On the trail of Italian cinema: Open City

Early January I taught a course on Rome in film at the Dutch Institute in Rome. Together with Hans de Valk, historian and staff member of the institute, we gave lectures on history, urban development, and film history and theory, connected to postwar Italian cinema but also the pre- and postwar war Roman urbanism and architecture.  The oldest film we treated was Roberto Rossellini’s Open City (Roma, città aperta, 1945), shot while war was still going on in the North and the Allies were occupying the city. Rossellini could not use the Cinecittà studios (first emptied by the Germans, then a refugee camp), so he shot his interiors in an improvised studio in Via degli Avignonesi, a narrow street between Via del Traforo and Via Quattro Fontane. Actually a parallel street of Via Rasella, where in 1943 a severe attack by the Resistance on the German army had taken place; the Germans had counterreacted with the massacre at the Fosse Ardeatine.  Rossellini had few lights and cables from the neighbouring Stars and Stripes, a journal run by American army officers, provided the necessary electricty. It was here that Rossellini shot the scenes of the Gestapo headquarters, the dressing room of Marina, and the sacristy of Don Pietro.

The outdoor scenes were shot in the Prenestino quarter, a popular quarter then (it still is), stuck between a triangle of railroads while nowadays the highway or Tangenziale runs right through the quarter and hangs over part of the old tram tracks – the reversed situation of that in French Connection. It was here in Via Raimondo Montecuccoli nr. 17, almost at the dead end of the road, that for instance the scene of the razzia in Open City was shot, where all inhabitants are dragged into the courtyard while the Germans and fascists look for a hidden communist, a head of the Resistance. When her husband to be is found and dragged away on a truck, Pina (Anna Magnani) goes berserk, breaks through the soldiers, runs onto the main street after her man… and is killed. The local priest, Don Pietro (Aldo Fabrizi), also a Resistance man, can only hold up Pina a Pietà-like pose, while Pina’s little son goes hysterical. A classic scene that still gives you a lump in your troat. 

As the staircase in nr. 17 was too narrow, the scenes in the staircase in Open City, as during the razzia, were filmed in the staircase of nr. 36, just opposite the street. Nowadays an elevator blocks most of our view when looking up, but the original ramps are still visible. It was also at nr. 36 that the washing room was filmed where the men hid during the razzia, but this space has been demolished in later years. A sign at nr. 17, and another one at the entrance of the street, commemorate the shooting of Rossellini’s film here. 

At the Via Casilina, the church of Sant’Elena, fully named Sant’Elena fuori Porta Prenestina (arch. Palombi 1914), functioned as the church of Don Pietro in Open City. Unfortunately the church was twice closed when we got there, but behind it there is still a courtyard visible where in the beginning of Open City the priest is playing soccer with the local schoolboys.

Thesis award

Today my former student Lena Wilde won the Master Thesis Award of our Faculty of Arts. Lena Wilde wrote an intriguing thesis on the film musical Across the Universe (2007) by Julie Taymor in which she analyzed and theorized this film. Wilde not only applied the concepts of immediacy and hypermediacy from Bolter & Grusin’s Remediation, but, with the help of Altman’s The American Film Musical, she also indicated how digital technology has remediated the modern film musical. Analyzing the two dream scenes of ‘Strawberry fields forever’and ‘I want you/She’s so heavy’, she concluded that sound is leading the image and that we can recognize a transition from a realistically working transparency (immediacy) towards a modus that stresses the qualities of the medium itself. Instead of identification with the character(s), the film becomes a visual and audial spectacle. As the film often shifts between the two modes, the spectator is confused and amazed. 

Dutch Documentary and European Film Heritage online

Films or film fragments on the internet have become standard practice, thanks to YouTube and other fora. The quality of those films is not always high. If you wanted some more quality, there was already the Dutch site Het Geheugen van Nederland (The Memory of the Netherlands), which also has an interesting film section, containing many interesting Dutch documentaries from the holdings of the Netherlands Filmmuseum and Sound & Vision. These include documentaries by Joris Ivens such as De Brug/The Bridge (1928), by Herman van der Horst such as  ‘t Schot is te boord/Shoot the Nets (1951), and by Johan van der Keuken, such as Een film voor Lucebert/A Film for Lucebert (1967), De Tijdgeest (1968) and De Platte Jungle/The Flat Jungle (1978): www.geheugenvannederland.nl 

Today some of the European film archives such as the Netherlands Filmmuseum have joined forces and together with the French company Lobster Film they have put several silent and  sound films on the net, in pristine quality. The silent films are accompanied by new music composed and executed by artists such as Antonio Coppola. Films hitherto hidden in archives can be viewed now. Enjoy a boat tour through the Amsterdam Prinsengracht, Parisian fashion of the 1920s, and George Pal’s crazy puppet animation of the 1930s and the war years (see the wonderful and funny war propaganda filmTulips Shall Grow).  Other suggestions are a comedy with Annie Bos on the Zandvoort seaside,  Max Linder’s parody on the Three Musketeers (The Three Must-Get-Theres), Macedonian colourful folklore, a sensational Belgian drama involving a revenge and a windmill (Le Moulin Maudit), early Austrian erotic films, and even John Ford’s oldest western, starring Harry Carey (Bucking Broadway). The collection also includes the only Hungarian film surviving directed by Mihaly Kertesz, better known as Michael Curtiz: My Brother is Coming (1919). All the prints shown are well restored copies, showing the beauty of their early colour systems.  See www.europafilmtreasures.eu.

London cinemas and theatres

From 14th to 17th October I have been in London, just for recovery of work overload, no lectures etc. involved this time. It proved to be a kind of theatre trip. The first night we went to see a musical at the Victoria Palace, near Victoria Station; a typical former music hall. It was the first of many theatres to follow, at least in seeing and capturing them.

In the subsequent days I photographed many theatres at the West End area that showed musicals, such as the the Apollo Victoria (Wicked), the Wyndham’s (Shawshank Redemption), the Palace Theatre (Priscilla),  the Noel Coward Theatre, the Garrick Theatre, etc. We also went to Leicester Square to see the Empire Cinema, the former music hall where in 1896-1897 Felicien Trewey gave the – highly popular – Lumiere shows. The 1893 front is still intact and has been restored. Next doors a casino moved in. On the location of the Alhambra theatre, Empire’s rival at Leicester Square in the age of music hall, the Odeon cinema rose in the 1930s.  As we passed by the impressive, functionalist-styled building, we noticed several people waiting for George Clooney, as his new film was being released during the London Film Festival.  Close to the  Square stands the Vu West End cinema, a Warner cinema of the 1930s with a nice deco styled front.

On Thursdays, we did a tour at the Theatre Royal, better known as the Drury Lane theatre, built 1811, but several versions were there before, one of which burnt down despite a new safety curtain. We got a glimpse of the rehearsals of the sets of the musical Oliver being moved, but we were only permitted to shoot anything but the stage. While guided around we met the cleaning lady; Nell Gwynn, Charles II’s volupteous mistress; and the ghost of a murderous actor. I had a special relationship to the building, as future Dutch music hall owner, cinema owner and film distributor Anton Nöggerath junior shot a special insert for the play The Great Millionnaire (1901) performed at Drury Lane; Nöggerath was then working in the UK as cameraman. The insert of a car crash on the road to Plymouth was combined with a real motor-car on stage, but after problems on the opening night it was cut out and replaced by a mechanical solution, despite its popularity. Filmic inserts in plays were quite popular during the age of early cinema.

Friday night, we visited the opera Turandot at the Coliseum. It was a novelty to me to hear everybody sing in English instead of in Puccini’s native tongue, but that’s the tradition at the Coliseum. In spite of a superfluous kind of reporter witnessing the horrors going on at Turandot’s palace [his overacting was quite unnecessary], the leading singers did quite well. My favourite was Amanda Echelaz, performing a heartbreaking Liù. The sets were well done too, though I was glad we were in the platea; people in the upper aisles could not see the upper part of the stage design, we noticed when walking around during the interval. The London audience was not so smitten with the show and gave a short applause, and left. Well, too bad for them; I had a very enjoyable evening. The birthdaycake-like interior contributed to that, no doubt.

Addio, Gianfranco Mingozzi

We mourn over the loss of Italian filmmaker Gianfranco Mingozzi. After a long illness, Gianfranco Mingozzi (born 1932) has died on 7.10.2009.

Mingozzi, born near Bologna, and son of parents who owned a local cinema, started in film in the late 1950s, after getting a degree in law and finishing the Roman film academy Centro Sperimentale di Cinematografia. While starting to make documentaries, he also became assistant director for Gianni Franciolini’s Ferdinando I, re di Napoli (1959); Federico Fellini’s La dolce vita (1960), while also playing an uncredited role as the priest who permits Steiner to play on the organ; and L’amant de cinq jours de Philippe de Broca (1961).  

In 1961 he filmed his first fiction film, the episode La vedova bianca of Le italiane e le amore,  a film inspired by real events. After some ten documentaries in the early and mid-1960s, including Michelangelo Antonioni, storia di un autore (1966), Mingozzi wrote and directed Trio (1967); Sequestro di persona/Island of Crime (1968) with Charlotte Rampling and Franco Nero; La vita in gioco/Morire a Roma (1972) with Mimsy Farmer; the horror drama – also named ‘Nunsploitation’- Flavia, la monaca musulmana (1974) with Florina Bolkan; the tv-movie Gli ultimi tre giorni (1977); the mini-series Il treno per Istambul (1980) with Stefano Satta Flores; La vela incantata/ The Magic Screen (1983) with Massimo Ranieri and Monica Guerritore, and inspired by his own memories of his youth; the sexual awakenings of a boy in WWI in Les exploits d’un jeune Don Juan/Exploits of a Young Don Juan (1987), with Fabrice Josso and based on a story by Apollinaire; L’ appassionata (1988) with Piera degli Esposti; of course the romantic drama Il frullo del passero/The Sparrow’s Fluttering (1988), with Philippe Noiret and Ornella Muti; and Tobia al caffë (2000). In addition to fiction, Mingozzi also shot numerous documentaries such as L’ultima diva (1982) on Italian silent cinema star Francesca Bertini. His last works were the documentary Giorgio/Giorgia (storia di una voce) (2008), presented at last year’s Festival del Film di Roma, and focusing on the life of transsexual Giorgia O’Brien; and Noi che abbiamo fatto la dolce vita (2009), a film on  the cast of Fellini’s classic film.
(Sources: IMDB/ http://www.aamod.it/scomparsa-di-gianfranco-mingozzi)

Gianfranco Mingozzi and I often met at the Cinema Ritrovato festival in Bologna and Le Giornate del Cinema Muto in Pordenone, often together with our mutual friend, the late Vittorio Martinelli. Mingozzi told me at length about Francesca Bertini when he made L’ultima diva. Remember that in the documentary Bertini behaves like a real Norma Desmond: she remained a star, the movies got small. One night they were shooting at the Grand Hotel in the nighttime, apparently making too much noise. A lady knocked on the door, clearly disturbed by all the noise; it was the ‘real’ Norma Desmond: Gloria Swanson…  

Mind you, Bertini always told that, in the late 1910s at the zenith of her Italian career, she got a million dollar offer to come in Hollywood but she stayed in Italy instead. This was about the time that Swanson got her star breakthrough at Famous Players/Paramount in the DeMille films. In L’ultima diva, Bertini gave a marvellous insight into her own performance, indicating all the emotions of the protagonist of her famous film Assunta Spina; after which she sternly remarked: “Why all these intertitles? Everybody understands what’s happening!” Bertini was keen on keeping up appearances; for the outer world she lived at the Grand Hotel, but Mingozzi discovered she really lived in a humble souterrain apartment. She was a good sport though; for his documentary she re-enacted the death scene of Tosca, of which only a clip remains but which had been one of her great successes in the silent era. ”Davanti a Dio, Scarpia!”

Festival, cinemas & memories

Last weekend I was in Utrecht for the Netherlands Film Festival. Wandering around my former home town, I took some pictures of the cinemas I used to go to:  Scala and Rembrandt.  It brought back my student’s years in Utrecht. Scala was just around the corner where I lived for two years, that is: in a mice-ridden, top floor mini-apartment at Loeff Berchmakerstraat. But that was only after my graduation; in my bachelor student’s years I lived in IJsselstein (way out of town), Oog in Al (at the edge of the city), and the then brand new quarter of Lunetten (out of town too). In my student years we would go to the midnight screenings of Scala; I remember having seen a whole Fellini retrospective there. Rembrandt we went less, but I am sure I have seen several films there too. Nextdoors there is still the strange unchurch-like St. Augustine church with its vast neoclassical front, which I recall being obliged to draw when in my first year in art history. The poor drawing results of my fellow students and myself proved that an interest in art didn’t necessarily turn you into an artist too.

By the way, in addition to Scala, we also went to City (corner Drift/ Wittevrouwensingel), Camera/ Studio on Oudegracht, Jos Stelling’s Springhavertheater (which showed Visconti’s Death in Venice for ever, it seemed) and of course Henk Camping’s ‘t Hoogt.  I also recall the matinees at the university premises Uithof, including a marathon day of long films (Novecento 1/2, Godfather 1/2, War and Peace,  etc.): of course on wooden benches. We had wooden bottoms and squared eyes afterwards, but that didn’t matter. There were also the sheer endless projections of Syberberg’s films at ‘t Hoogt (who dared to stay till the end?; by the way, not a very comfortable place either then). And I even remember a very oblique vision of a long film at the student’s association Veritas –  I was sitting almost under the screen, as the room was packed. I wasn’t member of any association, but we were all film buffs, so we went everywhere where films were projected. Video was slowly coming along, but which student could afford a vcr then?! Those were the days…

 Here is some information on Scala and Rembrandt. 

Cinema Scala was originally situated at Lange Viestraat 12, where it was opened in 1912. Initiator was Johan De Liefde, pharmacist, and owner of the local newspaper Utrechtsch Nieuwsblad and the renowned Hotel de l’Europe on Vreeburg in Utrecht. The elegant Scala was opened in one of the auditoria of the hotel. In 1935 it had to move to Potterstraat, an extension of Lange Viestraat, because of the broadening of the street and the opening of the department store Galeries Modernes. The architect of the new building was Nic. de Jong who had designed it in sober, functionalist style. Scala  remained active as cinema until 1989. On the first floor a smaller auditorium was situated, called Select. During a screening of Karate Kid Part III, enormous fissures were suddenly noticed in the walls, after which the cinema quickly closed. After renovation, it reopened in 1996 as Grand Café Scala, which projected films while dining, but this flopped. After that, Scala became a discotheque.

The original Rembrandt Bioscoop was opened in 1913; it was built within a large mansion.  Owners were H. Nieuwenhuijzen, J. Edelkoort, L. Lorjé and D. Hamburger. Cinema lecturer Louis Hartlooper did his performances here. In 1919 the cinema was enlarged and redecorated in art deco style. The cinema had become a luxurious theatre, with a massive front by B. van der Woord and the interior by M. Rietbergen. Rembrandt was Utrecht’s main cinema in the 1920s, while other cinemas such as Flora, Scala and New York offered competition. Rembrandt was wired for sound in 1929, just like most larger cinemas in the Netherlands. In 1933 it was modernised in functionalist style by architect H. van Vreeswijk. In the 1970s Rembrandt did not close but was split up, the sort of many cinemas: in 1974 the stage disappeared, the balcony was transformed in another auditorium, and the main auditorium was split in two smaller screening spaces. Rembrandt is still running. The cinema is now owned by the Pathé company. During the Dutch Film Festival it is one the venues where the films are screened.

Source: Bas Agterberg et.al., Sensationele voorstellingen en passend vermaak. Film en bioscoop in Utrecht (2009).

Angst wins poster award

Today at the Dutch Film Festival in Utrecht, Sander Plug has won the Cinema.nl Afficheprijs 2009 for his poster for Angst, a documentary by Michiel van Erp. While a professional jury did a pre-selection of 5 posters out of 53, audiences could vote online or at the festival premises. One audience reaction was: ‘The poster shows what fear does: it fragments and hides from reality’, while the jury commented: ‘As a spectator you are immediately involved in a painful life behind the venetian blinds. A world ruled by anxieties. The poster reminds of the one for Brian De Palma’s Body Double. ‘ Personally, I was more reminded of the last shot of Mary Astor in The Maltese Falcon, where the bars of the elevator closing on her foreshadow her future prison life.

Alfred Stevens

Last Friday night, together with my students, I visited the Alfred Stevens exhibition at the Van Gogh Museum, here in Amsterdam.  Stevens, originally Belgian, made career in Paris during the Second Empire of Napoleon III, and afterwards. While he originally painted moral, a bit heavy scenes, he shifted to interior scenes of well-to-do Parisian women within their homely surroundings. Emotions yes, but restrained, confirming the ‘imprisonment and boredom female upper-class life. On the other and, it also shows that a modern woman could be shown in her interior without any historical or mythological narrative to legitimate the subject, just like the interior scenes of Vermeer and De Hooch. But while the study of 17th century paintings is still surrounded by moralism and iconology, the paintings by Stevens seem to focus more on a kind of modern haptical, tactile kind of painting.  The expression of the silks and velvets of the dresses, the ways the textiles are folded, the use of red in the cashmere shawls, the deep blue of a velvet dress, the accessories on a dress such as silver clips and chains, and the oriental objets d’art an upperclass woman could cherish,  point at a unabashed display for the viewer.  Some of the paintings though place the characters in the shadow, while light refers to spaces only partly visible, the rest being offscreen.  Visconti’s costume designer Marcel Escoffier used Stevens’ work to design the costumes for Alida Valli in Senso (1954).  It is not hard to understand why he preferred Stevens’ paintings to 19th century fashion stamps.

We also witnessed a tableau vivant-like performance by designer Catta Donkersloot. Elegantly dressed fashion models (fashion 20th century) paraded through the museum and took frozen poses at the entrance of the exhibition. They referred to the minimal narratives of Stevens, such as a woman reading saddening letters,  or a group portrait of three females, lost in thought.

Symposium The Art of Fashion

Friday 18th, I went to the symposium The Art of Fashion at Museum Boijmans in Rotterdam. After some mishap while travelling – the brand new extra fast HiSpeed train already breaking down (so HiSpeed became NoSpeed=NS) and a Rotterdam taxi driver who didn’t know where Museum Boijmans was (don’t they get to do an exam?) – I arrived too late, but not very. 

After curator José Theunissen’s opening speech and her announcement of the exhibition catalogue and the separate scientific volume issued for this event, we split up in three groups, with lectures and interviews going on in three rooms within the building. After Inga Fraser’s presentation of a large series of short films dealing with clothes and fashion transformed in art, I wanted to attend Luca Marchetti’s lecture, but the room was small, full and hot.

I therefore listened to the interviews with Anne Nicole Ziesche, Christophe Coppens and Han Nefkens. While Ziesche called herself an artist now instead of a designer, not making any difference anymore between art and fashion, Coppens clearly had difficulty with that because of his restrictions as designer. Nefkens, who had generously commissioned five fashion designers to make works between art & fashion for this exhibition, did not like labels as well. He did not consider himself a classic collector, but stated that art must communicate and so it has to be brought into the open – I liked that.

During the break I ran for the bookshop, enjoyed the September sun in the museum courtyard, and discussed with my students. After the break I attended the presentation by Judith Clark, who had curated the exhibition together with José Theunissen, and stayed on in the same room for an interview with Hussein Chalayan. Chalayan had an interesting talk how his roots and living in London created him an in-betweenness (between belonging and displacement, between optimism and melancholy), which corresponded with his in-between in fashion and art, and his affection for both the commercial and the artistic side of fashion. We were just in time for one drink, when the museum’s representant thanked the organisers and we were lead to the preview of the exhibition.

An exhibition that has been designed with some trajectory, but without a classic linear pathway. Connections are made between objects, but in a rather free floating manner, as Clark had already announced in her speech. In that respect, the spectator can even decide where art begins and fashion stops or viceversa, though the institutional museum context tends to declare all objects as art, as Chalayan remarked before. The museum makes it all more seriously, he stated. Still, I had a strong feeling that there was a lot of irony in the exposed objects, whether the temple and sarcophagus of Walter van Beirendonck, the women’s dresses as if standing in a wind tunnel by Chalayan, or the fairgroundlike dark passage where the strange smells by Vikor & Rolf reigned. Like trying to find a counterbalance to the seriousness of the museum. But I may be wrong; the intermedial world of fashion and art was just as new to me as to my students. It surely needs more analysis, theory and history. Next November and December we hope to do a first good move in that direction within my new course Contexts, Practices and Institutions of Intermediality.

Cinema.nl film poster award

Every year during the Netherlands Film Festival in Utrecht, the Cinema.nl Afficheprijs (Poster Award), is awarded to the best Dutch film poster. Whereas a jury makes a pre-selection of five posters, voters decide which of these wins the award, consisting of an original poster of the film Jonge Harten (1936), designed by Titus Leeser, and 2500 euro’s. This year’s nominees are Angst (design Sander Plug), De laatste dagen van Emma Blank (Alex van Warmerdam), Nothing Personal (Susanne Keilhack & Joost Hiensch), Oorlogswinter (Sara Simpson & Richie Burridge) and De Storm (Michael van Randeraat). In 2001 Brat Ljatifi won the first award for his poster of Iles flottantes.