Tag Archives: Giornate del Cinema Muto

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The Silent London Poll of 2023: And the winners are …

January 26, 2024 PH Leave a comment

I may be a humble blogger typing at my desk, but just imagine I am a glamorous celebrity cracking first-rate jokes while wearing a designer ballgown. I have counted the votes, and I am ready to announce the winners of the Silent London Poll of 2023!

Congratulations to all the people mentioned below – as ever, these categories were bursting with great nominations. Thank you for all your votes, and your comments, which remind us all of the passion for silent film out there.

Without further ado, let me open this giant stack of golden envelopes. Here are your winners.

1. Best orchestral silent film screening of 2023

Your winner: Stella Dallas (Henry King, 1925), with a score composed by Stephen Horne, orchestrated by Ben Palmer and performed by Orchestra del Teatro Comunale directed by Timothy Brock, in the Piazza Maggiore Bologna, as part of Il Cinema Ritrovato

I said: “Before Monday night’s screening of the original 1925 adaptation of Olive Higgins Prouty’s weepie, some people in Bologna were still dropping the names of Barbara Stanwyck and King Vidor. After Monday, the talk of the town was only Belle Bennett, Henry King and Stephen Horne, whose marvellous score, alongside Bennett’s impeccable performance, left the piazza awash with tears. Horne has long championed this film, as have I, and the new restoration from MOMA is a very welcome, and beautiful thing. I really hope more people get to see this wonderful film now. Silent melodrama really can be the very finest melodrama.”

Honourable mention: Lady Windermere’s Fan (Ernst Lubitsch, 1925), at the same festival, with Timothy Brock’s new orchestral score.

The Crowd (King Vidor, 1928)

2. Best silent film screening with a solo musician or small ensemble of 2023

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The Silent London Poll of 2023: vote for your winners now

December 21, 2023 PH 2 Comments

Season’s greetings Silent Londoners. It’s that time of year when we like to look back at the year, and especially at all the great silent movies we watched.

2023 was a busy year. We had in-person and online film festivals, seasons, screenings and conferences, some fabulous new restorations, discs and some big anniversaries. We had new books and DVDs to enjoy. I was a little distracted, but the silent film scene was booming.

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Le Giornate del Cinema Muto 2023: Pordenone Post No 8

October 14, 2023 PH 1 Comment

The final day of the Giornate, for indeed this was the final day of the Giornate, was a lot like the Ryder Cup. Confused? Well bear with me as I unpack this extremely rare sporting analogy. It was a case of Europe vs the United States, with the home continent playing the first half of the day and Hollywood taking over just as the sun was about to set.

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Le Giornate del Cinema Muto 2023: Pordenone Post No 7

October 14, 2023 PH Leave a comment

You don’t have to be superstitious to notice when the date is Friday the 13th, and conduct yourself cautiously as a result. And of course I am not superstitious – unless you count the fact that I am convinced I willed this evening’s gala into existence by the power of my mind. But that’s a story for later on…

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Le Giornate del Cinema Muto 2023: Pordenone Post No 6

October 12, 2023 PH Leave a comment

Good vibes only at the Giornate on this sunny Thursday. All of us who made it to the extra-early morning serial knew that we had got out of bed on the right side as soon as we realised that this episode of Le P’tit Parigot might have been called La P’tite Parisienne. Yes, it was young Bouboule’s time to shine, as she raced to the rescue of Biscot in a very fetching Delaunay pinafore, and explained her actions in a nifty flashback while the two of them filed through his prison bars. The episode took a turn for the torrid towards the end, but otherwise oh what a joy.

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Le Giornate del Cinema Muto 2023: Pordenone Post No 5

October 11, 2023 PH Leave a comment

Pordenone changes a person. I don’t just mean in the way that my bloodstream is now 80% espresso. It changes your aspirations. My dream now is to live in an apartment designed by Sonia Delaunay, watching Peter Elfelt’s dance films (they are playing before several of the screenings) all day. For loungewear, I would choose the louche shawl-collared robe sported by Jaque Catelain in Le Vertige, and if I ever left the flat, I would wear the stunning geometric coat and hat sported by Madame Gilberte in Le P’tit Parigot. I’d take the vintage Bugatti too, please.

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Le Giornate del Cinema Muto 2023: Pordenone Post No 4

October 10, 2023 PH Leave a comment

We’re at the halfway mark, and let me be abundantly clear: I’m not ready to go home yet. But should you be homesick, there was more than a taste of London in the Verdi today, with Walter Forde’s chase comedy Would You Believe It? (1929) for starters, and even Harry Piel or rather Harry Peel transported us to the Big Smoke for his Rivalen (1923). More of which anon.

More authentically, Jacques Haïk’s Se London!, filmed in the summer of 1927, gave us the view from the streets, whisking us from Hyde Park to Whitechapel in dashing style. I was lucky enough to write about this one for the catalogue, so I was cockahoop to see it on the big screen, with London’s own John Sweeney bringing out the spirit and style of this characterful travelogue. Especially, in the really beautifully photographed Tower Bridge sequence – a real highlight of this film.

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Le Giornate del Cinema Muto 2023: Pordenone Post No 3

October 9, 2023 PH Leave a comment

As Erich Von Stroheim never ever once said: I’ll keep this fairly brief. That’s partly because I was a little distracted today by matters literary, only some of which is relevant to this dispatch.

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Le Giornate del Cinema Muto 2023: Pordenone Post No 2

October 8, 2023 PH Leave a comment

Pordenone eh? It’s like Christmas for silent film fans. Quite literally tonight at the breathtaking conclusion of tonight’s headline film. The title was Hell’s Heroes, and we were watching the silent version of William Wyler’s 1929 sound adaptation of the story better known as Three Godfathers.

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Le Giornate del Cinema Muto 2023: Pordenone Post No 1

October 7, 2023 PH 2 Comments

Watch your step, Pordenauts. Leaving the Verdi after the first afternoon of screenings at this sun-soaked Giornate, I almost walked into the path of the Pordenone Pnthlon relay race. A timely reminder that this festival of silent cinema is a marathon not a sprint, so get set, but don’t tear off too fast, we have eight days ahead of us.

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Pordenone season

September 28, 2023 PH Leave a comment

Fall vibes. It’s giving pumpkin spice lattes, mellow fruitfulness, Luke Danes in a flannel shirt and the scent of a freshly sharpened pencil. This autumnal atmosphere can only mean one thing. Pack your bags, gang, we’re going to Pordenone.

The Pordenone Silent Film Festival hasn’t begun yet, it runs 7-14 October, but today the programme was announced, so let’s take a look and enjoy some shivers of anticipation. Shivers? Best put a cardigan on, it’s October.

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In memoriam: Carl Davis

August 7, 2023 PH 2 Comments

I wanted to write something about Carl Davis, but I didn’t really know where to begin. Other people can say far more intelligent things about his music. Other people were in the right time at the right place.

But for an accident of birth, my first introduction to the work of Carl Davis might have been his astonishing score for The World at War, or more aptly for my interests, his collaborations with Kevin Brownlow and David Gill on the Thames Silents, or on the landmark television series Hollywood. I was lucky however, to be exactly this age: I was a bookish teenager when the BBC broadcast Pride and Prejudice, adapted by Andrew Davies, starring Jennifer Ehle and Colin Firth, and with a soundtrack by Carl Davis. Formative.

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The Silent London Poll of 2022: And the winners are …

January 25, 2023 PH 2 Comments

Well done everyone! The Silent London Poll of 2022 had a record-breaking number of votes, and the winners reflect a thriving, international silent film scene. Congratulations to all the people mentioned below, some of these categories were bursting with great nominations. Thank you for all your votes. And for making me blub a little when I was typing this up.

Without further ado, let me open this giant stack of golden envelopes. Here are your winners!

The Manxman (Alfred Hitchcock, 1929)

1. Best orchestral silent film screening of 2022

Your winner: The Manxman (Alfred Hitchcock, 1929), with a score composed by Stephen Horne, orchestrated and conducted by Ben Palmer and played by Orchestra San Marco di Pordenone, with soloists Louise Hayter and Jeff Moore, at Le Giornate del Cinema Muto, Pordenone.

I said: “Horne’s music is as deft as Hitch’s camera: always gorgeous, but sometimes delicate and other times thick with portents of doom… Needless to say, Hitch and Horne brought the Verdi to its feet once more.

Honorable mention: The Unknown (Tod Browning, 1927) with a score conducted and composed by José María Serralde Ruiz, performed by Orchestra San Marco di Pordenone, , at Le Giornate del Cinema Muto, Pordenone.

La Dixième symphonie (Abel Gance, 1918)

2. Best silent film screening with a solo musician or small ensemble of 2022

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The Greatest Silent Film Poll of 2022: vote for your winners now

December 14, 2022 PH 3 Comments

Season’s greetings Silent Londoners. It’s that time of year when we like to look back at the year, and especially at all the great silent movies we watched.

Who knows what normal is any more? But this year we had in-person film festivals, seasons, screenings and conferences a-plenty. We had new books and DVDs to enjoy. New websites too! And honestly, silent cinema seems to be more popular than ever.

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Le Giornate del Cinema Muto 2022: Pordenone Post No 8

October 9, 2022 PH 5 Comments

So the 41st Giornate del Cinema Muto, and my personal 11th, draws to a close with two British silent films. What is that they say about saving the best for last?

I was certainly in Italy this morning, with the Italian drama Profanazione (Eugenio Pergeo, 1924-6) – a tale of adultery, corruption, suspicious, lost pets and automobile accidents. This was spirited drama, if very heavy on the intertitles, with Leda Gys as a woman who strays and yet is more sinned against than sinning. That title translates into English as “defilement”, which gives you a sense of the subject matter, I think, and why censorship delayed the film’s release for so long. Gys is every inch the star, though notably more restrained than the diva mode, and she is the heart of this film that despite its twists and turns, is very much a serious film for grownups.

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Le Giornate del Cinema Muto 2022: Pordenone Post No 7

October 8, 2022 PH 3 Comments

Day Seven of the festival and the mood on campus is very much “Thank God it’s Friday”. Not because anyone is glad the Giornate is nearly over (perhaps apart from the festival team perhaps who have worked tirelessly to ensure everything has run beautifully, as usual), but because today’s lineup is especially toothsome. More Norma! A Frances Marion-directed feature! And Ivan Mosjoukine and Brigitte Helm smouldering opposite each other! That’s before we even get to tonight’s Ruritanian romp – the 1924 adaptation of the silent era touchstone that is Elinor Glyn’s Three Weeks. Hold on to your string of pearls, we are going all-in.

First, an especially timely effort from Team Talmadge. In Within the Law (Frank Lloyd, 1923), Norma plays a shop girl who fights back. Exploited under capitalism, and imprisoned for a crime she didn’t commit, young Mary finds “going straight is a tough proposition”. Instead she teams up with a pretty blonde cellmate to take revenge on the moneyed male establishment with a breach-of-promise scheme that exploits men, cashes the big and stays strictly “within the law”.

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Le Giornate del Cinema Muto 2022: Pordenone Post No 6

October 6, 2022 PH 4 Comments

This evening belonged to Marie Prevost, much-maligned silent Hollywood comedienne and high empress of flirtatiousness. She appeared twice on the Verdi screen in front of a packed hall in two fashionable comedies, one about hair and another about lingerie: first in a fragment of the multi-authored flapper farce Bobbed Hair (Alan Crosland, 1925), and then full-length in the Al Christie comedy Up in Mabel’s Room (E. Mason Hopper, 1926).

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Le Giornate del Cinema Muto 2022: Pordenone Post No 5

October 5, 2022 PH 2 Comments

We have already established that Norma Talmadge is fond of a dual-role, but 1920’s Yes or No? (R. William Neill) pushes the boat out by having two Talmadge sisters on the cast list. of this New York drama Natalie T plays Emma, the maid of dissatisfied society lady Margaret (Norma) and sister of dutiful tenement housewife Minnie (also Norma). The clue is in the title here, and each woman will be asked to choose between temptation and courage, extramarital adventure and (often thankless) fidelity. So it’s a similar structure to that great Norma T melodrama Secrets (1924, Frank Borzage): a character study building to a question that tests that character. However, here we have two women, two questions, two answers – and two sets of consequences.

Choose carefully, ladies. The film is judging you. Literally, if those beartrap illustrations behind certain title cards are to be believed. In fact the title cards were a real highlight of the film, elegantly and often wittily illustrated. True, they were also a little sanctimonious, regressive… but it’s 1920 what can I say? The important point is that Norma is really splendid in this one. She does well with these two sympathetic characterisations, and while she is not charismatic in the way of a Swanson or a Pickford, she is very watchable. I am very much excited for the Normas to come. And thanks are due to José Maria Serralde Ruiz, for playing such an old-fashioned dramas if it were brand new, and building the tension beautifully.

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Le Giornate del Cinema Muto 2022: Pordenone Post No 4

October 4, 2022 PH 3 Comments

What’s your favourite Latvian nationalist historical fantasy war epic? From the silent era, I mean. Taking a little while to decide? Cool, I’ll share mine. It’s Lāčplēsis AKA The Bear Slayer (Aleksandrs Rusteiķis, 1930), newly restored by Riga’s Studio Locomotive.

To reassure the squeamish among you – there is no bear slaying in this film. The Bear Slayer is a strongman of Latvian legend, so burly he can kill a bear with his bare (sorry) hands, but he uses his might for right. This film starts with a hell of a bang, in full-on fantasy mode as an evil “Black Knight” (Osvalds Mednis) with an alarming bullet-shaped head and a supremely sinister gaze tries to bear down on a damsel in distress (Lilita Bērziņa) in a castle. She has an enchanted brooch that will save her, but the Knight gets his ghoulish, wizardy goblin pals to reverse that charm. They begin preparing the cauldron with the usual eye of newt etc and at the last minute, as they prepare to take the blood of an innocent dove, the Bear Slayer/Lāčplēsis (Voldemārs Dimze) throws his sword into the works and foils the dastardly scheme.

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Le Giornate del Cinema Muto 2022: Pordenone Post No 3

October 3, 2022 PH 3 Comments

Holiday hats on everyone. The sun is out in Pordenone. And although it can be a struggle to choose the dark of the cinema over basking in the Italian heat, there are compensations. Even if, this afternoon, the heavens opened in the Verdi with a screening of Joris Ivens’ splashy art film Regen (1929), part of the strand celebrating 90 years of the Venice Film Festival.

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