SFSFF. Preview.

In October of 1998, while living briefly in Berlin, I made my first visit to a small city north of Venice. I had read many times of a festival there devoted exclusively to silent motion pictures and this particular year marked a retrospective of work from the legendary Fox Film Corporation, the company that brought Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau to Hollywood. Known as Le Giornate del Cinema Muto, or more commonly as the Pordenone Silent Film Festival despite the slight detail that it has occurred in the neighboring city of Sacile for the past few years, the event is a wonderful showcase of works restored by the various archives of the world. Granted, there are similar festivals elsewhere - Il Cinema Ritrovato in Bologna and the Festival of Preservation in Los Angeles, among others. However, Le Giornate del Cinema Muto is the event most likely to include an overwhelming number of films unseen for decades that might remain unseen for nearly as long thereafter.

This pilgrimage to Pordenone remains my favorite festival-going experience and, although I haven't been able to attend in recent years, the voyage to Italy provides a wonderful occasion to see the same sizeable group of friends and acquaintances that attend annually. Relocating to San Francisco, I was pleased to discover a number of venues that catered to aficionados of the pre-sound era - David Packard's Stanford Theatre in Palo Alto, the Pacific Film Archive in Berkeley and the Silent Film Museum in Niles (sponsors of the excellent if under-publicized Bronco Billy Film Festival). The jewel of the Bay has the San Francisco Silent Film Festival, now in its eleventh year.

SFSFF presents a fair opportunity for folks new to silent cinema as well as for knowledgeable cineastes to savor an equal mix of somewhat well-known classics along with relative obscurities. Of the former, the Oscar-winning opening night film, Seventh Heaven, recognizes the centenary of star Janet Gaynor and the first of many respected pairings with Charles Farrell. Its syrupy melodrama and creaking sentimentality can still bring tears to your eyes. I first saw the film during that maiden journey to Pordenone and, in the context of a mad rush of multiple Gaynor performances, Seventh Heaven can be quite affecting. Perhaps most striking, though, is her appearance in the John Ford rarity Shamrock Handicap which receives a long-awaited screening next month during an exceptional late-July-to-mid-August series of Gaynor's films at the PFA.

An entirely other Ford film, Bucking Broadway, opens SFSFF's Saturday program. Simply for the opportunity of seeing one of Harry Carey and Ford's earliest collaborations, this rollicking romp of cowboys in the big city is a must-see. Similarly worthy of recommendation, Au bonheur des dames, a mid-career Julien Duvivier effort adapted from Émile Zola which could be viewed as a post-Bastille Day treat with musical accompaniment from the Hot Club of San Francisco. The following afternoon offers The Girl with the Hatbox, a Soviet comedy which bears a passing resemblance to René Clair's magnificent Le Million. All three of these efforts are rarely shown in theaters, infrequently appear on television and, except for the latter, are unavailable on video.

If "classics" are more your speed, perhaps you would prefer Mary Pickford in the pleasant peasant story, Sparrows, Lon Chaney in Tod (Freaks) Browning's queer The Unholy Three (later remade in 1930 as a sound picture, still starring Chaney but directed by Jack Conway), or Oliver Hardy and Stan Laurel in a trio (or secretly promised quartet) of shorts, including the wacky Wrong Again. If you thought that Un chien andalou was the only film to put a four-legged animal on top of a grand piano, you would be quite mistaken. Same year, opposite sides of the Atlantic, proving that the distance between Leo McCarey and Luis Buñuel was less daunting than you might otherwise suspect. The true highlights of the program, however, are unsurprisingly reserved for the evening slots.

It is part of film history folly to presume that Susan Alexander character in Citizen Kane was a direct reference to Marion Davies, an implication of a no-talent trophy mistress. Davies was an incredibly skilled actress, best suited for comedy but forced into a number of dreary dramas at the insistence of William Randolph Hearst. Arguably her greatest performance can be seen in the excellent Show People, the tale of a young lady trying to break into show business, sublimely directed by King Vidor. A number of celebrities - Douglas Fairbanks and Charles Chaplin among them - make brief cameos, but Marion steals the Show with her remarkable impersonations of other leading ladies (Lillian Gish, in particular). As grand as this final movie in the program might be, nothing in the entire weekend touches the Saturday evening closer - Pandora's Box, one of the greatest motion pictures ever made.

It was considered a certain career-ending disaster when the lovely Louise Brooks, a former professional dancer and ex-ladyfriend of the aforementioned Chaplin, decided to refuse her new Paramount contract and accept an offer to travel to Germany and make a film with Georg Wilhelm Pabst. Pabst was not an entirely unknown figure. He was already somewhat recognized in these parts for The Joyless Street (Greta Garbo's last film before departing for the US) and The Love of Jeanne Ney (starring Brigitte Helm, best known for Metropolis) but, while Ernst Lubitsch, Billy Wilder and other directors ventured to Hollywood, GW stayed in Germany. It is said that he spent many months looking for a lead for his adaptation of the Frank Wedekind play. On seeing Brooks in Howard Hawks's A Girl in Every Port, Pabst knew that he'd found his star.

Pandora's Box, more than any other in her 24-film career, remains the film for which Brooks is most fondly remembered, although her legendary locks date back as far as her first feature, The Street of Forgotten Men, four years earlier. On paper, it is the tale of a vamp that destroys the lives of the men around her. The genius of Pabst and Brooks, however, was to play the lost girl as an innocent. It is an essential display of the Kuleshov Effect; the audience projects whatever they want onto the carefree Lulu. This ambiguity inevitably adds to its greatness. Is she provocateur or prey? Villain or victim? It is unfortunate that the director and his perfect muse made only two films together. After their second collaboration, Brooks retreated back to America and to an industry that was no longer interested in her abilities. Her first work after returning to the States was a picture directed by the similarly blacklisted Roscoe Arbuckle (working under a pseudonym); her last before a self-imposed retirement had her playing against John Wayne a few months before Stagecoach.

It's often claimed that they don't make 'em like they used to. In truth, they haven't made a film quite this good in over seventy years. If you're in the neighborhood, you'll have a rare opportunity to see for yourself - in the ornate Castro Theatre with an enthusiastic audience, it will be akin to a time machine transporting you back to 1929, when Berlin was the center of the artistic world.

Posted by dwhudson at July 13, 2006 4:45 AM