single shot - pollock

Pollock (2000)

single shot - lost weekend

Lost Weekend (1945)

I've been away. Seems when one blogs a lot, the rest of life backs up.
Now that things are settling down and holidays are in sight, I should manage to post more regularly.
See you soon.

i saw the gaucho on the big screen

I haven't seen many Douglas Fairbanks movies - just The Thief of Baghdad, When the Clouds Roll By and The Mystery of the Leaping Fish, the last two also courtesy of the San Francisco Silent Film Fest. The hammy qualities overshadow the daring stunt work for me. However, I couldn't pass up an opportunity to view my first Lupe Valez.

You know I'm not easily won over by movie stars but wow, she has a presence. I'd heard about her from friends and its easy to see why she's talked about. Fiery is the best term, and much like Clara Bow especially the eyebrow expressions. Oh Mr. Fairbanks - why walk into a scene when you can do a back flip? Its all so endearing and so much fun.

The best part was the outtakes shown before the feature. The shots of Mary Pickford as the Virgin were not only shot in two-strip technicolor but with a whirling set of metal spikes behind her head lit brightly to replicate the celestial glow. Numerous shots were tried and miraculously those that didn't quite line up just right (as well as those with the technicians making adjustments) have been preserved.

Viewed at the Castro Theatre as part of the San Francisco Silent Film Festival.
The booklets published by the festival feature great articles on each film.
This film was written up by local writer and blogger Brian Darr.

SFSFF 2009- sunday

Erotikon (1929, directed by Gustav Machaty, photographed by Vaclav Vich, art direction by Alexander Hackenschmied) was the film I was most anticipating this year and it truly was fantastic. I especially liked the Soviet-style framing of the actors. I was happily surprised by the sympathetic treatment of the lead character and her situation. Unfortunately, I felt this was undermined by the musical score, composed and provided by the Mont Alto Motion Picture Orchestra. The music accompanying the seduction scene was rather too sweet, more suited for a mother-daughter reunion than for the sensual interplay happening on-screen. There were virtually no dynamics throughout the score. In fact the music made the languid pace actually feel boring. I know I would enjoy the film much more with a different soundtrack. I hope to be given that opportunity sometime.

So's Your Old Man (1926, directed by Gregory La Cava) lifted the mood this afternoon. If not for the beautiful intertitles during Wild Rose, the intricate John Held Jr illustrated cards would surely win the prize. Although W C Fields was just as funny without using that voice, my heart was captured by the scene-stealing caddy in the overly-long golf scene. He is uncredited unfortunately; does anyone know who that was?

The Fall of the House of Usher (1928, directed by Jean Epstein) was also a visual pleasure. Again, I have to credit Stephen Horne for a brilliant and harmonious accompanying score, utilizing both piano and synthesizer for special sound effects. The stunning visuals were a treat, especially the long veil that reminded me of Vera Chytilova's Automat Svet.

But the long days of sequestering myself in the lovely old theater surrounded by thousands of fellow silent film fans finally extracted it's price - I left the remaining film for the rest to see, perhaps for my own viewing another time.

SFSFF 2009 - saturday

Amazing Tales From The Archive is one of the highlights for me of the entire weekend. It's so inspiring to learn about all the work done to bring all these films and fragments to such an appreciative audience. This year the theatre was nearly full to see these little tidbits:
Screen Shots promotional short (1923)
The Actor's Children short (1910)
Polly of the Follies trailer starring Constance Talmadge (1922)
Happiness Ahead trailer fragments starring Colleen Moore (1928)
The Lover's Oath trailer starring Ramon Navarro
How the Hungry Man Was Fed (1911)

I missed the next but was back in time for
Wild Rose (China, 1932, directed by Sun Yu)
The special guest was actress Qin Yi, who received a standing ovation as a well-known actress and wife of the star of this film. Restored by the China Film Archive, it was a beautiful print. Unfortunately the film occasionally jumped its tracks, one time obscuring the FANTASTIC Art Deco set I knew had to be in a film from Shanghai in the early 1930s. It also featured the most beautiful intertitle of the fesetival: the Chinese character for snow that was drawn as if weighed under in snow. Qin Yi said before the film that China was behind the rest of the world in film making but with double exposures and a crane shot, this movie wasn't lacking in any department.

Underworld (1927, directed by Josef von Sternberg)
This was as stunning as everyone told me it would be. The lighting was moody and turned out multiple gradations of gray. The nightclub scene was a stand-out, especially the rapid set of close-ups as the drinking progressed. The look was reminiscent of der Blaue Engel showing that this was pure von Sternberg. Stephen Horne's score was as impressive as ever- understated as the film was in the first half, dramatic and pulling tension as the film making picked up the same speed. Mr Horne really knows how to ratchet up the tension, even dropping back if need be. He doesn't always replicate the sound effects suggested by the screen, rather he underscores these moments and plays around them as a good jazz musician does to swing the melody. Brilliant.

The Wind (1928, directed by Victor Sjostrom)
Far better than I had expected. As phenomenal as it was, it greatly benefitted from the accompaniment of the mightly Whurlitzer organ and TWO wind sound machines hand cranked by sound artists. The overwhelming storm was fighting it out with the volume of the organ - I could feel the wind from the pipes along the wall of the theatre.

More next time about the final day of the festival.

influence

You know this one, don't you?

Ringing any bells yet?

Its so eerily beautiful.
I fell in love with this scene when I saw this film as a little girl.
Apparently so did Lars von Trier.
In the commentary for his own film, he names the ending sequence of Europa as an homage to
Night of the Hunter (1955).

Ghost Ship

Gorgeous cinematography only slightly marred by the poor video transfer.
Can't someone release a nice, REMASTERED boxed set to honor Val Lewton?
Or is this as good as a B-movie can hope to look?



There's a wealth of geometric combinations to be arranged on the set of a ship.
Some of this reminds me of The Long Voyage Home a few years earlier:

Ghost Ship (1943)

directed by Mark Robson

cinematography by Nicholas Musuraca

produced by Val Lewton

art direction by Albert D'Agostino

and Walter E Keller

zentropa

Europa (1991)
aka Zentropa
directed by Lars von Trier
cinematography by Henning Bendtsen
and Edward Klosinsky
and Jean-Paul Meurisse

I'm listing the title Zentropa because that's how I saw it in the theatre when it was released. [I also saw Europa, Europa, released around the same time, since they were linked in numerous articles due to the similarity in names.] My first von Trier film and it made a lasting impression on me. The rear and front projection look just as gorgeous and overwhelming as they did when I sat in the theatre, watching with no inkling of what was to come.

single shot - regeneration

Regeneration (1915)
directed by Raoul Walsh

2009 SFSFF

Aelita, Queen of Mars photo courtesy of San Francisco Silent Film Festival

Due to my keyboard troubles I'm late with this announcement, but here it is:

The 2009 San Francisco Silent Film Festival line-up has been announced for July 10-12.

The Gaucho (1927)

Bardelys the Magnificent (1927)

Wild Rose (1932)

Underworld (1927)

The Wind (1928)

Aelita, Queen of Mars (1924)

Oswald the Lucky Rabbit shorts program

Erotikon (1929)

So’s Your Old Man (1926)

The Fall of the House of Usher (1928)

Lady of the Pavements (1929)

The only one I've seen already is Aelita, Queen of Mars. I was so sure I'd seen The Wind but now that I think about it, I've just seen clips. So far, Eroticon and The Fall of the House of Usher look to be the stand-outs but there have been upsets in my predictions in previous years.


So what I want to know is what films in this line-up do you recommend?

One thing I know is I'll go to see virtually anything when Stephen Horne is playing the score.

single shot - van gogh

Lust For Life (1956)
directed by Vincente Minnelli

further disintegration

More beauty within loss.
With a running jump, our hero grabs onto an overhanging bar and spins himself upwards onto the next floor.
How sad that the one piece of stunt work in Street Angel is nearly lost to deterioration.
How lucky we are to experience it with the glow of disintegration that gives the feat an other-worldly quality:

single shot - street angel

Although the most photogenic aspect of the movie has to be this actress  playing Garbo-as-a-vampire, my favorite part is this sweet little song that has stuck in my head for days now.

In the clip you get a brief glance of her brooding as well as the lead heroine's Depeche Mode-like boyfriend and of singer Zhou Xuan herself in all her charm.

I love that the words appear as subtitles. I can only imagine how wonderful it must have been to see this in the theatre - would the audience sing along? I really hope they would sing with the film.

It should play on a double bill someday with Electric Shadows, which has a lovely scene in which the characters try to get into a sold out showing of Street Angel.

Malu tianshi (1937)
aka Street Angel
directed by Mu-Jih Yuan

prisoner 13

I'm completely blown away by the quality of light in the photo above.
It is one of the most gorgeous scenes ever captured onto film.









el Prisionero 13 (1933)
aka Prisoner 13
directed by Fernando de Fuentes
cinematography by Ross Fisher








No relief offered by the end of the film:

now i'm rich

Ahora Soy Rico (1952)

directed by Rogelio A Gonzalez

cinematography by Agustin Martinez Solares

set design by Jorge Fernandez

Another Mexican gem, brimming with film noir moodiness. The art direction is fabulous. The composition in nearly every frame is a work of art. Sadly the print was very poor, else I'd share a lot more images of the art moderne apartments which contain many key scenes.

What really impressed me was Pedro Infante. Within a meandering plot that includes gangsters and marital disharmony, there is a deeply moving scene in which Infante is struggling with his male inferiority complex. He literally howls in pain. The scream shatters the momentum of the story, taking a moment to rawly expose the underlying unrest in all of film noir. Very powerful and very moving.

suggestions

Big Brown Eyes (1936)
directed by Raoul Walsh
cinematography by George Clemens



Two wonderfully surreal images, especially when divorced from the
rest of the film.

I haven't found any movie visually earth-shattering lately.
Perhaps those Mexican spectacles have raised the bar to unattainable heights?
Did Five knock out all other competition?

Does anyone out there have any suggestions, requests?
I'd love to hear about more movies to track down.

single shot - pearls of the deep

Perlicky na dne (1966)

aka Pearls of the Deep

(which segment I didn't record - if you know, leave a comment)

singles shot - daisies

Daisies (1966)

los tres garcia

Los Tres Garcia (1947)

directed by Ismael Rodriguez

cinematography by Ross Fisher

The three dueling cousins had a hit comedy films with this one. Slapstick coupled with singing is a winning formula. The best scene shows the cousins, all three longing after the blonde, sitting silently while singing harmonious love songs in their hearts that only we can hear on the soundtrack.

This isn't a very high quality video which is very unfortunate because there is a lot of gorgeous camera work at play here; lots of deep focus photography as well as traveling shots. The most spectacular effect is a backwards tracking from a medium shot at the front of a church that pulls away, takes a different angle and continues to a wide shot from the back of the church. Most of the people moving into camera view are so smooth that I didn't even notice the complexity until the final long shot.

But all you get are these two pictures.

oh my

I haven't found an addition to my canon in quite a while.

This makes it in spades.

You just know nothing good goes on in these nightclubs.

Let's see: suicide, rape, slavery, drugs, murder, blackmail, revenge, deception, adultery, sex, assault, prostitution, extortion, seduction, an attempted heist and (somehow entwined within this all) singing and dancing. It seems all so Bollywood and yet this is part of the cabaretera (cabaret movies) genre from Mexico during the late '40s and early '50s.

Busby Berkeley would surely wince at the aerial photography but I really admire the big production numbers that burst the proscenium arch of the nightclub stages wide open. The ballads, mambos, rumbas and sambas that feature many top Mexican musicians [including Carmen Miranda's nightclub band] had me humming the tunes for days after watching this.

All this and noir-ish elements too - femme fatale, expressionist lighting, fog enshrouded streets, nihilist attitude, dark and dreary subject matter. Yet it never quite slides over into camp. Its all so lovingly embellished that I can suspend my disbelief and for the whole wild plot-wringing ride I'm right along with them.

Aventurera (1950)

directed by Alberto Gout

cinematography by Alex Phillips

production design by Manuel Fontanals

the blurry underground

Underground (1941)
directed by Vincent Sherman
cinematography by Sidney Hickox




Its such a shame that the DVD transfer is so poor.
I'd live to be able to share more images-
I'm sure there is a lot more beauty I couldn't notice over
the blurry transfer,
more black and white contrast that was washed out into greys.
For some reels, the sound and image
tracks had lost their common stride.

But the story is so compelling and the performances
absolutely riveting
that I'm sharing these just so I can mention that I've seen it.
Not to mention that the plot involves the underground
resistance in Germany.
Unusual enough and especially for a Hollywood film in 1941.