What’s Screening: February 13-19

The Silent Film Festival Winter Event happens on Valentine’s Day this year, and has one great romantic masterpiece, F. W. Murnau’s Sunrise. It also includes Buster Keaton’s Our Hospitality, the horror comedy The Cat and the Canary, and the Russian comedy A Kiss from Mary Pickford. All films will have live accompaniment. And it all happens, of course, at the Castro. A couple of the individual films are discussed below.

Between the festival and a couple of other events, this is a very silent weekend. And a very good week. I can’t think of another newsletter with so many ‘s.

And, of course, IndieFest continues through this week, still primarily at the Roxie.

Idiots and Angels, Roxie, Sunday, 7:15; Monday, 9:30. Bill Plympton made a very bizarre, dark, and funny cartoon, which shouldn’t surprise anyone who knows his work. This story of a lonely, angry, and all-together rotten man (at one point he pushes a tear of empathy back into his eye) who inexplicitly sprouts angel wings will make you grimace as well as laugh. Dialog-free, Idiots and Angels reveals its characters by showing us their actions and their daydreams, which are mostly about money and undeserved glory. But no matter what their bearer may be thinking, the wings themselves insist on virtue. Plympton has created a dreadful world filled with dreadful people, yet allows something magical and wonderful to come out of it. Idiots and Angels made my list of the Best Films You Couldn’t See in 2008, and here’s another chance for you to see it.

Sunrise, Castro, 6:30. 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 in the city. But the execution, with its stylized sets, beautiful photography, and talented performers, makes it both touchingly personal and abstractly mythological. Basically a silent, Sunrise was one of the first films released with a soundtrack (music and effects, only). But the San Francisco Silent Film Festival doesn’t do recorded soundtracks, so Dennis James will accompany Sunrise on the Castro’s Wurlitzer pipe organ.

The Freshman, Stanford, Friday, 7:30. This very human and extremely funny tale of a young college student who desperately craves popularity is Harold Lloyd’s best-known film after Safety Last. It’s by far the better of the two, and one of the great masterpieces of silent comedy. Awkward and as eager to please as a puppy, Harold (his characters always had the first name Harold) tries desperately to be good at sports and a regular fellow, and fails to realize that everyone is laughing behind his back. With Dennis James at the organ. On a double bill with The College Coquette, an early talkie starring Freshman co-star Jobyna Ralston. I haven’t seen it.

The Human Condition, Pacific Film Archive, Sunday, 12:00. Masaki Kobayashi’s pacifist World War II trilogy runs well over 9 hours. There will be three short and two moderately long intermissions. That’s a long slog for a theater that doesn’t allow food or drink. From what I hear, the films are worth it.

Double Bill: Miracle of Morgan’s Creek & The Major and the Minor, Stanford, Saturday through Monday. In 1944, it was impossible for a Hollywood picture to criticize the American military in any way, or to suggest that it was even biologically possible to get pregnant out of wedlock (or even to use the word pregnant). Yet with Miracle of Morgan’s Creek, Preston Sturges managed to make a comedy–and a hilarious one–about a single, teenage, small-town girl who goes out with some soldiers and comes back in a family way. The real miracle is that this movie got made–and came out so good. The Major and the Minor isn’t in Miracle’s class, but it’s a reasonably funny screwball comedy, and was Billy Wilder’s first American film as a director.

Our Hospitality, Castro, noon. Three years before he made The General, Buster Keaton mined the antebellum South for comic gold in this almost gentle comedy about a Hatfield/McCoy–type feud. Still adjusting to the long form of the feature film (this was only his second), Keaton fills Our Hospitality with funny gems that have little to do with the story–like the journey from New York to the backwoods on a very early train (the movie is set around 1840). When Buster finally arrives at his destination, he finds himself a guest in the home of men sworn to kill him. Luckily, the code of southern hospitality forbids killing a guest…as long as he’s in your house. Opening the San Francisco Silent Film Festival, Winter Event.

Shadow of a Doubt, Pacific Film Archive, Wednesday, 3:00. In Alfred
Hitchcock’s first great American film, a serial killer (Joseph Cotton at his most charming) returns to his small-town roots. When his favorite niece (Teresa Wright) begins to suspect that all is not right with her beloved Uncle Charlie, her own life is
in danger. The locations were shot in Santa Rosa. Part of the Film 50: History of Cinema series and class, with a lecture by Marilyn Fabe.

Che: The (sort of) Roadshow Version, Elmwood, opens Friday. I still haven’t seen it, so I can’t give you an opinion on it. But if you prefer a long, leisurely film with an intermission to two normal-length ones, here’s your chance. Well, not quite. Separate admission is required, but the two films are showing on the same screen–Part 1 followed by Part 2.

The Adventures of Prince Achmed, Pacific Film Archive, Saturday, 3:00. Yep, the PFA is playing a silent film simultaneously but across the bay from the Silent Film Festival Winter Event. Eleven years before Walt Disney made Snow White and Seven Dwarfs, Lotte Reiniger used cut-out silhouettes to make what is probably the oldest surviving animated feature. It’s been a long time since I’ve seen The Adventures of Prince Achmed, but I remember a magical experience. Live piano accompaniment by Judith Rosenberg. One of the PFA’s Movie Matinees for All Ages.

Milk, Castro, Sunday through Thursday (and then returning next week). Yep, I’m always a sucker for a historical epic, especially one set in a time and place that I can remember. Sprawling without ever being boring, and inspiring without getting preachy. I’ve always known that Sean Penn was a great actor; it’s nice to know that he can do “happy” as well as less pleasant emotions. James Franco is also very good as the main man in his life.

Let the Right One In, Red Vic, Thursday through next Saturday. Better than Horror of Dracula, Interview with a Vampire, and The Lost Boys, and maybe better than Nosferatu, this is one of the great vampire movies. What better place for a vampire than a Swedish winter? The nights are very long, snow covers everything, and people drink heavily and seem depressed to begin with. It’s like Bergman, only with undead bloodsuckers. Let the Right One In is also a coming-of-age story, about first love between a boy about to turn 13 and a girl who has been 12 “for a very long time.”

Annie Hall, Red Vic, Friday and Saturday. Almost every Hollywood film deals on some level with romantic love, but very few accurately capture the complex, dizzying ups and downs of that common experience. And no other captures it as well, or as hilariously, as Annie Hall.