“Rescued and Regained”: Il Cinema Ritrovato 2010 June 26–July 3, 2010, Bologna, Italy

Throughout its entire twenty-four years, Bologna’s Il Cinema Ritrovato has never availed itself of fusty festival accessories like trailers or late-night parties for fabricating buzz, nor has this venerable festival ever fretted over off years during which the lineup suffered because pickings were somehow slimmer than usual. Since Bologna’s mandate is the “recovered and restored,” Il Cinema Ritrovato could be called an event for historians and archivists, but in fact, it is much more—a compelling and comfortable festival for any cineast with curiosity, a taste for well-crafted programming, and a lust for a new find from the deep recesses of cinematic history.

If anything, the 2010 edition of Il Cinema Ritrovato was more vigorously programmed than usual and thus more gratifying for the scores of international curators, critics, conservators, archivists, scholars, and students who already regard the city of Bologna as a mecca for cinephiles. The presence of Cineteca di Bologna, one of Europe’s leading cinematheques, and L’Immagine Ritrovato, the workshop responsible for many recent stellar restorations, has elevated this Emilia-Romagna town to special status. Its congenial surroundings, relaxed pace, Bolognese cuisine, and artisan entrepreneurs along the arcades generate another sort of appeal.

Screenings and formal presentations take place mainly in two adjacent theaters on the campus of the Cineteca and in a nearby 1950s widescreen palace called Cinema Arlecchino. Discussions, projections, and musical accompaniments for the silent film presentations are generally exceptional, another reason Ritrovato tends to outclass any rivals. Interestingly, the entire city appears to celebrate cinema—Teatro Comunale di Bologna, the town’s opera house, occasionally offers cine-concerts, while Piazza Maggiore, in the heart of the historic district, has nightly open-air restoration screenings that attract thousands.

Bologna’s Piazza Maggiore during a festival screening: Il Gattopardo—Piazza 1. Photo courtesy Piazza Maggiore e il pubblico del Il Cinema Ritrovato (Bologna 2010).

2010 Program Highlights

“Il Primo John Ford,” a mind-bending series of twenty-nine early films (twenty-three silents and six sound films, some of them fragments) curated by Peter von Bagh and Guy Borlée in association with Schawn Belston and Caitlin Robertson, included a number of surprisingly good prints of several well-known masterworks such as Pilgrimage (1933), Four Sons (1928), and Three Bad Men (1926). The latter, performed with full orchestra en plein air, was a Piazza Maggiore high point. There were also many lesser-known films and a few revelations such as Up the River (1930) and Kentucky Pride (1925). Ford’s early work is not often discussed or taught, although these films illustrate well his natural inventiveness.

Possibly the greatest eye-opener at Ritrovato this year was “Albert Capellani: Un Cinema di Grandeur,” twenty-four films structured by Mariann Lewinsky into eight programs spanning Capellani’s career in France from 1906 to 1914 and concluding with the American-made The Red Lantern (this 1919 film functioned as a prelude for next year, when the director’s American work, spanning 1915–22, will be shown). Capellani seemed at his best when directing the divas Alla Nazimova (in The Red Lantern) and the extraordinary Mistinguett, queen of the French music halls (in La Glu, 1913).

The two complementary sections organized by critic Goffredo Fofi and Cineteca di Bologna director Gian Luca Farinelli, “Hard Times, Italian Cinema, 1945–1949,” and Ritrovato’s artistic director Peter von Bagh, “Hard Times in Europe, 1946–1952,” constituted their own mini ritrovato. These were both programs of surprising complexity, filled with intriguing rarities such as Alberto Cavalcanti’s mood piece They Made Me a Fugitive (1947) and Renato Castellani’s stirring neorealist take on the children of a marginal Roman neighborhood living in the shadow of the famous Basilica of San Giovanni in Laterano, Under the Sun of Rome (1947).

A highlight of every Cinema Ritrovato, “Cento anni fa” (“A Hundred Years Ago”), was curated this year by a number of specialists, including Mariann Lewinsky, Martine Offroy, Dominique Païni, Nikolaus Wostry, Giovanni Lasi, Luigi Virgolin, Manuela...