BETRAYAL AND LIES IN ERNST LUBITSCH’S LOVE TRIANGLE

THE ANNUAL LECTURE ON THE ART OF COSTUME DESIGN IN SILENT CINEMA CONCEIVED BY COSTUME DESIGNER DEBORAH NADOOLMAN LANDIS AND HELD THIS YEAR BY PRISKA MORRISSEY

Following the success of Girl Shy (US, 1924) at the festival’s preview event in Sacile, Harold Lloyd, the “third genius” of comedy — alongside Chaplin and Keaton — returns to delight audiences in Pordenone on Thursday 10 October 2024, 9.00 p.m. at Teatro Verdi. With 80 shorts, 12 feature-length silent films and 5 feature-length “talkies” in the thirties, Lloyd secured his place in the pantheon of cinema comic legends, receiving a well-deserved Oscar for his career achievements in 1953. The actor was also well-known for his fearless approach to dangerous stunts: the image of him hanging from a clock hand twelve storeys up is one of the most famous and widely used in the history of cinema. Harold Lloyd also proved his extraordinary acrobatic ability in Girl Shy in a frenetic chase sequence, where he jumps from one vehicle to another in an effort to prevent the girl he has fallen for from marrying a crook.
Like the screening in Sacile, musical accompaniment is provided by Zerorchestra, playing a score written by Daan van den Hurk, who will lead as pianist and conductor.

The screening will be preceded by a short restored by Masha Matzke thanks to a grant from Haghefilm Digitaal – Selznick School 2024, and by the award of the Russell Merritt Prize to Lucía Ciruelos (Argentina), the author of the best piece of writing chosen from the 2023 Collegium students based on their experience at the festival. The title of her essay is The Explanation of a Metamorphosis: a Reflection on Two Films That Changed Me During the Giornate del Cinema Muto.

On Thursday 10 October, the daily cinema marathon begins at 9 am with the Griffith Biograph Project: the programme also features the Canadian early silent star Florence Lawrence.

A love triangle, as we know, is not only difficult, but can become downright dangerous. This is clearly illustrated by Ernst Lubitsch in his Three Women (US, 1924) in which a mother and her daughter are seduced by the same man, a cynical dowry hunter who ends up dumping both for his next conquest. It may seem surprising but, although other masterpieces of silent film by Lubitsch have been screened on various occasions at the festival, this is the first time in all 43 editions of the festival that Three Women has been presented. This omission is perhaps due to its poor critical reception, which deserves reconsideration, as noted in the film note by Charles Musser, who penned many essays about the director. Musser’s final work on Lubitsch will feature in the series of book presentations, on Thursday 10 October 2024 at 5.30 p.m. at the Ridotto del Verdi venue.
The role of the daughter in Three Women is played by May McAvoy, working with Lubitsch for the first time before her subsequent appearance in Lady Windermere’s Fan. McAvoy also featured in The Jazz Singer, which Lubitsch had wanted to direct. In Three Women, like in other films, although handling rather delicate themes in an age of strict censorship, the director artfully avoids vulgarity and direct presentation of all aspects of the narrative, letting the audience use their own imagination. “Any good movie is filled with secrets” he said. “If a picture is good, it’s mysterious, with things unsaid.”

The second selection of Swedish documentaries presents Erik Bergstrom’s Med ackja och ren i Inka Läntas vinterland (With Reindeer and Sled in Inka Länta’s Winterland) (Sweden, 1926) at 11.45 a.m. at Teatro Verdi. Real scenes and reconstructions illustrate the harsh life of Sami shepherds in Sweden’s extreme north. The film is striking for the highly effective depiction provided by Bergstrom — who was not a man of cinema but an inspector of schools for the nomadic people of Lapland — and his respectful and unpatronizing treatment of their culture.

For the retrospective dedicated to the great set designer Ben Carré, at 2 pm audiences can enjoy La Mort de Mozart by Etienne Arnaud, which describes the composer’s last days and his composition of the Requiem.  The other film, For the Soul of Rafael (US, 1920) directed by Harry Garson, is from Ben Carré’s Hollywood period, which reinvents a colonial Spanish California, depicting a pastoral world of haciendas, missions and Native-American villages.

Further south of California, in the region of San Rafael, a rural town at the feet of the Andes in the south of the province of Mendoza is the setting of 1924 Argentine film Historia de un gaucho viejo directed by and starring José Romeu, scheduled for 3.45 pm.  The Argentine short Salida de obreros (1902) is by Eugenio Cardini, a photographer of Italian descent, a pioneer of Argentine cinema. Long believed to have been lost, this is one of the rare surviving films shot with the Lumière method. It shows the workers of the Cardini furniture factory, and his grandchildren are here at the Giornate with a project to promote Cardini’s oeuvre.
 
The Uzbek film closing the day’s programme is Eshon Qizi (The Daughter of the Saint, 1931) by Oleg Frelikh, already introduced at the festival as director of La lebbrosa. Here, too, the theme is the liberation of women from slavery and religious superstition, represented by an incestuous ishan (spiritual leader). The film features stunning scenes shot in the monumental Shah-i-Zinda necropolis of Samarkand.

“From Tutu to Chain Mail” is the name of the annual conference, conceived by costume designer and historian Deborah Nadoolman Landis, exploring the use of costumes in silent films. On Thursday, 10 October 2024, 6.00 p.m. at Teatro Verdi, Professor of Cinema from the University of Rennes 2 (France) Priska Morrissey will trace the origins of the costume departments in the initial decades of French cinema. 

At 9.00 p.m. on Mymovies, the online programme will present Apuros do Genésio (BR, 1940) and La virgen de la caridad (Cuba, 1930), with accompaniment by Daan van den Hurk (the films are available for 48 hours).

The Pordenone Silent Film Festival / Le Giornate del Cinema Muto is made possible thanks to the support of the Regione Autonoma Friuli Venezia Giulia, the Ministry of Culture — Direzione Generale Cinema, the city of Pordenone, the Pordenone-Udine Chamber of Commerce and the Fondazione Friuli.