« Il Monastero di Sandomir, capolavoro cinematografico della Svenka di Stoccolma, messo in scena da Victor Sjostrom, interpretato dalla celebre attrice svedese Tora Teje. Altri interpreti Tore Svennberg e Richard Lund.
È la storia fosca di una nobile famiglia polacca distrutta dalla colpa d’una donna bellissima e simulatrice. Amore, tradimento, finzione, vendetta, si succedono attraverso il gioco serrato degli attori, che rappresentano i personaggi del dramma con verità umana e con tragica cupezza. L’espiazione mistica del marito, che atrocemente offeso nell’onore e negli affetti, s’era vendicato senza pietà, costituisce un episodio commoventissimo, pieno di significato spirituale e di bellezza scenografica. Il Monastero di Sandomir, sorto sulle rovine fumanti del Castello in cui fu consumato il terribile dramma, chiude nelle sue mura austere l’uomo che à offerta a Dio la sua triste vita spezzata, in olocausto del suo peccato di sangue. »
(dalla pubblicità del Sindacato per il Libero Commercio Cinematografico, Roma 1922)
« A dispetto dei costumi benelliani, Klostret i Sendomir (1919) è, in certo modo, l’opera più sperimentale di Sjöström. Quasi tutto girato in interni, il film, ambientato nel secolo decimottavo, si avvale di un’illuminazione fortemente effettata. Le linee sinuose della tragedia, cupamente evocata dal monaco (l’ex-castellano Starensky, uccisore della moglie Elga, bella e infedele), si intrecciano con quelle, ancor meno rettilinee, dello stile. È evidente che Sjöström, influenzato dalla messinscena espressionista, tenta una difficile meditazione tra il chiaroscuro di ascendenza fiamminga e la lezione di Munch. In pratica si va — come gusto — dalle illustrazioni per romanzi storici all’eclettismo del secondo Reinhardt. »
Francesco Savio (La parola e il silenzio, il film scandinavo dalle origini al 1954, Mostra di Venezia 1964)
New York, 1913. Bernhardt’s recent engagement in New York at the Palace Theatre was doubly interesting in serving to reintroduce to the American public a young Greek actor of unusual appeal and commanding presence.
Lou Tellegen is twenty-eight and be has already for two years been the leading man of the world’s greatest actress. He is, therefore, a somewhat extraordinary young man indeed, the youngest leading man she has ever had. Despite bis youth his work has a dignity, authority and repose that is impressive. In watching these artistes together there appears no great disparity in age or experience, but then, has there yet been discovered a spirit that is more youthful than that of Sarah Bernhardt ?
Tellegen’s father was a Greek general and his mother a Danish dancer. He was born in Athens and reared in Holland. He has been associated with the theatre nearly all his life, rather against his father’s wishes. He has travelled almost all over the world and has acted in Holland, France, England and America. He is, in fact, a man of the world by education and experience. At fourteen he ran away from home and for three years lived a nomadic life. He knew what it was —to be desolate to be without decent clothes — to be disagree ably hungry.
One dramatic moment in his youthful experience impresses one as graphic and significant. He was sixteen barefoot; he had no money, no place to go no shelter and it began to rain. The quick, sudden realization of all this was too overwhelming so he began to cry. He saw a house, but pride forbade from telling his plight. Seeing a tree he laid down under it and slept with the abandon of perfect youth. When he woke he walked to the next town, got work and in four hours was eating a meal that he had earned by the sweat of his brow. At that moment he says: “I realized what it was to be a man.”
Tellegen is a universal man; as one talks with him you realize that his biggest lessons he has learned from the stars and living out in the open. He loves life and speaks of his love for it with the naiveté of a child. Bernhardt be reveres. He speaks of her with an affectionate, admiring respect that is refreshing. He says: “My mother brought me into the world, but Madame Sarah is my real mother. She has given me my chance and has taught me everything. We really play together: it is not work to us and there is no audience ever. It is those moments that we are on the stage that we live and have our real being. I hate the word actor —I never want to act I want only to be !”
To see Tellegen on the stage is to be convinced that this is not a mere pose. Each of the characters he portrays is a creation and is etched individually with cameo-like clarity. Best of all he brings fresh thought to a character and often entirely disregards tradition. Oddly enough, his best work on the American stage has been the two extremes of classical and modern drama. Armand in Camille and Hyppolitus in Phèdre. In this latter rôle he is given, too, the opportunity to visualize a glorious picture of physical beauty.
His most radical departure from tradition is revealed in his portraiture of Scarpia in Tosca. Scarpia is usually presented as a burly brute, sensual, pugnacious, rather blatant and a little middle class. As a matter of fact, Scarpia was a patrician and Tellegen makes him so, and from this major note he works out his plan. He smiles a great deal and his smile is terrible. It is the smile of utter cruelty. There is no sun in this glancing light. It does not warm. It kills as it tortures Tosca. He has the gentleness of absolute control of the situation, he has the mildness of the finished job. He is subtlety and resiliency itself. His mentality hurts so you almost wish he’d do something crude, obvious and humanly stupid.
As Armand he is the ingenuous lover : a little gauche as a boy might be— a little dumb and awkward as a youth hopelessly in love ever is. His first entrance is perfect. You realize absolutely he is coming into the presence of his divinity —the one who embodies his grande passion.
A.R.
Straordinario viaggio in 2 atti e 52 quadri ideato da Georges Méliès.
Questo viaggio straordinario sorpassa per immaginazione, le più fantastiche concezioni di Giulio Verne.
Vediamo uno strano consiglio formato di scienziati del mondo intero: Run Ever rappresentante dell’Inghilterra – Bluff Allo Bill per gli Stati Uniti d’America – Cervesa per la Spagna – Tchin Tchun Tchon per la Cina – Scopritutto per l’Italia – Maboul per la Francia. Questi uomini della scienza, preparano una novità che farà strabiliare il mondo: un magnifico apparecchio volante…
Quando la macchina meravigliosa è pronta, gli uomini di genio, s’innalzano con essa fino alle alte sfere stellate, ed il presidente del Congresso, il professore Maboul, si reca a visitare le maggiori costellazioni dello zodiaco. Ma una violenta bufera imperversa lassù e il meraviglioso apparecchio viene spinto da una fortissima corrente verso il polo. Gli arditi navigatori dell’aria vengono attratti dall’asse magnetico e sarebbero certo inghiottiti da quella oscura forza della terra, se non sopraggiungesse in loro salvamento un altro ardito pioniere in aeroplano.
Domenica 25 febbraio 1912. Tra le fiabe e i racconti ispirati dai moderni capolavori della fantasia americana possiamo segnalare una grandiosa e romanzesca avventura, pubblicata dalla Star Film, e intitolata suggestivamente Alla conquista del Polo Nord. La raccomandiamo come una curiosità rara della migliore produzione.
sempre in penombra 