Professor Richard Abel co-curated two sets of programs for the Pordenone Silent Film Festival, October 5-12, 2019. The first, with Diane and Richard Koszarski, included seven programs of William S. Hart westerns from 1914 to 1918: seven two-reelers and seven features. Several, such as incomplete The Aryan (1916), Wolf Lowry (1917), and The Gunfighter (1917) were recently rediscovered and restored. One program also screened Hart’s “Introduction” to the 1939 re-release of Tumbleweeds (1920), a rare audio record of what a late 19th-century actor’s delivery of a speech sounded like.
The second, with Victoria Duckett, included two programs of films starring the French performer Mistinguett: L’Epouvante (1911), La Glu (1913), Chignon d’or (1916), and Fleur de Paris (1916). In the latter two films, she demonstrates her versatility in multiple roles; in La Glu and Chignon d’or, she shows off (at the age of nearly 40) her famous dancing skills.
