A Morning of Italian Fim and Food

It wasn't my first time at the Italian Film & Food Festival, but it was the first time I attended the first showing of the day.

I met a friend (and his friend) there, someone who works in the restaurant business and wouldn't normally choose to be anywhere at 10:30 in the morning and who desperately needed wake-up caffeine.

Luckily for him, one of the sponsors of the fest was Caffe Espresso so he ordered an Italian coffee from the very Italian proprietor (dark curly hair, dashing scarf). When asked what I wanted, I declined, saying I don't drink coffee.

"You don't drink coffee?" he asked, clearly appalled. "That's not Italian!" Even given my Irish heritage, I somehow felt like a failure to this man.

The food part of the morning was a surprise since I'd always gone to later screenings and they couldn't very well serve dinner before noon. We were treated to two kinds of soup, one a veggie lentil and the other a chicken stock-based soup with egg and Parmesan; both were terrific. Accompanying that were Prosciutto and cheese on rolls, smoked salmon and cream cheese with capers on crostini, hard-cooked eggs in a tuna cream sauce and a rich little dessert, which I was told consisted of an almond cookie dipped in egg and covered in phyllo dough and baked.

It was a perfectly lovely Italian breakfast.

We were seeing Fists in the Pocket directed by Marco Bellocchio from 1965. Made at a time when post-war Italy was still adrift, it was a very dark film. It was Bellocchio's first film, made on an extremely slim budget by a young anarchist searching for his way in the film world. The movie about a highly dysfunctional family was all about subverting institutions: the family, marriage, the church, even the confessional.

Considered part of the Second Italian Renaissance, the film was considered at the time to be the start of a new era in Italian film. Given the heavy plot, complete with epilepsy, blindness and murder, it must have been shocking when it came out.

But it was 1965, so there was a 60s party scene, complete with stylish young people dancing to current music and clearly part of the "in" crowd.

The last minute of the film was completely improvised by the lead actor, the anti-hero who was considered an Italian Brando. It was an incredibly powerful way to resolve the family drama and no doubt difficult for audiences at the time. Bob Ellis from VCU introduced the film and said that when he first saw it, he found it to be the most excruciating and depressing film he'd ever seen.

That said, it was absolutely worth getting up early to see on a Saturday morning. Bourgeois dysfunctional families may not be a new topic, but in the hands of a serious Italian talent like Bellocchio, it was riveting.

Breakfast from the kitchens of Mam Zu's. Edo's Squid and 8 1/2 only made it more irresistible. It truly was a feast for all the senses.

Silent Movies in the Basement

As part of the Silent Classics series that the Richmond Moving Image Co-Op is currently putting on, today I saw perhaps the first successful sequel ever, Son of the Sheik, starring Rudolph Valentino. I'd never even seen a Valentino movie before, much less the original The Sheik, not that it mattered given the plot: hero falls in love, is duped and tortured, finds lover is loyal, wipes out bad guys and rides into sunset. All in 68 minutes.

It was Valentino's last film before an early death at age 31 and, as it came out in 1926, made only shortly before the advent of talkies. By that time in silent film production, fewer and fewer title cards were used and the actors conveyed quite a bit themselves, without the crutch of cards. Valentino seemed to rely on a lot of sultry looks and cigarette smoking, which was apparently what the female portion of the audience liked. I tend to agree with his critics of the era; he seemed a tad foppish, which may well have translated as continental at the time. He was, I learned, Italian.

The final film in the series will be Sunrise, made in 1927 and supposedly much copied for its use of lighting and camera. I think I'm spoiled, though, because I miss the musical accompaniment with a silent film. The last credit in the movie was the composer of the organ score, which obviously was not being played in the downtown library's auditorium. Too bad, really, because music, like bacon, makes practically everything better. Even Valentino.

How to Watch a Silent Movie

I juts started getting into silent films in the last couple of years.

And even then mainly because of my friend Jameson and his monthly Silent Music Revival, a showing of a silent film with a band providing live music accompaniment.

 He's suggested several films for me to check out since then and now I'm quick to take advantage of an opportunity to see a silent film.

The Richmond Moving Image Co-Op (the people who do the Italian Film Fest, the James River Film Fest, Flicker and more) started a 4-part Silent Classics series last week and today I went to see Buster Keaton in "College" at the downtown library's auditorium.

Keaton was just as stone-faced as I'd been told he always was and the film showed off his surprising athletic prowess as he tried to win the most popular girl on campus.

The film was released in 1927, so there were references to colored waiters and girls being expelled for having a boy in their room.

Very quaint.

VCU's film guru Mike Jones spoke before the film and told the audience that we'd be seeing the film on 16mm, a rare treat these days and only because Randolph-Macon College divested itself of all its old 16mm films about seven years ago and VCU was the lucky recipient.

As Jones pointed out, there's a certain retro pleasure to watching a film accompanied by the whirring of the projector.

To a fan of silent movies, it's as enjoyable a part of revisiting the past as the movie itself.