Bologna is famous not only for its ancient university and excellent cuisine. Over the past few decades, the city has also become a Mecca for cinema culture thanks to the Cineteca di Bologna. It is a world-renowned centre for film restoration and conservation. Since 1986, the Cineteca has hosted the 'Il Cinema Ritrovato' festival, which has grown from a three-day meeting of enthusiasts to an international event. Anyone passionate about classic films will find their dream destination here. This year, Bologna once again attracted visitors with its unusual retrospectives and large selection of restored films. The festival impresses with its unpretentious, democratic nature. There is no red carpet, VIP lounge or first- or second-class accreditation. On the Piazetta in front of the Cinema Lumière, representatives of international film archives, critics and film heritage specialists meet festival visitors from all over the world.
From the Lumière brothers to Buster Keaton
The film pioneers Auguste and Louis Lumière were the subject of a tribute put together by Thierry Frémaux, entitled ‘Lumière, l'aventure continue!’ (Lumière, the adventure continues). Frémaux, director of the Cannes Film Festival, who also heads the Institut Lumière in Lyon, presents an exemplary selection of films shot with the Cinématographe, a device that was the precursor to the modern camera. Frémaux, director of the Cannes Film Festival, who also heads the Institut Lumière in Lyon, presents in his compilation an exemplary selection of films shot with the Cinématographe, a device that combined the functions of a film camera, copying machine and projector and was developed by the brothers Auguste and Louis Lumière. On 28 December 1895, France's first public film screening took place in front of a paying audience at the Grand Café on Boulevard des Capucines in Paris, where employees of the Lumière brothers showed ten short films they had shot themselves.
The films had a maximum length of 50 seconds, many of them shot by Louis Lumière himself. Later, operators were trained in Lyon to document events in France and other countries, offering us insights into the world of the fin de siècle. Lumière's cameramen had to leave New York because Thomas Edison feared cinematic competition. It is surprising to note that the much-celebrated depth of field, which André Bazin, the spiritual father of the Nouvelle Vague, believed he had discovered in Orson Welles' ‘Citizen Kane’ (1941), was already to be found in the Lumière brothers' work at the turn of the century.
Thierry Frémaux also presented the restored version of ‘L’Horloger de Saint-Paul’ (The Clockmaker of St. Paul, 1974), the cinema debut of his mentor Bertrand Tavernier. Tavernier, who had previously worked as a film critic and PR agent, relocated George Simenon's novel ‘The Watchmaker of Everton’ from the United States to his hometown of Lyon. Without the support of Philippe Noiret, who plays the watchmaker Michel Descombes, the film would probably never have been made. Jacques Denis as his friend and Jean Rochefort as the police inspector complete the ensemble of characters rooted in everyday life in Lyon. In retrospect, the film seems like an emotional homage to the city where Tavernier spent his childhood.
Among the highlights of the festival are the screenings in Piazza Maggiore. Every evening, the square is completely filled, with some viewers sitting on the steps in front of the cathedral. Admission is free. Jack Nicholson could be seen twice, in ‘One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest’ (directed by Miloš Forman, 1975) and in ‘Five Easy Pieces’ (directed by Bob Rafelson, 1970). The spectacular climax was the presentation of the restored version of Charlie Chaplin's ‘The Gold Rush’ (1925), accompanied by music from the city's philharmonic orchestra, to mark the 100th anniversary of the film's premiere. Even in the glacial conditions of Alaska, Chaplin's Tramp is still dressed like an impoverished upper-class gentleman. After enduring hunger and cold, being beaten and humiliated, he is ultimately rehabilitated into society and leaves the scene as a millionaire, but not before meeting his great love Georgia again on the ship. The Gold Rush shows Chaplin at the height of his silent film artistry, in a magnificent combination of slapstick and romanticism.
Previously, his granddaughter Carmen Chaplin had presented a documentary in which her father Michael, Chaplin's eldest son, sets out in search of his father's ‘gypsy roots’. This gives rise to wild speculations. Allegedly, Chaplin was not born in London at all, but at a Roma camp outside Birmingham. In any case, a great deal of ‘Gypsy blood’ flowed in his veins and became a decisive source of inspiration for his comedy. With its bold thesis, the documentary comes across as a misguided family story that makes all too many claims and provides little evidence to back them up.
Dante Desarthes' portrait of Chaplin's brilliant colleague, ‘Buster Keaton. L'art de la chute’ (The Art of Falling), is quite the opposite. On the one hand, the title refers to Keaton's incredible stunts, in which he falls so spectacularly that one wonders how he survives them unscathed. On the other hand, it refers to his meteoric rise and fall at the end of the silent film era. Joseph Frank Keaton, born in 1895, appeared in music hall shows at the age of four, where his father hurled him around the stage to the horror and laughter of the audience.
In 1917, he met Roscoe ‘Fatty’ Arbuckle, alongside Chaplin one of the most famous comedians of his time. Keaton made numerous short films with Arbuckle before getting the chance to establish his own studio and realise independent projects. Keaton was a cinematic all-round genius: he came up with the stories himself – there was usually no script – directed the films and developed the gags. He even performed the most dangerous stunts himself. Buster Keaton's trademarks were his poker face and fast-paced chase scenes.
Unlike Charlie Chaplin, he refrains from any form of pathos or emotionalism. His films are radically anarchic and unsentimental. With ‘Cops’ (1922), ‘Sherlock Jr.’ (1924), ‘Go West’ (1925) and ‘The General’ (1926), he reached the height of his fame during the 1920s. When he joined MGM in the early 1930s, the studio wanted to impose a rigid control on him that ran counter to his improvisational approach. Keaton's great career was over, he had to make do with supporting roles and made a memorable appearance in Billy Wilder's ‘Sunset Boulevard’ in a poker game with former silent film stars.
Der amerikanische Kritiker Roger Ebert sagte über ihn: "The greatest of the silent clowns is Buster Keaton, not only because of what he did, but because of how he did it. Harold Lloyd made us laugh as much, Charlie Chaplin moved us more deeply, but no one had more courage than Buster."
Es macht den besonderen Charme von Bologna aus, dass man hier Charlie Chaplin und Buster Keaton nebeneinander erleben kann.
Dangerous Women
'Duel in the Sun' (directed by King Vidor, 1946) is a Hollywood cinema legend. At first glance, it appears to be an epic Western, but behind the lush colours of Technicolor unfolds a breathtaking story of forbidden love and erotic tension. After the global success of ‘Gone With the Wind’ (1939), the influential producer David O. Selznick wanted to bring another monumental love story to the big screen.
He wanted his lover, the 24-year-old actress Jennifer Jones, to play the lead role. Joseph Cotton and the young Gregory Peck are two contrasting brothers who compete for her affection. Silent film icon Lilian Gish does everything she can to set the young woman on the path to virtue, while her husband, Lionel Barrymore, is not thrilled to have a ‘half-breed’ woman in the house. The film has been restored in 4K format and features an introduction by Martin Scorsese, who recounts how he saw Duel in the Sun at the tender age of four. His mother had taken him to the cinema. ‘The film upset me so much that I never recovered from it for the rest of my life.’
No wonder, because what little Martin saw was a wild mix of lust, sex and violence. Jennifer Jones plays Pearl Chavez, the daughter of a white poker player and a Mexican-Indian dancer. She witnesses her jealous father shooting her mother and her lover. Pearl ends up with her aunt Laura Belle on a ranch in Texas. The aunt's authoritarian husband (Lionel Barrymore), whom everyone calls Senator, is confined to a wheelchair and rails against Native Americans, taxes and the railroad.
When his educated son Jesse (Joseph Cotton) sides with the railway company, he is disowned by his family. He had previously courted Pearl, but now she is at the mercy of his brother Lewt's (Gregory Peck) advances. Both attracted and repelled, Pearl cannot resist his brute macho charm. No wonder she drives the men crazy when her blouse slips off her shoulder. When she refuses to comply, Lewt takes her by force.
This results in a relationship of sadomasochistic dependence. First, Lewt shoots the older rancher who wants to marry her, then he gets rid of his law-abiding brother Jesse. But none of this diminishes Pearl's passion for him. In the final showdown in the desert, they embrace each other, mortally wounded.
The American film scholar Elise M. Marubbio describes Pearl's erotic range as ‘too sexual to be a proper wife, too dark to be a comfortable part of (white) society, and too passionate to be controlled with anything but violence’. Quite logically, the film was nicknamed ‘Lust in the Dust’. There were considerable censorship restrictions, the Archbishop of Los Angeles condemned the immoral fabrication, and cinemas in the American South refused to show the film. Catholic film critics called the film ‘highly unpleasant in content’. Nevertheless, or perhaps precisely because of this, it became a huge box office success, to which Martin Scorsese's Catholic mother obviously contributed.
A completely different kind of female independence, is represented by Katharine Hepburn to whom a retrospective was dedicated with a selection of her films from the 1930s to the 1950s. The description ‘feminist, acrobat and lover’ lived up to its promise, showing Katharine Hepburn as a cinema icon and a feminist avant la lettre. She prefers to wear trousers and comes across as extremely sporty. She is intelligent and quick-witted, but in the end she has to be tamed because otherwise the men around her don’t stand a chance.
Katharine Hepburn was not the typical Hollywood star who rose from humble beginnings to the top. She grew up in a progressive, well-educated family in Hartford, Connecticut. Her father was a doctor and her mother was an activist for women's rights. Katharine attended the renowned Bryn Mawr College in Pennsylvania, where she met her future husband. After initial successes in the theatre, she separated from him when she moved to Hollywood. She never remarried and was extremely discreet about her private life. She was nominated twelve times and won four Oscars. The American Film Institute voted her the ‘greatest female film legend’.
‘Silvia Scarlett’ (1935), her first of ten films directed by George Cukor, was released in Italy under the telling title ‘Il diavolo é femmina’ (The Devil is a Woman). Hepburn plays Sylvia, a daughter who, after the death of her mother, flees to England with her father, who has lost his money gambling, and, in order to cross the border, she transforms herself into a son, Sylvester. She ostentatiously cuts off her hair and takes control of the situation. On the way, they encounter an elegant con man, played by Cary Grant, with whom they join forces. When their ingenious plan goes awry, they perform as a theatre troupe in Pierrot costumes. A scene photo with Cary Grant and Katharine Hepburn in absurd costumes served as the poster image for the festival that year. The story is relatively absurd and derives its appeal from Katharine Hepburn's cross-dressing, first transforming into a man and then back into a woman at the end. In between, she performs an acrobatic handstand on the rings.
In ‘Bringing Up Baby’ (1938), directed by Howard Hawks, Katharine Hepburn does everything she can to throw Cary Grant, who plays an absent-minded palaeontologist, into chaos. She keeps telling him that he looks really sexy without his glasses. While trying to transport Baby, a tame leopard, from New York to Connecticut, there are numerous opportunities for slapstick moments and razor-sharp dialogue between the two protagonists. In one scene, it is Cary Grant who becomes the object of cross-dressing when he appears in a feathered negligee because she has sent his clothes to the dry cleaners. This is why the film is now cited as an early example of queer culture in Hollywood cinema. However, despite positive reviews, Bringing Up Baby was not a box office success, which reinforced Katharine Hepburn's reputation as ‘box office poison’.
She makes magnificent use of her reputation as an intellectually superior, independent woman in ‘Woman of the Year’ (directed by George Stevens, 1942). Katharine Hepburn plays Tess Harding, a successful cosmopolitan journalist inspired by the famous foreign correspondent Dorothy Thompson. She considers baseball superfluous in times of war, which infuriates sports reporter Sam Craig (Spencer Tracy). As befits a romantic comedy, the two initially clash before eventually coming together. Originally, the film ends with Spencer Tracy learning foreign languages to compensate for his intellectual deficits. But neither studio boss Louis B. Mayer nor producer Joseph L. Mankiewicz liked the ending. They found Katharine Hepburn's character too strong and too dominant. She had to lose her superiority. The new ending now shows her trying to make breakfast for Spencer Tracy and failing miserably. The pancakes overflow, the bacon burns in the pan. It is painful to watch her being portrayed as an incompetent housewife. For Hepburn and Tracy, the film was the start of further joint projects and the beginning of their lifelong relationship.
In 'Adam's Rib' (1949), again directed by George Cukor, the two play a married couple of lawyers who find themselves on opposite sides of a courtroom battle. Amanda (Katharine Hepburn) defends a housewife who has unsuccessfully attempted to shoot her violent husband and his mistress. Her husband Adam (Spencer Tracy) is assigned to the case as the prosecutor. This cannot end well, and in the course of the trial, their marriage threatens to fall apart. Katharine Hepburn delivers a magnificent plea for women's rights, while Spencer Tracy looks on helplessly and accuses her of mocking the justice system.
‘Of course, I have an angular face, an angular body, and, I suppose, an angular personality which jabs into people,’ Katherine Hepburn said about herself. This angular, non-conformist personality, which shines through in all her roles, was hardly to be expected in the Hollywood of the 1930s and 1940s. It made her a woman ahead of her time.
Men and War
Another remarkable retrospective was dedicated to American director Lewis Milestone. He is best known for his film adaptation of Erich Maria Remarque's novel ‘All Quiet on the Western Front’ (1929). It was the end of the silent film era, and the film was shot in two versions, one with dialogue and one silent with intertitles. In Bologna, the originally silent version, now equipped with an avant-garde soundtrack, was shown.You can hear the sounds of war, the exploding shells and the barrage of artillery fire, as well as the German marching songs. Milestone takes a lot of time to tell the story of the young recruits, whose Latin and Greek teacher raves about how noble it is to die for one's country. The whole class volunteers to go to the front. During basic military training, they experience their first frustrations when they are harassed by a sergeant whom they knew as a little postman.
Service on the front line is anything but heroic. The soldiers are tormented by the wet and cold, the trenches are swarming with rats, and the food is miserable. One by one, the young recruits die, until only young Paul Bäumer (Lew Ayres) and experienced front-line soldier Katczinski (Louis Wolheim) remain. But they too will not survive.
In Germany, the film was met with angry reactions from the right wing. Goebbels organised a targeted campaign in which SA squads disrupted screenings with stink bombs and sneezing powder. At the end of 1930, the film was banned and afterwards re-released with significant cuts, until it finally fell victim to Nazi censorship in 1933. But even in Italy and France, it was not shown until the 1960s, and in Austria not until 1980!
Lewis Milestone, who was born Lew Milstein in Moldova in 1895 and came to the United States in 1913, worked as a cameraman during World War I and was familiar with the reality of trench warfare on the Western Front. He filmed with mobile cameras and used an innovative camera crane to better capture the action on the battlefield. To this day, the film impresses with its precise realism and the consistent disillusionment of its characters. It remains much closer to Remarque's novel than Edward Berger's Oscar-winning remake.
War is a central theme in Lewis Milestone's films. ‘A Walk in the Sun’ (1945) was released in the cinema immediately after the end of the war and is based on a book by Norman Brown, which Robert Rossen used as the basis for his screenplay. In September 1943, an American infantry unit lands in the Gulf of Salerno, south of Naples. They are tasked with capturing a farmhouse and blowing up a bridge, which they manage to do at great cost. As the ironic title suggests, this is no ‘walk in the sun’. The film focuses entirely on the group of soldiers; their German opponents appear only in the shadows. There was much praise for the documentary realism, while James Agee criticised the artificial dialogue. The London magazine Time Out calls it ‘one of the best films to come out of World War II’ and particularly highlights the portrayal of ‘fear and boredom’.
Two years earlier, Lewis Milestone made two extraordinary war films, ‘Edge of Darkness’ (1943) and ‘The North Star’, in which the German army is portrayed as a murderous aggressor. ‘Edge of Darkness’ is set in Norway under German occupation. A fishing village refuses to collaborate with the Germans, with Warner stars Errol Flynn and Ann Sheridan acting as leaders of the resistance. Gradually, they manage to convince the initially hesitant villagers. With the help of smuggled English weapons, they risk heavy losses in their uprising against the military occupation. Despite the nuanced portrayal of the individual characters, the emphasis is on collective resistance. ‘Edge of Darkness’ is an impressive example of anti-fascist cinema that found expression in Hollywood during the war years.
Another example in Milestone's filmography is ‘North Star’, which paints an idealised picture of a Ukrainian village before the German invasion in 1942. Singing and dancing, the farmers of an agricultural collective farm head out to the fields. The rural paradise with its happy Soviet people is suddenly destroyed when German bombs rain down. The children of the village are forced to give blood transfusions so that injured Nazi soldiers can be supplied with blood. One of the German doctors is played by Erich von Stroheim, who excels as a Teutonic hate figure. His opponent is the upright village doctor, Dr. Kurin (Walter Huston), who studied in Leipzig and, in an act of heroic resistance, shoots Stroheim and his colleagues. A rebellion against the German occupiers ensues, during which the partisan troops hiding in the forest succeed in liberating the village.
The premiere was met with mixed reactions. The critic from the New York Mirror praised The North Star as ‘one of the most vivid war dramas,’ while the editor-in-chief of the newspaper called it ‘pure Bolshevik propaganda’ that ‘could not be more obvious, even if it were paid for by Stalin.’ No wonder that screenwriter Lillian Hellman and director Lewis Milestone were summoned before the House Un-American Activities Committee as alleged communist sympathisers in the climate of the Cold War. In 1957, a 30-minute shortened version was produced, in which the idyllic beginning was omitted and a warning about the evils of communism was added.
In 1948, Milestone adapted another novel by Erich Maria Remarque for the screen with ‘Arch of Triumph’. The film is set in Paris during the German occupation. Charles Boyer plays the Austrian doctor Dr Ravic, who has come to France as an illegal refugee. Here he meets Joan Madou (Ingrid Bergman), with whom he begins a passionate affair. 'Arch of Triumph’ is a pessimistic melodrama that captures the desperate situation of political refugees in haunting black-and-white images. The setting is similar to that of the classic ‘Casablanca’, but there are not so many humorous interludes, Ingrid Bergman’s character in ‘Arch of Triumph’ is less heroic than her role in ‘Casablanca’, the characters are more broken, and the atmosphere is gloomier.
The Lewis Milestone retrospective was certainly a highlight of the Bologna programme and reflects the spirit of the festival quite well. The aim is to present forgotten or underrated films to today's audiences and thus share knowledge about film history. At the same time, it is also about sparking a lively discussion about the canon of film history.
All photos: © Cinema ritrovato Bologna 2025