Want to read something really amazing? There are no film festivals in the Bay Area this week. At least, none that I know of.
But there are some good movies.
A Steamboat Bill Jr., Niles Essanay Silent Film Museum, Saturday, 7:30. One of Buster Keaton’s best, both as a performer and as the auteur responsible for the entire picture (it’s the last film in which he would enjoy such control). Steamboat Bill
(Ernest Torrence) already has his hands full, struggling to maintain his small business in the wake of a better-financed competitor. Then his long-lost son turns up, not as the he-man the very-macho Bill imagined, but as an urbane and somewhat effete Keaton. You can look at Steamboat Bill, Jr. as a riff on masculinity or a study of small-town life as an endangered species. But it’s really just a lot of laughs seamlessly integrated into a very good story,and you really can’t ask for more. And it contains what’s probably the most thrilling and dangerous stunt ever performed by a major star. With two short comedies, and Frederick Hodges on the piano.
A Double Indemnity, Stanford, Wednesday through next Friday.. Rich but unhappy
(and evil) housewife Barbara Stanwyck leads insurance salesman Fred MacMurray by the nose from adultery to murder in Billy Wilder’s near-perfect thriller. Not that she has any trouble leading him (this is not the wholesome MacMurray we remember from My Three Sons). Edward G. Robinson is in fine form as the co-worker and close friend that MacMurray must deceive. A good, gritty thriller about sex (or the code-era equivalent) and betrayal, Double Indemnity can reasonably be called the first true film noir. On a double bill with The Bitter Tea of General Yen, which I’ve never seen but also stars Stanwyck.
B Ninotchka, Stanford, Saturday and Sunday. Garbo’s first comedy and penultimate film is sweet, charming, romantic, and quite funny. It also nails perfectly the absurdities of Communism–still well respected by many Americans in 1939. As Garbo’s character points out, “The last mass trials were a great success. There are going to be fewer but better Russians.” But it’s not quite as good as you might expect when Ernst Lubitsch directs a screenplay by Billy Wilder. On a double bill with another Garbo vehicle, Camille, which I have never seen.
C Sing-Along Sound of Music, Castro, Friday through next week’s Sunday. Many people love it, but I find the biggest money maker of the 1960s lumbering, slow, and dull. Not funny or 
romantic enough to be light entertainment, yet lacking the substance to be anything else. And the songs give the impression that, by their last collaboration, Roger and Hammerstein were running out of steam. On the other hand, the Todd-AO photography of Alpine landscapes makes this one of the most visually beautiful of Hollywood movies. I’ve never experienced a Sing-Along Sound of Music presentation, however. This might be something entirely different.
Bayflicks 
