BIFF 2013 #3: A Throw of Dice (Prapancha Pash, India/UK/Germany 1929)

This print restored by the BFI provides a glimpse of the possibilities of ‘global film’ just before ‘hegemonic Hollywood’ began to exert its control with the coming of sound. German filmmaker Franz Osten had already worked in India on two films with Bengali actor-producer Himanshu Rai – Prem Sanyas (The Light of Asia) 1925 and Shiraz (1928). These were the fore-runners of modern co-productions. Osten brought in German crews and the backing of a German studio (Ufa). According to IMDB, two British studios were also involved. The script seems to have had both German and British input into what was initially an Indian story scripted by Niranjan Pal who with Himanshu Rai would eventually set up Bombay Talkies in 1934 as one of the major studios of the sound period. The British contribution seems to have been ‘supportive’ since the main creative and technical roles were undertaken by Germans and Indians. Much of the film was shot on location in Rajasthan.

The 2006 restoration includes a Nitin Sawhney score that I was a little wary of at first but eventually I found worked very well. The camerawork by Emil Schunemann is excellent and at one point he gave us a stunning tracking shot seemingly out of nowhere. The film’s title neatly describes the narrative which involves two kings who are cousins, neighbours and inveterate gamblers in a period before the arrival of Europeans. It’s all fairly predictable stuff in the sense that they compete for the hand of a beautiful girl with one of them rather more devious than the other. But the story isn’t the main attraction – with 10,000 extras, footage of tigers in the jungle and ceremonial elephants, palaces and stunning landscapes, this is an action melodrama (the two terms once meant the same thing).  One thing that struck me about the camerawork was that several of he compositions can be seen as being imported from German cinema and then incorporated in later Indian popular cinema narratives. I’m thinking in particular of some of the fight scenes on cliff tops and a couple silhouetted on a mountain skyline. The spectacular German cinema of the 1920s was very interested in the ‘exotic Orient’ with Murnau travelling to the South Seas for one of his early Hollywood titles in Tabu (1931) and Fritz Lang in aspects of Destiny (Germany 1921). (He would later return for his two-part film The Tiger of Eschnapur in 1959 based partly on his script for another 1920s film.) What we see in A Throw of Dice I think is not so much a German view of India as an example of the potential of Indian cinema to take the technical skills and creative vision of Osten and Schunemann and use them in developing the Indian cinema that would flourish in the 1930s.

Before the main feature (74 mins), BIFF elected to show an extract from Raja Harishchandra, the film usually taken to mark the beginning of Indian feature films in 1913 (and therefore the key film for the 100th Birthday tribute). The film was  originally a ‘four reeler’ of 3,700 feet running around 48 minutes at silent speeds. Producer-director-writer Dadasaheb Phalke had travelled to Germany and to the UK to acquire the skills and the technology to enable him to become the first Indian filmmaker of note, completely in control of his own productions in Bombay. Later he founded Hindustan Films, but the company struggled and Phalke’s brief career which should have flourished in the 1920s was cut short. Nevertheless, he stands as one of the founders of the film industry in Bombay and the Indian genres of the ‘devotional’ and the ‘mythological’. The extract was presented from Blu-ray and there seem to have been problems in transferring the material (I think that the original was lost in a fire at the Film Institute Archive in Pune). I confess that I found what was presented was quite difficult to follow but in 1912 when Phalke was making the film, cinema worldwide was in a state of very rapid innovation. To pick out a few points, there is still a reliance on what might be termed ‘proscenium arch’ shots with a tableau of characters as if on a stage, some occasionally looking at the camera. There are special effects and it is possible to see links to the Ramayana (Phalke is said to have been inspired by Christian narratives). The main plot involves a king who loses his kingdom and his wife and child through various accidents and by deceit but who then recovers them because the gods wish to reward him for his moral integrity.

There is a documentary on Phalke and the making of the film on YouTube (it’s not the ‘complete film’ as it claims) and it’s interesting to see the variety of comments (including the surprise shown by some Indians that Indian cinema goes back so far). Well done to BIFF for showing this and giving us all a chance to consider the whole 100 years.

The Black Pirate

USA – Elton Corp. – United Artists, 1926. Directed by Albert Parker. Scenario Lotta Wood, adapted by Jack Cunningham, story by Elton Thomas (Douglas Fairbanks).

This is one of the popular starring roles of Douglas Fairbanks in the 1920s. Having cemented his popularity as Zorro, one of the Four Musketeers and Robin Hood, Fairbanks now took on the larger than life character of a C17th pirate. In fact, there is more to his character than just that, because this is a swashbuckling tale with disguised heroes, bloodthirsty pirate crews, a threatened princess and lots of sea-borne action. Fairbanks always exercised careful control over his films and his on-screen grace and agility is seen in a number of carefully composed and exciting sequences.
The same care was excised on the new fairly new two-strip Technicolor film process. Many silent films had colour added – by hand, by tinting and toning or stencil painting, and by devices such as revolving filters. But Technicolor had developed a process that incorporated colour in the film stock: later they successfully developed three-strip process, which produced the full range of the spectrum. The two-strip process recorded red and green, but not yellow. Fairbanks and his production team went to great lengths to maximise the way they used this palette: even the leading lady was tested for her suitability for the filming in colour.
Of course, it is an old film and the original two-tone colours have to be processed on modern film stock. And the print is likely to show some signs of the wear and tear of years. However, Douglas Fairbanks remains a charismatic and visually engaging star whilst the early Technicolor has its own distinctive palette.
The film is screening at the Nation Media Museum in Bradford on Sunday February 3rd. As an added bonus there will be a live accompaniment with Darius Battiwalla at the piano.

Leeds IFF 2012: Crossways ( Jujiro, Japan 1928)

The screening was part of the Leeds International Film Festival restrospective and Silent Classics with Live Soundtrack. This is an early classic film from Japan [also known in English as Crossroads]. It was possibly the first Japanese film to receive International attention with screenings in Paris, Berlin and in London in 1930. The director Kinugasa Teinosuke, who also wrote the screenplay, was a pioneer in a more experimental approach to film in Japan. His most famous film is A Page of Madness (Kurutta ippeiji 1926). This was an avant-garde film whose style bore strong affinities both with German Expressionism and Soviet Montage. That film offers an extremely subjective and fragmentary plot set in an insane asylum. A tour-de-force of style, in Japan its screenings could have the assistance of the benshi (a film narrator in the cinema); abroad one version has had intertitles inserted to assist viewers. Unfortunately for Kinugasa, who also produced this and the later film, it was a commercial flop. This would seem to be a major factor in Crossways having a more discernible and conventional plot line: and frequent intertitles. The production was also dependent on the major commercial studio of Shochiku.

The film centres on a brother and sister, Rikiya (Bando Junosuke) and Okiku (Chihaya Akiko). Okiku is the centre of attention early in the film as she waits and worries about her brother who is visiting Yoshiwara, the entertainment district of 18th century Tokyo. Entertainment, of course, concerns prostitution and its associated vices. Rikiya is obsessed with a geisha O-ume (Ogawa Yukiko) herself the centre of an admiring circle, with several men suing for her graces. Essentially most of the film switches between the sparse attic flat where the brother and sister live, and the gaudy and racy district of Yoshiwara.

Okiku also becomes the object of both a passing man who carries a police truncheon, apparently a sign of his office: and of an old procuress at a nearby brothel. She is also caught in the economic bind of the pair’s poverty, a fact of life that is blithely ignored by the brother.

The story of the film is fairly conventional, but the style of the film is as arresting as Kinugasa’s earlier work. The living quarters are filmed in the contrasting shadows of light and darkness familiar from expressionism, and the settings make frequent use of bars and blocks, and present an extremely stylised feel. Yoshiwara is closer to the circus feel of early Soviet films, and has frequent and dramatic montages. The plot line is not only fragmentary but offers a demanding chronology.

Michael Wood, who introduced the film, remarked that Kinugasa had stated that he was influenced by the 1919 German expressionist masterpiece Das Cabinet des Dr Caligari. Sequences of the film also reminded me of Sergei Eisenstein’s 1924 Strike (Stachka), with a touch of Grand Guignol. Whilst Yoshiwara reminded at times of sequences in Fritz Lang’s 1926 Metropolis: a film which itself borrowed from the representations of Yoshiwara district.

The good 35mm print enjoyed a live accompaniment from the group Minima. They are a four-piece line-up of electric guitar, keyboard, bass and drums. Their accompaniment was an improvisation rather than a prepared score. Apparently this was their third outing with the film. Overall their music worked extremely well, and provided a fine addition to the visual poetry. There were a couple of sequences where they used woodblocks, an instrument frequently used in traditional Japanese film accompaniment. These emphasised both the melodrama but also the distance the film sought to create. There was a certain amount of repetition in their music, but this mirrors a device also found in the film. I did think in one or two sequences that the electronic amplification was a little loud. However, this was a really fine cinematic vision, which was enchanced by the live music in the auditorium.

26th Leeds International Film Festival

Sansho Dayu screening in the Retrospectives section.

This year’s festival runs from the 1^st until the 18^th of November. There are about 160 films on offer, in a variety of categories and venues. At the start of the Festival there is Ben Affleck’s new film Argo and the new Jacques Audiard film Rust and Bone. And right at the end of the Festival Michael Haneke’s Cannes prize-winner Amour makes an appearance. In between there as a wide range of choices programmed into five distinct categories.

The Official Selection addresses contemporary cinema and the ‘incredible diversity and brilliance of global filmmaking.’ Of course, new releases are rather like racing tips – they may or may not fulfil expectations. However, the selection represents a wide range of film industries and genres. The filmmakers include Xiaoshuai Wang from China, Thomas Vinterberg from Denmark, François Ozon from France, British directors Michael Radford and Martin McDonagh plus a number of first time directors, including the Hollywood star Dustin Hoffman.

Retrospectives has an especially strong selection this year. The ‘special focus’ is a profile of the Japanese actress and filmmaker Kinuyo Tanaka. She worked through several different periods of Japanese film and with three of its greatest masters, Kenji Mizoguchi, Mikio Naruse and Yasujiro Ozu. Her scene at the end of Sansho Dayu (1954) is one of the most sublime endings in World Cinema.  She was also a pioneer woman direction in the Industry. There are six of her films, all in either 35 or 16mm. And there is a workshop on November 3^rd at the Centre for World Cinemas at the University of Leeds.

This category also celebrates the early Soviet of films of Andrei Konchalovsky: arguably superior to and certainly more interesting that his work in Hollywood. These are films from the 1960s and 1970s and ones that are not always that easy to see.

There are several Silent Screenings with live music: though the brochure only lists the 35mm or 16mm formats: some will be digital and depending how much of a purist you are it may be worth checking beforehand.

The category also includes Kubrick’s The Shining and Barry Lyndon: a number of fairly recent films from Portugal: and tributes to great cinematographers, including Vittorio Storraro and Sven Nykvist.

Fanomenon offers horror, sci-fi and animation. Substantial events include both an all-night Night of the Dead and an Anime day. There are also cult films, Django (1966), King Kong vs Godzilla (1962) and the martial arts film Somi, the Taekwon-do Woman (1997). This is a large and varied selection, read through the brochure carefully if this is your scene.

Cinema Versa covers documentary film, especially ones that fit an ‘underground aesthetic’. This section also covers a wide and varied selection of works. There is Five Broken Cameras, a newly released film about the Palestinian struggles against occupation and exploitation. There are a number of films about or presenting music, including a new improvisation to the Surrealist classic, Un Chien Andalu (1929). Shadows of Liberty promises a critical analysis’s of the ‘disintegrating freedoms’ in the USA: timely given the election. And the Pavilion project presents the Abandoned Projectors show, which premiered at Leeds old, disused Lyric cinema.

Finally there is Short Film City Intro, again with varied films from many countries. These are programmed in feature length presentations, including several ‘short film competitions’.

The full Brochure is available in print or online, and there are regular updates via email, Twitter, Facebook and YouTube. The festival venues are the usual ones. The Town Hall is not completely ideal for sound, but has improved its quality. The Vue has gone all digital. This is fortunate as it means that nearly all the 35mm screenings will be at the Hyde Park Cinema, with a projection team well versed in its technicalities. And I assume that the Silent Comedies at the Cottage Road Cinema will also be in 35mm, and they include a Harold Lloyd feature.

So, a fairly full eighteen days on offer, with both interesting new offering from round the world and some classics from the past – including of course several that featured in the Sight and Sound Critics Poll of this year.

Festival site – www.leedsfilm.com

The Pleasure Garden (UK 1925)

Chum with Hugh

I am afraid this is a little last minute, having just returned from the ultimate filmbuff’s heaven, the Pordenone Silent Film Festival. Now this earliest of films directed by Alfred Hitchcock is screening at the National Media Museum on Sunday October 21^st at 6 p.m.

The film has been restored by the BFI, adding 20 missing minutes to the running time, and restoring the image quality and the tinting. So for me, as for many others, it will be like viewing a new movie. Last time I saw the film the plot seemed somewhat confused, the print quality uneven. Now it should match the standard of the many of the revived silent screening of recent years.

The film possesses the recognisable touch of Hitchcock, and there are a number of familiar motifs or tropes. And the production is also the work of such luminaries as Alma Reville, Eliot Stannard and Michael Balcon. The film was made in 1925 so the cast is likely to be less familiar, but there is Miles Mander (seen recently in The First Born, (1928)) and the minor cult star Nina Naldi in a walk-on part.

The film concerns the romantic entanglements of two London showgirls, but also involved travels to Europe and West Africa. Truffaut’s famous published interview with Hitchcock includes a lengthy description of the production and location work on the film: and there is a detailed description of the film in Charles Barr’s excellent English Hitchcock (1999)

What I hope makes the screening more interesting is the intention of the National Media Museum to screen the nine surviving silent Hitchcock’s in chronological order (subject to continuing availability). A boon for Hitchcock fans, filmbuffs and bloggers. And, as always, there will be a musical accompaniment by Darius Battiwalla, who has enlivened a varied range of films with his playing.

PS –  We were expecting a screening of 83 minutes and we enjoyed 91 minutes, which included the credits for the restoration. Oddly the bfi Webpages still give 75 minutes?

Never mind, this is a film transformed. When I last saw it at Le Giornate del Cinema Muto the print image quality was rather poor, the plot was confusing to say the least and the film looked like the work of a tyro.

Now the image quality is very good, though variable. Some really nice tinting. The plot makes complete sense. Morover there are all sort of deft touches which make this is a really interesting film. The filmmakers include some sharp parallel cutting between the two showgirls and their two romances. There are some evocative close-ups that look forward to a recurring trope in the work of Fitchcock. And there is some delighful comedy.

I used ‘filmmakers’ above because it would seen that Eliot Stannard’s contribution is very important, and he is generally underrated. And there is an interesting parallel with The First Born (1928) which was scripted by Alma Reville.

I am inclined to think that this is a better film overall than one of two of the later Hitchcock silent titles.

Don’t get over-excited though, Chum the dog is probably the only character not to have suffered a cut in the truncated versions. Still, he is one of Hitchcock’s better protrayal of a canine friend.

Menschen am Sonntag (People on Sunday, Germany 1930)

This is a rather different sort of film from those produced in Germany at the giant UFA studios. A low-budget independent film with no special effects or gigantic sets: ordinary young people on an ordinary 1920s Sunday. Then one notices the credits – young filmmakers on their first outing with film: Robert and Kurt Siodmak, Billy Wilder, Edgar G. Ulmer, and Fred Zinnemann, all to become successful Hollywood filmmakers. They do have the help of two experienced German film craftsmen, Rochus Gliese and Eugen Schüfftan.

The cast are young non-professionals: “a film about Berlin, about its people, about everyday things that we all know. First we consider using young actors. No: the people have to be authentic. So we start searching . . .” (Billy Wilder quoted in a 1930 newspaper). They find Erwin, a taxi driver: Brigitte who works in a record-shop; Wolfgang, a travelling salesman; and Christi, who actually works as a film extra.

The film introduces us to the main characters as they end the working week at their jobs. Then on the Sunday they all spend their free day at the local resort of Lake Wansee. And we follow a typical day’s leisure of young Berliners. Much of the film was shot on the actual locations, in the city and at the resort. Together with the young people this gives the film a real sense of freshness, even eighty years on.

The original release was a silent, without a soundtrack, though sound had already arrived in Germany. So it would have enjoyed a musical accompaniment. At that point it was 2,014 metres in length. However, the film suffered cuts, including the censorship of some scenes. By the time of the revival in silent film in the 1980s surviving prints only ran to about 1600 metres. In 1997 the Nederlands Filmmuseum, working with other archives produced a restoration of 1,839 metres. This now runs for 73 minutes.

Even without the interest in seeing early work by a number of distinguished directors and writers the film is worth seeing. It is an unassuming portrait of Berlin and its working people in the last days of Weimar. It sense of realism looks forward to realist tendencies that grace 1930s French Cinema and the later Italian Neo-realism.

The National Media Museum has a bfi print of the film on Sunday September 9th and there will be a live piano accompaniment by Darius Battiwalla.

Il Cinema Ritrovato 2012

This archive film festival held in Bologna at the end of June is now in its 26^th year. It has grown over that time, with over a 1000 registered members and four auditoriums dedicated to all-day screenings: added to this are the justly renowned open-air screenings in the city’s Piazza Maggiore. Even the most dedicated cinephiles cannot see everything on offer; so the week is both full of rare delights and agonising choices.

One strand over the week was a retrospective of the Soviet filmmaker Ivan Pyr’ev. The programme was titled ‘Mosfil’m’s Enigma’: Pyr’ev was, for a period in the 1950s, director of the studio. His films ranged through political dramas, literary adaptations and much-maligned musicals. Like many of his colleagues he also experienced periods of disfavour in the 1930s.

One of his admired films is The Civil Servant (Gosudarstvennyj Činovnik, 1931). The plot details anti-social actions both among rightist criminals and the Soviet growing bureaucracy. The filming is stylish but quirky; comparisons were made to the work of FEKS. Pyr’ev is one of those Soviet directors who can make inventive and slightly subversive jokes – there is a delightful pastiche of the Odessa Steps sequence which mirrors the action, camera shots and editing. Several of the musicals were shot in glorious Magicolor [A Soviet subtractive colour system] and were paeans to the Soviet collectivisation. On the one hand there was a sense of aplomb in the work of the committed peasantry, on the other hand the continuous upbeat tone create a sense of extreme simplification. Cossacks of the Kuban (Kubanskie Kazaki, 1950) was in many ways typical: it songs were visually and emotionally powerful: “the estranged heroine’s song (we hear “All through the war I waited for you”) is transformed into an anxious choral crescendo and a shot of deliriously singing young females…” [Olaf Möller in the Festival Catalogue].  The final film of this programme was an expressionist version of Fëdor Dostoevskij’s Idiot (1958). Pyr’ev’s career carried on into the 1960s, but this film provided a splendid finale.

Another programme celebrated the work of Lois Weber. She worked in Hollywood from 1913, having already directed one-reel films in New York. She went on to become a top director at Universal Studios and the first woman member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. She typifies a surprising number of women filmmakers who enjoyed important positions in the emerging industry: women only rescued from the ‘enormous condescension of film posterity’ in recent decades. I missed some of the films due to the programme overlapping with that of Pyr’ev. What I saw presented a filmmaker who was technically inventive and who developed clear dramatic narratives [which she usually scripted with he husband, Phillips Smalley]. Her films now would probably be classed within the ‘social problem’ genre, and she frequently focussed on the issues facing women. The titles of some of the film suggest this: Idle Wives: Where are my Children? [It is available on Treasures III: Social Issues in American Film, 1900 – 1934]: Saving the Family Name, all from 1916. Shoes (1916) depicts the travails of a young shop assistant who is unable to afford the new footwear that she so desperately needs.

Shoes

The most fascinating of these was a fairly lengthy drama from the same year, The Dumb Girl of Portici. This sparked much interest because it offers a rare opportunity to see the famed ballerina Anna Pavlova on film, in the part of Fenella. The film was adapted from an opera by Daniel Auber La Muette de Portici, first performed in 1828. The story is set in C17th Naples where excessive taxes and expropriations spark a revolt against the rule of the Hapsburgs. Fenella’s brother Masaniello (Rupert Julian] becomes a leader once the insurrection breaks out. The film has brutal extortion, exploitative seductions and popular rampage worthy of D. W. Griffith: the ending also shares his rather conservative values [the original opera seems to have been more progressive, it certainly sparked a riot in the revolutionary year of 1830]. But the dynamic section of the film, in the town square and in particular as the rebellious people lay siege to the palace of the occupiers has great elan. The striking shots of the advancing rebels reminded me at one point of the equally powerful final shot of Scaramouche  (1923), where the Sans-Culottes advance on the Bastille fortress.

Japan speaks out! The First Talkies from the Land of the Rising Sun was another fascinating programme. The focus on the arrival of the new sound technology produced a variety of films and filmmakers rather different from the film director or studio programmes I have seen in the past. The transition to sound in Japan took longer than anywhere else in the international film industry, with silents being produced as late as 1935. This was in part due to the benshi, who provided voice-over and commentary for silent films. They were clearly a better-organised and more forceful lobby than their equivalent, the thousands of silent musicians in the USA and the UK who lost their employment. In fact some of the early talkies were Katsuben Talkies, pre-recorded benshi tracks accompanying films.

The programme included films by now famous directors like Kenji Mizoguchi (Fujiwara Yoshie No Furusato / Hometown, 1930) and Yasujiro Ozu (Tokyo No Onna / A Woman of Tokyo, 1933) and the fairly small Sala Mastroianni auditorium was literally heaving for these screenings. However, what was more instructive were the two versions of the famous ‘Tale of the loyal 47 Ronin’: Chushingura, a version directed in 1912 by Shozo Makino and re-issued as part of a compilation Katsuben Talkie in the late 1930s: and Dai Chushingura, directed in 1932 by Teinosuke Kinusaga. Their different presentations of the tale actually made it far more comprehensible for me. A slightly more bizarre offering was a Katsuben Talkie version of Harold Lloyd’s Why Worry (1923 – Japanese title Kyojin Seifuku). This version was shorter than the US release, and that and the Japanese commentary meant it took some time to adjust to the film, but much of Lloyd’s humour survived into the new version. Indeed Harold Lloyd was a popular film comic in Japan in that period. A completely Japanese sound film was Namiko (Hototogishu Yori Namiko, 1932). It was adapted froma popular novel whose title translates as The Cuckoo: clearly a reference to that bird’s mating and rearing habits. There had been several earlier silent versions of the novel. In this version Yaeko Mizutani who had already performed the role on stage played the heroine of the title. The film used the Western Electric sound system. The technology seems to have been the major factor in the use of predominantly long single takes. In fact this technique seems to emphasise the almost fatalistic tragedy that occupies the film.  And we viewed a Katsuben Talkie produced on behalf of the Ministry of Education, Kagayaku Ai (Shining Love, 1931 directed by Hiroshi Shimazu). This socially conscious tale contrasted the careers of the sons of a working class cooper and a middle class salaried worker. Despite the moral tone it achieved an absorbing and humorous narrative. Intriguingly it was also reminiscent of an earlier Education Ashita Tenki Ni Naare (May Tomorrow be Fine, 1929 directed by Yasujiro Shimazu). One wonders if the Ministry had a few standardised plots that they handed out to filmmakers.

Chushingura 1932

As with previous Festivals there were restorations carried out by the World Cinema Foundation. One was After the Curfew (Lewat Djam Malam, 1954), an Indonesian film made not along after the successful struggle to liberate the country from Portuguese colonialism.  The film’s director was Usmar Ismail and he also co-wrote the script. The film follows the return of a soldier who has fought in the Liberation army in the mountains. His return is marked by disillusionment as he finds complacency, even repression by the authorities and evidence of war crimes by his one-time commander. The film dramatises the conflicts as the new society emerges from its colonial chains. It was interesting but I did not find it totally convincing. It seems to want to combine a sort of Neo-realist style with the narrative tropes of film noir: they made uneasy bedfellows.

The second film was a Hindi Cinema classic from 1948, Kalpana. The director Uday Shankar, was the brother of Ravi Shankar and a central figure in the developments in Indian dance in this period. He had set up a dance academy in the late 1930s and the film seems to is an imaginative working out of this trials and tribulations in this project. Much of the 155 minutes of running time is given over to dance: and a varied programme of traditional Indian dance forms from different regions and communities, together with experimental modern dance forms. The film also has a dream-like hallucinatory quality in many sequences: parts of the film have an almost surrealist quality to them.

Shankar Kalpana

There was a second Indian film, the seminal Cloud-Capped Star (Meghe Dhaka Tara, 1960), scripted and directed by the great Bengali filmmaker Ritwik Ghatak. The Cineteca di Bologna has produced a restoration that does full justice both to the black and white cinematography and to distinctive soundtrack. We enjoyed an earlier Ghatak film in 2010, A River Called Titas (Titas Ekti Nadir Naam, 1973). Though less well-known known outside the sub-continent he is clearly as important a director as Satyajit Ray, though unfortunately he produced far fewer films.

One of the events at the Ritrovato is the Awards for DVD issues. The good news here is an Award for a box set of the World Cinema Foundation which includes Redes (The Wave, Mexico 1936); Hyènes (Senegal, 1992); Mest (Revenge USSR, Kazakistan, 1989), Trances (El Hal Morocco, 1981).  At the moment this is only available in the French language version: however, I was assured that the English language version [in Pal and NTSC] is on its way.

The main pleasure of the Festival is listed in the Catalogue under The Cinephiles Heaven: the screenings in the Piazza Maggiore. My greatest pleasure trip was a beautiful digital restoration of Roman Polanski’s Tess (1979). The cast, lead by Nastassia Kinski, are excellent: the cinematography is superb, and many of the sequences feel very close to the sense created when reading Thomas Hardy’s original novel. This was an epic screening of nearly three hours; then we had the even longer Lawrence of Arabia (1962, the director’s cut) in a 4k digital restoration. The screening was introduced by Grover Crisp from Sony Pictures, a restoration artist whose previous work has also graced the Festival. Both of these will presumably circulate in the UK, as almost certainly will a new restoration of Sergio Leone’s Once Upon a Time in America (1984) now running for four hours and fifteen minutes. And hopefully, a new digital version of Jacques Demy’s Lola (1961) will come round.

There was a lot more. The Festival continued it centenary explorations, this time presenting films from 1912, a series of programmes of actualities, drama and newsreel footage. There was a whole programme of film directed by Raoul Walsh, of which I only caught a couple: and the same was true for the retrospective of French director Jean Gremillon. There was After the Crash: Cinema and the 1929 Crisis, perhaps compulsory viewing for the whole European and North American establishments.

This year all the venues were able to accommodate live music, and as always the compositions and performances were a key part of the Festival pleasure. We had great contributions from Festival regulars such as Antonio Coppola, Gabriel Thibaudeau, Neil Brand, Maud Nellissen and Stephen Horne. There were orchestral performances; several led by Timothy Brock. And there was one performance that was really distinctive, the accompaniment on the final night for the two short films that preceded the final Chaplin comedies. Two popular Sicilian singers, with a variety of instruments, produced a lyrical and slightly soulful accompaniment to L’Eruzione Dell’Etna (1910) and North Sea Fisheries and Rescue (1909): in the vast but crowded Piazza Maggiore the effect was magical. This and the preceding week have made a return in 2013 imperative.

Still courtesy of Il Cinema Ritrovato – http://www.cinetecadibologna.it/cinemaritrovato2012en/ev/foreword2012

Hindle Wakes (UK 1927)

Stanley Houghton’s play was written and produced in Manchester in 1912. It offered a working class heroine, Fanny, who was distinctively modern and liberated for the times. It remains an absorbing and dramatic story, which has been adapted for the cinema four times and for television twice. I think that the second film adaptation, directed by Maurice Elvey in 1927, is the best. Like the other film versions it fills out the original play with additional scenes, including material that is part of the back-story in the play.

The title refers to the week of holiday and pleasure enjoyed by the mill-workers in Lancashire leading up to the August Bank Holiday, (at that time at the beginning rather than the end of the month). Fanny and her fellow mill workers train off to Blackpool to enjoy the funfairs, the sunshine and the opportunities of the seaside resort. This includes a holiday affair with Allan, son of the owner of the mill where Fanny works. The original play is wholly concerned with the aftershock of this romance, and the responses of the traditionally minded families of Fanny and Allan. But it is the response of Fanny in particular, and her expression of her attitudes that made the play memorable.

This remains the climax of the film version. However, film is able to recreate place and space in a more realistic and detailed manner than theatre. And Elvey does this both with sequences inside the mill in Hindley, and more notably, in the resort of Blackpool. Rachel Low, in her magisterial History of British Film, suggests that these sequences were shot by Basil Emmott, who went on to film John Grierson’s Drifters (1929). And a short sequence in the Blackpool Tower Ballroom seems to point forward to work later work of Humphrey Jennings.

Elvey also elicits strong performances, both from the lead characters and from the supporting cast. Estelle Brody as Fanny is particularly good. And many of the intertitles recreate the Lancashire dialect that was a noted aspect of the original play.

Hindle Wakes is one of the outstanding British films of the late 1920s. Produced at a time when there was a sense of buoyancy in the Film Industry as the Government took action (which turned out to be ineffective) against the dominance of Hollywood in the UK film market.

The film has been restored by the British Film Institute and there is a screening at the National Media Museum in Bradford this coming Sunday, July 8th. As always in the Museum’s series of Silent Screenings there will be live piano accompaniment by Darius Battiwalla.

Note there is a longer and more detailed discussion of the film on Early and Silent Cinema.