Ph. Margherita Caprilli (live at Cinema Modernissimo, Bologna)
Director: Victor Seastrom [Victor Sjöström]
Year: 1924
Country: USA
Running time: 86'
Live sonorization by Laura Agnusdei (tenor sax, electronic), Simone Cavina (drums, percussions, electronic), Stefano Pilia (electric guitar, electronic), Antonio Raia (sax, chalumeau, objects)

Thanks to Cineteca di Bologna and Andrea Peraro

He who gets slapped

by Victor Sjöström

“A chilling study of humiliation and obsession, blending circus-world spectacle with symbolism and philosophical undertones, He Who Gets Slapped was Swedish master Victor Sjöström’s second Hollywood film. This is a tale of the fickleness of social status and a treatise on “man as clown”. There were major transformations at work in and around this seminal silent: Sjöström’s full transformation into Seastrom, a major Hollywood director; the merger of Goldwyn Pictures and Metro Pictures Corporation into Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, with this film as the new company’s first production; and, in the story, Lon Chaney’s metamorphosis from a heartbroken and disillusioned scientist researching the origins of mankind, into a clown letting lions loose on evil men” [Ehsan Khoshbakht]

The soundtrack by Laura Agnusdei (tenor sax, electronic), Simone Cavina (drums, percussion, electronic), Stefano Pilia (electric guitar, electronic), and Antonio Raia (sax, chalumeau, objects) skillfully moves along the delicate balance between respect and creative freedom, bringing Sjöström's film into a new dimension, enhancing its original pathos up to the final emotional climax.