Musing on the 2023 San Francisco Silent Film Festival

By Meredith Brody   

(July 11, 2023)

I’ve written these words before: I am in love with the San Francisco Silent Film Festival returning to the Castro Theatre July 12-16.

It is brilliantly programmed and one of the best places in the world to enjoy beautiful prints of silent films with live musical accompaniment.

I learned a long time ago not to try to cherry-pick among the programs on offer. Even if I’ve seen a title several times, viewing it here, with the interesting slides specific to each title projected beforehand, the great and attentive audience, and the carefully-chosen live music, will be a fresh and exciting experience.

But even so, I tend to be even more excited when it’s a movie new to me. These are some of the movies I’m most anticipating from the 26^th SFSFF. (The film title links below will take you to their page on the Silent Film Festival website with more info and ticket links. All attendees at the festival receive a free 130 page Program Book filled with essays and images. A worthy addition to your film book collection.)

 Wednesday July 12^th opens in rousing fashion at 7 p.m.with a restoration of Allan Dwan’s familiar swashbuckler The Iron Mask, a sequel to Alexandre Dumas’ The Three Musketeers, starring Douglas Fairbanks, with music from the excellent Guenter Buchwald Ensemble. 

By 1929 the silent era was essentially over and Fairbanks helped make the transition to talkies with two short speeches: “Fairbanks Talks!”  Biographer Jeffrey Vance (Douglas Fairbanks) summed it up:”As a valedictory to the silent screen, The Iron Mask is unsurpassed. In one of his few departures from playing a young man—and with fewer characteristic stunts—Fairbanks conjures up his most multi-dimensional and moving screen portrayal in a film that is perhaps the supreme achievement of its genre.” Vance will introduce the film.

(Editor’s note: Try to visit the fascinating exhibit about the author Alexandre Dumas revealing that he was a man of mixed race, a fact suppressed for more than 200 years. It is on view at the Berkeley Art Musuem Pacific Film Archive through July 30. Rare books, photographs, caricatures, vintage comic books and much more can be explored.)

But Thursday, well, Thursday July 13th  is an embarrassment of riches! Five count ‘em five programs – and I haven’t seen a SINGLE ONE of them on the big screen.

At 11:00 a.m, “Amazing Tales from the Archive“, a free program (no ticket necessary), in which a grab-bag of presentations and clips will introduce us to Nicholas White demonstrating antique noisemakers used to create live sound effects during silent film presentations,  Mindy Johnson on her discoveries with clips from the earliest-surviving hand-drawn animation directed by a woman, Bessie Mae Kelley; and Kyle Westphal taking us through learning the background on the lost (and found) Doll Messengers of Friendship, showing a 9-minute excerpt from a 1927 documentary about a post-WW I cultural exchange between Japan and the US . The excellent and versatile pianist/one-man-band Stephen Horne will accompany the clips. (Past Amazing Tales programs can be viewed here.)

Fun for the entire family!

2:15 p.m., Man and Wife by John McCutcheon who only directed two features. This one sounds delightfully wacky – Norma Shearer, in only her third year working in the movies, plays Dora who supposedly dies in a fire. Her widower, a famed brain surgeon, falls in love with Dolly (Gladys Leslie) who he doesn’t know is Dora’s sister. Of COURSE he operates on one of them and the surprises keep coming.  The musical accompaniment will be provided by Wayne Barker, the Tony-nominated composer of Peter and the Starcatcher, and a discovery of the SFSFF through Donald Sosin’s Master Class a few years ago.

In addition, before Man and Wife we get a beautiful animated puppet film, The Great Love of a Little Dancer (1924), featuring the famed puppets of the Marionnette Theater of the Schwiegerling family. Accompanied on piano by young Will Lewis.

At 4:30 pm, The Johnstown Flood, one of the screen’s first-ever disaster pics (based on a real and devastating event, the worst flood of the 19^th century). Plus it features the first pairing of tiny, pert Janet Gaynor and hunky George O’Brien, who went on to co-star in the masterpiece Sunrise, among others. Look for future stars Gary Cooper, Clark Gable, and Carole Lombard, Accompanied by the lively Mont Alto Motion Picture Orchestra.

At 7 p.m,, Up in Mabel’s Room, a comedy based on the 1919 Broadway hit, proved so durable a bedroom farce that it was remade in 1944 (coincidentally, by the extremely prolific and eclectic Allan Dwan, director of Wednesday night’s opening film, The Iron Mask). Starring Marie Prevost, a flapper who might have been forgotten without the dual mentions of her by Kenneth Anger in Hollywood Babylon and Nick Lowe in his misspelled Marie Provost. The pictures I’ve seen for this title promise rather amazing Art Deco costumes. The Guenter Buchwald Ensemble ought to cut loose with this one.

Closing out the night, we have Stella Maris, a 1925 remake of a 1918 film that starred Mary Pickford in, yes, another dual role. It’s dual roleplaying day, but this time it’s more the Prince and the Pauper than sisters; Mary Philbin plays a rich heiress as well as an impoverished servant.  Stephen Horne, renowned for playing two – or more –instruments at once, will accompany the film.

Even more densely programmed, Friday the 14^th offers six programs – every two hours, like clockwork – and three of them brand-new to me (or should I say brand-old?)

 

We begin at 11 a.m. with Stark Love, shot on location in the Appalachian mountains of North Carolina, where all the actors were locals who never appeared in another movie (wistfully, IMDb mentions that Forrest James, the male lead, was offered a contract by Paramount but turned it down). Karl Brown has credits in numerous fields of filming, and many more as a cinematographer or camera operator (49) and writer (33) than his 12 director credits.  Stark Love was his first directorial debut, and his only time as a producer. Described by the SFSFF as “proto-neorealist,” its young couple seek to escape the cycle of rural poverty its families are stuck in by attending college.  Music by Stephen Horne and his versatile percussionist partner Frank Bockius.

At 1 pm, with Flowing Gold, we stay in the country: the oil country of North Texas, where the homesteading family escapes poverty by, well, striking it rich.  (Pun not intended.) This is a brand-new SFSFF restoration, undertaken with the Narodni Film Archiv, Prague, and the film has not, to the best of SFSFF’s knowledge, been screened anywhere since the silent era. The 35mm print offers a number of tinted sequences, including “a spectacular bright red tint used to highlight a thrilling fire sequence.” Based on a novel by Rex Beach. To the best of my knowledge, I have not seen any of director Joseph de Grasse’s 91 other films as director – Flowing Gold was his second to last – nor his 35 acting credits, a few of which came in the sound era. His wife, Ida May Park, was also an early silent film director, with 14 credits, and her 50 writing credits continued into the early sound era.  As Andrew Sarris would say, subjects for further research – if there are prints to research from.  Music, interestingly, provided by a prize-winning Indian raga player, Utsav Lal, who is returning to the Festival, where he first played in 2019.

3:00 pm, and a third brand-new-to-me movie, Padlocked  – another brand-new SFSFF restoration, in concert with the Narodni Filmovy Archiv, Prague – again, “to the best of our knowledge, this film has not been screened in any capacity since the silent era.” Yippee! And again from director Allan Dwan – one of his 408 directorial credits. Whew. Also, as with Flowing Gold, based on a novel by Rex Beach (53 credits as a writer between 1910 and 1955 – by which time he’d been dead for 6 years – with 37 film adaptations). Starring F. Scott Fitzgerald’s crush, Lois Moran, who apparently is a BAD GIRL – “shipped off to a reformatory,” we’re told. I’m anxious to find out why.  Stephen Horne will accompany.

I’ve seen all of the last three films playing on Friday, but not in these new prints or DCPs. I can recommend all three without cavil: Buster Keaton is a household god, and his Three Ages at 5 p.m. is a new restoration, accompanied by the Mont Alto Motion Picture Orchestra.

I loved The Dragon Painter when I saw it at SFSFF in 2004, and this is a brand-new SFSFF restoration, featuring “recently discovered additional footage located at Eye Filmmuseum in Amsterdam that greatly enhances the storyline of Ume-Ko, portrayed by Sessue Hayakawa’s real-life wife Tsuru Aoki.” Music by NY-based, Japanese-born Masura Koga and his ensemble. At 7 p.m.

At 9 p.m., The Cat and the Canary, German Expressionist Paul Leni’s first American feature after a prolific career abroad as an art director, production designer, and director, notably of Waxworks. Relatives of an eccentric millionaire (now they are eccentric, not to say crazy, billionaires) gather in his spooky mansion on the 20^th anniversary of his death to hear the reading of his will. (what took them so long?) This is a 4K restoration completed by MoMA in 2022.  I enjoyed it when I saw it at SFSFF in 2009, so I can only imagine I will enjoy it even more now.  Musical accompaniment by Utsav Lal.

                        Read Part Two of Meredith’s preview to learn aobut Saturday and Sunday picture shows.

  We thought our readers might enjoy some Bonus rare photos, posters and clips (curated by Gary Meyer).

                    See a pattern?

Tales From The Archives

Nicholas White on Sound Effects 
Many videos and more.

 

Watch White play his sound effects to a silent film. Amazing.

Read about the discovery of Doll Messengers of Friendship

Learn more about The Japanese Friendship Doll Exchange – Silent Envoys

The Great Love of a Little Dancer

Man and Wife

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m9W3A0MqN0g

Explore the Johnstown Flood Museum online.

 

Marie Prevost was one of Hollywood’s most popular comedic actresses but after she died wild rumors started about what really happened. Read all about it.

Read more about this nearly forgotten film on Silent Film Calendar

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Dragon Painter magazine covers and trailer courtesy of Milestone Films.

Theater owners were encouraged to book Sessue Hayakawa movies for quality programs by the distributor.

Join the International Buster Keaton Society and become a Damfino.

 

 

Meredith Brody, a graduate of both the Paris Cordon Bleu cooking school and USC film school, has been the restaurant critic for, among others, the Village Voice, LA Weekly, and SF Weekly, and has written for countless film magazines and websites including Cahiers du Cinema, Film Comment, and Indiewire. Her writings on books, theater, television, and travel have appeared in the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, and Interview. She also contributes to EatDrinkFilms including her“Meals with Meredith,” where she talks about food and film with filmmakers at restaurants in northern California, writes about vintage cocktails and where she eats during film festivals at the Castro Theatre in San Francisco. A selection of her EDF pieces are found here.

One could describe Meredith as “hooked on cinema” as she attends four-five films a day at many bay area and international festivals each year.  Somebody has to do it. Read about her journey back to festivals after two years in pandemic mode.