Posted by Larry Gleeson

Hard to tell where the original film and begins by Paolo Villaggio travesty that, thanks to the comic film The second tragic Fantozzi (1976) , has made a cult film without the need for it to be seen.
The Battleship Potemkin tells the story of the revolt of the battleship Potemkin sailors of the ship and the subsequent tragic massacre in Odessa. The rebellion reached its most dramatic point in the city staircase scene where the soldiers shoot without mercy on the population, with no distinction between men, women and children. It ‘just that moment to have become iconic, not only for what he represented in film history, but above all for being reviewed by other filmmakers. The high rate of violence and tragedy of the scene, achieved thanks to a direction that does not let up and catapult the viewer into the story, has trained several directors who have not lost an opportunity to pay homage, or parodiarla, in their films.

It is not a coincidence that this is the scene that is made to recreate employed in The second tragic Fantozzi of Luciano Salce. The Fantozzi and colleagues, forced to see once again the Eisenstein film company to film club run by Professor Guidobaldo Riccardelli, driven by the same rebel Fantozzi, in his only moment of personal revenge, shouting proudly the most famous line fantozziana the saga “For me, the Battleship Kotiomkin is a crazy shit!”. Battleship Kotiomkin because in fact the original and Salce rights were granted it created a craft parody and was renamed the name of the film and also the director (who became Sergei M. Einstein). The punishment of the employees of Megaditta for having turned against the power and destroying the copy of the film is “Dantesque” says Fantozzi: recreate the sequence of the steps every Saturday afternoon until retirement age.

While in Italy The battleship has become popular for the irony that it is built around, and around the world, the Eisenstein film has often been lauded by major directors who saw in the Russian filmmaker a model to inspire them. In the film The Prisoner of Amsterdam (1940) by Alfred Hitchcock and I The Godfather (1972) by Francis Ford Coppola is cited the dramatic end of old woman on the steps, struck in the eye by a saber: the glasses are broken, the look of terror and the blood line of the face. This same scene is shot, with a more parodic intent, by Woody Allen, in two films: The Dictator of the Free State of Bananas (1971) and Love and War (1975). Even in the film dystopian Brazil Terry Gilliam (1985) is honored the staircase of Odessa, recovering the movements of the soldiers and the fatal descent of the wheelchair.

The most heartfelt tribute and poetic of the Odessa massacre is surely to Brian De Palma in the gangster film The Untouchables (1987) . In the middle of a shootout, in a wheelchair with a child she begins to roll down the stairs, while the mother desperate moans and the protagonist, played by Kevin Costner, try to save them, avoiding enemies’ bullets. The scene keeps the dramatic atmosphere of the Eisenstein film, but moves at a slower speed, playing more about the pathos and the fate of the child: able to save themselves? Shooting and taken to the extreme, the scene of De Palma was parodied in the movie demented Naked Gun 33 1/3 – The Final Insult (1994) by Peter Segal: wheelchairs become three, with flights hilarious babies at the end of staircase.

Even the latest cinema and mainstream became infected from The Battleship Potemkin : in Star Wars III – Revenge of the Sith (2005) Anakin Skywalker, now turned to the dark side as Darth Vader, is going to carry out the massacre of young jedi, moving with a deployment of soldiers that resembles that of Soviet Odessa. The special boots leaves no doubt: the massacre in Odessa lives according to the futuristic vision and CGI George Lucas.

— Emanuela Vignudelli , Course of Higher Education Editor media and cross-media, courses Cineteca di Bologna

(Source: ilcinemaritrovato.it)

Posted by Larry Gleeson

Cinema Ritrovato 2017:  Battleship Potemkin and Edmund Meisel

“Consider soundtrack Meisel only in its musical component, it is to misunderstand its purpose. Of course, occasionally there is a musical theme, but this soundtrack can be described perfectly as a comment to the film and at the same time a component thereof, a headset symbolism that harmonizes rhythmically and emotionally with sequences of images that strengthens.”

In describing the soundtrack composed by Edmund Meisel ( Berlin: Symphony of a Great City, love the mountains ) for Battleship Potemkin , William Hunter captures the ultimate meaning of such a pioneering music that, even today, thanks to the surprising its complex essence and its incredible power. The same force with which the symphony of the warship most famous film breaks into a frame with a projection alive and pulsating Piazza Maggiore, live music by the Philharmonic Orchestra of the Teatro Comunale di Bologna conducted by Timothy Brock. An experience that has become reality thanks to the synergy of film historians and commitment stock ranging from Russia to the United States, and Great Britain to Germany, which has the merit of having finally restored the original version of the masterpieceEisenstein and soundtrack Meisel.

It’s been 92 years since its first showing, however Battleship Potemkin is always able to renew the astonishment of those who attend to its staging. Freely inspired by an episode that led to the first Russian Revolution of 1905, the collective drama in five acts of Potemkin winds through the most classic forms – that of tragedy, making those stylistic innovations that decreed – rightly – his elevation to the subject of worship in smoky film clubs of the ’70s. Projections in which mounting of the sights of the Eisenstein film, although stripped of its soundtrack, was gutted in its fundamental components: the worms in the flesh to the wheelchair, to the eye of the mother.

Images – or cinepugni , which have helped to carve in the collective memory for a movie that even the most indifferent, have seen more or less directly: whether the fantozziana average man’s revenge or the lyricism of Ettore Scola We had so beloved . However, it is the theme of the movie, not a hero or a real protagonist, surprises even today with its raw vitality with the recovery of those fundamental values identified that, long ago, had been its another revolution. Liberty, Equality, Fraternity.

—- Federica Marcucci

(Sourced from Ilcinemaritrovato.it)

Posted by Larry Gleeson

From the very beginning, when it still lacked the spoken word, cinema has always sought its musicality – an interweaving of rhythms, harmonies and passions. The musicians, improvisers and composers of Cinema Ritrovato know this only too well: those artists who grind out hours at the piano, searching for the rhythms, the harmonies and the emotions that come from the silent image. Matti Bye, Neil Brand, Antonio Coppola, Daniele Furlati, Stephen Horne, Maud Nelissen, Donald Sosin and Gabriel Thibadeau: this is the team of international champions reunited by the Cinema Ritrovato Festival to bring music to cinema.

At the piano, and not just; once again this year we will have plenty of special events: the Filarmonica del Teatro Comunale di Bologna will play Edmund Meisel’s music directed by Helmut Imig for Battleship Potemkin, and the music written by Arthur Honegger for Abel Gance’s monumental film La Roue, of which there will be the world première of the newly restored prologue, thanks to Fondation Jérôme Seydoux-Pathé’s extraordinary work. The Teatro Comunale di Bologna Orchestra will play a score composed by Timothy Brock to accompany Buster Keaton’s Steamboat Bill, Jr. We will also have ad hoc ensembles, such as Daniele Furlati alongside Frank Bockius for Addio giovinezza, who have returned to the original music from Giuseppe Pietri’s light opera to give it a new cinematographic life; or the duo composed by Stephen Horne and Frank Bockius for À propos de Nice in the new restoration by Gaumont; or with tried and tested formations, such as The Sprockets conducted by Maud Nelissen for The Patsy.

And then cin ema found its voice, the human one that is; but also that of an accordion, the unforgettable musical protagonist of L’Atalante, which accompanied the rhythms, harmonies and passions of a love story. The wonderful score composed by Maurice Jaubert for L’Atalante was violated in a second, re-edited and censored version of the film, but with a Neapolitan touch of Cesare Andrea Bixio, who adapted his song Parlami d’amore Mariù for Le Chaland qui passe.

But there are also those who upset the time, such as director Bill Morrison from the United States, an artist-archaeologist on the trail of the past (both of cinema and of America), who has once again removed the voice from the images, to give them sounds by experimental musicians such as Bill Frisell or Alex Somers.

And what of the images? What have they given to the music? They have expanded the allure of the performance incredibly. They have created myth s which sounds alone would never have been able to invent. They let the world know that not only did Otis Redding have one of the most beautiful voices ever, but that he was also a great performer, and that Jimi Hendrix did not just play guitar like he was walking a tightrope, but was also the embodiment of madness and freedom. Why Otis Redding and Jimi Hendrix? Because we’ll see them in all their grandeur on the big screen in Piazza Maggiore – in a restored version – along with other greats immortalised by D.A. Pennebaker at Monterey in 1967: Ravi Shankar, The Who, Simon & Garfunkel (whom we will also meet along with their Mrs. Robinson, who entered into the collective musical imaginarium in The Graduate).

Would the Bee Gees‘ hit song have reached such mythical proportions without John Travolta’s dancing? We will also be dancing at the Cinema Ritrovato Festival with Saturday Night Fever (a newly rest ored version, in Piazza Maggiore), or to the rumba of 1950s’ Mexican star Ninón Sevilla (upon arriving in Mexico, Edith Piaf was asked by a journalist what she wanted to see in Mexico. Her reply: “Ninón Sevilla!”).

And we will be singing, too: with the bewitching Marylin Monroe (when she sings River of No Return in Otto Preminger’s film of the same name), with Peggy Lee (who gives her voice to the epic Johnny Guitar), and with Chet Baker (the trumpet player whose voice has enthralled generation after generation), portrayed by one of the world’s leading photographers. Bruce Weber will be our guest in Bologna, this time as the director of Let’s Get Lost, his moving homage to Chet Baker. He will also present the latest version of his work in progress dedicated to Robert Mitchum (He too sang, and boy could he sing! We’ll have the chance to find out for ourselves in Weber’s documentary: a duet with Rickie L ee Jones in a fantastic interpretation of Cheek to Cheek, and alongside Marianne Faithfull for the song that gives its name to the film: Nice Girls Don’t Stay for Breakfast).