Festival Report: Le Giornate Del Cinema Muto 2025

Co-Director James Harrison gives an overview of his five favourite films from this year's Le Giornate Del Cinema Muto in Pordenone, Italy.

It’s not often you can sum up a film festival in just one word; but for its 44th year, Le Giornate Del Cinema Muto (Pordenone Silent Film Festival) one word I could maybe use is ‘brutal’.

Now this isn’t a word I use lightly and, in fact, I love the festival, I love the people who run it, I love the people who attend it and I love the festival’s home of Pordenone in north-west Italy. My first time attending was in 2005, and here I am, twenty years later, calling it ‘brutal’.

But I should point out that this is very much down to the underlining tone of some of the films which made up the festival’s programme this year.

We had Max Fleischer’s Koko the Clown giving, and taking, a massive amount of physical abuse from not only his fellow animated characters but from his creator as well (Fleischer); but hey, that’s cartoons for you. And kudos to Koko's Earth Control (1928) which came with a flashing and strobing warning before the film’s start; the film needed it, as it made one of the most incredible animated experiences at the Giornate.

The Belgian Avant Garde films left a brutal taste in the mouth as well. Some were watchable others were very much on the edge of unwatchable. Out of all of them, the gem was (no pun intended) Le perle (1929) which saw the recurring idea of the stealing of a pearl. To be honest, trying to explain the whole storyline would take up all of the blog post; so let's leave it there. But Le perle was a very fun, dreamlike, brutalist film.

We also had silent film heartthrob George O'Brien’s character (one of the key highlights for this year’s festival) brutally whipping his wife (played incredibly by Dorothy Mackaill) in the final stages of The Man Who Came Back (1924). Many were shocked at such a brutal act.

Many stated that it was a step too far for a character that they had been watching for past 90 minutes. Although, many seem to have forgotten that earlier in the film O’Brien’s character almost strangles Mackail’s character to death. The overall tone of The Man Who Came Back was… well… ‘brutal’ as well.

All of these were titles which very much made the 44th Giornate worth going to see. But they didn’t quite hit the mark for me. So, here are my top five titles from another great year at the festival. Long live silent cinema! Long live Le Giornate!

Japanese Paper Films

I’m always reserved when it comes to animation retrospectives. I shouldn’t, but I am. It’s mainly down to the way they are presented at film festivals; over the years we have had crazy bulk screenings where you spend nearly two hours (or more) sitting watching animation after animation and after a while everything becomes a blur. To be honest, this isn’t just me, this has happened before and I have seen (first hand) an entire audience just switch off after an hour and a half.

This presentation, which lasted 77mins and included 30 films in total, was rather different however. The presentation included a wide variety of films from comedies (animal Olympics anyone?), adverts to live samurai action films. There was a lot going on here and it was fascinating to watch (and hear). There is a wealth of great films here, some of which came with sound. Fingers crossed I can maybe get these films to the south west in the near future.

Kryl'ia Kholopa (Wings of Serf/ 1926)

Film festivals are all about discoveries. Director Yuri Tarich’s 1926 film Kryl'ia Kholopa was a directorial debut that didn’t quite stand out in the festival’s programme, but it was title I had heard of but never given the chance to see on the big screen. Now was my chance.

Thanks to Jay Leyda’s Kino: A History of the Russian and Soviet Film (a book which has been by my side for years and is very much one of the starting blocks when it comes to the history of Soviet Film) I had a general idea what to expect, but I didn’t realise how full on the film really was going to be.

The film is a comment about the classes which orbit Tsar/Grand Prince Ivan the Terrible and the film very much emphasises the on the word ‘Terrible’. Our protagonist, if the use of such a word is correct here, is Nikita (played by Ivan Klyukvin), an inventor who is working on a flying/glider contraption. Not wanting to spoil the story, Nikita’s story is intertwined with his local ‘lord’ and the Tsar, and the Tsar’s wife (Safiyat Askarova). To be honest, while Nikita is our hero as such, this is a film which has hardly any hero qualities.

Many performances stand out here; but the key one is Leonid Leonidov’s depiction of Ivan the Terrible. With a perfectly executed performance of inner torture, anger and madness, Leonidov’s Ivan overshadows nearly everyone else in every scene. It is a sharp performance which works perfectly with the film’s atmosphere.

Atmosphere is another important ingredient for Kryl'ia Kholopa as well. With sets designed by Vladimir Yegorov and the directing and editing by Tarich and Esfir Shub (in which there should be a retrospective of her work alone) it is a brilliant film just to look at.

Kryl'ia Kholopa is a visual feast which romanticises the past but infuses it with a horrible, brutal, meanness. It is a film that almost feels like you are watching a dream (or maybe a nightmare?) that stands with other period Russian epics such as Aleksei German’s Hard to Be a God (2013), Andrei Tarkovsky’s Andrei Rublev (1966) and (of course) Sergei Eisenstein’s Ivan the Terrible (1945).

From drunken orgies, male and female rape, murder, public humiliation and extreme paranoia from the outset, it is a film which scraps every dreg from the bottom of humanity’s barrel. It’s incredibly uncomfortable horrible film to watch at times and brutal on the eyes and senses. I loved every bit of it!

Non-Fiction Films

As many of you might know. I love my non-fiction films and the Giornate’s lineup for this year was no exception of finding some wonderful moving images.

From the shores of the Mediterranean to the plains of Palestine; there were small and fragmented wonders throughout the non-fiction strands which were titled ‘Liguria’, ‘The World that Was…’ as well as the most recent of Imperial War Museum restoration projects, The German Retreat and Battle of Arras (1917).

The Battle of Arras screening was particularly an interesting one. The final film of three titles (The Battle of The Somme (1916) / Battle of Ancre and the Advance of the Tanks (1917)) the Arras film showcases (as the full title suggests) the German retreat of 1917 and the battle in and around the Arras area between 9th April to 16th May 1917.

While watching it, I began to realise that this was very much a different film to the last two. Not only is this a film about the Allies (British, Canadian, French) fighting against the Germans but also a film about the landscape, the town (or the ruins of it) and the people who lived there. We do get the odd shots of the former inhabitants, although brief, you can tell they are as war weary and tired as the soldiers we see marching passed the camera.

But the film is of course about the soldiers fighting inch by bloody inch on the Western Front and I always find it fascinating that we can see their reactions when they spot the camera, whether British or German. I wouldn’t say The Battle of Arras is the most important of the ‘big three’ First World War titles looked after the IWM; but it does give us a glimpse, like all war related material, on how the soldiers involved (on either side) relax, work and die.

The Blood Ship (1927)

There is something always unsettling when Hobart Bosworth is on the screen. Yes, he played the jolly faced lighthouse keeper Jeremiah alongside Baby Peggy in Captain January (1924) but thanks to the work of the San Francisco Film Preserve, the San Francisco Silent Film Festival and Flicker Alley that jolly faced persona has most certainly been put aside.

With titles such as Behind the Door (1919) and Below the Surface (1920), both truly terrifying films in their own right, Bosworth, as a character actor really should be examined fare more. With his chalk cut face, piercing eyes and powerful physic, Bosworth can be a rather intimidating figure on screen, and The Blood Ship (1927) is another one on Bosworth’s ‘hardman’ belt.

The Blood Ship is a revenge story more than anything else. Capt. Angus Swope (Walter James) is an incredibly vicious captain, who heavily mistreats his sailors (many of which have been Shanghaied to his ship) and hopes that many will desert rather than get paid when they get to land. Jim Newman(Bosworth) joins the crew and realises that Swope is the actual Captain who destroyed his reputation as a fellow sea Captain back in the day.

With some great supporting ‘heavy men’ in the shape of Walter James and the fantastic Blue Washington I do think it’s worth revisiting The Blood Ship sooner rather than later. And fingers crossed that more 'tough guy' Bosworth films will be found in the future.

Are Parents People? (1925)

A great title to go with a very good (not great tho) film. To be totally honest, it might have been the wrong day for me to watch Are Parents People? (1925), and while I did enjoy it, it wasn’t the rip roaring affair many had been lead to believe. But it has a lot of charm which I know many fell for.

Betty Bronson plays Lita Hazlitt, a young woman who finds herself in the middle of her parent's divorce and wants to stop it at all costs. What unfolds is a light hearted comedy which showcases one of the key problems in American society in the 1920s, divorce.

There are a number of great sequences; particularly one involving a Hollywood movie star by the name of Maurice Mansfield (George Beranger). Adolphe Menjou plays well as the father (more about Menjou, ‘the man you love to hate’ in our Woman of Paris review). As always, Menjou was perfect casting to play the pompous Mr Hazlitt.. after all Menjou had good knowledge of playing such a pompous individual; he was one in real life.

The highlight of Are Parents People? however was the wonderful Florence Vidor who really steals the show from everyone in this film. Beautifully portrayed and just great to watch, her visual expressions, especially during the scenes involving Maurice Mansfield were just wonderful. Vidor (just divorced from her first husband, film director, King Vidor) brings a wonderful performance; you almost want to tear up when she does. More Florence Vidor films please!