The hottest ticket in town: the 40th Il Cinema Ritrovato

Festivals, like films, begin life before they officially open. For Il Cinema Ritrovato, the trickle of information about the programme becomes something of a torrent in the early days of June, when the schedule goes online, and festivalgoers have to make tough decisions about what to catch and what to miss over the course of its nine days. This ‘XL’ (40th, but also Xtra-Large) edition of the festival was my first Ritrovato, and while I was a bit blindsided by the programme reveal – and had to take a day off work just to feel like I was across it all – I was keenly aware that my festival had now begun, a little under two weeks before proceedings properly kicked off. With festival pass in hand, I knew that the week leading up would be the best chance to secure seats for many of the screenings, and indeed as I made my way out of the online booking queue a mere minutes after places were made available, I could see that more than a few of the sessions had already sold out their first tranche of tickets. There were other opportunities to reserve seats online later on, but given the European heatwave that would hit Bologna fairly hard this summer, I was reluctant to stand in any of the last-minute queues, sweltering away on the off chance I could sneak into a film.

Festival Opening, Cinema Modernissimo

Given all this pre-festival excitement, it was fitting that the first official session in the underground (and therefore slightly cooler) Cinema Modernissimo was devoted entirely to trailers, teasing us about the buffet of films to come, of some that weren’t at the festival, and others that conjured pangs of guilt in realising which treasures we would likely miss out on seeing this year due to schedule clashes. The 70-minute montage of trailers (all screened seamlessly on film) was lovingly put together by Cassie Blake and Tessa Idlewine at the Academy Film Archive, and more than simply advertising the films of the programme, opened a window on to the past to show how such classics were excerpted for promotion to (United States) audiences throughout the twentieth-century. Greeted with much laughter was the hyper-American pronunciation in the promo for Rocco e i suoi fratelli (Rocco and His Brothers, 1960), which promised us Al-AYN Delon starring in a film by Lu-CHEE-no Visconti. Funny, too, was William Castle’s stern warning that his 1964 horror movie The Night Walker, a late-career Barbara Stanwyck vehicle that was not included in Bologna’s “All She Desires” strand devoted to the actress, “might be too much for you.” Another trailer, for Mitchell Leisen and Walon Green’s 1967 Las Vegas time capsule, Spree, was humorous in its own right, but also provided the only glimpse at a documentary film not featured in the programme for the good reason that it has long been deemed lost.

Co-director Cecilia Cenciarelli’s powerful opening salvo helped to underscore the importance of these paratexts, which she connected to microhistory, a field co-founded by Carlo Ginzburg, a Bologna resident and historian who had passed away in the city only a few days earlier. Thinking from the margins, from the perspective of the abandoned and the lost and the minor, seemed a perfect entrée to this event, which of course showcases major talents like Stanwyck and Visconti, but also offers an unparalleled platform for the discovery of hidden gems, of that which – for whatever reason – has been heretofore under-viewed, undervalued. (Chafing slightly against this was a thread I picked up on in multiple conversations and introductions pontificating about whether or not “X” or “Y” film was “flawed” or whether it could be deemed a “masterpiece,” a category I do not much care for.)

A case in point that connected with this discussion was the work of Daisuke Ito, whose films had to this point received negligible attention. Ito’s career spanned nearly 50 years, but from the “Shadows and Steel” programme curated by Alexander Jacoby and Johan Nordström, I was especially drawn to two of the silent screenings. The first featured a duo of Ito’s unfinished works, fragments in a quite different way than those trailers I had seen earlier in the day since it is unlikely we will ever see the fuller films from which they are drawn; the second was a longer effort, Otsurae Jirokichi (Jirokichi the Rat, 1931), the only of Ito’s silent features remaining completely intact. While I will admit that I found the plot of the latter quite difficult to follow in the moment or retain after exiting the cinema, what really captured my attention was the narration by famous benshi Ichiro Kataoka, alongside the traditional musical accompaniment of Karada Kisayo (on the percussion instruments collectively called narimono) and Kawashima Nobuko (on the biwa, a traditional Japanese lute), all of whom received a standing ovation for the screening in the Modernissimo.

Jirokichi the Rat, Cinema Modernissimo

As with the unrepeatable experience of seeing the Ito films like this, my selections were guided largely by the rarity of the screenings, whether because of print scarcity or because of the offering of an experience that could not be reproduced anywhere else. Even given the wide online availability of rare films for those who know where to look, the beauty of Ritrovato still often lies in the hope of seeing works that are not otherwise guaranteed to see the light of day. In this regard, I was sad to have missed Mitchell Leisen’s Cradle Song, which festival co-director Ehsan Khoshbakht informed viewers had not had a screening since the 1930s! But I was pleased to have made it to two of the three Warner Bros. mid-century 3D restorations, for André de Toth’s The Bounty Hunter (1954) and for Roy del Ruth’s bonkers Phantom of the Rue Morgue (1954), which went full tilt at Poe’s short story with garish colour and set design that were fully brought to life by the additional depth of field. With late-night attendees in the Modernissimo donning their special glasses for the occasion, and with both features preceded by Warner’s animated shorts, the tone was perfect for these uniquely theatrical events.

The single session I saw from the “Century of Cinema: 1906” strand provided another unmissable experience. Curated again this year by Karl Wratschko and the festival’s outgoing co-director Mariann Lewinsky (replaced by Emilie Cauquy), this section presented an array of 64 films grouped in screenings not by their similarities, but instead modelled “closely on the way film exhibitors at the time organised their programmes, aiming to achieve a dramaturgy of rapid change and a variety of emotional aesthetic impacts by combining titles from different types of production such as comical sketches, drama, féeries and topical films.”¹ The programme was notably “subject to change,” and as such we were treated in my session to G.A. Smith’s Kinemacolor experiment Tartans of Scottish Clans instead of his Two Clowns, which Wratschko wryly informed us would have commanded an eye-watering $9,000 screening fee, and so should be viewed much more affordably on YouTube instead. The programme – backed by a delightful four-handed piano performance from Gabriel Thibaudeau and Alice Zecchinelli – was capped off with Georges Méliès’s comical féerie, La Fée Carabosse ou la Poignard fatal, a funny and convoluted hand-coloured fantasy story narrated live with terrific verve by the committed imbonitrice Julie Linquette.

As someone who admittedly doesn’t gravitate towards silent cinema, I set myself an unofficial rule/obstruction of seeing one silent session each day and was very pleased that I did. Jumping ahead slightly in time, Oliver Hanley’s “A Hundred Years Ago: 1926” programme provided a wonderful assortment of animated works in the outdoor setting of the Piazzetta Pier Paolo Pasolini. Here, the steamy spectacle of the gigantic carbon arc lamp projector gave cause for attendees to turn their heads to the back of the courtyard just as they were also watching the action unfold on screen. A number of shorts in my 10PM session were accompanied by the lively piano of festival stalwart Meg Morley, while the centrepiece, a screening of Lotte Reiniger’s early animated feature, The Adventures of Prince Achmed, was given a truly impressive musical treatment, as Valeria Sturbia impressively managed both voice and multiple instruments, including an ethereal theremin that fit the otherworldly setting of the film.

One other surprising silent film experience was Sam Wood’s Sick Abed, a 1920 Wallace Reid vehicle that formed part of the “Matinée Idols: Women’s Male Stars” strand alongside films revolving around the bright lights of Rudolph Valentino, Richard Barthelmess, and Thomas Meighan. Charlotte Barker, the director of film preservation and restoration at Paramount Pictures, offered an informative introduction that framed my reading of the film as I watched. Reid, a tall, handsome and prolific performer for Famous Players, was injured during a film shoot in 1919, but was pressured by his studio into continuing, prescribed morphine to alleviate the pain of his serious head wound. He would soon become addicted, and succumbed while trying to recover in 1923, aged only 31. Despite its clear comedic intentions, Sick Abed resonates in a strangely inverse way with Reid’s unhappy biography. Here, Reginald Jay (“Wally” Reid) – unwittingly the cause of a couple’s marital disharmony – is to be called as a key witness in their divorce proceedings. The wife’s lawyers, in an effort to quash his testimony, consign him to bed, saying he is too ill to take the stand. Just as his studio drugged him so that he could continue to work, so is the leading man’s character here ordered to feign illness by another interested party. The film, accompanied by delightful harp (Eduardo Raon) and piano (Maud Nelissen) also features a fascinating plot of a female screenwriter (Winifred Greenwood) conjuring Reid as an idol with her very words, which in one shot we see uniquely before us on the screen.

Sunrise, Piazza Maggiore

The first confirmed film in the programme I heard about this year was F.W. Murnau’s Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans (1927). Slated to screen outdoors in the fabled Piazza Maggiore, I desperately wanted to see this 4K restoration with a new score composed by Timothy Brock and performed live by the Orchestra of the Teatro Comunale di Bologna. Apparently I was not alone in this, with the 2,000 seats in the square almost immediately booking out. (This sadly meant that I also missed out on being the proud owner of a limited edition San Francisco Film Preserve Sunrise paper hand fan.) I showed up anyway in the hope of squeezing in at short notice, to no avail; there were surely another 1,000 bodies arrayed in seats at the adjacent bistros and on the surrounding steps, as well as many hundreds like myself who stood stoically up the back for nearly 2 hours, finally basking in the glow of Janet Gaynor’s radiant face and the sun itself that closes out this beautiful tale. Admittedly, I am not the world’s greatest fan of outdoor screenings, but was pleased to have enjoyed the Piazza experience at least once, and was blown away by the music; maybe next time I’ll even get a chance to sit down!

Like Sunrise, there were other films that everyone had apparently already seen, but which would manifest anew here with the right audience and in the right setting. One of these for many was likely Stella Dallas (King Vidor, 1937), which I myself had never seen before, and eagerly anticipated this 35mm screening. The film itself was a revelation, and I would have happily watched it again right afterwards. What was also striking about the screening at this particular festival was the way in which—as many others have commented both offline and on podcasts—the person introducing the film was unceremoniously clapped off after taking almost 20 minutes before the feature started. In their defence, the French-language introduction needed to be translated twice (per festival protocols) into English and Italian, meaning even less time to talk, and I did feel for the presenter. But truth be told, overly long preambles like this—and others I heard about on the grapevine—threatened to blow out the tightly-wound festival schedule, and often left patrons scrambling to make their next screenings. So: here’s to those speakers who stuck to a ‘tight 10’ (including time for translation), and to the comperes (often festival co-directors) who ushered them towards the finish line if they needed help!

One of the trailers from the opening session in the Modernissimo was for Ken Russell’s The Devils (1971), in which viewers were warned that this was “not a film for everyone.” Of course, the self-selecting Ritrovato crowd are not “everyone,” and predictably flocked en masse to the sold-out world premiere of the director’s cut of the film, shown here for the first time on 35mm as compared to the Betacam version that was made a couple of decades ago (or the 4K restoration screened at Cannes in May). I was especially glad to have seen this version of the film for my first ever viewing of The Devils, and given its long history of censorship, I wasn’t surprised that it was one of the hottest tickets in town, with the standby line seemingly the longest of the festival. Another British film in a very different vein was Robert Hamer’s The Long Memory (1953), which was introduced with helpful context by the BFI’s James Bell, and which was for me surprising in its own way. From the director of the better-known Kind Hearts and Coronets (1949), this tonally chameleonic postwar noir set mostly in the Thames Estuary east of London felt deeply connected with its shooting location, and had a roster of richly-drawn seriocomic characters to match.

Against the professionally finished restorations seen throughout the festival, the lovingly-completed direct cinema work Harlem School 1970 (Phil Gries), made over half a century ago but never commercially released, demonstrated—thanks to the efforts of Ben Wolf—the possibilities of self-taught restoration processes today. Another great vérité documentary from this period about Black life in the United States shot mostly down the road in Madison Square Garden was also making a belated appearance here, but only managed to do so after an unfortunate cock-up. On the first day of the festival, instead of the world premiere of William Greaves’ The Fight (1974) taking place in the DAMSLab cinema, a miscommunication somehow led to the delivery of the DCP for a different 1974 film about the fighter formerly known as Cassius Clay by a different William: Muhammad Ali: The Greatest by William Klein. It took less than a minute before those responsible for the restoration identified this error, and the screening was halted in its tracks. Luckily, I was able to catch the film a few days later, absent its helpful introduction from Brian Belovarac (Janus Films). A documentary of two halves that has much in store for boxing agnostics like me, there’s plenty of electric back and forth between Ali and his opponent, Joe Frazier, prior to their “Fight of the Century” showdown, followed by the 15 rounds of the fight itself (essentially in its entirety), a comeback for “the Greatest” after his refusal to fight in Vietnam. And it’s encouraged me to now chase down the Klein documentary as well.

The Fight

While this small mistake was a bit disconcerting at the outset, it barely registered later on. In a festival boasting over 500 films and with countless moving parts, the fact that this was the most notable glitch I witnessed or heard about is nothing short of remarkable. Across the six days I was in town, with the mercury climbing and tempers of the 5,000+ passholders often a little frayed (especially as refusals of entry were increasingly enforced for ticket holders—like me—turning up to a booked screening with fewer than ten minutes to spare), all staff acquitted themselves wonderfully well in order to keep things moving. Indeed, I was constantly reminded how this utopian cinephile space was being carved out and constantly maintained over the course of the week by the labours of many devoted people working together, and felt privileged to be cocooned from the real troubles of our time, including from those execrable “white men with horrible hair and horrible ties that run the world” who co-director Gian Luca Farinelli called out in his opening speech. (We were not, however, completely shielded from the heat, which lingered even in the most air conditioned of cinemas, and made its unwelcome presence felt especially in the finely ageing Cinema Europa, where bodies are arranged in the closest of quarters.)

“The Sixteen-Millimeter Shrine”

In this context, the already allegorical experience of watching “The Sixteen-Millimeter Shrine” (1959), an episode of The Twilight Zone directed by Mitchell Leisen, was heightened all the more. An ageing Hollywood star, played by Ida Lupino, locks herself at home projecting her old films in the dark. Reliving the glory years through old footage while refusing to engage with the world, she finally enters the screen itself, becoming one with the image rather than facing the horrors of growing old and irrelevant. Would that we could all stay forever in the cinema! Part of the “Easy Living with Mitchell Leisen” programme, this was far from the only discovery in a strong batch of films that were unfamiliar to me, including the warmly funny Glenn Ford caper, Young Man with Ideas (1952), and the unexpectedly stirring Fred MacMurray/Carole Lombard comedy of remarriage, Swing High, Swing Low (1937), which opens with a stunning meet-cute making innovative use of the vertical movements of the Panama Canal’s lock system. One Leisen that did not capture my interest as much was the more serious Italian-set Death Takes a Holiday (1934), but I will still be making it my utmost priority to track down the rest of his films where possible… and will hope for future restorations of those that currently have no digital existence.

I was conscious from the moment of booking how Anglo-American my schedule seemed to be skewing, but this shifted a little towards the end of my time in Bologna with a couple of notable films from the ‘Cinemalibero’ selection. I was particularly taken with Paul Rocha’s Mudar de Vida (Change of Life, 1966), a Portuguese cinema novo film that was clearly indebted to Deus e o diabo na terra do sol (Black God, White Devil, 1964). Given its imported Brazilian star (Geraldo del Rey) moving and talking in ways that were very similar to his character’s in Glauber’s earlier film, and with the coastal setting orienting the plot to the ocean, I’m sure that others have already pointed out these connections. Another story of a rural community was Lino Brocka’s devastating Tinimbang Ka Ngunit Kulang (Weighed But Found Wanting, 1974), which deals with the heavy stuff of abortion, leprosy and abuse, but in its young main character, played by Christopher de Leon, also channels hope for a progressive future where the tides might turn against religious and gendered constraints.

Weighed But Found Wanting

The punishing schedule I’d set myself was already taking its toll by day 3, where I hit the wall after mistakenly thinking I could manage five to six films each day. For next time, I’ll remember that a steady diet of three or four sessions per day, interspersed with human interactions, square meals and maybe even a quick nap, is much more sustainable. I’m not sure whether my stubborn refusal to slow down led to my lukewarm reaction to Ritwik Ghatak’s Komal Gandhar (A Soft Note on a Sharp Scale, 1961) on day 5, but I noted that there were far more walkouts for this early evening screening of a film about a radical 1950s Calcutta theatre group than I had seen before or since. For different reasons I was a little unenthused by Gunvor Nelson’s experimental works shown on 16mm, of which I saw My Name is Oona (1969) and Moon’s Pool (1973); both works were undeniably impressive, but I ultimately found it quite hard to calibrate to this type of work in the midst of watching mostly narrative feature films.

As a way of freeing up some of my festival time, I had managed to see Tsui Hark’s restored Do Ma Daan (Peking Opera Blues, 1986) on my way to Italy at the Shanghai International Film Festival (a truly odd AI-embracing event which also boasted a full Harry Potter franchise retrospective), meaning that I didn’t catch the session in Bologna. Anyway, it’s a hell of a lot better looking than some of the suspect digital copies of Hark’s films I’ve seen floating around online, and I was pleased to see it joined here by a restoration of Dao (The Blade, 1995), a screening I was just too tired to attend on my last night. In any case, my final screening of the festival happened to be another one from Hong Kong. Angie Chen introduced her film Fa Gai Si Doi (My Name Ain’t Suzie, 1985) by explaining that it was a corrective to Richard Quine’s racist 1960 romantic drama The World of Suzie Wong. Produced by Shaw Brothers but shelved by the company for reasons, as Chen mentioned, “that we would have to deduce for ourselves” (AKA the film’s lesbian undertones), this screening was truly a triumphant rising from the ashes. As the credits rolled, Chen was greeted with an emotional standing ovation from the gathered crowd, and it was a joy to see her and her film being deservedly given their proper dues before an appreciative audience. I hope it continues to travel well beyond Bologna.

My Name Ain’t Suzie

Just as the festival’s reputation preceded it, so too will Ritrovato stay with me not only as a series of exuberant memories—of images on screen and of socialising in between sessions—but also in the form of the official catalogue, a handsome 500-page doorstop of a thing full of terrific contextualizing essays that my kitchen scales tell me weighs in at nearly half a kilo. My bathroom scales tell a different story about my own post-festival weight which, after all the spritz, the birra, the formaggio and the strozzapreti, was not at all found wanting. With attendance figures rising year on year, and Bologna an almost overbearingly hot and heaving mecca for cinephiles this summer, I do wonder if the festival will itself continue to expand, or if it will try, like me, to contract ever so slightly in future. Either way, I will be back before too long!

Il Cinema Ritrovato
20 – 28 June 2026
https://ilcinemaritrovato.it/en/

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