SF Silent Film Festival Opening Night

When I entered the bustling lobby of the Castro Theatre for opening night of the SF Silent Film Festival, I was almost face to face with Kevin Brownlow, the great champion of silent film from way before it was cool. Sporting a festival baseball cap, he amiably chatted with audience members as if he were just another attendee. There were many women in period costume, & the crowd filled both the auditorium & the balcony.

A gleeful Rob Byrne, president of the festival’s board of directors, introduced the event & remembered Frank Buxton, a long-time festival sponsor & board member, who passed away earlier this year. Mr. Byrne read out a spirited proclamation honoring Mr. Buxton & presented it to Mr. Buxton’s widow & daughter. Mike Daruty, a senior executive at NBCUniversal, announced his company’s plans to restore 10 silent films, in addition to 15 that were announced at a previous festival.

The opening night film was NBCUniversal’s very clean 4K restoration of the 1928 The Man Who Laughs. The movie is a big-budget entertainment & a mature product of the silent era. We get a hero to pity, a villain to boo, a sentimental love story, ghoulish horror, comedy & a climactic chase, complete with rioting mob, sword fighting & rooftop stunts. Conrad Veidt plays the title character with elegance & taste, even in distinctly weird scenes involving his reactions to other characters' reactions to his grotesque disfigurement.

The Berklee Silent Film Orchestra, a tight ensemble of twelve musicians, performed a score by seven students of the Berklee College of Music. The music was in the style of traditional symphonic film music & set a strong emotional tone for each scene. It used a lot of repeated melodic motifs, & at various times I was reminded of Wagner, Philip Glass, Leonard Bernstein & Danny Elfman. The composers took turns conducting, quickly & invisibly replacing one another at the podium. The orchestra played with precision, & live sound effects were perfectly timed to the movie.

The specialist audience is one of the best things about this festival, & it was a thrill when the theater spontaneously erupted into joyful cheers & applause for Homo the Wolf at the movie's racing climax. The excitement extended into a thunderous standing ovation for the student composers & orchestra.


§ The Man Who Laughs
111 minutes | USA | 1928 | d. Paul Leni
Live musical accompaniment by the Berklee Silent Film Orchestra

§ San Francisco Silent Film Festival 2018
May 30, 2018, 7:00 pm
Castro Theatre

SF Silent Film Festival 2018 Program

§ San Francisco Silent Film Festival 2018 Program
Castro Theatre

Wednesday, May 30, 2018

7:00 pm
THE MAN WHO LAUGHS
111 minutes | USA | 1928 | d. Paul Leni
Berklee Silent Film Orchestra

9:00 pm
Opening Night Party
McRoskey Mattress Company

Thursday, May 31, 2018

10:00 am
Amazing Tales from the Archives
100 minutes | Free
Live musical accompaniment by Donald Sosin

1:00 pm
SOFT SHOES
With short: Detained (1924, d. Scott Pembroke, starring Stan Laurel, 17 m.)
45 minutes / with short: 62 minutes | USA | 1925 | d. Lloyd Ingraham
Donald Sosin

2:45 pm
MASTER OF THE HOUSE (DU SKAL ÆRE DIN HUSTRU)
107 minutes | Denmark | 1925 | d. Carl Th. Dreyer
Stephen Horne

5:15 pm
AN INN IN TOKYO (TÔKYÔ NO YADO)
80 minutes | Japan | 1935 | d. Yasujirô Ozu
Guenter Buchwald and Frank Bockius

7:15 pm
PEOPLE ON SUNDAY (MENSCHEN AM SONNTAG)
73 minutes | Germany | 1930 | d. Robert Siodmak, Edgar G. Ulmer, Billy Wilder, Fred Zinnemann
Mont Alto Motion Picture Orchestra

9:15 pm
THE LIGHTHOUSE KEEPERS (GARDIENS DE PHARE)
83 minutes | France | 1929 | d. Jean Grémillon
Guenter Buchwald and Frank Bockius

Friday, June 1, 2018

10:00 am
GOOD REFERENCES
60 minutes | USA | 1920 | d. Roy William Neill
Donald Sosin

12:00 noon
THE OTHER WOMAN’S STORY
65 minutes | USA | 1925 | d. B.F. Stanley
Stephen Horne

2:00 pm
SILENT AVANT-GARDE
From the collection of Unseen Cinema: Early American Avant-Garde Films
70 minutes
Matti Bye Ensemble

4:15 pm
ROSITA
90 minutes | USA | 1923 | d. Ernst Lubitsch
Mont Alto Motion Picture Orchestra

6:30 pm
MOTHER KRAUSE’S JOURNEY TO HAPPINESS (MUTTER KRAUSENS FAHRT INS GLÜCK)
133 minutes | Germany | 1929 | d. Piel Jutzi
Sascha Jacobsen and the Musical Art Quintet

9:30 pm
POLICEMAN (KEISATSUKAN)
121 minutes | Japan | 1933 | d. Tomu Uchida
Stephen Horne

Saturday, June 2, 2018

10:00 am
NO MAN’S GOLD
65 minutes | USA | 1926 | d. Lewis Seiler
Donald Sosin and Frank Bockius

12:00 noon
MARE NOSTRUM
111 minutes | USA | 1926 | d. Rex Ingram
Kevin Brownlow Celebration
Stephen Horne and Frank Bockius

2:45 pm
TRAPPOLA
With short: San Francisco, 1906
52 minutes, with short: 62 minutes | Italy | 1922 | d. Eugenio Perego
Mont Alto Motion Picture Orchestra

4:30 pm
THE HOUND OF THE BASKERVILLES (DER HUND VON BASKERVILLE)
65 minutes | Germany | 1929 | d. Richard Oswald
Guenter Buchwald Ensemble

7:00 pm
THE SAGA OF GÖSTA BERLING (GÖSTA BERLINGS SAGA)
200 minutes | Sweden | 1924 | d. Mauritz Stiller
There will be a 30-minute intermission at approximately 8:45 pm
Matti Bye Ensemble

Sunday, June 3, 2018

10:00 am
SERGE BROMBERG PRESENTS
65 minutes | A selection of short silents from Lobster Films
Donald Sosin

12:00 noon
A THROW OF DICE (PRAPANCHA PASH)
74 minutes | India | 1929 | d. Franz Osten
Guenter Buchwald and Frank Bockius

2:15 pm
THE ANCIENT LAW (DAS ALTE GESETZ)
129 minutes | Germany | 1923 | d. E.A. Dupont
Donald Sosin Ensemble with Alicia Svigals

5:30 pm
FRAGMENT OF AN EMPIRE (OBLOMOK IMPERII)
109 minutes | USSR | 1929 | d. Fridrikh Ermler
Stephen Horne and Frank Bockius

8:00 pm
BATTLING BUTLER
74 minutes | USA | 1926 | d. Buster Keaton
Mont Alto Motion Picture Orchestra

Up-Coming: San Francisco Silent Film Festival 2018

I'm looking forward to the San Francisco Silent Film Festival, which this year expands to 23 screenings over 5 days, from classics to rarities to recent discoveries, all with live musical accompaniment. It opens this Wednesday night at the Castro Theatre, with the grandiosely melodramatic The Man Who Laughs, starring Conrad Veidt as the grotesque title character. The Berklee Silent Film Orchestra will perform their original score, recreating the experience of top-class film-going in the 1920s.

The festival's offerings are so uncommon that it's frustrating not to be able to take in everything. I'm always fascinated by the informative Amazing Tales from the Archives, showcasing the work of film preservationists & historians, which is offered free on Thursday, May 31st, at 10am. The avant-garde program on Friday, June 1st at 2pm looks intriguing. It includes films by Marcel Duchamp & Sergei Eisenstein & is accompanied by the stark, eerie music of the Matti Bye Ensemble.

Photo of Kevin Brownlow taken by Pamela Gentile

Venerated film historian Kevin Brownlow, whose book The Parade's Gone By gave me my mental image of the competitive, pioneering silent era, will attend the festival & celebrate his 80th birthday at the screening of Mare Nostrum on Saturday, June 2nd, at noon. Newly discovered footage of the aftermath of the 1906 San Francisco earthquake, probably shot in the last week of April 1906, will be shown at the Saturday, June 2nd, 2:45pm screening of the Italian comedy Trappola.

Greta Garbo fans should note that the version of The Saga of Gösta Berling playing on Saturday, June 2nd at 7p, is advertised as 200 minutes long. The Pacific Film Archive offers a supplementary program of Greta Garbo Rarities on Wednesday, May 30th at 3p. The delightful Serge Bromberg will present a program of early shorts from his Lobster Films archive on Sunday, June 3rd, at 10am. I'm excited to see that his list includes some of the startling "accidental 3D" films by Georges Méliès.

Klezmer violinist Alicia Svigals joins the Donald Sosin Ensemble to accompany The Ancient Law on Sunday, June 3rd at 2:25pm. This 1923 German film is apparently a source for The Jazz Singer. The salon-style Mont Alto Motion Picture Orchestra accompanies Battling Butler, starring Buster Keaton, to close out the festival on Sunday, June 3rd at 8p.

§ The San Francisco Silent Film Festival
May 30 - June 3, 2017
Castro Theatre

§ Festival Site | Schedule & Tickets | Festival Pass

SF Silent Film Festival - Day 3 - Continued

The afternoon of the 3rd day of the San Francisco Silent Film Festival, I stuck around for Tod Browning's 1920 Outside the Law, a film noir with a touch of domestic comedy. The demotic Eddie Muller, a last-minute replacement for Leonard Maltin, introduced the program. He expressed his admiration for the film's female lead, Priscilla Dean. Called "The Queen of Crookdom", she was supposedly as tough in real life as on-screen. The story is set in San Francisco's Chinatown, & Mr. Muller speculated that Dashiell Hammett must have seen it.

The suspenseful plot involves double-crossing mobsters & changes of heart, & I was easily caught up in the story. Ms. Dean's gutsy character comes across vividly, as does a scene-stealing child who remains irresistibly cute whether bawling his eyes out or toting an ax. Even though the Chinese are the good guys, I did not appreciate seeing white actors in yellowface, especially Lon Chaney grotesquely made up as a slit-eyed Chinaman. It was fun to spot Old St. Mary's in an exterior shot. It's a pity that the film image is badly deteriorated in the climactic fight sequence.

Pianist Stephen Horne & percussionist Frank Bockius accompanied with music that evoked the period & underscored the action. I enjoyed the sultry jazz theme they played for Ms. Dean's character. The duo resorted to oriental motifs & a gong for the Chinatown scenes. Somehow Mr. Horne also played the zither, flute or accordion at the same time as the piano. The audience laughed at an intertitle referring to San Francisco's "Knob Hill."

I came back at night for A Page of Madness, a 1926 avant-garde film from Japan that I'd been wanting to see for years. It is famously set in a madhouse & infamously lacks intertitles & a definitive scenario. The film has also not survived complete. Serge Bromberg got us in the mood for bafflement by beginning his introduction to the film in French. He admitted that he's seen it many times but never understands anything.

The director Teinosuke Kinugasa makes dazzling use of multiple exposure, rapid-fire montage & tracking shots, & every shot forms a striking composition. The actors are intense without being overly hysterical. I was impressed by the staging of the mob scenes. The movie triggered a lot of primal emotions, & I was especially freaked out by a scene in which the inmates put on masks.

The show was accompanied by the three-man Alloy Orchestra, playing electronic instruments and a large array of percussion. They made creepy use of harp, clarinet & theremin. The score was often loud & punishing & matched the movie's atmosphere of frenzy & menace.

During the breaks it was fun to catch up with Patrick, who I believe saw all 6 programs that day, & to see The Civic Center, who was a man on the go.

§ Outside the Law
Directed by Tod Browning | 1920 | USA | 76 min
Live musical accompaniment by Stephen Horne & Frank Bockius
San Francisco Silent Film Festival 2017
Saturday, June 3, 5:00pm
Castro Theatre

§ A Page of Madness (Kurutta Ichipeiji)
Directed by Teinosuke Kinugasa | 1926 | Japan | 70 min
Live musical accompaniment by Alloy Orchestra
San Francisco Silent Film Festival 2017
Saturday, June 3, 9:30pm
Castro Theatre

SF Silent Film Festival - Day 3

I started my 3rd day at the San Francisco Silent Film Festival at a program of shorts, dedicated to the memory of film preservationist David Shepard, who died this year. Festival board member Russell Merritt offered us personal remembrances of Mr. Shepard, & we saw a sweet home movie from 1942, in color, showing Mr. Shepard as a curious toddler.

Serge Bromberg, a friend & business associate of Mr. Shepard, selected the program of 10 shorts & introduced each with anecdotes & bits of movie history. The films were mostly from the 1st decade of the 20th century, & an ebullient Mr. Bromberg evoked the novelty & playfulness of early cinema. There was a lot of laughter. I especially enjoyed seeing Pathé's 1907 First Prize for Cello Playing, which parodies concert audiences in a neat 2 minutes, & Émile Cohl's discombobulating 1908 Fantasmagorie, considered to be the 1st animated cartoon. A few of the films had stenciled or hand-painted color & were lovely to watch.

The Dancing Pig records a disconcerting vaudeville act featuring a performer in an enormous pig costume & was a hit with tweeting festival-goers. Mr. Bromberg provided a live narration to Méliès's 1906 The Witch, as would have been done back in the day, though the original narrators were presumably a lot less cheeky than Mr. Bromberg. Pianist Donald Sosin & percussionist Frank Bockius played bounding, jazzy accompaniments to the films.

After lunch, I attended the showing of Filibus, an unashamedly silly Italian crime caper from 1915. At the screening, board president Robert Byrne presented the Festival Award to  archivists Elif Rongen-Kaynakçi & Frank Roumen of the EYE Filmmuseum in Amsterdam. Mr. Roumen complimented the festival's keen audiences, & Ms. Rongen-Kaynakçi introduced the film. The title character of Filibus travels around in a sort of stealth airship, & Ms. Rongen-Kaynakçi posited a connection between early cinema & aviation. As a prelude, she presented a brief documentary film about the launching of a balloon. She admitted that she knew almost nothing about it, other than that it likely records a Germany military operation. She has yet to discover the meaning of the initials DAZD, which can be barely glimpsed on the balloon.

The festival audience got into the spirit of the cat-and-mouse high jinks of Filibus & clearly approved when the cross-dressing villainess's male persona seems to court another female character. They also applauded a rescue scene in which she is hoisted out of a window & into the sky. The Mont Alto Motion Picture Orchestra, consisting of piano, violin, cello, trumpet & clarinet, provided a pleasant accompaniment to the film, vamping on a series of light, often waltzing, themes.

§ Magic and Mirth
Those Awful Hats | USA | 1909 | D.W. Griffith
Cartoon Factory | USA | 1924 | Fleischer Studios
The Masquerader | USA | 1914 | Charlie Chaplin
First Prize For Cello Playing | France | 1907 | Pathé Frères
Fantasmagorie | France | 1908 | Émile Cohl
Tit For Tat | France | 1906 | Gaston Velle
When The Devil Drives | UK | 1907 | Walter Booth
Down In The Deep | France | 1906 | Ferdinand Zecca
The Dancing Pig | France | 1907 | Pathé Frères
The Witch | France | 1906 | Georges Méliès

Presented by Serge Bromberg
Live musical accompaniment by Donald Sosin and Frank Bockius
San Francisco Silent Film Festival 2017
Saturday, June 3, 10:00am
Castro Theatre

§ Filibus
Directed by Mario Roncoroni | Italy | 1915 | 71 m.
Live musical accompaniment by Mont Alto Motion Picture Orchestra
San Francisco Silent Film Festival 2017
Saturday, June 3, 2:30pm
Castro Theatre

SF Silent Film Festival Day 2

The afternoon of the 2nd day of the San Francisco Silent Film Festival, I attended the screening of The Dumb Girl of Portici, an historical epic from 1915, directed by Lois Weber. The movie is derived from Auber's opera La muette de Portici & is notable for the casting of Anna Pavlova. Shelley Stamp, author of a book on Lois Weber, provided us with some background to the film's production & told us to watch for the use of camera movement. George Willevan, who participated in the film's restoration, related how footage for the film's ending was initially overlooked & told us that he had yet to see the movie on a big screen.

Pavlova dances in the opening & closing scenes, & she moves as if electrified & stretching every part of her body as far as possible. I felt like I got some idea of the intensity of her stage presence, but her acting did not fit well with the brash Hollywood style of the movie. Lois Weber was clearly given a lot of resources for costumes, locations & extras. I wondered where a scene showing an enormous domed building in the background was shot. There is a great deal of carnage in the mob scenes. At one point, Pavlova's character confronts severed heads on pikes. The plot is sometimes laborious, & a man in the row in front of me gently snored through the middle portion of the show.

Pianist Donald Sosin & percussionist Frank Bockius performed an improvisatory accompaniment with repeated riffs & a much forward momentum. They matched the pacing & mood of each scene & played continuously for nearly 2 hours without tiring. Despite the weekday afternoon show time, attendance was large. The musicians received an approving ovation.

I returned in the evening to see Body and Soul, a 1925 film starring Paul Robeson. Anita Monga, the festival's artistic director, introduced the evening's accompanist, DJ Spooky & highlighted his many collaborations. DJ Spooky praised director Oscar Micheaux's independence & was proud that his own DVD release of Body and Soul was self-financed. He described his score for the the film as an "art mix" of jazz & blues.

The film itself has low production values, but it is interesting to see Paul Robeson's boldly charismatic presence as well as the director's cynical view of the church. The film makes frequent use of flashbacks, & I was struck by how the rape of Isabelle is depicted through close-ups of the Reverend's footsteps.

DJ Spooky's live mix for the screening was eerie & slow-paced, using a lot of piano, saxophone & percussion tracks. Guenter Buchwald on the violin added to the harmonies with drawn-out notes & double-stops. The relationship between the images and the music was never clear to me, & I ended up feeling distanced from the story. The sound system belched jarringly a couple of times during the show. The audience gave the musicians an eager & respectful ovation.

§ The Dumb Girl of Portici
dir. Lois Weber | 1912 | USA | 112 min
Music by Donald Sosin & Frank Bockius

San Francisco Silent Film Festival 2017
Friday June 2 2017, 3:30p
Castro Theatre

§ Body and Soul
dir.  Oscar Micheaux | 1925 | USA | 93 min
Music by DJ Spooky & Guenter Buchwald

San Francisco Silent Film Festival 2017
Friday June 2 2017, 7p
Castro Theatre

SF Silent Film Festival: Tales from the Archives

Jack's Joke. 1913.
Edison Kinetophone.

I started my 2nd day at the SF Silent Film Festival with Amazing Tales from the Archives, a free program of highly informative presentations by film preservationists. A chipper George Willeman, from the Library of Congress, talked us through one of his pet projects: resurrecting Edison Kinetophone films. The technology involved synchronizing phonograph cylinders with projectors via a mechanical cable & pulley system. Mr. Willeman summed it up as "too damned complicated," & it failed in the market. He showed us his discovery of the 1st microphone accidentally appearing in a shot, & we saw absurd single-take films of singing blacksmiths & shouty actors.

Elif Rongen-Kaynakçi, of EYE Filmmuseum in Amsterdam, gave a slide lecture about the life of Jean Desmet, an early 20th century serial entrepreneur & film exhibitor, whose archive of films, movie posters, photographs & documents form the EYE's Desmet Collection. Ms. Rongen-Kaynakçi is especially interested in his business correspondence, which provides details like the cost of a Bechstein piano for his cinema. She is also interested in his investment in a patented "cloud projector," which would have projected giant ads onto clouds, in the manner of the Bat-Signal.

Lastly, Heather Linville, of the Academy Film Archive, told us the astonishing story of Idris Welsh, who, as a 6-foot tall teenager, joined up with a certain Captain Wanderwell in 1922, adopted the moniker Aloha Wanderwell, & led a fleet of Model T's on a round-the-world tour. Along the way, she shot, edited & appeared in a series of travel films & eventually ending up in Hollywood. The Captain himself was charged with the enslavement of a minor, which he resolved by marrying Aloha. She went on to continue shooting travelogues & presenting her films to audiences in person. I could not understand why I had never heard of her & why no one has yet made her biopic. She even had a pet monkey called Chango.

Ms. Linville ran many excerpts of the travel films as she spoke. One alarming clip showed a motorcade of Model T's driving straight up the stairs of the Great Wall of China. Pianist Donald Sosin provided gentle, unobtrusive accompaniment to the films. Even though this was weekday morning, there was an impressive audience turnout.

§ Amazing Tales from the Archives
George Willeman, Library of Congress
Elif Rongen-Kaynakçi, EYE Filmmuseum
Heather Linville, Academy Film Archive
Music by Donald Sosin, piano

San Francisco Silent Film Festival 2017
Friday June 2 2017, 10a
Castro Theatre

Opening Night of SF Silent Film Festival

The San Francisco Silent Film Festival had a packed house for their opening night on Thursday. The event started about 10 minutes late due to ticket holders still waiting to get into the Castro Theatre. The program featured the 12-piece Berklee Silent Film Orchestra performing their original score for The Freshman, Harold Lloyd's effortlessly endearing comedy about social humiliation.

Festival President Robert Byrne thanked sponsors & introduced Suzanne Lloyd, Harold Lloyd's granddaughter, & Sheldon Mirowitz of the Berklee School of Music. Ms. Lloyd expressed her excitement to hear the new music, & Mr. Mirowitz explained that the score was composed by 7 of his students, who were each assigned one reel of the film to orchestrate. He individually introduced the student composers, who come from the United States, Switzerland & Mexico.

The score begins boldly, with a peppy march that recurs throughout. The music generally sounds 19th century classical, plus marches & jazz dances that evoke the film's period. It's synchronized with the on-screen action tightly, & every musical mood is stated clearly. The band was amplified, & I sometimes felt bullied by the score. The musicians were technically very secure, & all gave strong, boldhearted performances that fit the fearlessly optimistic personality of Lloyd's character.

The opening night audience was enthused, even applauding the restoration credits preceding the film. I'd never seen The Freshman before, & I found it simply plotted & thoroughly enjoyable. Intertitles sometimes carry the jokes, & I wish I knew what was meant by calling someone a "radio liar." I was impressed by the performances of 2 cats & by the string of gags involving Lloyd in a disintegrating dinner jacket at the Fall Frolic. The audience applauded the smooth choreography of a scene in which Lloyd takes advantage of temporarily having 3 arms. The show ended with a long & happy standing ovation for the composers & musicians. For those just getting started, there was an opening night party at the McRoskey Mattress Company down the street, apparently with more live music.

§ The Freshman
dirs. Fred C. Newmeyer &  Sam Taylor | 1925 | USA | 76 min
Live musical accompaniment by Berklee Silent Film Orchestra

San Francisco Silent Film Festival 2017
Thursday June 1 2017, 7p
Castro Threatre

SF Silent Film Festival 2017 at a Glance

§ San Francisco Silent Film Festival 2017
Castro Threatre

Thursday June 1 2017

7:00 PM
THE FRESHMAN
1925 | USA | 76 min | Fred C. Newmeyer, Sam Taylor, Harold Lloyd
Music by Berklee Silent Film Orchestra

Friday June 2 2017

10:00 AM (Free screening)
AMAZING TALES FROM THE ARCHIVES
George Willeman, Library of Congress
Elif Rongen-Kaynakçi, EYE Filmmuseum
Heather Linville, Academy Film Archive
100 min
Music by Donald Sosin

1:00 PM
GET YOUR MAN
1927 | USA | 76 min | Dorothy Arzner, Clara Bow, Buddy Rogers
Footage from NOW WE'RE IN THE AIR
Music by Stephen Horne

3:30 PM
THE DUMB GIRL OF PORTICI
1912 | USA | 112 min | Lois Weber, Anna Pavlova
Music by Donald Sosin & Frank Bockius

7:00 PM
BODY AND SOUL
1925 | USA | 93 min | Oscar Micheaux, Paul Robeson
Music by DJ Spooky

9:30 PM
THE INFORMER
1929 | UK | 99 min | Arthur Robison
Music by Stephen Horne, Guenter Buchwald & Frank Bockius

Saturday June 3 2017

10:00 AM
MAGIC AND MIRTH: A Collection of Enchanting Short Films, 1906–1924
60 min
Music by Donald Sosin

12:00 PM
A STRONG MAN
1929 | Poland | 80 min | Henryk Szaro
Music by Guenter Buchwald & Sascha Jacobsen

2:30 PM
FILIBUS
1915 | Italy | 71 min | Mario Roncoroni
Music by Mont Alto Motion Picture Orchestra

5:00 PM
OUTSIDE THE LAW
1920 | USA | 76 min | Tod Browning, Lon Chaney
Music by Stephen Horne & Frank Bockius

7:15 PM
BATTLESHIP POTEMKIN (Bronenosets Potyomkin)
1925 | USSR | 72 min | Sergei Eisenstein
Music by the Matti Bye Ensemble

9:30 PM
A PAGE OF MADNESS (Kurutta Ichipeiji)
1926 | Japan | 70 min | Teinosuke Kinugasa
Music by Alloy Orchestra

Sunday June 4 2017

10:00 AM
THE DOLL (Die Puppe)
1919 | Germany | 60 min | Ernst Lubitsch
Music by Guenter Buchwald & Frank Bockius

12:00 PM
SILENCE
1926 | USA | 70 min | Rupert Julian
Music by Mont Alto Motion Picture Orchestra

2:00 PM
A MAN THERE WAS (Terje Vigen)
1917 | Sweden | 60 min | Victor Sjöström
Music by the Matti Bye Ensemble

4:00 PM
THE LOST WORLD
1925 | USA | 100 min | Harry O. Hoyt, Willis O'Brien, Wallace Beery, Bessie Love
Music by Alloy Orchestra

6:30 PM
TWO DAYS (Dva Dni)
1927 | USSR | 60 min | Heorhii Stabovyi
Music by Stephen Horne

8:15 PM
THE THREE MUSKETEERS
1921 | USA |  146 min | Fred Niblo, Douglas Fairbanks
Music by Guenter Buchwald Ensemble

22nd San Francisco Silent Film Festival

Thursday is the 1st night of the SF Silent Film Festival, running June 1 - 4 at the Castro Theatre. This year's festival presents 36 musicians providing live accompaniment for 18 films from 9 countries. DJ Spooky is new to the festival this year, & on Friday night he accompanies Body and Soul, a 1925 feature by African-American director Oscar Micheaux, starring Paul Robeson. On opening night the Berklee Silent Film Orchestra performs their original score for Harold Lloyd's The Freshman, & Sunday at noon the Mont Alto Motion Picture Orchestra accompanies Silence, a 1926 American crime drama based on a stage play, restored with recently discovered footage from the Cinémathèque Française.

The festival has 2 films directed by women, including The Dumb Girl of Portici, a high-budget epic directed by Lois Weber & starring Anna Pavlova in her only screen role. Dorothy Arzner is the director of Get Your Man, a comedy with Clara Bow & Buddy Rogers. It plays with a fragment of Now We're in the Air, a lost comedy with Louise Brooks & Wallace Beery.

I am told that the Saturday afternoon showing of Filibus, an Italian adventure film featuring sky pirates, is a must-see. Preceding the screening, the festival will present an award to the the Dutch EYE Filmmuseum, for its commitment to the preservation of silent film. Films from the EYE's Desmet Collection will be shown in the free, & always fascinating, Amazing Tales from the Archives presentation on Friday morning.

The festival will also honor David Shepard, a film preservationist who died this year, with a Saturday morning program of shorts selected by the delightful Serge Bromberg. The classic Battleship Potemkin is on the schedule, as well as the the avant-garde A Page of Madness, which I have always wanted to see. Two Days, a Soviet film set during the Civil War in the Ukraine, looks intriguing.

I got to attend the festival's informal media preview event last month & had a chat with a fellow who does the sound for the Silent Film Festival, which sounds like an oxymoron, but isn't. He said The Freshmen is one of his favorites & assured me that The Three Musketeers show that closes the festival would be the most fun.

§ The 22nd San Francisco Silent Film Festival
June 1 - 4, 2017
Castro Theatre

§ Festival Site | Schedule & Tickets | Festival Pass 

Up-Coming: A Day of Silents

This coming Saturday the SF Silent Film Festival presents a special 1-day festival at the Castro Theatre. The 5 programs range from star vehicles for Douglas Fairbanks, Harry Houdini & Anna May Wong to a documentary & a French avant-garde fantasy. All are accompanied by live music.

The day starts with a splash with Douglas Fairbanks in the swashbuckling, technicolor The Black Pirate. The BFI National Archive will present a compilation of travelogues & newsreels of pre-war China, which ought to be an interesting time capsule. Harry Houdini stars in The Grim Game, a film until recently thought to be lost, in a restoration that premiered earlier this year. It is famous for footage of an unintended airplane crash which was then incorporated into the plot. In the evening the festival presents L'Inhumaine, a fantastical French melodrama, & Piccadilly, a British drama featuring Anna May Wong.

§ A Day of Silents | Films & Tickets | Passes
San Francisco Silent Film Festival
Saturday, December 5, 2015
Castro Theatre

§ Schedule at a Glance

11:00 am
THE BLACK PIRATE 
1926, USA, 84 min
Live musical accompaniment by the Alloy Orchestra

1:00 pm
AROUND CHINA WITH A MOVIE CAMERA
Filmed 1900–1948, 68 min
Compiled in 2015 by the BFI National Archive
Live musical accompaniment by Donald Sosin

3:00 pm
THE GRIM GAME
1919, USA, 73 min
Live musical accompaniment by Donald Sosin

6:30 pm
THE INHUMAN WOMAN (L'INHUMAINE)
1924, France, 122 min
Live musical accompaniment by the Alloy Orchestra

9:15 pm
PICCADILLY
1929, UK, 92 min
Live musical accompaniment by Donald Sosin

SFSFF: All Quiet on the Western Front

When I arrived an hour early for opening night of the San Francisco Silent Film Festival on Thursday, there were already 2 lines outside the Castro Theatre. In his introductory speech, Board President Robert Byrne told us it was not OK to skip any of the festival's great programs. A representative from NBCUniversal, one of the sponsors, announced that the company was committed to restoring 15 of its silent films in the next 4 years. Mike Mashon of the Library of Congress introduced the opening night film, All Quiet on Western Front. He explained that though it was produced as a sound film, a silent version was also made for the European market. The hyped-up audience applauded any mention of "nitrate" & "35mm" in his remarks.

The film was accompanied by the 6-member Mont Alto Motion Picture Orchestra on piano, violin, cello, clarinet, cornet & trombone. For each scene, they vamped on one of a handful of themes, ranging from jaunty to martial to lyrical. The score was tuneful & had a 19th century feel. The movie ran well over 2 hours, plus an intermission, & the band's playing was impressively consistent throughout. Additional musicians supplied sound effects for the battle scenes. We heard a whistle & bass drum for explosions, as well as the sound of marching, gun shots & machine gun fire.

I'd never seen All Quiet on the Western Front before. The artful framing & camera movements give it a European style. The movie does a good job depicting the spectacle of battle without glorifying it. A staccato sequence showing soldiers being mowed down by machine guns is particularly effective, & I experienced a real sense of loss as the characters got picked off one by one. The traumas that the soldiers suffer made me think of the Vietnam War for some reason. My festival companion thought that the movie soft-pedaled the episode in which 3 young soldiers exchange food for a night with a trio of French country girls.

§ All Quiet On The Western Front
Lewis Milestone, USA, 1930 • 134 mins.
Live musical accompaniment by Mont Alto Motion Picture Orchestra

San Francisco Silent Film Festival 2015
Thursday May 28, 7:00 pm
Castro Theatre

SF Silent Film Festival Schedule

§ SF Silent Film Festival 2015
Castro Theatre

Thursday May 28

7:00 pm
All Quiet On The Western Front
Lewis Milestone, USA, 1930 • 134 mins.
Musical accompaniment by Mont Alto Motion Picture Orchestra

Friday May 29

10:00 am
Amazing Tales from the Archives (Free)
Serge Bromberg, Bryony Dixon & Robert Byrne, presenters
Musical accompaniment by Donald Sosin

1:00 pm
Cave of the Spider Women (Pan si dong)
Dan Duyu, China, 1927 • 60 mins.
Musical accompaniment by Donald Sosin and Frank Bockius

4:00 pm
When the Earth Trembled
Barry O'Neill, USA, 1913, USA • 48 mins.
Musical accompaniment by Stephen Horne

7:00 pm
The Last Laugh (Der letzte Mann)
F.W. Murnau, Germany, 1924 • 90 mins.
Musical accompaniment by Berklee Silent Film Orchestra

9:30 pm
The Ghost Train
Géza von Bolváry, UK/Germany, 1927 • 93 mins.
Musical accompaniment by Stephen Horne & Frank Bockius
Narration by Paul McGann

Saturday May 30

10:00 am
Speedy
Ted Wilde (Harold Lloyd), USA, 1928 • 85 mins.
Musical accompaniment by Mont Alto Motion Picture Orchestra

1:00 pm
Visages d'enfants
Jacques Feyder, France, 1925 • 117 mins.
Musical accompaniment by Stephen Horne
Preceded by Serge Bromberg receiving 2015 SFSFF Award

4:30 pm
The Donovan Affair
Frank Capra, USA, 1929 • 73 mins.
Musical accompaniment and narration by the Gower Gulch Players

7:00 pm
Flesh and the Devil
Clarence Brown (Greta Garbo, John Gilbert), USA, 1926 • 112 mins
Musical accompaniment by the Matti Bye Ensemble

9:30 pm
Pan
Harald Schwenzen, Norway, 1922 • 105 mins.
Musical accompaniment by Guenter Buchwald

Sunday May 31

10:00 am
The Amazing Charley Bowers
Charley Bowers, USA, 1926–28 • 75 mins.
Musical accompaniment by Serge Bromberg

12:30 pm
Avant-Garde Paris
Emak-Bakia • Man Ray, France, 1927 • 16 mins.
Musical accompaniment by Earplay
Ménilmontant • Dimitri Kirsanoff, France, 1926 • 44 mins.
Musical accompaniment by Stephen Horne

2:30 pm
Why Be Good?
William Seiter (Colleen Moore), USA, 1929 • 81 mins.
Musical accompaniment by Mont Alto Motion Picture Orchestra

4:30 pm
Norrtullsligan
Per Lindberg, Sweden, 1923 • 86 mins.
Musical accompaniment by the Matti Bye Ensemble

7:00 pm
Sherlock Holmes
Arthur Berthelet (William Gillette), USA, 1916 • 116 mins.
Musical accompaniment by the Donald Sosin Ensemble

9:30 pm
The Swallow and the Titmouse (L'Hirondelle et la Mésange)
André Antoine, France, 1920  • 79 mins.
Musical accompaniment by Stephen Horne and Diana Rowan (harp)

Monday June 1

1:00 pm
So You Think You Know Silents (Free)
Bruce Goldstein, presenter • 60 mins.
Musical accompaniment by Steve Sterner

3:00 pm
The Deadlier Sex
Robert Thornby (Blanche Sweet), USA, 1920 • 60 mins.
Musical accompaniment by Guenter Buchwald

5:00 pm
100 Years in Post-Production: Resurrecting a Lost Landmark of Black Film History
Ron Magliozzi, presenter • USA • 60 mins.
Musical accompaniment by Donald Sosin

7:00 pm
Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ
Fred Niblo, USA, 1925 • 141 mins.
Soundtrack with score by Carl Davis
Preceded by Kevin Brownlow in conversation with Serge Bromberg

Up-coming: SF Silent Film Festival

The San Francisco Silent Film Festival is one of my favorite events, & this year it runs for 5 days, starting this Thursday night at the Castro Theatre. This year's selections look particularly strong, & I'd see everything If I could. The classics are represented by All Quiet on the Western Front, Murnau's The Last Laugh, Greta Garbo & John Gilbert in Flesh & the Devil, & Fred Niblo's Ben-Hur, puportedly the most expensive Hollywood production of the silent era.

The festival has been touting the restoration of When the Earth Trembled, a 1913 melodrama with the 1906 San Francisco earthquake at its climax, & Sherlock Holmes, a recently discovered 1916 feature starring William Gillette, the stage actor who established our iconic image of the detective. Cave of the Spider Women is a Chinese adaptation of an episode from Journey to the West. Other intriguing shows are a compilation of surreal shorts by Charley Bowers & an uncompleted film with an African-American cast that includes Bert Williams. I'm excited that Menilmontant is on the schedule. It's one of the best silent films I've ever seen, & I hope to learn more about it at the screening.

All the programs except for Ben-Hur are accompanied with live music, ranging from solo piano to a student orchestra from Boston's Berklee College of Music. Actors will perform the dialogue live for Frank Capra's The Donovan Affair, a talking picture with a missing soundtrack. The irrepressible film preservationist Serge Bromberg will speak in the festival's free Amazing Tales from the Archives presentation, accompany the Charley Bowers shorts on the piano, interview Kevin Brownlow before Ben-Hur & receive a well-deserved festival award at the screening of Visages d'enfants.

§ Festival Website | Musicians | Programs & Tickets | Passes

§ 20th Anniversary San Francisco Silent Film Festival
May 28–June 1, 2015
Castro Theatre

Rising from the Ashes

Thursday evening at the Presidio Officers' Club, I attended an informative & engaging presentation by film restorer Rob Byrne about the recent restoration of When the Earth Trembled, a 1913 melodrama featuring a climactic sequence taking place during San Francisco's 1906 earthquake. Mr. Byrne began with the film's ambitious producer, Siegmund Lubin, a Polish immigrant who came to America as an optician & then became an early film industry pioneer. He made his 1st movie in 1897 & proceeded to build a major film company based in Philadelphia. He produced, distributed & exhibited his own films, as well as making movie cameras & projectors. Then in 1914 a fatal film explosion started a fire that destroyed everything. Disappointingly, he closed the business & returned to being an optician. Of the over 5,000 films he produced, fragments of just 200 survive.

The current restoration combines 3 different prints, & Mr. Byrne showed us the intricate spreadsheet used to track every shot in the film across all the versions. He demonstrated the differences between the sources with a neat visualization that shows all 3 versions running side by side, revealing the gaps & variations in quality. At the end of the presentation we got to see the restored earthquake sequence. The production used collapsible sets that could only be shot once, so the destruction is quite real. The audience winced audibly when it saw Ethel Clayton, Lubin's leading lady, get hit in the face by a falling chandelier, in what appears to be an unintentional mishap.

Mr. Byrne shared many fascinating details about the reconstruction, such as intertitles that had to be translated from Dutch back into English & hidden frames specifying tint colors. When the real 1906 earthquake occurred, Lubin sent cameraman John Frawley to San Francisco, & some of Frawley's footage of the actual fire are in the film.

Everyone at the presentation received a half-second strip of film from the earthquake scene. I was amazed to learn that even though the reconstruction is all done digitally, a film negative is still made as the final archival artifact. Afterward, Mr. Byrne explained to me that film is simply cheaper & more permanent than digital storage. The restored When the Earth Trembled will play at the San Francisco Silent Film Festival on May 29th.

§ Rising From The Ashes: Resurrecting the 1913 Silent Film When the Earth Trembled
May 14 at 7:00 pm - 8:00 pm
Presidio Officers’ Club