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.