APPEARING WITH GEORGE O’BRIEN IN THE MAN WHO CAME BACK A GREAT REDISCOVERED MELODRAMA

THE 2025 JEAN MITRY AWARD GOES TO ANDREA CUARTEROLO & GEORGINA TORELLO AND TO PAULA FÉLIX-DIDIER

The programme for Friday 10 October 2025 at Pordenone’s Teatro Verdi

The programme for Friday 10 October is a perfect compendium of the best of the Giornate. Even in a week with so many major titles, we can state that on no day is it worth spending the whole day sitting in the dark as much as it is on Friday, from Victor Sjöström’s first film, scheduled in the morning, to the magnificent restoration at 9 p.m. at the Teatro Verdi, of The Man Who Came Back, starring Dorothy Mackaill, whose intense closeup is the official image of this 44th edition of the Festival.

It’s strange how some great films of the silent era have fallen into oblivion, as did this one that was released with great success in 1924. Its popularity was the fruit of expert directing by Emmett Flynn, Edmund Goulding’s screenplay that recounts the fall and rise of a couple with sincere emotion, and the superb photography of Lucien Andriot. But, above all, it depends on the exceptional performances of Dorothy Mackaill and George O’Brien, the latter best known for his role in Murnau’s Sunrise and in many of John Ford’s films.

Before the screening of The Man Who Came Back, there will be one of the most highly anticipated moments of every edition of the Giornate: the Jean Mitry Award ceremony. The award is given to individuals and institutions that stand out for their commitment to the preservation and promotion of silent film heritage. Bruno Malattia, president of Fondazione Friuli, which supports the award, will present it this year to Andrea Cuarterolo with Georgina Torello, who since 2015 have been editing the journal Vivomatografias, dedicated to the study of pre-cinema and early cinema in Latin America, and to archivist and film historian Paula Félix-Didier.

The day begins at 9 a.m. with four fragments and the first film by Victor Sjöström: 1912’s The Gardener in which he also stars. Of the 42 films he directed in Sweden before moving to Hollywood, 23 are now considered lost and the four fragments being shown today survived only because they were reused in other productions. Swedish censors banned The Gardener (screenplay by Mauritz Stiller, the other big name of early Swedish cinema, and the man who discovered Greta Garbo) for being contrary to morality, so it was never distributed in that country. Fortunately, a copy of it was sold in the United States, and we can watch the restoration presented here today thanks to collaboration between the American archives and the Svenska Filminstitutet in Stockholm.

At 9.45 a.m., the retrospective dedicated to Italia Almirante Manzini features La piccola parrocchia (1923) by Mario Almirante, based on the novel by Alphonse Daudet, the author of “Les aventures prodigieuses de Tartarin de Tarascon”. Critics lauded the actress’s performance, praising “the elegance in her gestures, her control of the scene, a very special charm that emanates from her intense and penetrating gaze”.

In 2025, the Festival has dedicated significant space to director Augusto Genina. We opened the Festival with his Cyrano de Bergerac, and we return to his work on Friday 10 October at 11.30 a.m. with the screening of Il siluramento dell’Oceania (1917) that recounts the torpedoing of a transatlantic ship by a German submarine. Remember that the Great War was still raging at the time of the film’s release, and audiences still clearly remembered the tragedy of the RMS Lusitania, where 1,200 people lost their lives in a German attack on 7 May 1915. Masterfully orchestrating crowds of extras, with audacious points of view and optical tricks, Genina constructs a truly impressive sinking sequence, many decades before James Cameron’s Titanic.

Screenings begin again at 2 p.m. with Chaplin imitators, the American Billy West and Swiss actor Edmond Barenco.

In Europe, the 1920s were the years of the artistic avantgarde, also seen extensively in cinema. Belgium’s Henri Storck and Charles Dekeukele were the fathers of experimental documentaries, while Henri d’Ursel, eighth Duke of the ancient Ursel family, authored an interesting surrealist experiment, La Perle of 1929, which has been restored by Cinematek / Cinémathèque royale de Belgique. Even the greatest surrealist painter René Magritte had a passion for cinema and uses his home movies in Dialogue avec des objets (1956-1957) to construct a farcical game in the manner of silent film (2.30 at Teatro Verdi).

Even in Russia, after the Revolution, the winds of the avantgarde blew and 1926’s Wings of a Serf (at 3.30) represents an interesting attempt to merge ideology and formalism. This tragic story of a peasant dreamer who clashes with obtuse and violent authorities, is a clear allegory of an experimental filmmaker’s fight to protect his own creative freedom against State interference. Wings of a Serf is the fruit of an exceptional team: from director Yuri Tarich, who created a formidable portrait of Ivan the Terrible (Ejzenstejn certainly must have had it in mind when making his 1941 film), to screenwriter Viktor Shklovsky, one of the most influential Soviet intellectuals who survived the entire post-Revolution period without being crushed by either faction in power.

We change registers at 5.30 with the one-hour programme dedicated to animation genius Max Fleischer, father of Betty Boop and co-founder with his brother Dave of Fleischer Studios, Walt Disney’s most formidable competitor. The Giornate presents the other popular character created in 1923 by Fleischer, KoKo the Clown. On Friday 10 October seven shorts from the Inkwell Imps series will be screened. Max Fleischer’s materials were collected and restored by his granddaughter Jane Fleischer Reid and her team. Jane is the daughter of Richard Fleischer who directed major Hollywood productions, and is a special guest at the 44th edition of the Giornate.

And last, we should mention Edward Cline’s short film East Lynne With Variations (1919) which precedes the screening of The Man Who Came Back. Only four minutes have survived of the original two reels of the hilarious parody of the melodrama East Lynne, which included a few stars of Mack Sennett’s troupe: Ben Turpin, Heinie Conklin and Marie Prevost.

The offering of the online festival for Friday 10 October is Die Dame mit der Maske (The Lady with the Mask, 1928) by Wilhelm Thiele, accompanied by Günter Buchwald. Starting from 9 p.m., the film will be available for 48 hours on: https://www.mymovies.it/ondemand/giornate-cinema-muto/ .

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.