Thomas Bakels and his amazing team at Alpha-Omega Digital GmbH re-assembled from scraps and tatters Ernst Lubitsch’s The Loves of Pharaoh (1922), and screened it for us this afternoon. It’s not another Ninotchka, but it was a trip to another place and time. Another reminder how silent movies and opera are the only places we can experience real 19th century melodramatic acting, characters and plots. It’s another language, and it takes a while to remember how it goes (all the principals die in the end). People are making movies of 19th century novels all the time, but when was the last time there was a movie of a 19th century play? And it was the era of theater as popular entertainment. I loved the comic touch of Lyda Salmonova playing the Princess of Ethiopia as a Flapper-era Paris Hilton.
This evening’s hush-hush mystery screening turned out to be nothing less than a new edition of Monty Python and the Holy Grail. I’m fairly confident I could recite most of the dialog from memory, but I sat through it and laughed at the same jokes I’ve been laughing at since 1975 to the point that I am sore. Whatever spark of sanity I might have is largely due to discovering Monty Python at a moment when nothing less could save me. I’m hardly an unbiased observer, but I was impressed this time by how smoothly it flows, given it’s a sequence of skits. A lovely gift.
Comments