Il Cinema Ritrovato 2017: By Candlelight, James Whale, 1933

At the same time true to its stage play source and completely cinematic, especially in its use of doors as sluices controlling both visual spectacle and erotic energy. The master / servant dynamic is very funny, especially because of Paul Lukas's natural air of superiority towards his boss, but like the magnificent The Kiss Before the Mirror, this is ultimately all about learning / unlearning the automatisms of romance. Although this time around it's set in a much lighter mood.

The key to the film (and to Whale's authorship) might be the only scene not set in enclosed space, though:  a short sequence at a country fair. While I still don't really know what to make of these strange images, one thing is clear: no one could mistake them for "good honest people having fun". Instead (and completely unrelated to the plot) they have a ritualistic feel about them. The most important element of Whale's fair are clearly the masks. And the reason for the strangeness of the scene might be that the usual links between mask and identity do not apply. The people neither wear masks to hide their (real) identity, nor to reveale their (true) self. Rather, masking is a state of being in its own right, a sign of pure difference, free from all (bodily, social, sexual) restraints.

Il Cinema Ritrovato 2017: Les amours de minuit, Augusto Genina, Marc Allegret, 1931

Two escaped men meet on a train. One - young, nervous, curious - escaped from his boring day job, the other - lean, lanky, sleazy - from a penal colony.  The train would bring the young guy directly to the harbour and to his ship bound  for South America. The other one persuades him to dismount one stop earlier by promising him a night in town with lots of erotic attractions. For the young man, the train is transformed from a mere means of transportation into a machine that grants worlds, options, adventures. A sense of anarchic, but also modernist freedom which for me is strongly associated with early sound cinema, right now my favorite period in film history - by far.

The storyline might be rather straightforward, but the film isn't really interested in plot mechanics. Every scene is self-sufficent, every place a whole world in itself. Especially the nightclub: Several dance routines are filmed in their entirety, the buzz of the place is, for the most part, much more important than the conspiracy the young man might be caught in. A beautiful tracking shot floating alongside the bar counter: in the first row, men and a few women eating sanwiches, drinking beer; but there's a second row, comprised almost exclusively by women trying to snatch a quick bite or a drink for free.

Another great moment: the other guy, the bad, lanky one, and his mistress meeting in a revolving door. Her slight hesitation in joining him in the inside - her realizing that instead of meeting him she could just succumb to the dynamics of the door, rotate with it and get thrown out into the world.

Il Cinema Ritrovato 2017: Lac aux dames, Marc Allegret, 1934

A Ritrovato moment to stay with me for a long time, probably: Simone Simon and Jean-Pierre Aumont rolling around in a barn, bedded on a pile of grain, joined in a flowing movement of not-quite-lovemaking, which somehow is even more erotic than actual sex. All scenes with Simon's Puck and Aumont's Eric in the barn (a magic fairytale wonderland which might also be a fishing lodge) are absolutely marvellous, elevating an already freewheeling, joyfully frivolous youth melodrama into pure cine-ecstasy.

Lac aux dames is a film of unpretentious, un-selfconscious, but at the same time completely unhinged extravagance. Aumont - who's a swimming teacher working at a strange, almost sci-fi-like public bath - isn't caught between, but both blessed and marked by three women: Or maybe it's one woman split in three, into the imaginary (Simon), the symbolic (Rosin Derean), and the real (Illa Meery). But that's just one among several possible layers, and Aumont himself is more spirit than human most of the time in this.

Il Cinema Ritrovato 2017: Große Freiheit Nr. 7, Helmut Käutner, 1944

A man's passion done in by automaton love. But he himself is part of the automaton world, he just doesn't want to admit it (to himself, first and foremost). Hans Albers as Hannes Kröger still thinks of himself as king of the high seas, although he's been stranded in St. Pauli's red-light version of the cultural industry for quite a while. Right at the beginning the mighty four-master is exchanged with a ship in a bottle. When in the end he reenters the world of seafaring, this doesn't feel like liberation, but rather like his giving in to an imaginary solution.

The melodrama in between never settles down on a constant tone; for all its musical and cinematographical brillancy (lightning and make-up turning Albers' face into a mask, transforming him into the most uncanny of the film's many automatons) it's first and foremost driven by gestures. Hilde Hildebrand leaning over the counter with the beer tap pressing into her chest; the automaton lover Hans Söhnker absentmindedly stroking the handrail while waiting for Ilse Werner, his automaton girlfriend; Werner squeezing the automaton egg between her hands, while holding it up over her head, creating a personal world of her own in just one single, simple shot.

Il Cinema Ritrovato 2017: Lo squadrone bianco, Augusto Genina, 1936

A colonialist adventure setting filtered through fascist melodrama: A weak, lovelorn bourgeois flees his girlfriend (who is borderline crazy herself - played by a statuesque Fulvia Lanzi; strangely, it's her only acting credit, judging from this great performance, she could've easily made it as an Italian Zarah Leander) by enlisting for war in the desert. After at first being despised by his tough guy peers, he earns their respect through both fortitude in battle and erotic self-denial. In the end, he's just another lonely psychopath in the desert.

Lo squadrone bianco is Duce approved (winner of Coppa Mussolini 1936), and ideologically dubious  in more ways than one (although the depiction of Arabs is paternalistic rather than racist, in obvious contrast to German films of the same period set in Africa) but also powerful filmmaking. The long desert campaign in the center of the film reduces the whole world to sand, camels, sweating bodys, and fluorescent shadowplay. The night scenes are especially beautiful: the film abandons the narrative completely, succumbs to a trance-like despair - at one time, there's a cutaway to the heroe's girlfriend visiting an orchester performance. She arrives at her (ultimately pointless) decision to surrender to her man's vanity almost without speaking a single word, it's all done by music and subtle camera movements.