Silent Film Festival, Opening Night

I attended both San Francisco Silent Film Festival opening night screenings last night at the Castro. I didn’t attend the party, which conflicted with the second show. That was an easy choice.

Upstream

The festival opened with a newly discovered John Ford film. Thought lost for decades, a tinted print of Upstlream turned up recently in New Zealand.

The movie was introduced by Schawn Belston of 20th Century Fox and Joe Lindner of the Academy Film Archive. They made it clear that this was a preservation, not a restoration. The difference? Their goal was to create a new negative that was as close as possible to this one existing nitrate print, not as close as possible to what the film might have looked like when it was new.

And it certainly did not look like a new film. The source print had suffered from considerable nitrate decomposition. But it was still enjoyable.

The feature was preceded by a newly preserved short comedy, “Why Husbands Flirt.”

Upstream is an amusing and entertaining trifle about the residents of a theatrical boarding house. There’s a love triangle at the center. The movie in no way feels like anything one would call a John Ford film. That’s not necessarily a bad thing. It showed that he was considerably more versatile than we generally assume.

The Sosin Ensemble provided excellent accompaniment. Silent film fans already know Donald Sosin as an excellent composer and pianist. For this movie, he put together a jazz sextet that probably made the movie more enjoyable than it would otherwise be. They rocked the house.

After the movie, we were treated to a surprise: a widescreen trailer for Abel Gance’s Napoleon, followed by a brief talk by Kevin Brownlow. A new restoration of this classic will play the Oakland Paramount next year—four dates in late March and early April. Carl Davis, one of the leading lights in silent film accompaniment, will conduct a full orchestra. This will be the first time Napoleon has played in the US in 30 years, and the first time ever with the Davis score.

Sunrise

The second feature of the night is better known—and a much better film. Sunrise is widely and rightly considered one of the great masterpieces of the cinema. Let me quote my newsletter blurb:

Haunting, romantic, and impressionistic, F. W. Murnau’s first American feature turns the mundane into the fantastic and the world into a work of art. The plot is simple: A marriage, almost destroyed by another woman, is healed by a day of reconciliation and romance in the big city. But the execution, with its stylized sets, beautiful photography, and talented performers, makes it both touchingly personal and abstractly mythological.

In this screening, I noticed something interesting. Although Sunrise was shot in Hollywood, and includes a written introduction that says this story could happen anywhere and everywhere, the setting is clearly European. A clear concept of a rural peasant class keeps cropping up, most obviously in the “peasant dance” done to  honor the lead couple. Notice how the husband feels as if he’s being insulted when the music (identified with an insert shot of titled sheet music) begins.

Aw, yes—music. Basically a silent film, the 1927 Sunrise was one of the first films released with a soundtrack (music and effects, only). But the San Francisco Silent Film Festival  doesn’t play recorded tracks. They presented this masterpiece with the world premiere of a new score written and performed by Giovanni Spinelli on solo electric guitar.

I wish I could say it worked beautifully, but I can’t. At best, I can say it worked beautifully on occasion. When things are going bad in the story and the husband is contemplating murder, Spinelli’s discordant riffs heightened and enhanced the drama. The rest of the time, it was a distracting annoyance. It hit its low point in the barber shop and photography studio scenes, where it effectively killed the comedy. I wonder if Spinelli knew that those two scenes are supposed to be funny.

Scheduling conflicts will keep me away from the rest of this year’s festival. I’ll be missing a lot of great stuff.