David Bordwell on Bologna’s Cinema Ritrovato
July 16th, 2007 by Andre Soares
Via David Bordwell’s Website on Cinema:
"Our last days at Bologna’s Cinema Ritrovato were as busy as the first ones. Inevitably, choices, choices. Invasion of the Body Snatchers in a rare SuperScope print, or Asta Nielsen as Hamlet [above]? Emilio Fernandez’s melodrama Enamorada (1946) or a 1907 version of Little Red Riding Hood, with a big dog playing the Wolf? You can’t see it all, but we offer some notes on some of the choices we made.
"I can’t say that I am a great fan of Frank Borzage’s films of the 1930s and 1940s. For me his great period was the mid- to late 1920s. 7th Heaven (1927) [left] somehow manages to climb beyond its blatant sentimentality, much as the hero and heroine ascend the stairs of their tenement apartment house, and earns our emotional investment in their transcendent love. For me, Lazybones (1925) and Lucky Star (1929) were the revelations of the Borzage retrospective during the 1992 Giornate del Cinema Muto in Pordenone. It is a true pity that both remain largely unknown."
I don’t agree with Bordwell on 7th Heaven, which I find way overlong and much too sticky, but I’m with him when it comes to Lucky Star, a 7th Heaven rehash that is actually superior to the original — and shorter, too. Lovebirds Janet Gaynor and Charles Farrell starred in both films.
In any case, Bordwell comments on several films he watched (with Kristin Thompson) at this year’s edition of Cinema Ritrovato, including Michael Curtiz’s silent-talkie hybrid Noah’s Ark (1929); Victor Sjöström’s early talkie A Lady to Love (1930), starring Edward G. Robinson; a handful of early Max Linder shorts; and a 44-minute reconstruction of Ernst Lubitsch’s Die Flamme (1922).
Ernst Lubitsch Retrospective at San Sebastián
San Francisco Silent Film Festival 2007
The 11th San Francisco Silent Film Festival - 2006
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