Silent Sundays Redeems Itself

[TheManWhoCameBack]

Just when I had about given upon "Silent Sundays" to stop repeating repeating itself over and over - when "Old San Franciso"(1927) had gotten really old fast, when "The First Auto" (1927) was the last thing I wanted to see again, When "Grass" (1925) made me want to reach for a joint - they finally decided to program something fantastic.

 

Hurray! King Vidor's "La Boheme"(1926) with Liian Gish and JohnGilbert is on tonight. Check it out.

[johnnyweekes70]

Unless my power goes out or I have to endure some unexpected, unnatural event, I can't see anything keeping me away from checking out La Boheme tonight! Can't wait!

[Guest]

Yes don't miss La Boheme..... Gish and Gilbert are suprisingly good together. I think this is a very underrated film.....

[nsallieharding]

I'm watching La Boheme now, what a great print, I know all of you will be pleased in the quality of this print TCM is showing.

[johnnyweekes70]

I can't believe it! I fell asleep and missed it!!! I'm such an idiot! Oh, well, at least, I woke up and caught Hitler's Madman but that's just not the same!

[lux0786]

In Osborne’s intro to La Boheme, he said that Gish (or MGM) tried to get Puccini’s music from his opera of the same name, but was refused. Evidently The Great Bertini was able to succeed where Lillian Gish failed. Francesca Bertini (1888-1985) was a legendary silent screen actress whose films were all made in Italy. She claims to have made 100 films, one of which is Tosca (1918), based on another opera of Puccini of the same name. So how did Francesca succeed in getting the great composer to agree to the use of his music? Well, to be precise, he didn’t exactly agree, sort of. Here are Miss Bertini’s own words transcribed verbatim from a documentary of this silent screen star made in 1982 when she was 94 years old.

 

 

Says Francesca:

The film opened in Milan with music by Puccini. And Puccini went to see this Tosca one night. He phoned his publisher Ricordi, and asked, “Who authorized them to put my music in the film?” Ricordi replied “I did. Francesca Bertini deserves this and more. So you be quiet and let the music go on.” Puccini said, “You’re right, it’s a lovely Tosca. I want to see Bertini.” Oh, he came to Rome, but I was nowhere to be found. No one’s ever seen me in the flesh. [laughs] … In the dagger scene, as I raised my hand the dagger overshot, that is, it went above the top of the backdrop. The producer refused to take it again so as not to waste the negative. That wouldn’t have happened to Garbo, capiche! And so the scene was left like that in the film. We were short of means. In Hollywood they had everything, costumes, make-up, wigs of every kind. All I put on my face was soap and water. I made a hundred films with no make up on. These days I wear make-up, the years weigh heavy. Ah, I feel this century on my back.

===

 

This film, Tosca, is lost, with only a few stills still extant, which is more than you can say of any of her other films. According to Francesca, they were all burned during WWII. All that’s left are a few scenes from a film entitled The Serpent.

[Guest]

wow what a great story.... I can't say I ever heard of Bertini.... another sad example of lost films.... unbelievable.... why were the films burned?

[lux0786]

Probably for political reasons, I'm not sure exactly. I can't imagine what threat poor Francesca represented for the Fascist regime in Italy at that time but apparently she needed to be expunged from the record.

 

I see that her 1915 movie, Assunta Spina, which she also directed BTW, still survives and is available online at rottontomatoes.com. "It is the operatic tragedy in which Bertini stars as Assunta, a woman in the midst of a tempestuous relationship with a jealous man named Michele. When his abuse gets him thrown in jail, Assunta takes up with corrupt official so that she can continue to see him." (The plot sounds a little like Carmen, doesn’t it? Geraldine Farrar made Carmen in this country about the same time.) Also on this CD is the documentary I referred to, The Last Diva. I haven’t seen the entire documentary, only a 10-minute excerpt that was presented on the ARTS Channel, it was very moving. At 94, she was very together, feisty, and cute. At one point, she asks rhetorically, “I once worked for three directors at one time. Do you have any idea what’s it like working for three directors?” And then she burys her head in her hands. (Well, maybe you have to see it).

[feaito]

Lux, thanks for posting all that info on Francesca Bertini, one of the first divas of the world's Cinema. I read about her, in the first Film Encyclopedia I began collecting in 1981-1982 and I remember being very intrigued by her career and persona.

[feaito]

In fact, I remember reading about many famous actresses of the Italian Cinema of the 1910s, many of them with incredible names like "Italia Almirante Manzini", for example.

[lux0786]

There were two other Italian actresses that rivalled her, Borelli and Menichelli, but these two were not so well known outside of Italy as was Bertini.

 

I wonder if she really did refuse to see Puccini when he came to Rome. Mr. P was a quite a lady's man and Bertini might very well have wanted to meet the great composer, who by this time (1918) had written most of his famous operas and was celebrated round the world. I wouldn't be surprised if she wasn't being a bit coy on this point. Easy to imagine they might have had a couple of "get-togethers."

[Guest]

what a great thread..... I love learning about silent stars I never heard of or know little about.... THANKS!!!!

[nickdimeo]

Just wanted to thank TCM for showing this wonderful movie last Sunday night! I enjoyed the movie very much but I did notice in a few parts that the title cards went by very quickly before the viewer had a chance to read them. But, that's the beauty of taping a great movie like this, you can go back and rewind or pause and read the title card.

[feaito]

Yeah Lux, I seem to remember their remember Lyda/Leda Borelli and Pia Menichelli, I think. Great Thread!

[feaito]

Lux,

 

Due to your very interesting writings on Miss Bertini, I re-read my Spanish Film Encyclopeadia (1981-1982), where these Italian actresses, mainly Bertini are analyzed, and I found so many names!!! Besides Francesca Bertini, Italia Almirante Manzini, Lyda Borelli and Pina Menichelli...there also were: Hesperi, Mar?a Jacobini, Mary Cleo Tarlarini, Giovanna Terribili Gonzales, Giulia Cassini-Rizzotto, Leda Gys, Lina Mellifleurs, Clelia Antici-Maffei, Lina Cavalieri...they all sound so very "Aristocratic" and exotic too.

 

The authors state that these actresses made the Italian Cinema internationally famous in the 1910s; these actresses were known as the "Dive Muettes". They also say that they installed/created a new formulae of explotatition of the human "physique", at both levels: of interpretation and eroticism, based on their photogenic presence (onscreen), in other words: sex-appeal. It's stated that they were the precurssors of the American Star System.

 

Francesca Bertini herself, who started her career in 1909, described this as follows (from the Italian book of Guilio Cesare Castello "Il Divismo"): "They were few the ones who could have said that they had seen me in person. I was jealous of myself and my fascinating work, I went out very little...I want to be sincere: this attitude did not exclude calculation on my part. I had realized that if I acted in a different way, I might have broken the spell....So, even in the publicity aspect, I anticipated the launching methods of the big American companies. With a difference: I never needed a publicity agent to arrange it, as the big Divas of the other side of the Atlantic nowadays do. I always knew how to create my publicity all by myself. To achieve this, it helped enormously my luxurious dresses and hats, as well as my gestures, manners, less easy to emulate, but it wasn't an obstacle to them being imitated, at all hours..."

[lux0786]

Feaito: She wasn’t kidding about being “imitated, at all hours…”,at least according to Katz, who writes, “… and women the world over imitated her style and manners.” (Emphasis mine). Although I had my tongue somewhat in cheek when I said earlier that she might have trysted with Puccini, I would certainly reject that idea now as I learn more about her. She probably wasn’t being so “coy” at all when she said in The Last Diva that few people actually saw her in the flesh (unless she had a very well-guarded private life) since she was obviously committed to protecting her image, as your quote of hers indicates.

 

She also said in the documentary that she signed a million dollar contract (!) with a Hollywood studio in 1920 but ended up getting married and announcing her retirement from film instead of honoring the contract. Fascinating decision on her part (“… and then I got married. The spotlights had ruined my eyes,” she says in The Last Diva, but there must have been more to it than that) and interesting too to speculate on what her impact would have been in Tinseltown. Regarding her “sex appeal” David Shipman in The Story of Cinema, a rambling, narrative history of film that covers just about everything though in a cursory way, says that Bertini, “who in the remnants available in Serpe (1919) [surviving snippets are turning up all over the place!] “is found in the classic position of the vamp: exultant on a huge divan, pearls around her brow and one shoulder graced with feathers, while her victim lies below, white tie and tailed, so overcome with lust that he has drunk himself into impotency.” (Move over, Theda). In The Last Diva there is a pretty good excerpt from Assunta Spina that gives us a good look at her. The vamp look of her day doesn’t do that much for me but I think I like her a little better than Theda though they look remarkably similar.

 

I’m curious whether Francesca appears in that excellent six-part documentary Cinema Europe that’s been shown on TCM. You may recall that this was a history of silents by country and narrated by Kenneth Branagh. I have it on tape and will have a look.

 

By the way, it wasn’t the Italians who burnt her films. She says in the documentary “The Germans burnt them in Mr. Barattolo’s villa.” Who is Mr. Barattolo? I don’t know but I’m curious because elsewhere when talking about how many films she made and how hard she worked she says parenthetically and with a laugh, “I worked day and night for all you Barattolos!”

 

Fiaito, maybe our little retrospective thread here on Miss Bertini will inspire TCM to acquire Assunta Spina for a showing. That would be nice.

[feaito]

Yet more interesting info Lux! And yes, it would be very interesting to see her in "Assunta Spina".

[johnnyweekes70]

Once upon a time, Playboy ran a series of articles called "The History of Sex in the Cinema." Included in these articles was a lengthy piece on Bertini and Borelli and which constituted my introduction to these ladies. At the same time, I'd just watched Bertolucci's 1900 and had to revisit it when I found out Bertolucci had convinced Bertini to appear in it. Years later, when Kino put out the video edition of The Last Diva, I found her a magnetic, fiesty personality of great interest and entirely warranting of the lauditory comments bestowed upon her in the Playboy articles. Her appearances in the two Italian Shakespeare films included on the Milestone compilation, which I think is soon to air on TCM (though not in Canada), are further evidence of Bertini's unique sexy persona. I've yet to see Assunta Spina but I can't get around to everything!

[johnnyweekes70]

And I don't seem to recall seeing her in Cinema Europe. A complete episode on Italian cinema of the period would have been nice but you can't have everything! I've got the DVD and, if she's in it and I've forgotten, it would probably be in the introductory episode. It's worth a look just to watch it again, it's such a superb documentary.

[lux0786]

You’re right on, Johnny Weekes, in the introductory episode of Cinema Europe, we are shown two scenes from Assunta Spina. The narration identifies Francesca as the ”foremost diva of Italy,” who up until that time had been famous for her “emotional roles,” but surprised “her followers with a totally naturalistic performance” in Spinta. The movie was filmed “on the streets of Naples and was a forerunner of Neo-Realism.” Italian cinema had been elaborate but because of the war had to cut back explaining why perhaps Assunta Spinta was shot on city streets instead of inside a studio mirroring what happened 30 years later when the same thing happened after WWII producing the Neo-Realistic school

 

There is no sign of the vamp here. Francesca is shown in a very realistic scene, seated at a dinner table with two men one of which is presumably her husband. The men get up to leave, one of them tries to kiss her but she gently rebuffs him, sends them on their way, she returns to the table and impulsively decides to take a drink from a glass, then chases them out the door, a short domestic scene that could have been taken from real life. She appears to be a very good actress. We also see her walking down a street rebuffing a half-hearted, ogling, pass from some guy. She waves him off and keeps walking …

 

From there they cut to Malombra (1917) briefly showcasing Bertini’s “rival,” Lydia Borelli, who, at least in this film, was more in keeping with the erotic trappings of the Diva, showing her once at the piano and then swirling around wantonly to a lush orchestral version of Vissa D’Arte from Puccini’s Tosca. They said that Lydia is the source of the Italian word “Borellismo.” You don’t need to be a genius to know what this word means.

 

Re the Playboy article on sex and cinema, I remember those, they were done some time ago. I don’t recall reading them (I think I was more into looking at pictures in those days but they would certainly be interesting to read today, now that I have a TCM education, so to speak. I haven’t done a search on them but wondering whether they are available. It’s been about 40 years since those appeared, I think. Very nice that they gave Bertini a lot of attention. Despite her obvious fame, she is anything but a household name today.

[johnnyweekes70]

I guess my memory isn't as bad I thought. One of the greatest things about those early Italian films was the location work. Even those Shakespeare films used exterior streets and countrysides and they're fantastic to look at today. You're right about those lengthy articles appearing forty years ago; they were written by Arthur Knight and Hollis Alpert and began in the mid-60s. I remember a particularly striking picture of Carole Lombard I haven't seen since. My late father had a subscription then and after my parents passed on I cleaned their house out and wasn't thinking clearly and pitched 'em all. I didn't know about ebay then!!

 

I know I ripped off the Bertini and Borelli info for an article of my own in the mid 80s, so I'll have to look for it. I'd absolutely forgotten about that until now.

[lux0786]

Did anyone watch "Silent Shakespeare"? If so, you saw Francesca Bertini as Cordelia in King Lear from 1910. Francesca playing the faithfull daughter. Also, she is Jessica in The Merchant of Venice, also from 1910, which was also shown. I really liked the color, probably very painstakingly done, I imagine by hand. Enjoyed generally seeing these very realistic scenes from the plays of the Bard.

 

Message was edited by:

lux0786

 

Message was edited by:

lux0786

[lux0786]

Johnnyweekes, I see now that you had alerted us that these Shakespeare films were coming up on TCM. I had missed that and so the appearance of Bertini in these films were a complete surprise to me. Note to myself, it pays to read more carefully.

[path40a]

I watched these Shakespeare silents too and was also impressed by the color of King Lear (1909) & The Merchant of Venice (1910) (as they are listed in the Now Playing Guide). Naturally, it was hard to find any more information about these on imdb.com which lists them both as B&W. In fact, because their Italian, you either have to search using the actors' names or Re Lear (1910) & Il Mercante di Venezia (1910), respectively.