MoMA.org | Film Exhibitions | 2006 | To Save and Project: The Fourth MoMA International Festival of Film Preservation


To Save and Project: The Fourth MoMA International Festival of Film Preservation May 19–June 21, 2006

Every year, the member institutions of the International Federation of Film Archives (FIAF) preserve hundreds of motion pictures, working together to find the best surviving materials for each film. Spanning the history of the moving image, these preserved films are vivid reflections of the diverse cultures that produced them, making this annual festival a tribute to the passion and commitment of film conservators and archivists around the world. The films in To Save and Project were preserved through the collaborative efforts of FIAF archives, as well as commercial studios and distributors. Virtually all are having their New York premieres, and some are shown in versions never before seen in the U.S.

The May program features three rediscoveries of silent French and Weimar cinema, Jacques Feyder’s Crainquebille (1923), Joe May’s Asphalt (1929), and People on Sunday (1929) by Robert Siodmak, Edgar G. Ulmer, Fred Zinnemann, and Billy Wilder; a postwar supernatural thriller, Bernard Vorhaus’s The Amazing Mr. X (aka The Spiritualist) (1948); Delmer Daves’s western 3:10 to Yuma (1957); Otto Preminger’s Bunny Lake Is Missing (1965); and four features by Finnish filmmaker Teuvo Tulio, hailed by Aki Kaurismäki as a master of melodrama.

The June program features a special appearance by legendary nonfiction filmmaker Robert Gardner; stunning preservations of films by Fritz Lang, Lev Kuleshov, Haile Gerima, Pier Paolo Pasolini, Otto Preminger, Satyajit Ray, and King Vidor; tales of horror and the uncanny from Japan (Uchida Tomu’s The Mad Fox), Great Britain (Thorold Dickinson’s The Queen of Spades), and the United States (Bill Gunn’s Ganja and Hess); gorgeous hand-colored, hand-stenciled actualités, or proto-newsreels, from 1900–12; and four features by André Antoine, an unsung master of silent-era French realism.

Organized by Steven Higgins, Curator; Joshua Siegel, Assistant Curator; Anne Morra, Assistant Curator; and Leigh Goldstein, Executive Assistant, Department of Film and Media.

Onésime et le coeur du tzigane (Onésime and the Heart of the Gypsy). 1913. France. Directed by Jean Durand. Restored by the Cinémathèque Gaumont. Approx. 15 min.
Crainquebille. 1923. France. Written and directed by Jacques Feyder. With Maurice de Féraudy, Marguerite Carré. A hilarious yet bitter social satire about a pushcart peddler who is wrongly accused of insulting a gendarme. Shot with documentary realism in the working-class neighborhoods of Paris, Crainquebille was praised by D. W. Griffith as “beautiful, compelling, bold!” Restored by Lobster Film (Paris), in collaboration with Lenny Borger. French intertitles; simultaneous English translation. Approx. 77 min. Both silent; piano accompaniment by Ben Model.

Friday, May 19, 6:30; Saturday, May 27, 8:15. T1

The Amazing Mr. X (The Spiritualist). 1948. USA. Directed by Bernard Vorhaus. Screenplay by Muriel Roy Bolton, Ian McLellan Hunter, based on a story by Crane Wilbur. With Turhan Bey, Lynn Bari. The unsettling tale of an enigmatic stranger who convinces a widow that he can communicate with her supposedly dead husband. Boasting breathtaking black-and-white photography by famed cinematographer John Alton, this B-movie classic has one foot in horror, the other in film noir. Preserved by Sony Pictures Entertainment. 78 min.

Friday, May 19, 8:30; Saturday, May 27, 3:00. T1

3:10 to Yuma. 1957. USA. Directed by Delmer Daves. Screen-play by Halsted Welles. With Glenn Ford, Van Heflin. Daves’s masterwork, one of the great unsung “chamber” Westerns of the 1950s, has been stunningly restored by Sony Pictures Entertainment. A decent farmer, desperate to save his drought-stricken land, accepts a deadly job when he agrees to escort a captured outlaw to the Yuma Penitentiary. Fate intervenes and violence ensues as they await the train that will take them there. 92 min.

Saturday, May 20, 2:00. T2

Bunny Lake Is Missing. 1965. Great Britain/USA. Written and directed by Otto Preminger. Titles by Saul Bass. With Laurence Olivier, Carol Lynley, Keir Dullea. Playfully reworking the classic whodunit premise, Preminger presents the mounting hysteria of a young American mother whose child has gone missing in swinging 1960s London. Featuring a quiet cameo from Noel Coward as a slippery-tongued enthusiast of the Marquis de Sade. 107 min.

Saturday, May 20, 4:15. T1

Ideale Filmerzeugung. 1913. Austria. Directed by Ludwig Schaschek. Self-reflexive cinema by a master cinematographer of Austrian silent cinema. Preserved by the Filmarchiv Austria, Vienna. 7 min.
Menschen am Sonntag (People on Sunday). 1929. Germany. Directed by Robert Siodmak, Edgar G. Ulmer, Fred Zinnemann. Screenplay by Billy Wilder. A young man, his girlfriend, and a taxi driver spend a day in the countryside. Neorealist before its time, this fascinating film brings together four future masters of the Hollywood studio system. Preserved by the Netherlands Filmmuseum. 74 min. Both silent; piano accompaniment by Jon Spurney and Ben Model.

Saturday, May 20, 6:30 (Spurney). T1; Wednesday, May 24, 8:15 (Model). T2

Asphalt. 1929. Germany. Directed by Joe May. Screenplay by Hans Szekely. With Betty Amman, Gustav Froehlich. Caught red-handed, a lovely would-be thief uses her wiles to charm a policeman into looking the other way. Suffused with the vibrant rhythms of Weimar street life, Asphalt was the one of the last collaborations between May and Erich Pommer, UFA Studio’s A-list director-producer team. Preserved by Filmmuseum Berlin. 90 min. Silent, with piano accompaniment by Jon Spurney and Ben Model.

Saturday, May 20, 8:15 (Spurney). T1; Wednesday, May 24, 6:30 (Model). T2

The Mark of Zorro. 1920. USA. Directed by Fred Niblo. Screenplay by Eugene Miller. With Douglas Fairbanks, Marguerite de la Motte. In his first feature-length costume film, Fairbanks shines (and leaps!) as Don Diego Vega, an aristocratic dandy who, as the mysterious swordsman Zorro, battles a corrupt colonial government. Tinted print restored by MoMA with funds from The Film Foundation and the Celeste Bartos Film Preservation Fund. Approx. 97 min. Silent, with piano accompaniment by Stuart Oderman.

Sunday, May 21, 1:00; Thursday, May 25, 6:00. T1

Aladdin and His Wonderful Lamp. 1939. USA. Directed by Dave Fleischer. A classic Popeye Technicolor short, restored by MoMA with funds from the Celeste Bartos Film Preservation Fund. 22 min.
The Mark of Zorro. 1940. USA. Directed by Rouben Mamoulian. Screenplay by John Taintor Foote, Garrett Fort, Bess Merdyth. With Tyrone Power, Linda Darnell. Set in Southern California during the early 1800s, this witty swashbuckler stars Power as the foppish Don Diego who, by night, becomes Zorro, dashing champion of the oppressed. Restored by the UCLA Film and Television Archive and Twentieth-Century Fox. 93 min.

Sunday, May 21, 3:00; Thursday, May 25, 8:15. T1

Sellaisena Kuin Sinä Minut Halusit (The Way You Wanted Me). 1944. Finland. Directed by Teuvo Tulio. Screenplay by Nisse Hirn. With Marie-Louise Fock, Ture Ara. Cruel fate and wartime necessity lead a country girl to a desperate life of prostitution. Tulio shot this brutal, tender melodrama in 1943, as war raged in Finland and the nation’s future hung in the balance. Preserved by the Finnish Film Archive, Helsinki. In Finnish, English subtitles. 102 min.

Sunday, May 21, 5:15; Monday, May 29, 3:45. T1

Unelma karjamajalla (In the Fields of Dreams). 1940. Finland. Directed by Teuvo Tulio. Screenplay by Ivar Johansson. With Sirkka Salonen, Olga Tainio. Tulio, who has been touted by Aki Kaurismäki as an incomparable master of melodrama, cast international beauty queen Sirkka Salonen—Miss Europe of 1938—in this, her only film appearance. Preserved by the Finnish Film Archive. In Finnish, English subtitles. 108 min.

Monday, May 22, 6:00; Monday, May 29, 1:30. T1

Laulu tulipunaisesta kukasta (The Song of the Scarlet Flower). 1938. Finland. Directed by Teuvo Tulio. With Kaarlo Oksanen, Rakel Linnanheimo. The best adaptation of Johannes Linnankoski’s classic novel, starring Oksanen as Olavi, the wayward son of a stern landholder. Olavi leaves home to wander as a lumberjack and, in his travels, meets and abandons many women. His eventual redemption is hard-won. Restored by the Finnish Film Archive. In Finnish, English subtitles. 99 min.

Monday, May 22, 8:15; Monday, May 29, 6:00. T1

Rakkauden risti (The Cross of Love). 1946. Finland. Directed by Teuvo Tulio. A melodrama loosely based on Alexander Pushkin’s The Stationmaster (1830) about a provincial girl who, in shame after being seduced and abandoned, moves to the city—and away from her estranged father. Preserved by Finnish Film Archive. In Finnish, English subtitles. 99 min.

Friday, May 26, 8:30; Sunday, May 28, 5:30. T1

When It Rains, It Pours! 1916. USA. An early comedy written by legendary director King Vidor. Preserved by the American Film Institute, Los Angeles. Approx. 13 min.
The Family Honor. 1920. USA. Directed by King Vidor. Screenplay by William Parker. With Florence Vidor, Roscoe Karns. When the dissolute scion of an impoverished, aristocratic Southern family is implicated in a murder, his sister must save them from ruin. Tinted print preserved by the Cinémathèque Française, Paris. Approx. 70 min. Both films silent; piano accompaniment by Stuart Oderman.

Saturday, May 27, 6:30. T1

Due to rights issues, Gioventù perduta (Lost Youth) has been replaced with the following screening:

Un Maledetto Imbroglio (A Dirty Trick). 1959. Italy. Directed by Pietro Germi. Screenplay by Germi, Alfredo Giannetti, Enni DeConcini. With Germi, Eleonora Rossi Drago, Claudia Cardinale. A masked bandit steals jewels from the apartment of Commendatore Anzaloni. Inspector Ingravallo (Germi) is called in to investigate the robbery and uses his detective skills and his keen sense of intuition to solve the crime. Preserved by Mediaset S.p.A. In Italian with English subtitles. 115 min.

Sunday, May 28, 1:00; Wednesday, May 31, 6:00. T1

Lo Scopone Scientifico (The Scientific Cardplayer). 1972. Italy. Directed by Luigi Comencini. Screenplay by Rodolfo Sonego. With Alberto Sordi, Joseph Cotten, Bette Davis, Silvana Mangano. Comencini assembled a dream cast for this wicked satire of the idle rich and scheming poor, pitting eccentric American heiress Davis and her hapless beau Cotten in a high-stakes game of cards against a destitute Italian couple, the woebegone Sordi and his shrill wife Mangano. Preserved by Cineteca Nazionale. In Italian, English subtitles. 116 min.

Sunday, May 28, 3:15; Wednesday, May 31, 8:15. T1

Treasures from the Joye Collection: Spanning the Globe

Bryony Dixon, curator of silent film at the British Film Institute National Film and Television Archive, London, presents a program of stencil-colored actualités, or early newsreels, from the bfi’s Joye Collection. Made in Europe and the U.S. between 1900 and 1912, these films provide a snapshot of distribution and exhibition at a pivotal moment in cinema history. Selections include In the Land of Monkeys and Snakes (1910, France), Glimpses of Bird Life (1910, Great Britain), and Children’s Carnival in Nice (c. 1911, France). Program 60 min.

Thursday, June 1, 6:15 (introduced by Dixon); Sunday, June 11, 3:00 (shown with The Cinematic Experience, below). T2

Treasures from the Joye Collection: The Cinematic Experience

From 1900 through 1914, cinemas showed diverse programs of travelogues, industrial shorts, ethnographic studies, animation, pantomime and trick films, comedies, dramas, and biblical epics. This second Joye Collection program captures the spirit of these early theatrical presentations. Selections include The Ainus of Japan (1913, USA), the earliest known record of one of the oldest races on earth; Magic Dice (1907, France); The Life and Passion of Our Lord Jesus Christ (1907, France); and The Rubes’ Easter at Atlantic City (1912, USA). Program 60 min.

Thursday, June 1, 7:30 (introduced by Dixon); Sunday, June 11, 3:00 (shown with Spanning the Globe, above). T2

When It Rains, It Pours! 1916. USA. An early comedy written by legendary director King Vidor. Preserved by the American Film Institute, Los Angeles. Approx. 13 min.

The Family Honor. 1920. USA. Directed by King Vidor. Screen-play by William Parker. With Florence Vidor, Roscoe Karns. When the dissolute scion of an impoverished, aristocratic Southern family is implicated in a murder, his sister must save them from ruin. Tinted print preserved by the Cinémathèque Française, Paris. Approx. 70 min. Both films silent, with piano accompaniment by Stuart Oderman.

Friday, June 2, 6:00. T1

Forest of Bliss. 1986. USA. Directed by Robert Gardner. Gardner’s meditation on the holy city and river of Benares, India, is at once tactile and otherworldly, immediate and timeless, leading Nobel laureate Seamus Heaney to observe, “When Ezra Pound commended the natural object as the adequate symbol, he might have been thinking about Forest of Bliss. Robert Gardner transmits the sensation of the deep and literate gaze, and does so with an intensity that passes from the documentary into the visionary.” 90 min.

Friday, June 2, 6:00 (introduced by Gardner); Monday, June 5, 8:00. T2

Rivers of Sand. 1974. USA. Directed by Robert Gardner. Among the Hamar people of southwestern Ethiopia, men are masters and women are their slaves. This rigid social structure, forged in isolation and fiercely administered, is the subject of Gardner’s film, about which Octavio Paz has written, “[His] camera scans with precision and feels with sympathy—the objectivity of an anthropologist, the fraternity of a poet.” 83 min.

Friday, June 2, 8:00 (introduced by Gardner); Sunday, June 4, 3:00. T2

Bunny Lake Is Missing. 1965. Great Britain/USA. Written and directed by Otto Preminger. With Laurence Olivier, Carol Lynley, Keir Dullea. Playfully reworking the classic whodunit premise, Preminger presents the mounting hysteria of a young American mother whose child has gone missing in swinging 1960s London. Featuring a quiet cameo from Noel Coward as a slippery-tongued enthusiast of the Marquis de Sade. 107 min.

Friday, June 2, 8:00. T1

New Frontier. 1939. USA. Directed by George Sherman. Screen-play by Betty Burbridge, Luci Ward. With John Wayne, Phylis Isley. Led by a young and valiant Wayne, the enraged ranchers of New Hope Valley battle a corrupt construction company that has condemned their property to make way for a dam. Isley, soon to be known as Jennifer Jones, makes her screen debut. New 35mm print made by Paramount Pictures from the original nitrate negative. 57 min.

Saturday, June 3, 2:00; Monday, June 5, 6:00. T1

True Grit. 1969. USA. Directed by Henry Hathaway. Screenplay by Marguerite Robert. With John Wayne, Glen Campbell, Kim Darby. When Mattie’s father is murdered, she hires crusty, one-eyed U.S. Marshal Rooster Cogburn to hunt down his killer. The irascible Cogburn becomes Mattie’s surrogate father as he ventures into hostile Indian territory seeking vengeance. Vintage 35mm IB Technicolor print courtesy Paramount Pictures. 128 min.

Saturday, June 3, 3:30; Monday, June 5, 7:30. T1

Dead Birds. 1964. USA. Directed by Robert Gardner. A landmark of ethnographic cinema about the Grand Valley Dani—mountain Papuans in West New Guinea (Irian Barat, Indonesia)—that counts Robert Lowell, Jean Rouch, and Margaret Mead among its admirers. Life is twinned with death, the mundane with the mystic, as the Dani peaceably tend their gardens and pigs while also engaging in vengeful, ritualistic warfare with rival clans. “They dressed their lives with plumage,” Gardner observes, “but faced as certain death as the rest of us drabber souls.” 84 min.

Saturday, June 3, 6:00; Monday, June 5, 6:00. T2

M. 1931. Germany. Written and directed by Fritz Lang. With Peter Lorre, Ellen Widmann. Marked by the sinister aura characteristic of German Expressionist cinema, Lang’s first sound film inaugurated the ever-indomitable serial killer genre. Showcasing Lorre as a murderer with a taste for little girls, Lang pushes the audience to be both repelled by and sympathetic toward his unsavory central character. German version, preserved by the Netherlands Filmmuseum, Amsterdam. In German, English subtitles. Approx. 108 min.

Saturday, June 3, 6:15 (introduced by Mark-Paul Meyer, Senior Curator, Netherlands Filmmuseum); Monday, June 12, 8:15. T1

Saturday, June 3, 8:30. T1

Rediscoveries from the Netherlands Filmmuseum

Maudite Soit La Guerre (War Be Cursed). 1914. Belgium. Written and directed by Alfred Machin. With Baert, Suzanne Berni, Albert Hendricks. Released just months before the outbreak of World War I, Machin’s pacifist masterpiece is often celebrated for its prescient and realistic depiction of aerial combat, with dogfights so startling that the film was perceived, during its original release, as belonging to the fantasy genre. A classic Romeo-and-Juliet tale of lovers divided by the outbreak of war between their homelands. Approx. 45 min.

Cinéma Perdu. 1897–1903. A selection of fourteen Biograph and Mutoscope films. Approx. 12 min.

De levende ladder (The Living Ladder). 1913. The Netherlands. Directed by Mauritz Binger, Louis H. Chrispijn. Acrobats rescue a damsel in distress from a burning windmill. Approx. 25 min. Program approx. 80 min. All films preserved by the Netherlands Filmmuseum, Amsterdam, and silent with Dutch intertitles and simultaneous English translation, with piano accompaniment by John Spurney and Ben Model.

Sunday, June 4, 1:00 (introduced by Mark-Paul Meyer, Senior Curator, Netherlands Filmmuseum) (Spurney). T2; Friday, June 9, 5:30 (Model). T1

The Queen of Spades. 1949. Great Britain. Directed by Thorold Dickinson. Screenplay by Rodney Ackland, Arthur Beys, based on the short story by Aleksander Pushkin. With Anton Walbrook, Edith Evans. The macabre tale of a greedy young army officer who wrestles a mystical gambling secret away from an aging countess. Set in early-nineteenth-century Russia, the film boasts a chilling score and lavish décor that create an aura of romanticism and terror. Preserved by the bfi National Film and Television Archive, London. 95 min.

Sunday, June 4, 5:00. T2; Monday, June 19, 8:00. T1

Ostia. 1970. Italy. Directed by Sergio Citti. Screenplay by Citti, Pier Paolo Pasolini. With Laurent Terzieff, Franco Citti. Long-time writing partner and mentor Pasolini entrusted Citti with the direction of this underrated film set on the desolate Roman beaches of Ostia, the site of Pasolini’s murder five years later. Filled with references to Pasolini’s own life, the film follows two inseparable brothers who commit patricide and are driven apart by a mercurial woman. In Italian, English subtitles. 105 min.

Wednesday, June 7, 6:00; Sunday, June 11, 1:00. T1

Appunti per un’Orestiade Africana (Notes on an African Oresteia). 1970. Italy. Written and directed by Pier Paolo Pasolini. One of Pasolini’s riveting and complicated “impure” works, Notes on an African Oresteia highlights the cultural limitations of the anthropological essay film. The poet-filmmaker is seen scouting locations throughout Uganda and Tanzania for a modern retelling of Aeschylus’s Oresteia. The tragedy

lies in Africa’s painful and violent path toward modernity and the eradication of its ancestral roots. Preserved by the Cineteca di Bologna. In Italian, English subtitles. 70 min.

Wednesday, June 7, 8:00. T2; Sunday, June 11, 3:15. T1

Ganja and Hess. 1973. USA. Written and directed by Bill Gunn. With Duane Jones, Marlene Clark, Gunn. A classic of 1970s independent cinema, restored to its original release version by MoMA with funds from The Film Foundation. In Gunn’s wildly imaginative twist on a timeless myth, an African American anthropologist succumbs to the vampirism that wiped out the ancient African culture of Myrthia. 113 min.

Wednesday, June 7, 8:15; Saturday, June 17, 7:45. T1

Utvandrarna (The Emigrants). 1971. Sweden. Written and directed by Jan Troell, based on several novels by Vilhelm Moberg. With Max von Sydow, Liv Ullmann. Academy Award winner for Best Foreign Film, Troell’s magnum opus succeeds both as a sweeping epic of the immigrant experience and a detailed portrait of character and landscape. An impoverished Swedish farmer and his wife embark on a journey to the New World with a group of coreligionists, making their perilous way across ocean and wilderness to stake their claim in Minnesota. Full-length Swedish theatrical version preserved by Svenska Filminstitutet, Stockholm. In Swedish, English subtitles. 191 min.

Friday, June 9, 7:30; Saturday, June 17, 1:00. T1

Two by Satyajit Ray

Kapurush (The Coward). 1965. India. With Soumitra Chatterjee, Madhabi Mukherjee. While scouting locations for his next film, a successful screenwriter encounters a woman he once loved but then discarded. Eager to reclaim her affections, he tries to persuade the now-married woman to leave her husband. 74 min.

Mahapurush (The Holy Man). 1965. India. With Charaprakash Ghosh, Rabi Ghosh. A traveling trickster dupes a gullible father and his enchanting daughter into thinking he’s a sadhu, a guru, but the girl’s fiancé proves more difficult to deceive. 65 min. Both films preserved by the Academy Film Archive, Los Angeles, and in Bengali, English subtitles.

Saturday, June 10, 1:00; Monday, June 12, 5:30. T1

Le Coupable. 1917. France. Written and directed by André Antoine. With Romuald Joubé, Séphora Mossé, René Rocher. A startling rediscovery of French silent cinema that scholars have compared to Carl Theodor Dreyer’s Praesidenten (1919) and Jean Vigo’s Zero for Conduct (1933). Antoine uses an intricate, innovative flashback structure in adapting François Coppée’s controversial novel about the sad, cruel fate of a young man born of a secret affair between a magistrate and a poor girl. Preserved by the Cinémathèque Française, Paris. French intertitles, simultaneous English translation. Silent, with piano accompaniment by Stuart Oderman and Jon Spurney. Approx. 84 min.

Saturday, June 10, 2:00 (Oderman); Wednesday, June 14, 8:00 (Spurney). T2

Elippathayam (Rat Trap). 1981. India. Written and directed by Adoor Gopalakrishnan. With Karamana Janardhanan Nair. A dark and exquisitely rendered fable by one of India’s leading contemporary filmmakers. As a privileged family in southern India finds its traditional ways imperiled by modern influences, three sisters discover newfound freedom while their brother becomes increasingly isolated. Preserved by the National Film Archive of India, Pune. In Malayalam, English subtitles. 121 min.

Saturday, June 10, 4:00; Thursday, June 15, 5:30. T1

Mademoiselle de la Seiglière. 1919–21. France. Written and directed by André Antoine. With Romuald Joubé, Catherine Fontenay. Antoine’s tense and psychologically nuanced adaptation of Jules Sandeau’s best-selling novel relates the political, economic, and sentimental fortunes of the nobility and parvenus in their bitter dispute over property ownership between the Revolution of 1789 and the restoration of the monarchy in 1814. Preserved by the Cinémathèque Française, Paris. French intertitles; simultaneous English translation. Silent, with piano accompaniment by Stuart Oderman and Jon Spurney. Approx. 87 min.

Saturday, June 10, 4:00 (Oderman); Wednesday, June 14, 6:00 (Spurney). T2

La Terre. 1919–21. France. Directed by André Antoine. Screen-play by Antoine, based on the novel by Émile Zola. With Armand Bour, René Alexandre, Germaine Rouer. A key example of the French “peasant films” produced in the grim aftermath of World War I, Antoine’s sober melodrama blends the harsh naturalism of Zola’s Lear-like novel of greed among the peasant class with an impressionism that recalls the paintings of Jean-François Millet. Preserved by the Cinémathèque Française, Paris; Cinémathèque Royale de Belgique, Brussels; and Gosfilmofond, Moscow. French intertitles, simultaneous English translation. Silent, with piano accompaniment by Stuart Oderman and Jon Spurney. Approx. 87 min.

Saturday, June 10, 6:00 (Oderman); Thursday, June 15, 8:00 (Spurney). T2

L’Arlésienne. 1922. France. Directed by André Antoine. Screen-play by Antoine, based on the short story and play by Alphonse Daudet. With Gabriel de Gravonne, Lucienne Bréval. Although Antoine captured the Provençal light and peasant customs of the Camargue countryside where Daudet set his melodrama, some contemporary critics faulted him for giving a visible presence to the Arlésienne who remains a spectral seductress throughout Daudet’s story. Preserved by the Cinémathèque Française, Paris. French intertitles, simultaneous English translation. Silent, with piano accompaniment by Stuart Oderman and Jon Spurney. Approx. 85 min.

Saturday, June 10, 8:00 (Oderman); Thursday, June 15, 6:00 (Spurney). T2

Il Canale degli angeli. 1934. Italy. Directed by Francesco Passinetti. With its use of nonprofessional actors, on-location photography in Venice, and improvised script, Il Canale degli angeli anticipates the Neorealist movement by nearly a decade. World premiere of a print preserved by the Istituto Luce, Rome, which has produced, distributed, and preserved seminal works of Italian cinema since 1924. In Italian, English subtitles. 55 min.

Sunday, June 11, 5:00. T1; Friday, June 16, 6:30. T2

Italian and Italian American Actors in American Cinema

Two programs presented by Giuliana Muscio, a professor of cinema studies at the University of Padua, that focus on the work of Italian immigrant and Italian American actors and their contributions to American cinema.

The Movie Actor. 1932. USA. Directed by Bruno Vallety. Starring Edoardo Migliaccio, aka Farfariello, a vaudevillian known on the Italian American theater circuit for his macchiette coloniali, or character sketches. Preserved by George Eastman House with funds from the National Endowment for the Arts. 15 min.

Santa Lucia Luntana. 1931. USA. Directed by Harold Godsoe. Screenplay by Orazio Cammi. Raffaele Bongini plays an immigrant from Naples who dreams of returning home. Preserved by George Eastman House with funds from The Film Foundation. 58 min.

Monday, June 12, 6:00 (introduced by Muscio). T2

House of Strangers. 1949. USA. Directed by Joseph L. Mankiewicz. Screenplay by Philip Yordan. With Edward G. Robinson, Richard Conte, Susan Hayward. Robinson stars in Mankiewicz’s brooding melodrama as an Italian American patriarch whose brutality and hubris lead to a catastrophic rift with his assimilated sons. Preserved by Twentieth Century Fox. 101 min.

Monday, June 12, 7:45 (introduced by Muscio). T2; Wednesday, June 14, 8:00. T1

Harvest: 3000 Years. 1976. Ethiopia. Written and directed by Haile Gerima. An international consortium of prominent directors, led by Martin Scorsese, announced at this year’s Cannes Film Festival the creation of a fund to help save the film heritage of developing countries. This initiative could not be more timely, as these cinematic masterworks are in grave danger of being lost forever. The inaugural film, preserved by the Cineteca di Bologna, is Harvest: 3000 Years, a riveting docudrama on the Ethiopian peasantry. Gerima shot the film guerilla-style in the tense weeks between Emperor Haile Selassie’s final days and the military’s coup d’etat. In Amharic, English subtitles. 150 min.

Thursday, June 15, 8:00; Wednesday, June 21, 7:30. T1

Colorful Fashions from Paris Displayed by Hope Hampton. 1926. USA. The latest fashions, circa 1926, by French designers Vionnet, Drecoll, Lanvin, and others. Preserved by George Eastman House. Approx. 7 min.

Po zakonu (By the Law/Dura Lex). 1926. USSR. Directed by Lev Kuleshov. With Alexandra Kokhlova, Sergei Komarov. Kuleshov, a pioneer of Soviet montage theory, was also a lifelong lover of American culture. Shooting under treacherous conditions with just a single interior set, he infused Jack London’s “The Unexpected,” a tale of murder and madness among snowbound gold prospectors, with such psychological intensity that the poet H.D. is said to have fallen into paroxysms of hysteria on viewing it. Preserved by the Cinémathèque Française, Paris. French intertitles, simultaneous English translation. Approx. 90 min. Both films silent, with piano accompaniment by Jon Spurney.

Friday, June 16, 6:00; Monday, June 19, 6:00. T1

Koiya koi nasuna koi (The Mad Fox). 1962. Japan. Directed by Uchida Tomu. Screenplay by Yoda Yoshikata. With Okawa Hashizo, Saga Michiko. “Uchida’s reputation as a realist or naturalist is severely tested by this wildly stylized, immensely lovable fable…. Its crazy tale about a court fortune teller driven mad by a murder, who ends up marrying his slain lover’s dead ringer, a fox in human form (got that?), incorporates animation, kabuki and butoh, colorist experiments, collapsing sets, animal masks, revolving stages, and scroll compositions….” (James Quandt, Cinematheque Ontario). Preserved by the National Film Center, Tokyo. Courtesy Toei Company. In Japanese, English subtitles. 109 min.

Friday, June 16, 8:00; Saturday, June 17, 4:45. T1

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Pictured above left:

The Living Ladder. 1913. The Netherlands. Directed by Mauritz Binger, Louis H. Chrispijn

Pictured above right:

The Emigrants. 1971. Sweden. Written and directed by Jan Troell