I awoke with good intentions but encountered even better conversations. And thus, my film viewing on this, the final day of the 44th Giornate del Cinema Muto, began at midday, with Koko the Clown. Which is a wonderful way to begin. This cartoon, Ko-Ko at the Circus (Dave Fleischer, 1926), with our inky friend squaring off against a giant, had me in stitches – which is how I ended the day too. Apt, perhaps to start with animation when today was really all about the kiddywinks.
Continue reading Le Giornate del Cinema Muto 2025: Pordenone Post No 8Tag Archives: GCM44
Le Giornate del Cinema Muto 2025: Pordenone Post No 7
I have been a little slow to start up some mornings. But one thing you can guarantee that I will get out of bed for is Victor Sjöström. Victor Sjöström’s 1912 debut film no less, banned outright in Sweden, but available for us lucky degenerates on the capacious Verdi screen, with a truly wonderful accompaniment by Stephen Horne. Variously known as The Cruelty of the World, The Gardener or The Broken Spring Rose, this is a really special film and I do think the first title is the best one.
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Le Giornate del Cinema Muto 2025: Pordenone Post No 6
Feature films? What a concept. They don’t always seem to be the dominant form here at Pordenone. But this afternoon was an exception to that rule, with a triple-bill of four-to-six-reelers back to back. Welcome to a world of truly immersive narrative entertainment, It’s the future.
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Le Giornate del Cinema Muto 2025: Pordenone Post No 5
It may seem that the Giornate is in its own bubble, a hundred years or more removed from the real world, wrapped up in the fashions and the fads of the past. But we’re still looking out at the world every day, and no matter how the text on screen tries to guide us, we bring our 21st-century interpretation to everything that passes in front of our eyes. Sometimes the challenge is to wind back the clock, to see the past as our ancestors did when they were living through it. Sometimes we have no choice but to view images of the world as it was while burdened with the knowledge of our shared history, and of our violent present.
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Le Giornate del Cinema Muto 2025: Pordenone Post No 4
Last night I dreamt I went to East Lynne again… Ellen Wood is directing my subconscious now. I love this mini melodrama strand and I really enjoyed today’s instalment, which was the lavish 1925 Fox adaptation, East Lynne (Emmett Flynn), scripted by Lenore Coffee and starring Edmund Lowe as Carlyle and Alma Rubens as Lady Isabel – a very handsome pair and just right for this ill-starred pair.
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Le Giornate del Cinema Muto 2025: Pordenone Post No 3
Monday finished with a zinger. I mean a Zingari. Italia Almirante Manzini wowed the Verdi as Wilejka, a heavy-lidded beauty with great hair, but in this case as a heavy-lidded beautiful Gypsy shepherdess with great hair. In Zingari (Mario Almirante, 1920) Wilejka falls in love with a man, Abaldo (Amleto Novelli, no less) that her father, the leader of the camp, forbids her to marry. There is many a consultation of the cards, a fireside dance, a storm, a threatening villain, a crushing pang of jealousy, an assassination and naturally, a barn on fire before this will all end happily ever after.
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Le Giornate del Cinema Muto 2025: Pordenone Post No 2
Is it still a pathetic fallacy even if the weather is true but the drama is not? As I set out to begin my day with some major melodrama, there was heavy weather in the skies above Pordenone also. We shook off the rain in the Verdi foyer, while we prepared to dampen our faces with tears during the first of this year’s adaptations of East Lynne.
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Le Giornate del Cinema Muto 2025: Pordenone Post No 1
The Giornate dawned with grey skies but good times, a respite from Storm Amy and all the rest of the week’s turbulence, a day of pretty views and outbreaks of mild escapism. Many of us were just grateful to be get here, let alone arrive on time, after the transport situation was especially complex this year. It was an especially mellow start to the festival for me. Blame it on the 3am alarm call, the cold medication or just the pleasurable daze of seeing so many familiar faces all at once. Will I sneeze or snooze my way through the first day of films? Who knows? And will my ears ever “unpop” from the plane? Join me now to find out.
Continue reading Le Giornate del Cinema Muto 2025: Pordenone Post No 1
Silent London 