SFSFF: Preview.

Year nine of the San Francisco Silent Film Festival and I will once again find another weekend in July preoccupied with the wonders of pre-1935 cinema. Short of flying to Pordenone in October, this is your best chance to see the so-called Silent Era in all of its glory, screening in the appropriate surroundings of the Castro Theatre.

Between films rare and remarkable, including Monta Bell’s rarely seen Lady of the Night (1925) and pictures from two Williams (Seiter and Worthington, What Happened to Jones (1926) and The Dragon Painter (1919) respectively), there are a handful that really should not be missed. Maurice (father of Jacques) Tourneur’s classic The Blue Bird (1918) was a box office failure upon its initial release. The director’s efforts of imparting extravagant, expressionistic design into this avant-garde production proved financially fatal on it release, causing the director to move in a more commercial fashion in later years (The Last of the Mohicans (1920), most notably) before returning to France. Tourneur's thinking, while filming, was such that "the time has come where we can no longer merely photograph moving and inanimate objects and call it art... we must present the effect such a scene has upon the artist-director's mind, so that an audience will catch the mental reaction."

Douglas Fairbanks was considered "one of film land's most popular comedians" when he starred in When the Clouds Roll By (1919). The film's director, Victor Fleming, is remembered now as a dependable "finisher" - he completed The Wizard of Oz and Gone With the Wind only after others were removed from these projects. Regardless, he was one of a handful of directors whose silent period is largely forgotten and unjustifiably so. Clouds proves, particularly, that his skill rested firmly with visual compositions.

Unlike the rest of the world, Asian cinema stayed "silent" (although, in most cases, with a benshi), into the mid-1930s. Getting a worthwhile resurrection, Shennü (The Goddess, 1934) by Wu Yonggang proves that some of the greatest efforts of early cinema were originating in the east (and, if there is any doubt, refer to the exceptional body of pre-sound work from Yasujiro Ozu). This being one of the most remarkable little-seen films of the period, Ruan Ling-yu stars as a woman who, in the wake of pressure about an affair, decides to end it all. Sadly, one year later, the 24-year-old Ruan did precisely the same thing. If the story sounds familiar, Stanley Kwan made a film (Center Stage) in 1992 with Maggie Cheung as the young actress.

Naturally, the last films of the evening (Saturday and Sunday) are reserved for the showcase pictures. This year, Artistic Director Stephen Salmons has outdone himself. Saturday presents a rare big-screen presentation of Rex Ingram's epic Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse (1921). Extremely profitable at the time of its release (it remained one of the top-grossing films throughout the 1920s), the story was adapted from the Vicente Blasco Ibáñez novel and remains a classic of the anti-war genre (terribly appropriate at this time). Ingram was considered one of the four true leaders in the burgeoning Hollywood movie business in 1923 (along with DW Griffith, Marshall Neilan and CB DeMille) by fellow writer/director Tamar Lane. Rex Ingram was proud of the results, of course - "In The Four Horsemen I made all the exteriors I could on dull days in order to allow us an open lens and get a softer image. I wanted to get away from the hard, crisp effect of the photograph and get something of the mellow mezzotint of the painting; to get the fidelity of photography but the softness of the old master. To picture not only the dramatic action, but to give it some of the merit of art." Not to be overlooked, the picture stars Rudolph Valentino in arguably his finest role.

The climatic event of the festival arrives Sunday night with a screening of Charles Chaplin's The Circus (1928). It was common at the time for theatres to change their films every week; some theatres changed their titles as many as six times a week. In fact, only ten percent of theatres even ran a film for an entire week. Therein, it is worth remarking that The Circus screened for nearly four months at Grauman's Chinese Theatre in Los Angeles. Not unlike Chaplin's career, with this film the show moves on and the Tramp is left behind. It was only two-and-a-half years earlier when Chaplin wrote, directed, scored and starred in The Gold Rush (1925). In the interim, he was off American screens; while the country was enamored with the possibilities of sound, Charlie mounted an "attack on the talkies."

Still, the success of The Circus was something of an anomaly. The public reception of City Lights (1931) essentially ended any chance for the "alternative silent cinema" movement that Chaplin hoped for. Despite all of that, it is surprising that The Circus is little-seen by even adoring fans of Chaplin. A shame, because, with City Lights from his silent period and Monsieur Verdoux (1947) from the sound era, it should be considered one of his greatest films. Although we were unable to orchestrate an appearance by composer Timothy Brock to accompany this screening (something Salmons and, to a much lesser degree, I were trying to put together with the San Francisco Symphony), perhaps we’ll be able to bring him next year for the tenth annual event. In the meantime, you'll find me down in front, awash in the bliss of eight fantastic films.

Posted by dwhudson at July 8, 2004 9:43 AM