00:20Welcome back to the 45th edition of Legionata del Cinnamomoto, the Pordenone Silent Film Festival.
00:25I'm standing on the Adam and Eve bridge over the Noncello River. Noncello's original name was the Naones, which gives
00:32us the name Pordenone, the port of the Naones River.
00:35And I'm here to talk about the first of our Marshall Nealon films in this year's streaming program.
00:42One of the biggest sections that we're doing this year is focusing on the director Marshall Nealon, a name that
00:48many of you maybe know but possibly don't know his films.
00:50You might be more familiar or only familiar with some of the films that he made with Mary Pickford. He
00:55made five of them.
00:57Now, Nealon was widely celebrated by his contemporaries as one of the most fascinating men in Hollywood.
01:05Gloria Swanson wrote that he was the most bewitching man in Hollywood. For Gloria Swanson to say that, that's already
01:10something.
01:10And I want to read to you what Mary Pickford herself wrote about him.
01:13She said he was one of the most delightful, aggravating, gifted and charming human beings I have ever known.
01:20It's important to keep in mind, Pickford and Nealon made five films together.
01:25Melis was the last of them. That's in 1918.
01:27The team isn't only Mary Pickford and Marshall Nealon.
01:30It's also the great screenwriter Francis Marion and the cinematographer Walter Stradling.
01:35Sadly, Stradling died shortly after this film was released. He died in 1918 from pneumonia.
01:41You'll notice just how beautiful this film is shot. His use of mise-en-scene, shadow and light, is really
01:48quite notable.
01:49And I want to read off a quote here from Kevin Brownlow, who said,
01:52There have been few films with exteriors more exquisite than Melis.
01:57You'll be noticing that immediately. Pickford here plays a character very much in many of her films from this period.
02:03She's a sort of girl, a very rambunctious, naughty girl, but she makes the transition to womanhood.
02:09And there's a truly beautiful sequence where a doll that she has is damaged.
02:14And through that, you see that move, that shift from this rambunctious girl to more of a woman.
02:21Do please read the catalogue note, which is written by J.B. Kaufman, who's the overall curator of the Marshall
02:27Nealon program,
02:28as well as Leslie Midkiff-DeBosch, who's done a lot of work on Melis, not just the film, but of
02:32the source material as well,
02:34which comes from a Bret Hart story that was adapted a number of times.
02:38Many other people adapted it for theatre.
02:40There were other stories involved.
02:42And Leslie has really followed all of that through to see how it has shifted over time.
02:48The film was adapted first with Mary Pickford, actually, as a one-wheeler by D.W. Griffith in 1912.
02:54Then in 1915, a film starring Barbara Tennant, which is sadly lost.
02:57But the Pickford film was the one that's really survived and survived beautifully,
03:02thanks especially to the brand new restoration.
03:04We're extremely grateful to the Mary Pickford Foundation,
03:07who have collaborated to allow us to screen this truly pristine restoration for the first time.
03:14In addition to that, John Sweeney is doing the accompaniment.
03:17And what better accompaniment can we ask for?
03:19As we've been doing with a number of the other films that we're streaming,
03:22we're also including a Phantom Tram Ride.
03:25This is the program that's been curated by Lawrence Knapper.
03:28Camera being put on the front of a tram, going through urban and suburban spaces.
03:32In this case, we see Roschdale.
03:34It's a lovely way of entering into the spirit of the festival
03:38and into the spirit of the film.
03:40Enjoy the screening, and I hope to see you soon.
