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.