance in relation to the comedy saints Chaplin, Keaton, Lloyd. As the round-table discussion at festival's end made clear, a few historians felt that these comedians had been unjustly forgotten and ignored by the likes of James Agee, while others (including this writer) felt that given the lack of aesthetic quality, these comedians were hardly ripe for canonization. Indeed, watching these short comedies en masse, rather than as shorts before a feature, as originally screened, tended to accentuate weaknesses, rather than strengths. Endless repetitions of gags, overuse of vaudeville clichés and mindless slapstick seemingly ruled the day, whereas character development and plotting were only rarely in evidence.

Furthermore, the euphoria of discovery displayed by some European viewers contrasted with the more subdued view of some American collectors long exposed to the Blackhawk Library of p.d. reissues. Most agreed that these comedies are rich in socio-political and cultural content, revealing much about the nature of humour and the typography of 1920s Los Angeles. Finally, everyone acknowledged the greatness of Max Davidson in Pass the Gravy (1928), which won the festival's comedy film poll, and was one of only a handful of comedy discoveries.

The second major retrospective, dedicated to Indian silent cinema, also had its detractors and defenders. As curated by Prof. Suresh Chabria, the director of the National Film Archive of India, “ The Light of Asia ” certainly demonstrated that the so-called Third World cinema did not begin with the discovery of Satyajit Ray by 1950s western art cinemas, but could look back on a long tradition reaching well back into the silent era. While most of the films survive only in fragmentary, mutilated form, due as much to tropical climate conditions accelerating film decomposition as to colonialist cultural policies, a proudly nationalist cinema rich in history, myth, spectacle, and religious pageantry nevertheless emerged. The musical accompaniment by a group of Indian musicians living in Europe was uniformly excellent, adding the right touch of local colour to the presentations. For Western eyes the early documentaries of British tourists taking in the glorious sights of the Imperial Raj proved an easy entry point.

The three fiction features directed by Bavarian expatriate Franz Osten were also accessible, given their narrative structure and visual style, perfected in Munich and Berlin rather than in Bombay. Die Leuchte Asiens / Light of Asia (1926), produced by the German Emelka, retold the story of the young Siddhartha and featured - like its Ufa-financed successors - a broad canvas of characters, spectacular Indian locations, realistic acting, and an accomplished, even breath-taking mise en scène. Shiraz (1928) related the love and rivalry behind the building of the Taj Mahal, while Throw of the Dice (1929) illustrated a tale of greed and corruption. All three films were successful in the export market (which may account for their excellent print quality), and also proved to be excellent propagandistic weapons in India's struggle for national independence.

Seemingly much closer to an Indian film aesthetic, and possibly the great discovery of the Indian program, was a little B-film, Gallant Hearts (1931). Made by a Poona-based company, it proved to be a fast and furious comedy-action-adventure film, filled with court intrigues, rowdy sword fights, fantastic locations, and an unlikely set of heroes in a foundling Prince who grows up a circus acrobat and an exotic dancer who wields a mean sword. Of particular interest was the female lead, who no mere love interest, metamorphoses from dancer to swashbuckler to betraying lover to masked avenger willing to risk death in order to atone for her momentary lapse of loyalty.

Strong women were also the hallmark of Monta Bell, to whom the “ Hollywood Independents ” portion of the program (along with William Wyler) was dedicated. Wyler's surviving films from the silent period appeared to be undistinguished until Hell's Heroes (1929), a work of incredible maturity, which was also Wyler's first sound film, but only survives in a silent version. After seeing eight of his thirteen silents, Monta Bell's film career seems ripe for reevaluation. Previously mentioned in most film histories as one of Chaplin's assistants on A Woman of Paris, and, like his colleagues, Harry D'Arrast, Jean de Limur, and Eddie Sutherland, a Lubitsch imitator, Bell seems to have been undervalued because of his relative lack of success in the sound era. Even his two best known films, The Torrent and Man, Woman and Sin, have been discussed in relation to their respective stars, Greta Garbo and John Gilbert, rather than for Bell's contributions.

Monta Bell thus seemingly emerged as a director of parts rather than the whole, proving to be a master of atmospheric details and elements of mise en scène that were simply brilliant, e.g. in Upstage : a female vaudevillian wrestling with a snake in a box, twins who do everything simultaneously, a box of Kotex prominently visible in a chorus girls' dressing room, a chorus girl stuffing a stocking into a hole in their window, a ventriloquist's dummy staring at a lifeless child. The backstage dressing room in The Torrent becomes the scene for the final confrontation between the film's cowardly (anti)-hero, an old, withered and emotionally broken man who had forsaken all to please his mother, and the gloriously radiant Garbo who remains youthful despite countless moral and sexual indiscretions. Bell's perverse imagination opens vistas on the other, which certainly must have caused puritanical studio bosses to shudder.

Thus, by week's end Bell's narrative lapses reveals themselves to be conscious devices to distance the viewer from the melodrama, while simultaneously underlining Bell's dark vision of thoroughly weak men and overbearing, phallic women. Both The Torrent and Man, Woman and Sin end with castrated sons returning to the womb, their mothers triumphant over younger, sexually alluring rivals. In both films the mothers are clearly marked as chaperones and driving forces behind their male offspring' social-climbing careers. Indeed, gender relations are repeatedly seen as a function of cash rather than love, a ruthless quest for riches taking precedence over sexual desire. The resulting tensions and conflicts make for thoroughly over-determined happy endings: In King on Main Street, the King forsakes his true love for raison d'état. In Lights of Old Broadway the upper class hero becomes dependent on his nouveau riche bride from the Lumpenproletariat. In Pretty Ladies a strong-willed wife forgives her philandering husband, understanding that he will stray again. In both After Midnight and Upstage a happy end is only possible due to the death of a loved one.

Given this new appreciation of Monta Bell's noirish world view, it is to be regretted that The Snob (1924) was not available. Long considered lost, Bell's first John Gilbert film features the actor in one of the most unsympathetic roles as a ruthless social climber. According to a rumour circulating in Pordenone, the film is in the hands of a private American collector. It was not the only film to surface: a lost Lubitsch film from 1917 was also reported to have been found in Slovenia. Thus, Pordenone also proves again to be fruitful territory for archivists on the look-out for those elusive treasures which make the daily grind worthwhile.

Malgré les difficultés diverses (risque de déficit, menace de perte du cinéma “Verdi”, pénurie de chambres d'hôtel, etc.), les Giornate de Cinema Muto ont encore une fois renvoyé à la maison des historiens, des archivistes et des collectionneurs aux sourires heureux.

Cette année, le thème principal était “Le sourire oublié”.

Certains historiens ont soutenu, lors de la table ronde organisée à Pordenone, que des comédiens américains (tels que Billy Armstrong, Billy Bevan, Charley Bowers, Chester Conklin, James Finlayson, Louise Fazenda, Oliver Hardy, Lupino Lane, Hank Mann, Al St. John, Snubb Pollard, Sid Smith, Ben Turpin et Billy West) étaient injustement méconnus alors que leur rôle aurait été relativement important en comparaison avec les “saints” de la comédie (Chaplin, Keaton, Lloyd). L'opinion du chroniqueur est qu'en fait ces acteurs n'étaient pas encore mûrs pour la canonisation... Une bonne surprise fut, de l'avis de tous les festivaliers, Pass the Gravy de Max Davidson.

La rétrospective suivante en importance fut celle proposée par le Prof. Suresh Chabria sur le cinéma muet de l'Inde (avec accompagnement de musique indienne). Trois fictions à sujet indien du bavarois Franz Osten complètent cette rétrospective.

Un regard nouveau est proposé par l'auteur sur l'oeuvre de Monta Bell, dont les films muets partagèrent le programme “Hollywood Independents” avec ceux de William Wyler...

Et Pordenone s'avère, une fois de plus, comme un territoire fructueux pour les archivistes en quête de trésors...

Las Jornadas del cine mudo, Pordenone 1994

Pese a todo tipo de dificultades (riesgo de déficit, amenaza de perder la sala "Verdi", escasez de habitaciones, etc.), las célebres Giornate del Cinema Muto han hecho felices, una vez más, a historiadores, archivistas y coleccionistas de todos los horizontes.

Este año el tema principal llevaba por título "La sonrisa olvidada" en el que se presentaron a numerosos cómicos estadounidenses (Billy Armstrong, Billy Bevan, Charley Bowers, Chester Conklin, James Finlayson, Louise Fazenda, Oliver Hardy, Lupino Lane, Hank Mann, Al St. John, Snubb Pollard, Sid Smith, Ben Turpin et Billy West, etc) del período mudo.

Otro programa fué el que propuso el profesor Suresh Chabria sobre el cine mudo de la India. Tres producciones alemanas de tema Indio, dirigidas por Franz Osten, completaban a dicha retrospectiva.

El programa "Los independientes de Hollywood" ofrecieron, entre otros aspectos, una nueva apreciación de las obras de Monta Bello y de William Wyler...

Pordenone se reveló, una vez más, como un territorio fructífero para archivistas, historiadores y públicos en búsqueda de nuevos tesoros...