This year's San Francisco Silent Film Festival opened at the Castro Thursday night with Louise Brooks' last starring role, Prix de Beaute (The Price of Beauty). I wouldn't put this French feature quite in the same category as Pandora's Box, but I liked it very much. Brooks plays a working girl who enters and wins … Continue reading Prix de Beaute: Silent Film Festival Opening Night
Category: Silent Films
Hitchcock 9, Part 3: Sunday
B The Pleasure Garden For a new director's first film, The Pleasure Garden is surprisingly assured--creatively using all the cinema's tools to tell a good story. Based on a popular novel of the time, it follows two young women, both dancers, as their professional and love lives go in different and contrasting directions. One goes … Continue reading Hitchcock 9, Part 3: Sunday
Hitchcock 9, Part 2: Saturday
I spent most of yesterday at the Castro, watching the Hitchcock 9 festival of early, silent Alfred Hitchcock movies, all newly restored. Here's what I saw: B Champagne With it's ditzy heiress ingénue, romantic plot, broad humor, and class consciousness, this Hitchcock silent has all the ingredients of a screwball comedy except sparkling dialog. I … Continue reading Hitchcock 9, Part 2: Saturday
Hitchcock 9 Report, Part 1: Blackmail
Friday night Blackmail A beautiful young woman ditches her boyfriend (a Scotland Yard detective), flirts with another man, then kills him in self-defense. The next morning she's at the mercy of a blackmailer. Alfred Hitchcock's tenth feature and second thriller already shows touches of the master. Her night wanderings after the incident, her reaction to … Continue reading Hitchcock 9 Report, Part 1: Blackmail
Nail-biting Laughter: My Blu-ray review of Harold Lloyd’s Safety Last!
Even Alfred Hitchcock never mastered that delicate balance between comedy and suspense as perfectly as silent comedian Harold Lloyd. Learning his craft carefully and consciously, he discovered that scaring the audience put them in an emotional pressure cooker, intensifying their reaction to a good gag. When the two effects were mixed expertly, by someone who … Continue reading Nail-biting Laughter: My Blu-ray review of Harold Lloyd’s Safety Last!
Bay Area Silent Summer 2013: Great Opportunities to Watch Movies with Live Musical Accompaniment
Perhaps it's the fog. When summer rolls around in the Bay Area, people want to go to the movies. And a sufficient number of those people want to go to silent movies, preferably accompanied by live music. You can devote three of June's five weekends to silent film. And that doesn't even include the biggest … Continue reading Bay Area Silent Summer 2013: Great Opportunities to Watch Movies with Live Musical Accompaniment
SFIFF Silent Movie Night: Waxworks with Mike Patton, Scott Amendola, Matthias Bossi, and William Winant
Every year, the San Francisco Intl. Film Festival hosts a silent film event, where they match a movie--generally not one everyone has seen--with one or more musicians who enjoy a strong local following--but are not associated with silent film accompaniment. This makes sense both culturally and financially. The event, always held at the Castro, attracts … Continue reading SFIFF Silent Movie Night: Waxworks with Mike Patton, Scott Amendola, Matthias Bossi, and William Winant
Blancanieves: Silent Film Still Lives in this Spanish Snow White Tale
A- Silent melodrama Written and directed by Pablo Berger Could The Artist have started a trend? Less than 18 months after Michel Hazanavicius' silent comedy hit Bay Area screens, here comes another brand new silent film, also in narrow-screen black and white. But Pablo Berger's very Spanish take on Snow White is as different from … Continue reading Blancanieves: Silent Film Still Lives in this Spanish Snow White Tale
SF Silent Film Festival Report, Day 4
The Mark of ZorroBig fun. I don't think I've seen this theatrically before, and certainly never with so big and enthusiastic a crowd. People cheered, hissed, and laughed on cue. Dennis James kept things lively on the Mighty Wurlitzer Organ, and Fairbanks' antics and stunts were stunning.One thing I noticed about the story: Zorro is, … Continue reading SF Silent Film Festival Report, Day 4
SF Silent Film Festival, Day 3
The Irrepressible Felix the CatThis may have been the first theatrical, 35mm presentation of multiple Felix the Cat cartoons ever. The shorts were wild, crazy, bizarre, surreal, and hilarious. The accompaniment added much to the festivities. Donald Soosan and a drummer who's name I didn't get accompanied some of the shorts. Toychestra--a sextet playing toy … Continue reading SF Silent Film Festival, Day 3
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