The film:

“Professor Stout and his friend Thynne are anxious to discover some way of ‘raising the wind’. Their sole asset is an old clarionet and some poems. They retire to a public recreation ground. Here they see lovers promenading in couples. Two pairs attract them, and Stout determines to enlist the sympathy of one pair of lovers by blowing on his clarionet, while Thynne tries the other couple with his poems. The plan works so well that they change over, and are again successful in extracting money from the two victims. They meet afterwards to divide the spoils and laugh over their victims. The two young fellows follow them to a restaurant. Their victims, getting together some of their friends, force Stout and Thynne to give them examples of their talent or be handed over to the police. Stout commences with the clarionet, and can only extract a hideous noise, and Thynne is also discovered to be a fraud, and the pair soon have to undergo punishment. The police arrive and march Stout and his friend off to prison.” 

[The Bioscope, 18.7.1912]

The film restoration:

The preservation of the film is part of a project to valorize the collection of Italian silent films that are conserved at the Filmoteca de Catalunya in Barcelona; the project is promoted by the Fondazione Cineteca di Bologna, by the Museo Nazionale del Cinema di Torino and by the Cineteca del Friuli of Gemona. A dupe negative was printed – using the wetgate option - from a black and white nitrate print (240 m) with Spanish intertitles. The preservation was carried out in 2007 at the L’Immagine Ritrovata laboratory in Bologna.

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• Silent films
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