The 16th San Francisco Silent Film Festival ended on Sunday and rushed by with lightning speed. The Castro Theatre hosted this well-attended festival, which has been packed to the rafters every night with appreciative cinephiles.
The first night, which may have been the festival's best (showings of John Ford's restored comedy "Upstream" and F.W. Murnau's lovely and menacing "Sunrise", both 1927), was eclipsed by the huge, surprise announcement that Abel Gance's silent classic "Napoleon" would be shown across the Bay in Oakland's Paramount Theater's huge screen next March 24 in its U.S. premiere as a restored film and as scored by composer Carl Davis. Kevin Brownlow, the Oscar-winning documentarian and silent film historian, restored "Napoleon".
For good measure Mr. Brownlow surprised the audience with a sudden appearance on stage. He was a convenient advertisement for "Napoleon", more monumental than the film's trailer, which thundered in the darkness of the 1400-seat theater.
"I implore you to see this film," Mr. Brownlow said, flashing a smile that widened to a grin.
If Mr. Brownlow's surprise appearance and news of "Napoleon" that was Thursday's highlight, the most unique moment that evening was musician Giovanni Spinelli's electric guitar accompaniment of Mr. Murnau's hypnotic "Sunrise". Silent film purists may have chosen to flee the palatial space, but Mr. Spinelli's orchestrations were pitch perfect for "Sunrise", layering the story's dark and all-too-human undercurrents, a jarring experience heightened by the guitar's unorthodox pitch, an astounding mix of Hendrix, Badalamenti, Vaughn and The Edge.
Even when things went wrong acoustically during the performance (and they did several times), Mr. Spinelli's skill at making the hiccups all sound like part of the film was notable. The stumbles made "Sunrise" -- about a man torn between his caring, dutiful rural wife and his mistress from the City -- all the more unsettling.
On Friday night Herbert Ponting's "The Great White Silence" (1924), a British silent, contained spiky humor, and some racially offensive language. Such language and imagery were typical of an era where blatantly racist attitudes existed in an overtly racist Britain. You could feel the discomfort in air amongst the predominantly white audience at the Castro Theatre as some of the offending epithets was displayed on the large screen. These were hurtful spitfires were mixed with amusing footage of a black cat entertaining one of the film's subjects. The stop-start laugh-o-meter was fully operational.
Mr. Ponting's documentary, about the 1910-1914 British Antarctic Expedition, shifts from comedy to catastrophe and tragedy. It's a slow, sad transition. The film is absorbing and endearing in many ways, strongly reinforcing noble heroism and bravery of the doomed crew, made more achingly so by the earlier arrival to the South Pole by the Norwegians.
The BFI (British Film Institute) helped restore "White Silence", which flickered crisply, its strength diluted only by its somber ending, one inevitable given the true story chronicled. The accompanying score by the Matti Bye Ensemble added to the funereal feeling by film's end.
The film "Il Fuoco" (1915), directed by Giovanni Pastrone (aka Piero Fosco) deliciously shows the early introduction of the femme fatale as a movie archetype, offering a suggestive look at the sexual temptress who strikes the heart of a man. Pina Menichelli plays a poet referred to as "She", and seduces then dumps a painter played by Febo Mari. Mr. Mari co-wrote "Il Fuoco", which warmed up the air inside the theater after the cool and ultimate gloom of "White Silence".
The four days at the San Francisco Silent Film Festival were peppered with "orphan films", abandoned films by owners not even willing to put "Alan Smithee" to their name. These films showed prior to the main feature attractions.Several events rounded out the weekend here, including a panel on musicians and their scoring of silent films, moderated by local musician and performer Jill Tracy. Among numerous films were showings of "Mr. Fix-It" (1918) with Douglas Fairbanks, ever the jokester showman and acrobat, and "The Woman Men Yearn For" (1929), with Marlene Dietrich, whose trademark penetrating, transfixing glare bores holes through the screen. Both films are rich with comedy, notably Kurt Bernhardt's "Woman", sedate and sly in its approach, working on a more relaxed plane to garner laughs than "Mr. Fix-It".
In Mr. Bernhardt's romance, comedy is generated from the silences and reactions to Ms. Dietrich's Stascha character from the film's male co-star Fritz Kortner, who plays the smitten Dr. Karoff. He can barely keep his cigarette in his mouth, such is the sight for sore eyes that is Stascha. Ms. Dietrich, who passed away in 1990, has an essence of being about her that smolders so deeply, yet she does little at all. It's what Ms. Dietrich doesn't do -- the inaction -- that not only gives her presence in this and other films great weight, but also great suspense, and allure.
Film historian and critic Leonard Maltin and "The Czar Of Noir" Eddie Muller introduced "Fix-It" and "Woman" respectively, offering glowering tributes.
On "The Woman Men Yearn For" the Mont Alto Motion Picture Orchestra did the film the great justice it deserved with their score. The Orchestra had tuned up for all of 25 minutes with sound checks just prior to the screening, and it paid off in spades.
Castro Theatre organist Dennis James sat at the Mighty Wurlitzer and gave it an almighty whirl for "Mr. Fix-It" earlier. Full throttle all the way through Allan Dwan's comedy about an impersonator (Mr. Fairbanks) who tries to get a friend out of a wedding commitment, Mr. James was drenched in sweat after his incredible effort. Playing the Wurlitzer with equal parts precision and abandon, he never paused during the 65-minute film.
The Festival concluded on Sunday with Lon Chaney's memorable role in "He Who Gets Slapped", the 1924 silent with Norma Shearer. The brilliance of silence was so deafening, it would be easy, if not corny to say you could "hear" it. You could undoubtedly feel it.
In some respects many of the films on the bill reflected an innocence and cheekiness in the simplicities and misunderstandings in life, things that would be magnified one hundred fold in today's day and age. Needless to say being transported 100 years in the dark was a great joy.
Now patrons in the San Francisco Bay Area just have to sit tight for nine months to enjoy "Napoleon", and the endurance of time for some will be more than a tall order. The patience however, will be worth the wait.
For more of Omar's film stories, movie reviews and interviews visit his Popcorn Reel website and watch his unscripted film reviews on YouTube. Follow him on Twitter.
For a list of Omar's Examiner.com stories and film reviews, click here. He is a contributing film critic for "Ebert Presents At The Movies" on PBS television and also a far flung correspondent for the preeminent film critic Roger Ebert and a member of the San Francisco Film Critics Circle.
Comments