Frusta in the Komiya Collection

Frusta’s contribution to the superior quality and style of Ambrosio’s productions, and therefore to its international success, cannot be overestimated. When searching for prints, we found many of his important films in three major collections of early European cinema outside Italy, where they had ended up due to exportation: the Desmet Collection (at the EYE Filmmuseum Amsterdam), the Joye Collection (at the BFI – National Archive) and the Komiya Collection (at the National Film Archive of Japan). Jean Desmet was a Dutch distributor, Abbé Joye a Jesuit priest screening in Switzerland second-hand film prints bought in Germany and Tomijiro Komiya (1897-1975) a great film lover and private collector living in Tokyo. He collected mainly European motion pictures – imported and screened in great number in Japan before World War I –, and he clearly was a great fan of Italian cinema. When his collection arrived thirty years ago (in 1988) at the then National Film Center of Japan, it had been badly damaged by two wars, theft and nitrate decomposition. The magnificent remains – complete prints and many fragments – have been identified by film historian Hiroshi Komatsu and restored by the National Film Center.
The programme includes three fragments of films scripted by Arrigo Frusta that do not exist in any other form: a taste of a more extensive section dedicated to the Komiya Collection planned in co-production with the National Film Archive of Japan for the next Cinema Ritrovato.

Mariann Lewinsky

A game of chess with death

Like most screenwriters, Frusta loves to pen characters obsessed with something: with love, revenge and, especially, time. Whether it be the time of a life not lived (La madre e la morte), of a game played for too long (Una partita a scacchi) or of shirking a responsibility destined to be a source of regret (La maschera pietosa), time is always too little. Death inevitably always shows up with his chipped scythe and bottles of poison concealed in ladies’ sleeves. A death that has to take its time to be fully lived, copying the tempo of theatre and customary plot twists (La ribalta). The films of this section, a fascinating puzzle of different ‘genres’, are devoted to these lost cause heroes fighting the inevitable passing of time, like the irresistible nut in Buon anno! who absolutely refuses to accept that it is 1910. The only positive exception is the prince Ghiacciolino (little icicle); stuck in an endless winter, he figures out how to change his stagnant situation winning back the love of Raggio di sole (sunbeam) and the alternating cycle of the seasons.

Stella Dagna