00:15Welcome back to Le Giornate del Cinema Muto, the Pordenone silent film festival. I'm on the Corso, the main street
00:22of the city. As many of you know, it's the city that really gives the best feeling for what the
00:28city was like
00:28with medieval and renaissance palazzi still flanking both streets, both sides rather, the arcades. It's a really lovely place to
00:37be, lots of cafes, so please frequent the cafes, the shops, all here.
00:43It's thanks to the people of Pordenone who support us that we're able to continue to bring this festival to
00:49life every year.
00:50I'm here to talk about two films that will be streaming today. The first is a short from 1913 called
00:55Stellina, la pescatrice di Venezia.
00:58The Fisher Girl of Venice. This is a film that was made by the film d'Arte Italiana, and it's
01:04an extraordinary film that was restored recently by the CNC.
01:08So it's a typical classic story of a young girl. She's a fisher girl from Chioggia, which is just near
01:14Venice, who becomes seduced by a nobleman, and the inevitable happens.
01:18You watch the mise-en-scene, and you realize that we're in the hands of a director who really knows
01:24what he's doing. Unfortunately, we don't know who this director is, so if anybody has further information, if anybody makes
01:30a discovery, please let us know.
01:32Let the CNC know. It's a film, remarkably, that was discussed quite a lot in the Italian papers at the
01:40time, in L'Adriatico, the local Venice newspaper from 1913.
01:44There are two extraordinary letters, reviews letters. The first one is complaining that the colors that are used can't in
01:53any way match the beautiful colors and tonalities of Venice itself.
01:57Well, of course they count. At that point, the color scheme is quite limited, but the fact that they're talking
02:03about this in such a clear way in 1913 is really remarkable, and then a representative of Pate, who worked
02:11with the film d'Arte Italiana, he counters that idea in a subsequent letter.
02:16Read Carlo Montenaro's catalogue note, because it's really quite remarkable to see this ongoing debate in 1913.
02:26There isn't really a connection between Stelina, La Pescatrice di Venezia, and our next film, but as so often happened
02:33in the silent era, there generally wasn't a connection between the shorts that were screened and the feature films themselves.
02:40Not only are we changing registers in terms of the kinds of films that these are, for our feature-length
02:45film, we're moving date and country.
02:48Stelina Pescatrice di Venezia is 1913, Italian-French, Gjorkovic Sarna, I hope I'm pronouncing that remotely correctly, is a Swedish
02:57production based on a Hungarian novel by the, at that time, very popular Hungarian author, Ferenc Herzeg, from 1895.
03:04It's a name you've probably not heard of before, but you are familiar, many of you will be, because the
03:11Moritz Stiller film, Eroticon, is also based on one of his novels.
03:15It's a very Swedish film, and yet, as you can tell by the title, it's very Hungarian at the same
03:20time.
03:21The movie is 1920, and it stars Pauline Brunius, Schuster Ekman, and Nils Astor.
03:28The reason why we have this film in our programme this year, is because under the umbrella of this section
03:34called The Roots of Situation Comedy, Pauline Brunius figures prominently.
03:39Magnus Rosborn, from the Swedish Film Institute, has done a lot of work on Brunius, recovering her work as a
03:46screenwriter, as well as director, as well as actress.
03:50In Gjorkovic Sarna, we're only seeing her as an actress and co-screenwriter.
03:56In fact, Magnus says that Brunius was most proud of her work as a screenwriter.
04:01The films that she was making shortly after Gjorkovic Sarna, have very much a feel of the kinds of situation
04:09comedy that was coming out of the United States at the time.
04:12Specifically, Mr. and Mrs. Sydney Drew, which is why we put the two sections, the two groups of films together.
04:18In that idea, not slapstick, the idea of a middle class husband and wife couple, who various things happen to
04:26them that can happen to any of us in actual life.
04:29Obviously, a little bit exaggerated. In those films, Brunius is both director, scriptwriter and actress.
04:36Please do read Magnus Rosborn's catalogue notes on Brunius' remarkable career, an undervalued career.
04:43She is one of those women in the film industry at this time who needs to be rediscovered.
04:50As I mentioned, the film co-stars Schuster Ekman, who, together with Brunius, were two of the most popular film
04:56stars in Sweden at the time.
04:57Ekman went on to have a really remarkable career, also one of the great male beauties of Scandinavian cinema.
05:04Another figure in the film, another actor, is Nils Astor, who is a name that you might recall because he
05:09moves to the United States and makes quite a lot of films through the 40s, if not even later.
05:14I can't recall right now. He was a great friend of Greta Garbo's. He made some films with Garbo.
05:20He's also in The Bitter Tea of General Yen with Barbara Stanwyck. And when Garbo died and Sotheby's auctioned off
05:26her estate, she still had a painting that Nils Astor had given her that he'd made, painted rather.
05:32It's a bit of a sort of Indian-ish image. There's an elephant. I still kicked myself that I didn't
05:38actually bid on it. It didn't go for very much. It's not very nice, but it didn't really matter.
05:42It would have been a nice connection. In any event, this is a delightful film. It needs to be seen.
05:48It needs to be rediscovered.
05:50And it's beautifully tinted as well. So we're grateful again to the Swedish Film Institute for making this available to
05:56us, also for streaming.
05:58And to round it off, we have Gabrielle Thibodeau performing accompaniment to both Stelina and Gjorkovic Sarnma. Enjoy the screenings.
