21:00 - Teatro Verdi Pordenone
THE IRON HORSE (US 1924; 132 min)
by John Ford with George O’Brien, Madge Bellamy
Score composed by John Lanchbery, performed by the Orchestra da Camera di Pordenone conducted by Ben Palmer

A "super Western," involving high production budgets and extensive location shooting, The Iron Horse dealt with the construction of the first transcontinental railroad route from Omaha, Nebraska, to Sacramento, California, a feat accomplished between 1863 and 1869, which effectively superseded the old wagon trail. Attention was immediately focused on John Ford, described by Moving Picture World (13.12.1924) as the "youthful Fox Film Corporation megaphone wielder, who rose to directorial pre-eminence overnight as the result of his splendid picturization."
Trains and tracks became rich sources of pictorial invention. Ford stages and shoots scenes organized along or against the perspective formed by the tracks, inside cars, outside on flat cars, under the cars, and on the roof of the trains. He shoots from moving trains, and trains in movement. Many beautiful shots pit the train's movement against the direction and quality of other kinds of movement, of men on horseback, of cattle and cowboys, of dense crowds moving with or against the train. Attention to framing and figure movement provide a sense of the director's unbridled imagination – he went wild with the comparatively high budget he enjoyed for the first time in this film, and the freedom from studio supervision that he enjoyed on location.