The Patsy

Pordenone, Italy — The silent film festival festival here screened the comedy “The Patsy,” which stars Marion Davies and Marie Dressler.  The King Vidor directed comedy features Davies as a woman (Patricia) who falls in love with her sister’s boyfriend (Tony, played by Orville Caldwell).  The continuous laughs stem from the Davies’ acting, the funny situations, and the wonderful performances by Dressler as Ma and Dell Harrison as Pa.

Marie Dressler, Marion Davies (center) and Jane Winton in “The Patsy.” (Photo courtesy of Photoplay Productions)

Davies glows as Patricia, as her screwball antics provide most of the movie’s physical delights.  But Dressler, Harrison and Jane Winton as Patricia’s attractive sister Grace also add to the slapstick extravaganza.  The screen at Pordenone (Teatro Verdi) is really big, and it’s nice to see such a big talent as Davies delight the packed house.  The movie’s great cast and Vidor’s comedy direction produce a winning film.  Davies reportedly wanted to make more comedies with Vidor, but he didn’t want to be typecast as a comedy director.
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The Patsy contains a lot of intertitle cards, with the intention of including as many witty lines from the play (by Barry Connors) as possible.  We know Marie Dressler’s voice from her sound pictures, so her lines rang fairly clearly in the back of my head.  At one point in the picture, Davies’ character pretends to be looney, which further enlivens the action.  The Patsy soars from the first scene, with a good a combination of sharp dialogue and deft physical comedy.

 

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Wooden Clogs

Watch “The Tree of Wooden Clogs,” an Italian movie from 1978, and you can learn a lot of things just by observing.  For instance, it’s very bad when a cow won’t eat and can’t get up, and chicken manure might be the best thing to fertilize tomatoes; it’s stronger and it keeps the ground warmer in winter.  Additionally, while poor tenant farmers tended their land the Bergamo province of Italy around 1900, a strong socialist fervor gripped the nation and caused the Italian police to be on high alert.

Farm life in Bergamo provincia: A scene from “The Tree of Wooden Clogs.”

The movie, which is known as “L’albero Degli Zoccoli” in Italian, tells the story of four peasant families and their struggles to get through the year.  The title refers to the father of one family, whose son walks 12 kilometers back and forth  everyday to attend school.  When the child’s wooden clog splits apart, the father cuts down one of the landlord’s trees to make him a new clog.  This action is symbolic of a father’s pride and love for his family amongst continuing poverty and hardship.
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Most remarkably, the director, Ermanno Olmi, cast actual peasants from the Bergamo region in all the acting roles.  The actors speak the local dialect and seem perfectly suited to this environment.  The film is mundane from start to finish, but so perfectly atmospheric with real-life characters that I couldn’t help but feel empathy for the people and their struggles.

The film displays a high amount of respect for the Catholic Church; it presents its priests, nuns and teachings in a very favorable light.  The film treats landlords and the Italian authorities more harshly, and it especially emphasizes the matter-of-fact cruelty practiced against farm animals by the peasants.  We witness a pig slaughter in detail, and a goose is also executed.  By the end, even a city dweller like me feels like I spent a year on a farm.

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Our Modern Maidens

MGM pays tribute to the revved-up late 1920s in “Our Modern Maidens,” a 1929 film starring Joan Crawford, Anita Page and Douglas Fairbanks, Junior.  MGM added sound effects, but the mostly silent picture follows the story of Billie, the most popular girl among a fabulously rich and hard-partying crowd.  (On a train trip, a porter announces, “Lunch is poured!”)

Joan Crawford (left) and Anita Page in “Our Modern Maidens.”

Billie wants to marry boyfriend Gil (Fairbanks), but his success in life depends on a coveted appointment to the diplomatic service in Paris.  When Billie meets chief diplomat Glenn Abbott on the train, she flirts with him for the purpose of securing his influence for Gil’s appointment.  Glenn falls for the alluring and perky Billie, and believing that she feels the same, he romances her.    Meanwhile, Billie’s friend, Kentucky (Page), falls for Gil, and they have and affair that leads to Kentucky becoming pregnant.
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Normally, sound films project at 24 frames per second, but silent films feature variable frame speeds.  That’s why silent films sometimes seem so sped up; they’re projecting wrongly.  When MGM added the soundtrack to Our Modern Maidens, they set the projection speed at 24 frames, so the action in Our Modern Maidens seems rushed at times.  Crawford brings all her physical gifts to the part, but the projection speed interferes with the exquisite timing of her movements.  The sound bits include a radio announcement at the beginning and crowd and partying noises for the rest of the picture.

Crawford performs a sexy dance routine at a lavish party, complete with a revealing costume.  Fairbanks entertains the party crowd with impersonations of John Barrymore, John Gilbert and Douglas Fairbanks, Senior (as Robin Hood).  I couldn’t keep my eyes off Anita Page, however.  Kentucky’s relationship with Billie seems more believable than anything Billie generates with Glenn.  Glenn, nicknamed “Dynamite,” doesn’t come across as a sympathetic character.  Jack Conway, the director, also directed the great 1936 film, “Libeled Lady.”

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Carnival in Flanders

Everybody should see the 1935 film called “La Kermesse Héroïque (Carnival in Flanders),” which stars the wonderful and gifted Françoise Rosay as the wife of the Burgomaster in a Flemish village.  When Spanish invaders take over the town, the men flee but the women greet them with open arms.  The Spanish become so taken with the women’s hospitality that they refrain from sacking the village.

Françoise Rosay as the Burgomaster’s wife in “Carnival in Flanders.”

The film takes its Flanders’ style from the paintings of Jan Brueghel, while the Spanish invading army’s style derives from Diego Velazquez.  The village Burgomaster, fearing a masacre, fakes his own death, a ruse he finds tiresome as the ladies wine and dine the Spaniards.

In addition, it balances the effect of sodium nitroprusside, a nitric oxide donor, was observed. on sale at site viagra prices The most deadly parts of Fugu include the liver, continue reading now generic cialis without prescriptions muscles, ovaries, and skin. From the very beginning, you should be thinking about your career cheap super viagra and where it’s going. Any of the following symptoms can be debilitating, greatly buy levitra viagra affecting their lives. Although released in 1935, the film remains fresh with satirical jabs at the Flemish and Spanish authorities and remarkable sexual openness.  A funny bit involves the wife of the village innkeeper, who lustfully engages with more than one of the invaders.  Rosay, the wife of director Jacques Feyder, revels in her characterization of a no-nonsense wife making the best of a potentially destructive situation.

Feyder also directed Greta Garbo in the German-language version of MGM’s “Anna Christie (1931).”  With Carnival in Flanders, he works with magnificent and blustery character actors performing a smart and very funny story.  A disclaimer card at the beginning of the movie warns us of the film’s farcical nature, perhaps anticipating the subsequent uproar the movie caused in Belgium. The crawling credits say in French: “This film is not based on historical events.  It is a heroic-comic farce, a fiction set in a sleepy town, by a canal lined with old wooden houses.”

The “sleepy” town used in the movie is Bruges, a town I know well from my years of living in Belgium.  Feyder, being a Belgian, understands the Flemish attitude towards festivals and food, which is less formal and more beer-centered than the French.  In a delightful scene, the frustrated Jan Brueghel threatens to walk out of painting an official portrait of the Burgomaster and his deputies.  “Go back to your ‘dauber,'” Brueghel says.  The Burgomaster retorts:  “My ‘dauber’ was Rubens!”

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The Red Mill

“The Red Mill,” a 1927 silent picture starring Marion Davies, features Davies as Tina, a drudge and servant girl in Holland who falls in love with foreign visitor Dennis, played by Owen Moore.  Tina and Dennis skate together along the lanes of her Dutch village, and then he leaves town while she returns to her life of drudgery.  Willem, the mean and sadistic tavern owner, abuses Tina with threats and a whip, but she keeps her dignity and her keen sense of humor.  She gets solace from her only faithful companion, a mouse named Ignatz who lives in her wooden clog.

Marion Davies stars in “The Red Mill.”

If you buy 40 pills you will be paying $143.60 and saving $16 no prescription tadalafil US dollars. Jackson was viagra in the usa catapulted onto the stage as fireworks went off behind him as the performances began. Issues create uncomfortable cheapest viagra in uk side effects and until the couple or family face the truth and find out ways to overcome it, the better for you. You still have 95% of the body parts 20mg tadalafil sale during winter season. Dennis returns on the day before the Burgomaster’s homely daughter, Gretchen, is set to marry the Governor.  Gretchen, played by Louise Fazenda, actually loves the oafish Jacob, but she’s being forced to marry the Governor against her will.  Tina switches places with Gretchen and the film’s mistaken-identity plot kicks in.  Tina tries to stop the wedding, but Willem figures it out and locks Tina in the “haunted mill.”  Lots of spooky sight gags ensue inside the mill until the thrilling finale.

Davies does a great job performing her wonderful stunts, especially when she skates around the village.  Roscoe “Fatty” Arbuckle, who uses the pseudonym “William Goodrich,” provides lots of funny set pieces that make the most of Davies’ talent and physical beauty.  I especially like when she dons a mud mask, which is pulled off to reveal a perfectly made-up face; she changes in an instant from a drudge to a beautiful princess.

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Dimitrios

Peter Lorre and Sidney Greenstreet team up once again in “The Mask of Dimitrios,” released in 1944 by Warner Brothers and directed by Jean Negulesco.  Lorre plays a Dutch detective story writer named Cornelius Leyden who becomes obsessed with a Greek criminal named Dimitrios.  Dimitrios washes up dead at the beginning of the movie on a beach in Istanbul.  When the local police chief gives details of Dimitrios’ infamous career,  Leyden travels around Europe to research the dead man’s history, for curiosity and a possible book project.

Peter Lorre is menaced by Sidney Greenstreet in “The Mask of Dimitrios.”

The film, which tells the Demitrios story in flashback, makes no mention of World War 2, hence Leyden’s ability to travel easily to Sophia, Belgrade, Vienna and other dangerous places.  Leyden starts out alone but soon Greenstreet arrives and tails him during his journey.  While Leyden searches for the truth, Greenstreet’s character, Mr. Peters, plots revenge against Demitrios, confounding and confusing Leyden the entire way.
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I suppose the appeal of pairing Greenstreet and Lorre lies in their apparent harmlessness.  Greenstreet hardly moves at all, and when Lorre finally mixes it up violently with the villain, he’s obviously overmatched.  But taking them for granted proves to be the villain’s undoing.  Zachary Scott plays the menacing and way over-confident Dimitrios, who does Warner Brothers proud as a gangster without a conscience.

 

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The River

An Indian film directed by Jean Renoir called “Le Fleuve (The River)” came out in 1951.  Its glorious color photography by Claude Renoir captures the sites along the Ganges River.  The story involves a  British family that runs a jute processing factory.  When a handsome American veteran, Captain John, visits the next door neighbor, he causes a stir among the teenage girls of the jute family, especially plain-looking, poetry-writing Harriet, who stalks Captain John throughout the picture.  He prefers Harriet’s prettier and shallow older sister, Valerie.  Captain John also shows interest in a half-Indian girl named Melanie, but that seems ill-fated from the start.

Patricia Walters (as Harriet) and Suprova Mukerjee (as Nan) spy on Captain John in “The River.”

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Satyajit Ray, who served as assistant director for The River, made his next film, “Pather Panchali,” in 1955.  I wondered if Ray borrowed much from Renoir, but it doesn’t seem likely.  The River seems like old-time film making, with a quick pace and finely-tuned editing.  Pather Panchali’s languid style heighten’s the suspense as it relentlessly explores the struggle of Apu’s impoverished boyhood.  Ray’s later, more stagey films owe more to Renoir’s style than Pather Panchali’s realist core.

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The Merry Widow

Last night, TCM exposed countless millions to Erich von Stroheim’s 1925 classic, “The Merry Widow,” starring John Gilbert, Mae Murray and Roy D’Arcy.  Gilbert plays Prince Danilo in a strange European country called Monteblanco, where his cousin, Crown Prince Mirko preens and struts about with a constant smirk.  Mirko plays all the right notes of old nobility but Danilo spends his time chasing women.  They both, however, frequent brothels and treat their servants like dirt.

John Gilbert (left), Mae Murray and Roy D’Arcy in “The Merry Widow.”

When an American dance troupe arrives with Sally O’Hara (Murray), she  dazzles both Danilo and Mirko.  They vie for her attention, but it’s no contest as Gilbert and his matinee idol looks wins the day. King Nikita of Montebello forbids their  marriage and O’Hara marries the richest man in the kingdom, who drops dead on her wedding night.  So, the suddenly rich widow runs off to have fun in Paris.  Both Danilo and Mirko resolve to track her down, which makes what started out as a broad comedy into a serious drama.

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I marveled at D’Arcy’s ability to maintain his smirk throughout the picture.  Since The Merry Widow is a silent picture, he did not need to hold his smug grin while also delivering dialogue.  However, he steals the movie with his conceited attitude, right down to the almost robotic gait he affects throughout.  I call it silent film acting at its best.

 

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Artistic Pictures

The 31st Pordenone Silent Film Festival, scheduled for October 6 to October 13, 2012, will show a program called “The Stories of W. W. Jacobs.”  Jacobs, an English fiction writer, wrote humorous stories, but is best known for a 1902 horror short story called “The Monkey’s Paw.”  The program includes the following films, all directed by H. Manning Haynes:

  • A WILL AND A WAY (1922)
  • SAM’S BOY (1922)
  • THE SKIPPER’S WOOING (1922)
  • THE HEAD OF THE FAMILY (1922)
  • THE BOATSWAIN’S MATE (1924)

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Artistic Pictures made all of the films in England.  The studio also made a film of The Monkey’s Paw in 1923.  Victor McLaglen, best known for “Gunga Din (1939),” stars in The Boatswain’s Mate.

 

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The Savage Girl

“The Savage Girl,” an interesting pre-code film made by Monarch Film Corporation in 1932, tells the story of an eccentric and drunk millionaire (Amos P. Stitch) who hires a professor to travel to Africa, catch wild animals, and stock Stitch’s private zoo.  The adventurers hear of a local legend concerning a wild white woman who lives in the jungle, but scoff at the idea.  When the girl appears in the shape and form of stunning Rochelle Hudson, she inspires lust and rage among the hunting party.

Rochelle Hudson sees western civilization for the first time in “The Savage Girl.”

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Stitch continues to drink alcohol throughout the picture, and there’s a funny bit where the drunken Stitch experiments to see if elephants are really afraid of mice.  He also rides around the jungle in a taxicab, complete with a bored cabby!  It takes a while before Hudson appears, but it’s well worth the wait.

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