ALSO ON THE FIRST DAY, A HARRY CAREY WESTERN
DIRECTED BY JOHN FORD

The 42nd edition of the Pordenone Silent Film Festival officially opens today with a screening of La Divine Croisière, one of the last silent films by Julien Duvivier, a director, screenwriter, film producer and stage actor born in Lille on October 8th, 1896. Famed for such sound classics as Un carnet de bal, Pépé Le Moko, Panique and The Little World of Don Camillo, Duvivier first became known during the silent era, establishing his name with films such as Poil de carotte (1925) and Le mystère de la tour Eiffel (1928). Quickly developing a reputation as a director who understood how to meet the needs of the industry while maintaining his artistic integrity, he foregrounded good storytelling, taking care to work with top actors and technicians: “I have the style of the films I make” he replied to his critics. La Divine Croisière is a film of love, greed, redemption, religion, nature, and man’s will to survive. Key scenes revolving around sailors rebelling against a shipowner were seen as subversive propaganda for class struggle and consequently the film was heavily censored, reducing the running time to a mere 45 minutes and stripping away its rawness and strength. At the time Duvivier was working on another set but when he learned of the cuts he demanded a re-edit, but no prints of his reconstituted version survive. The reconstruction presented in Pordenone comes from Lobster Films with the support of the CNC and returns Duvivier’s original vision to the screen, with all its beauty and intensity. The musical score is by Antonio Coppola, who also conducts the Octour de France.

Among this year’s anticipated series is a small selection of films starring Harry Carey, which begins at 5 PM in the Teatro Verdi with a screening of John Ford’s Hell Bent (1918). It was Ford, a longtime friend of Carey’s, who christened the beloved actor the “bright star of the early Western sky,” and the two had a fruitful partnership lasting decades – in an interview the director gave to Peter Bogdanovich, he claimed it was Carey who guided him in his early years. It’s also been noted that Carey’s most popular recurring role, Cheyenne Harry, defined by a combination of strength, sensitivity and fierce loyalty, had a strong influence on the characterizations of Ford’s heroes in subsequent films. Those first Westerns were a lesson in seat-of-the-pants filmmaking: Carey remembered there were no real scripts, and much of the filming was improvised; often a story was taken and shot in succession at various studios, with new titles and different actors. While sticking to a rather conventional Western plot, Hell Bent nevertheless presents some innovations, such as the initial scene of the painting which comes to life, and deliberate comic elements. For years the film was thought to be lost, until at the end of the 1980s a copy was found in Prague’s Národní filmový archiv, and more recently NBCUniversal oversaw the restoration in 4K, which is the version being presented at the Giornate.

Also today, at 3.45 pm, is The Love that Lives (US 1917), by the Italian-American director Robert Vignola, a highly regarded filmmaker of the period whose work has been consistently screened at the festival. The film is a melodrama produced by Famous Players, where Vignola made some of his most important early films before moving to the better bankrolled Cosmopolitan Productions, owned by William Randolph Hearst to showcase his multi-talented protégé Marion Davies. In The Love that Lives Vignola confirms his gift for directing actors, guiding the great Pauline Frederick in a performance of enormous effectiveness and realism, both when she plays the role of an old woman dressed in rags and then that of an elegant “kept woman.” A director skilled at probing the complexity of the human soul, Vignola also paid close attention to the social condition of his characters.

The Spanish film La reina joven (1916), screening at 2.30 PM and restored by the Filmoteca Valenciana, opens the second installment of our look at Ruritania and is an excellent example of how a real country’s burning political situation could be transposed onto an imaginary state, preferably a Balkan one, in order to avoid the censor’s wrath. Produced by Barcelona’s most prestigious studio Barcinógraf, and directed by Magín Murià, the film stars famed Catalan actress Margarita Xirgu as a queen who falls in love with a republican but renounces love in the name of duty.

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.