Following the opening on Saturday, 4th October, the 44th Giornate del Cinema Muto/Pordenone Silent Film Festival continues with a full programme of screenings and live musical accompaniment. Films will run from morning to late evening, Sunday 5th to Saturday 11th October.

Of the many films to be enjoyed on Sunday, one really stands out: Der müde Tod (Destiny, 1921) by Fritz Lang, the director considered by Jean-Luc Godard (who cast him in Contempt) to be a true cinematic great. Der müde Tod, playing at 9.15 p.m. at Teatro Verdi (Pordenone), accompanied by the live music of Ilya Poletaev, was Lang’s first international success, written with Thea von Harbou, his co-writer on all films from the 1920s, including Metropolis. Theirs was far more than an artistic partnership and the pair married in 1922. The rise of Nazism and Von Harbou’s decision to join the regime led to an ideological division and their eventual divorce. In 1933, Lang was exiled, first to France, and then the United States.

Der müde Tod marks an important chapter in expressionist romance of the Weimar Republic and captures the director’s love of renaissance painting. With its perfectly intertwined narrative structure, the film draws on technical contributions of the highest order for sets, costumes and cinematography, paired with an impressive cast starring Bernhard Goetzke as Death. The story is that of a young woman attempting to save her lover from the grasp of Death. Given three chances, all she has to do is save one life to be reunited with the man she loves. The different sections, referred to as “lights”, span distant times and places: the first episode takes us to an Islamic country during Ramadan, the second to Venice during Carnival, and the third to imperial China. The choice of these disparate settings are indicative of Lang’s passion for the exotic, with its origins in the adventure novels of his youth and various travels in Asia and North-Africa. Der müde Tod made a big impression on two young directors destined for greatness: Alfred Hitchcock and Luis Buñuel, the latter identifying this film as having first inspired him to approach the world of cinema. It is ironic that Der müde Tod, with its theme of destiny (central throughout Lang’s filmography), ended up playing an unexpectedly definitive role in the writer’s life. After serving a prison sentence for her Nazi involvement, Thea von Harbou returned to the world of cinema. Following a screening of the film during a celebration of her work at the 1954 Berlin Festival, she fell awkwardly, suffering serious injuries that ultimately led to her death.

A must-see, at 2.30 p.m. on Sunday, 5th October, one of this year’s special events will be dedicated to Japanese paper films. This format, developed in the 1930s, cost less than celluloid and sat perfectly with the long tradition of Japanese paper crafts. Subjects vary greatly: animations, traditional films, documentaries, anthropological works, propaganda, and Hollywood and European imports. After the destruction of the Second World War, most copies of paper films were lost. For the first time in Europe, the Giornate will present a selection of works digitalised thanks to the efforts of Professor Eric Faden of Bucknell University (Pennsylvania), founder of the Japanese Paper Film Project. Some feature a synchronised soundtrack, while others have musical accompaniment that will be performed live by Duo Yumeno, featuring Yoko Reikano Kimura on koto and Hikaru Tamaki on cello.

Another highlight of this edition is the section dedicated to Chaplin-mania “The Chaplin Connection: Six Degrees of Charlie”, spread over several days. The programme for Sunday, 5 October projects us into Chaplin’s world with unique material that provides a sense of Chaplin’s initial impact in the world of entertainment and beyond. Chaplin fever was already high in 1915, when Charlie moved from Keystone to Essanay, as illustrated by the first film to be screened, from the same year, Sammy’s Scandalous Scheme by Gilbert Hamilton. In the story, a girl who is infatuated with the actor longs to abandon her partner for him and writes letters to both, declaring her love to Chaplin and ditching Sammy. The two letters get mixed up and Sammy, dressed as Charlot, goes to the girl, acting dreadfully and curing her case of “Chaplinitis”. Sammy Burns, a British dancer and comic, was one of the first Chaplin imitators, and continued to impersonate him in a couple of other shorts. The programme continues with two cartoons, Charlie in Turkey (1919) by Otto Messmer, creator of Felix the Cat, and Charlie Chaplin’s Droom. Following this, directly from the Chaplin Office, is a screening of rare material filmed over an extended period, from 1917 to 1966, in the US, UK, Switzerland and Italy, including discarded shots, amateur films and informal snapshots. It is important to remember that Chaplin (born in the UK) was a victim of McCarthyism and had his US permit revoked while travelling in 1952. It was impossible for him to take all of his films to Switzerland, where he had decided to live with his family, so he chose a selection, now part of the Chaplin Family Archive. The rare material to be presented in Pordenone offers a unique snapshot of the unseen Chaplin, at home and with friends, colleagues and admirers. Many personalities make an appearance, including Max Linder, Scottish music-hall star Harry Lauder, and boxing champion Benny Leonard, who mimes a match with Chaplin, his brother Sydney playing referee. One of the most notable figures in these films is undoubtedly Winston Churchill, on the set of City Lights on 24 September 1929.

Sunday evening’s programme does not close with Der Müde Tod. After Lang’s film there will be a special documentary screening offering some bitter reflection on the obscene spectacle of war voyeurism, with tourists visiting locations of massacres. This is not a recent phenomenon. As early as December 1914, there were travel agencies organising tours of camps across La Marne and Aisne “where just a few weeks before the cannons were blasting out death and destruction”. Many “tourists” were driven by personal reasons such as visiting the place where their loved ones had died, but the film presented at the Festival, Bennett’s Reisebureau (Bennett’s Tourist Office, 1919), also captures brazen young people posing for the camera amongst the ruins. There is a clear parallel with recent cases of tourists snapping selfies at Auschwitz. Bennett’s Reisebureau was established by Englishman Thomas Bennett, who moved to Kristiania (Oslo) in 1848 and opened a transport service that soon became a leading international agency. The film documenting Bennett’s Reisebureau is held in the Hans Berge Collection of the Nasjonalbiblioteket and it is believed that Berge himself filmed it.

The Giornate’s online programme on MyMovies for Sunday, 5 October offers a double bill: four shorts by Feuillade as part of the Canon Revisited section (starting at 5.00 p.m.) and two children’s comedies filmed in Ukraine, Robinson on His Own and The Adventures of a Penny (at 9.00 p.m.). As usual, the screenings will be available for 48 hours.

The Pordenone Silent Film Festival / Le Giornate del Cinema Muto is made possible thanks to the support of the Regione Autonoma Friuli Venezia Giulia, the Ministry of Culture – Direzione Generale Cinema, the city of Pordenone, the Pordenone-Udine Chamber of Commerce, the Fondazione Friuli and with the participation of BCC Pordenonese e Monsile.