Max Ophuls began his feature film career directing a modest comedy called Die Verliebte Firma/The Company's in Love in 1932. Somewhat strikingly, but perhaps showing Max's self-confidence, it's a comedy about film-making with much satirical material about how movies get made. So many people wanted a ticket to it that Il Cinema Ritrovato wouldn't accept bookings and made most of those who wanted to see it queue up in the Last Minute Line.
The leads were well-known actors of the day. The lead female Anny Ahlers (above right) had star all over her performance. She is substituted into the film within a film when the then star finally bickers and walks out once too often. When she is finally tracked down and brought into the production there are a series of moments, which in later years Max would have directed in a series of fluid tracking shots from room to room as each of the principals attempts to get her alone, and each no doubt has quite nefarious purposes in doing so. Mordant jokes about the casting couch weren't common in 1932.
There are only 67 minutes of the film remaining, with at least seven minutes or so not located. The Murnau Institute has managed to put it back together, including incorporating material with different aspect ratios.
Still Il Cinema Ritrovato can have moments that set you back a bit. I doubt I have ever seen anything as mediocre as La Paga, a 61 minute film by Ciro Duran from Colombia/Venezuela chronicling the life of an exploited peasant in the Andes. The film had already screened at this year's Cannes Classics and it's described as "a pioneering work of Latin American social and political cinema". Worthy perhaps but that doesn't say much about filming itself - the staging, the acting, the longueurs, the heavy emphasis..Still as with almost everything screened here it got some sort of good reception.
It was followed by a Warner Bros movie of the first order, Lewis Milestone's film of the Norwegian WW2 resistance, Edge of Darkness (1943). Robert Rossen's script is a long and complicated story whereby all of the locals, bar fish factory owner/collaborator Kaspar Torgersen finally unite in common purpose. Errol Flynn speaks with his perfect mid-Pacific accent throughout. An Australian connection was added to by Judith Anderson as a stern resistance leader and with Orry-Kelly's costumes ...just saying.
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| Simone Signoret, Reginald Kernan, Le Mauvais Coups |
Finally I had to wonder what possesses a seemingly rational company, in the case the French major Pathe, to restore a film like Francois Leterrier's Les Mauvais Coups/Naked Autumn from 1961. This is a film with several sequences where the two lead characters go out hunting to kill birds. OK. Not a solitary occurrence. You only need to recall La Regle du Jeu and its hunting scene. But this film contains one sequence where clearly a bird is wounded and is pursued by its hunter who keeps firing and finally gets the bird, which is still moving, and in full view clubs it to death. Things have moved on folks.
