Category: First-person Report

Resnais and Stroheim at the Pacific Film Archive

~ Lincoln Spector

Friday night, I attended two very different screenings at the Pacific Film Archive. The first, Alain Resnais' Hiroshima mon amour, is a widely-acknowledged masterpiece. The other, Erich von Stroheim's Queen Kelly, is the uncompleted final work of great but controversial filmmaker. It was my first experience seeing either film. Hiroshima mon amour Why did it … Continue reading Resnais and Stroheim at the Pacific Film Archive

Dough and Opening night at the SF Jewish film festival

~ Lincoln Spector ~ 1 Comment

I attended opening night of the SF Jewish Film Festival at the Castro last night. It was, for the most part, an enjoyable evening. Although it did start with the inevitable reserved seating problem. The whole front half of the theater was cordoned off for VIPs. Luckily, I convinced a volunteer usher that as press, … Continue reading Dough and Opening night at the SF Jewish film festival

Technicolor experiences at the Pacific Film Archive

~ Lincoln Spector

Over the last few days, I've attended two separate three-strip Technicolor screenings at the Pacific Film Archive, each projected in a very different way. The first, Jean Renior's The River, was screened pretty much as the original audiences saw it in 1951. The second, Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger's The Tales of Hoffmann, was presented … Continue reading Technicolor experiences at the Pacific Film Archive

The A+ List: The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance at the Pacific Film Archive

~ Lincoln Spector

Sunday night, I attended a screening at the Pacific Film Archive of one of my favorite western's, John Ford's The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance--another film on my A+ list [URL changed 12/14/2015] of movies that I've loved dearly for decades. The PFA screened it as part of the series Cinema According to Víctor Erice. In … Continue reading The A+ List: The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance at the Pacific Film Archive

Early DeMille and early Tarkovsky: Saturday at the movies

~ Lincoln Spector

I saw two different movies at two very different theaters on Saturday. The Cheat at the Niles Essanay Silent Film Museum I not only attended this screening. I was part of it. I introduced this 1915 Cecil B. DeMille melodrama at the Broncho Billy Silent Film Festival. Among major American auteurs, DeMille stands alone as something … Continue reading Early DeMille and early Tarkovsky: Saturday at the movies

Silent Film Festival opens with All Quiet on the Western Front

~ Lincoln Spector

Most people think of All Quiet on the Western Front (1930)--the Oscar-winning movie that opened this year's San Francisco Silent Film Festival last night, as a talkie--and they're right. But in the early days of talkies, it was common to make an alternative silent version for theaters that had not yet converted, and for the … Continue reading Silent Film Festival opens with All Quiet on the Western Front

Experimenter and Closing Night at the San Francisco International Film Festival

~ Lincoln Spector

This year's San Francisco International Film Festival closed Thursday night with the local premiere of Michael Almereyda's Experimenter--a biopic about social psychologist Stanley Milgram, whose controversial experiments examined how we react when our empathy conflicts with our obedience to authority. Speaking of authority figures, when we entered the Castro Theatre, we found almost all of … Continue reading Experimenter and Closing Night at the San Francisco International Film Festival