A Summer Evening at the Cinema

Sultry summer evenings should ideally be spent sipping chilled lemonade (or beer if the company prefers it) over lazily meandering conversations with someone who can keep your senses from slipping into a heat induced apathetic slumber. But paucity of such company prevents one from making the most of such evenings. Irate, when my attempts to spend the evening in the company of the one such person were thwarted, I chose instead to spend the evening in the air-conditioned environs of NFAI watching Pinocchio.

The Consulate General of Italy in Bombay in collaboration with NFAI had screened Gant Guilio Antamarro’s Pinocchio (1911), an absolutely wonderful experience. Restored by the Fondazione Cineteca Italiana (Italian Film Archive) as a part of an ongoing project to restore films and valorise the patrimony of cinematic culture, the film was preceded by a short documentary on the subject of film restoration. Even given the fact that we have burdened the earth with an immense amount of junk, I was quite horrified, to say the least, by the brutal massacre of films. Needless to say the need to restore and conserve this medium was impressed on me by the short film.

Coming back to Pinocchio – from an era, when films were still silent, the scenario being explained by way of intertitles, the film had an enchanting appeal. The narrative, digressing a little from the original to incorporate encounters with Red Indian and the Canadians, was most delightfully and eccentrically fun. In fact I’d say that the film was one of the cutest films I’ve seen. The icing on the cake was the background music. Wait a minute, you say, background music? Didn’t I say it was a silent film? Yes indeed it was – the background score was provided a live band. The Antonio Zambrini trio, widely recognised for their jazz music not only in Italy, but elsewhere in Europe, provided a live score for the film. I was extremely impressed by their evocative composition and the attention to detail that made the film come alive in front of us. But what moved me the most was the piece they played at the end, which made an already beautiful evening, almost sublime.

I could have asked for more – dinner with the said person since my evening plans hadn’t worked out. But compromises must be made and the summer has just begun. There shall be other evenings and other opportunities. Insha Allah.