THE CANON REVISITED

Back in 2009, when the Giornate began reassessing the cultural status of silent film “classics”, the multi-layered definition of “canonical cinema” became the epicenter of a rediscovery process involving the exhibition of famous works, frequently mentioned in monographs or textbooks, and often subject to multiple restorations in the course of time. The critical appraisal of silent masterpieces has a long history in both the scholarly and archival domain. In 1962, the Programming Commission of the International Federation of Film Archives (FIAF) compiled a list of titles for its affiliates, intended both as a reference tool and a recommendation as to which films should become part of a collecting institution and be periodically exhibited to its audience. The document presented 146 titles arranged in chronological order, plus six compilations on important filmmakers (Dreyer, Keaton, Chaplin), production companies (Pathé), and key periods in the history of early cinema (the so-called “Brighton School”). Interestingly enough, FIAF’s compendium also included a “lost” film, Sperduti nel buio (Nino Martoglio, 1914). Whether this was an instance of wishful thinking, or an oblique reference to a projection print hiding somewhere, we will never know.
This year’s program – the ninth in the series – features two eminent examples of the silent film “canon”. One of them, King Vidor’s The Crowd (1928), has long been regarded as a quintessential expression of silent cinema as an art form. The Crowd is also an iconic case study in the history of film preservation: a key sequence in the film was notoriously excised from the only surviving element for a television project, and not reinserted after use (the missing section survived in a 16mm print). Yacov Protazanov’s Aelita (1924), on the other hand, falls somewhere between the “canonical” and the “cult” film, largely because of its genre (science fiction) and its flamboyant visuals, reminiscent of Futurist aesthetics. The fact that Aelita was neither typical of Protazanov’s style, nor, for that matter, his best film, was not as significant as much as the fact that the film was an epitome of silent cinema itself, a point of collision between a defunct form of expression (the “old movies”) and modernity (in its vision of the future); hence its inclusion as a “must-see” in the FIAF selection for acquisition and public exhibition in an archival context.
From this perspective, one of the key messages conveyed by the “Canon Revisited” series should be clear by now: these silent films are not necessarily the best ever made, nor are they the most representative of a given filmmaker, style and technique, or country of production. They are both archaeological traces and mirrors of public taste, the indicators of an evolution in the appreciation of silent cinema as a whole. Unsurprisingly, neither The Crowd nor Aelita have ever been shown at the Giornate since its inception in 1982. For many years, featuring them at the festival sounded to its organizers a bit like preaching to the converted. The situation, however, has changed. Today many people have never seen them on the big screen, let alone in the best available prints. These audiences do not have to be converted to anything, as they have already made up their minds about the relevance of silent cinema in the history of visual culture. In all likelihood, The Crowd will amply demonstrate that the curators and archivists working in 1962 were absolutely right in their assessment of King Vidor’s genius; Aelita will be “revisited” in the context of Protazanov’s outstanding body of work. And no doubt, the silent film canon will keep evolving, in its dialectic of continuity and discontinuity towards its own past.

Paolo Cherchi Usai

DAWN
Herbert Wilcox (UK 1928)
Ven/Fri 6 – 10:30 – Teatro Verdi

THE CROWD [LA FOLLA]
King Vidor (US 1928)
Sab/Sat 30 – 20:30 – Teatro Verdi

A FOOL THERE WAS
Frank Powell (US 1915)
Ven/Fri 6 – 20:30 – Teatro Verdi

MÉNILMONTANT
Dimitri Kirsanoff (FR 1926)
Mar/Tue 3 – 22:15 – Teatro Verdi

FIÈVRE
Louis Delluc (FR 1921)
Mar/Tue 3 – 22:15 – Teatro Verdi

AELITA
Jacov Protazanov (USSR 1924)
Mar/Tue 3 – 16:30 – Teatro Verdi

L’EMIGRANTE
Febo Mari (IT 1915)
Dom/Sun 1 – 15:45 – Teatro Verdi

FAUNO
Febo Mari (IT 1917)
Dom/Sun 1 – 15:45 – Teatro Verdi