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Pordenone
2001 Special
Presentations Maldone
(1928) is the debut feature by Jean Gremillion, a rural drama of a different
kind than Finis Terrae. For one thing, its gentle rhythms and
flowing images are more impressionist than the exacting dramatic images in
display in Finis Terrae. Charles Dullin plays Olivier Maldone, a
rugged cart driver taken from his simple but happy rural life and dropped into a
constricting suit and made the lord of the family manor he left in the hands of
his late brother years ago. Gremillion builds his film in two acts, the first
full of open countryside and sunny image set to a lolling, lazy pace, the second
arch and stifling as he’s stuck in a manor where everyone stiffly takes their
place at the gloomy dinner table in silence, never talking or laughing.
There’s the usual love triangle when he takes his young bride (Annabella), a
sweet girl whom he never really loved, on a honeymoon and meets the fiery gypsy
he once loved, but Gremillion takes a refreshingly adult route out of it. Only about half of the original German
cliffhanger adventure serial Was Ist Los Im Zirkus Beely? (1926,
a.k.a. Circle of Death) survives, saved in a shortened feature length
compilation, but it’s a kick nonetheless. The dramatic frame is patchy and
inconsistent, but the film is built around elaborate showcase set pieces
designed and performed by director/star Harry Piel. Piel, a barrel-chested man
who resembles a young Victor McLaglen, and was dubbed “The German
Fairbanks,” but he has a more wry personality and an urban sophistication, and
his stunts are less acrobatic than simply nervy. The story has something to do
with the murder of Harry’s pal, a hidden fortune in an abandoned circus
building, a sinister hooded figure lurking through the dark basement, a blind
girl Harry constantly saves, and a blustery police chief trying to beat private
detective Piel to the punch. The film, however, has everything to do with big
set pieces: a giant room with a descending ceiling (and, in a clever twist, a
corresponding floor that drops), a room full of lions that Piel has to dodge, a
chase through a full scale indoor one ring circus that ends up with a battle on
a spinning ladder. The sets are, simply put, big, designed to impress by sheer
scale and uncluttered by props. It’s like someone borrowed the sets from one
of Fritz Lang’s UFA epics at night to shoot this lark of a lark, and it was
one of the most purely entertaining pieces of the festival. The only surviving print of Allan Dwan’s East
Side, West Side (1927) was recently restored by the Museum of Modern Art,
and it’s a revelation. This delightful romantic drama from Fox was shot on
location in New York and on gorgeously detailed studio reconstructions of key
locations: a slum street under an elevated train, an underground subway tunnel
under construction, and the skeleton of a skyscraper in progress, all quite
beautiful. The screening was barely a month after September 11 and the sight of
the proud New York skyline of 1927 became more than simply the hope of the
future embodied in the film. George O’Brien is the gentle giant of a hero, a
veritable American Hercules raised hauling bricks on a barge and left homeless
when an ocean liner rams it one misty night, drowning his mother and stepfather.
The sequence is a beautifully shot miniature, directed in a somber key and the
tone is echoed in a later scene, an even more astounding and affecting shipwreck
scene fashioned very deliberately on the wreck of the Titanic. While the
miniature work is never “realistic,” it is always impressive, with a high
level of craftsmanship that makes it more suggestive and, yes, more effective
than many more convincing modern effects: what’s the point of verisimilitude
if it can’t move you? O’Brien washes ashore and is adopted by an outspoken
Jewish tailor’s daughter (Virginia Valli, coming off very much like a young
Irene Dunne), the first step on an adventure that takes him up the ladder of
success: from tailor shop gopher to prizefighter to architect. This is the glory
of the last hurrah of silent cinema, a strong, graceful, gorgeous film with a
strong emotional undercurrent of familial devotion and friendship, and a
nearly-tragic romantic disaster as the lovers are parted by sudden class
differences. It’s a testament to Dwan that he can play this all without the
usual stereotypes and pull off a happy ending from all this without a trace of
sentimental goo: the film ends on a strong sense of hope and renewal. The print
was beautiful, amazingly clear and clean and sharp, and the musical
accompaniment was one of the treats of the festival. A jazzy quintet played a
score of period songs (with periodic vocal accompaniment) arranged by pianist
Donald Sosin and supplemented by a couple of tunes written by Sosin especially
for this picture. The result was a lovely experiment: a silent musical that,
like all the best accompaniment, served the picture. The newly discovered “lost” Mabel Norman
comedy Molly O’ (1921), directed by F. Richard Jones, is nowhere in the
same company as East Side but it’s an enjoyable showcase for the great
comedienne of the teens. It plays something like a traditional Mary Pickford
picture. You know the genre: plucky poor urban girl wins the heart of the
boss’ son. In this case it’s a young doctor from a wealthy family that works
with the poor and is in the clutches of a gold-digging socialite, but Normand
puts a street-smart and sassy slapstick twist to the formula. The humor can be a
little questionable at times, like when her forgetfulness leads to a fire in the
family barn, but Normand has a marvelously devilish side: sweet but no babe in
the woods. She can take the snotty society girls who look down their noses at her
and dish it all back with interest. The print is missing some footage that
creates a knotty pacing problem and just as the film is wrapping up in a dark
melodramatic twist of near tragic misunderstanding, it launches into a bizarre
fourth act adventure that involves the socialite’s revenge (with the help of
her confidence man of a brother) and a dirigible, resulting in a second climax
of high flying stunts. It doesn’t make any sense, but the spectacle is
wonderful. You don’t see things like The Te Kooti
Trail (1927) everyday. This New Zealand shot and produced adventure is their
version of The Alamo or Zulu, a rousing tale of colonialist
triumph over the Maori rebel Te Kooti in the 1870s with a veritable rainbow
coalition of heroes: British, Irish, French, and Maori soldiers band together
with a small community of Maori farmers to hold off the attack. The filmmaking
is a bit stiff and director Rudall Hayward (who was also writer, producer, and
cameraman) tends to let the drama drag in his meticulous historical
reconstruction, but it turns into a surprisingly rousing picture shot on many of
the original locations (which make suitably impressive backdrops). Most
interesting is the portrayal of Te Kooti, the real life guerrilla leader who
battled the colonialist troops to recover Maori land. Though he starts out a
bloodthirsty villain, he emerges more complex and honorable, though the film
stops short of allowing a heroic dimension to his war against the settlers. This
festival was honored with the world premiere of the newly restored print. |
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