{"id":19880,"date":"2012-07-01T08:01:50","date_gmt":"2012-07-01T15:01:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogschapman.wpenginepowered.com\/dodge\/2012\/07\/01\/the-first-half-of-il-cinema-ritrovato\/"},"modified":"2012-07-01T08:01:50","modified_gmt":"2012-07-01T15:01:50","slug":"the-first-half-of-il-cinema-ritrovato","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.chapman.edu\/dodge\/2012\/07\/01\/the-first-half-of-il-cinema-ritrovato\/","title":{"rendered":"Beyond Dodge College: The First Half of Il Cinema Ritrovato"},"content":{"rendered":"

Buon giorno everyone!\u00a0 It\u2019s Max with another report from beautiful Bologna.\u00a0 Before I get into what I\u2019ve been seeing, I think I should take a moment to explain what the festival is all about.Part 2 of 3.\u00a0 (Back to Part 1<\/a>, Skip to Part 3<\/a>)<\/p>\n

This is the twenty-sixth year of Il Cinema Ritrovato.\u00a0 Unlike festivals like Cannes, Venice, or Toronto, which focus on new films with occasional screenings of older films, Il Cinema Ritrovato focuses on the past, looking at films ritrovati e restaurati (rediscovered and restored).\u00a0 There are no awards (except for a ceremony celebrating the best DVD\/Blu-Ray releases of the last year) and none of the excess of other festivals.\u00a0 Here in Bologna, it\u2019s all about the festival, the movies, and the symposiums.\u00a0 People travel from all over the world to be here to have the opportunity to see certain films on the big screen that they would otherwise not be able to.\u00a0 A large percentage of the newly restored films that play here are actually restored by Cineteca Bologna, a world leader in film preservation and restoration.\u00a0 Each year, the Cineteca decides on several subjects to focus the festival on, and from there, they decide what films to show.\u00a0 For this year, they\u2019ve decided to turn their focus on the filmmakers Raoul Walsh, Lois Weber, and Jean Gremillon, silent musicals (yes, they do exist), early Japanese talkies, Alma Hitchcock, and films that focus on the effects of the stock market crash of 1929, amongst others.\u00a0 In addition, they have programs that are the same year after year, such as looking back at films from a century ago (this year was a selection of films made in 1912, mostly from Italy), a focus on Charlie Chaplin, and screenings of the big, new restorations.\u00a0 Unfortunately, we arrived after the festival had begun, so we missed two of the most important restorations that screened here (the extended cut of Leone\u2019s Once Upon a Time in America <\/em>and The Archers\u2019 The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp<\/em>), but we did get the chance to see a bunch of other great stuff, as you\u2019ll see below.<\/p>\n

After almost 36 hours of traveling, we finally arrived in Bologna, and the next morning, we were all up early to get a head start on watching films.\u00a0 While I had a multitude of choices, I decided to start my festival off with a silent classic: the 1924 version of The Thief of Bagdad<\/em>.\u00a0 This is not the 1940 film of the same title released by Criterion a couple of years ago.\u00a0 Instead, this is the Douglas Fairbanks classic.\u00a0 Though I\u2019ve seen clips of the film in various classes I\u2019ve taken over the years, I\u2019ve never actually seen it all the way through, and the film did not disappoint.\u00a0 It\u2019s clear from his very first appearance why Fairbanks was one of the biggest movie stars on the planet.\u00a0 He\u2019s unbelievably charming and charismatic, commanding the screen.\u00a0 Though the film runs over 2 \u00bd hours, it flies by thanks to a fantastic plot, amazing special effects, and colorful characters.\u00a0 The sets are stunning, big and bold with a slight hint of German Expressionism to them.\u00a0 After Thief, <\/em>I stuck around the Arlecchino (one of the five theatres in Bologna that the festival uses) to see Raoul Walsh\u2019s Distant Drums<\/em>, a Western starring Gary Cooper that takes place in 1840s Florida.\u00a0 Though Cooper was a tremendous actor, he\u2019s more or less wasted here in what is not a very good film (not to mention the rather terrible quality of the print).\u00a0 In addition to the screenings, there are a number of symposiums here at the festival, so I next made my way to a discussion of the recent restoration of Jean Renoir\u2019s masterpiece The Grand Illusion, <\/em>which we would be seeing the following night.\u00a0 Being the tech\/restoration geek that I am, getting to hear about this important film\u2019s restoration from the people responsible for it was incredible.\u00a0 They talked about how the original nitrate negative made its way back to Toulouse Cinematheque from Moscow in the mid-1970s, how the new restoration was struck from that negative, and the various cuts that had been made to the film over the years for each re-release (the 1946 release cut an entire love story from the plot because the woman was German, and with the release coming just after the end of World War II, the distributor decided they did not want to show Germans in a positive light).\u00a0 This new version is the original, 1937 cut of the film, and when we saw it the following evening, it looked nothing short of amazing.\u00a0 Following that panel, I went back to the hotel, took a brief nap, then had dinner with friends, and then went to the Piazza Maggiore in the center of town, where the festival erects a gargantuan movie screen to show the biggest films of the festival each night at 10 PM (for those of you who\u2019ve never seen a film outdoors, I\u2019d highly recommend it).\u00a0 That night was the screening of the new restoration of Roman Polanski\u2019s Tess, <\/em>an adaptation of Thomas Hardy\u2019s novel Tess of the d’Urbervilles (the film is dedicated to his late wife Sharon Tate, who was a fan of the book and believed her husband would make a spectacular adaptation of it).\u00a0 The film certainly isn\u2019t for everyone (it\u2019s long and rather slow paced), but for those who can handle it, there is much to love.\u00a0 The film\u2019s cinematography is nothing short of stunning, reminiscent of Kubrick\u2019s Barry Lyndon <\/em>in its use of natural light.\u00a0 The production design, costuming, and direction are all top notch.\u00a0 The restoration is beautiful, breathing new life into an already amazing film.<\/p>\n

The next day began with more Raoul Walsh, a triple feature in fact.\u00a0 It was Wild Girl, <\/em>followed by Kindred of the Dust, <\/em>followed by Pursued, <\/em>all of which I enjoyed.\u00a0 After that, I spent a couple of hours watching some avant-garde filmmaking (thanks to my film studies education at UC Berkeley, I\u2019m actually quite a fan), seeing two films by Andy Warhol (Face <\/em>and The Velvet Underground in Boston<\/em>), one by Samuel Beckett, and one by Norman Mailer.\u00a0 I found each of them fascinating for different reasons.\u00a0 Face <\/em>is 66 minutes of Edie Sedgwick in close-up, listening to music and getting ready to go out.\u00a0 The first 25 minutes or so are enrapturing.\u00a0 Edie doesn\u2019t say a word, she just goes about her business, and she seems like a canvas upon which anything can be created.\u00a0 After she starts talking, however, the movie just isn\u2019t the same.\u00a0 The Velvet Underground in Boston <\/em>was not what I was expecting (but then again, why would I expect a standard concert doc from someone like Andy Warhol).\u00a0 Instead of focusing on the band, he focuses on the experience of being at the concert, with his camera focused on the lights and the concertgoers.\u00a0 Samuel Beckett\u2019s Film <\/em>was something I\u2019d wanted to see for years and it did not disappoint.\u00a0 The film is impeccable thanks to the amazing crew that worked on it.\u00a0 The connection between images to create meaning and emotion was powerful, and the revelation at the end of who the man is managed to surprise me, even though I knew who he was before the film even started.\u00a0 After that was the showing of The Grand Illusion, <\/em>which, like I mentioned earlier, was amazing.<\/p>\n

That was the first half of my time here at the festival.\u00a0 Check in tomorrow for an update on the final three days, which included the world premiere screening of the new restoration of one of the greatest films ever made.<\/p>\n

Continue to Part 3<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Buon giorno everyone!\u00a0 It\u2019s Max with another report from beautiful Bologna.\u00a0 Before I get into what I\u2019ve been seeing, I […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":75,"featured_media":19923,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"","ast-site-content-layout":"default","site-content-style":"default","site-sidebar-style":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-banner-title-visibility":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","ast-disable-related-posts":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","astra-migrate-meta-layouts":"default","ast-page-background-enabled":"default","ast-page-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"ast-content-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,23],"tags":[50,57,150,20,151,152,28,153],"class_list":["post-19880","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-beyond-dodge","category-film-studies-programs","tag-dodge-college","tag-film","tag-film-studies","tag-guest","tag-international","tag-italy","tag-student","tag-travel"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.chapman.edu\/dodge\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19880","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.chapman.edu\/dodge\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.chapman.edu\/dodge\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.chapman.edu\/dodge\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/75"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.chapman.edu\/dodge\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19880"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.chapman.edu\/dodge\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19880\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.chapman.edu\/dodge\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/19923"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.chapman.edu\/dodge\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19880"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.chapman.edu\/dodge\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19880"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.chapman.edu\/dodge\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19880"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}