Every year I tell myself I'm going to buy a special, "real" vintage outfit to wear, but I still keep being able to cobble together outfits from my existing clothing that look enough of the part so that I can wear something somewhat in the 1920s fashion. The only thing I'm wearing here that's vintage is the fur stole that was my grandmother's, but even that was probably circa 1940. The hat is from Buenos Aires (the main compliment getter today. I am still convinced that people will go out of their way to be nice to you if you are wearing a cute hat.). The shoes are Clarks (even though a fellow waiting in line with me told me they looked more 1930s) and the coat was a bargain at H&M on clearance for $30.
The best thing about this outfit was that I dreamed it up in my sleep. How's that for multitasking? The only other really useful thing I've done in my dreams that I can recall was to invent that Crack Potato recipe.
I also had a sexy dream about Buster Keaton but I'm going to chalk that up to pre-festival excitement.
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Next week, I'll be spending quality time with Relyn and Robin, who have trekked down to SF to visit me and dutchbaby. I didn't mention it earlier due to... stuff... but we should have some adventures and lots of photos to share soon.
But now I'm off to dream of tomorrow's festival outfit. Hope your weekend is full of whimsy.
Since I can't take you all with me all of the time, here is one of the films I saw on Saturday at the SF Silent Film Festival, Winter/Valentine's Day Event.
Buster Keaton in his second film, an entertaining romp of love and vengeance called Our Hospitality. From the program notes:
Set against the drama of an age-old feud between two families, Buster Keaton's ingenious take on Romeo and Juliet is a laugh-out-loud parody of Southern hospitality, circa 1830. Upon learning he's inherited the ancestral estate, Buster takes the first train home to reclaim his heritage. Soon he's courting a sweetheart and dodging her family's bullets. Buster's daredevil rescue attempt above a waterfall is one of the all-time great movie stunts.
If I was forced to pick my favorite silent film comedian, I'd have to pick Harold Lloyd. BUT my very very very close second would be Buster (who got his nickname as a child from none other than Harry Houdini, how freaking cool is that?!) That face ("The Great Stone Face") just kills me. He was such a pro. I'm not going into one of my silent film raves now (you can look up past ones yourself), but gosh darn it, I'll watch a Buster Keaton film a million times before I rent the Director's Cut of the Boring Sappy Blech of Benjamin Button.
Some very kind and patient person uploaded the entire film here, viewable in three parts. For those of you who (like me) despair of most modern cinema experiences nowadays, here you can watch a film full of stunts that are real (no special effects), great comedy, no special effects, and no special effects. Just imagine, a movie without CGI! How ever did they do it?!
Amazing.
ps.: I know that most of you (all of you?) won't watch the entire film if any of it, but if you do (maybe there's a lull at work?), there's a scene in part 2 here where a man kicks a hat off of another man's head (no special effects, just incredible gymnastic ability). That man was Buster Keaton's dad, who makes a brief cameo. And Keaton's son, billed here as Buster Jr, makes an appearance in the beginning of the film, as the baby. Keeping it all in the family. Oh, and his wife is the love interest. So there you are.
pss.: The full SF Silent Film Festival is scheduled this year for July 10-12. So don't call or write to me then. But I'll save you a seat!
I sat for many hours in a darkened theatre with almost 2,000 other enthusiastic cineastes.
It was a weekend of plucky orphans and exotic princesses and Ojibway Indians and powerful caliphs and underdogs and heroes and lovers.
It's hard to know what to tell you about the festival, really. I mean, it wouldn't make a lot of sense to describe movies you haven't seen, because that won't relay the power and attraction that these movies have.
I guess one thing I can tell you is something that The Boy says: These movies are a perfect form of time travel.
They are, of course, because you can see in exquisite detail the life in the teens and Twenties, when this country was undergoing monumental changes in technology and social roles and mores. But to me, these films are not only a way-back machine, but also a timelessness machine. What I see in these films, apart from great acting, interesting cinematography and inventive stories, are that people still want and love and dream of the same things, today just as they did almost 100 years ago.
One thing that I also enjoy about this festival is the amount of education I receive about the movies I am about to watch. The festival brings in respected critics (Leonard Maltin is a regular) and film historians and archivists, who explain the historical significance of these movies and what they mean to us as well as audiences in the past. Often, the stories of how these films have literally been saved from assured deterioration and are painstakingly conserved so that they can go on to be enjoyed by future generations are almost as interesting as the movies themselves. So few of these films have actually survived (some reports are less than 10%--meaning over 90% of these films are lost forever), that the ones that can be shown are even more important than ever.
One of the tragedies of our modern entertainment industry is that it leaves no room for exposing most people to the films of times past. Seeing a silent (or any classic film, for that matter) on television is a very second-place alternative but one that often is the only alternative. When these treasured films are given the venue and the opportunity to be viewed on a big screen like they were intended to be, the life and substance of the stories, the vibrance of the acting, all of that springs to life.
Otherwise, these films suffer the fate of becoming museum pieces and quaint curiosities.
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I'm going to recap a few films here, and I hope that someday you can see them too. Clips of these films on youtube are rare, as you might imagine, but I've found a few that you'll enjoy if you have a few minutes to watch.
One highlight of the festival was The Adventures of Prince Achmed (1926), by German animator Lotte Reiniger. This stunning and enchanting film took three years to complete, animated entirely by delicate paper silhouette figures. This film, a pastiche of stories from One Thousand and One Nights, is the oldest surviving animated feature film and Reiniger the first female animator.
The clip below is one of the highlights of the film, when Prince Achmed finds the exotic harem:
Harold Lloyd's amazing talent is experiencing a renaissance after many years of neglect. Along with Charlie Chaplin and Buster Keaton, he was one of the world's most popular and successful comedic actors.
I'll be honest and tell you that Lloyd is my favorite of the classic silent comedians. His films are fast, witty and expertly made. There's never a dull moment in a Harold Lloyd film and the one we saw, The Kid Brother, was accompanied by a live orchestra, the Mont Alto Picture Orchestra from Colorado.
Whereas many American silents are imbued with a somewhat innocent manner, the German Expressionism movement during the height of the Weimar Republic created incomparably powerful and sophisticated movies.
(The entire film is actually available in sections on youtube, beginning here, but if you can rent the DVD...)
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Lon Chaney Sr., the Man of 1000 Faces, was a terrifically talented actor. Raised by deaf-mute parents, he was perfectly destined to work in a medium where a voice was not a prerequisite. His face, so agile and so expressive, even without makeup, is fascinating to watch. Paired with an extremely young and very sexy Joan Crawford (not the Mildred Pierce variety you are thinking of) and directed by Tod Browning (now idolized as a cult director) in an atmosphere of circus creepiness...there is not a movie today that even comes close to The Unknown.
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I know this is a lot of information that might only be of interest to a few of you, but if you even get to see one of these films (and be sure to let me know!), I'll be so happy to know a new appreciator is out there to help spread the word about these wonderful, artistic treasures.
The San Francisco Silent Film Festival returneth! I am not exaggerating when I say that I have been looking forward to this event for a year--since the last one.
I'm looking forward to seeing a really great lineup of films, starting off the weekend right with Harold Lloyd in The Kid Brother.
I can't wait to see to an animated film that I read something about a few months ago, called The Adventures of Prince Achmed. It's the earliest surviving feature-length animated film.
One of my favorite events from the last festival is a talk that will be repeated again this time, called "Amazing Tales from the Archives," where film historians and conservationists talk about the efforts of film preservation and how conservationists are saving precious early films for generations of us to enjoy.
Oh, I just could go on and on about this festival (and probably bore you to tears), but I think I'll wait until after I've actually been there so I have something cool to tell you. In the meantime, you can read my previous posts about the festivals here and here.
There are rare moments where love is captured for eternity. I got to see one of them last Saturday at the San Francisco Silent Film Festival.
The 8pm presentation of Flesh and the Devil, the starmaking melodrama with Greta Garbo and John Gilbert, was shown to a packed house. The 35mm print, on loan from the Library of Congress, was given to the library's archives after the film was restored in the mid-80s by Warner Brothers. According to the archivist who flew out from Washington DC for the festival and gave the audience an introduction to the film, this print had never been shown before.
Acclaimed musician Dennis James, who is widely known on the silent film circuit for his amazing performances on piano and organ, provided the film's accompaniment on the Castro Theatre's Wurlitzer organ. Having live music playing while you watch a film raises the viewing of that film to an event. It becomes a total experience.
I had tried to do my homework before seeing this film, so I already knew that it was the vehicle that made Greta Garbo a huge star. I also knew that this film began the real-life stormy love affair of the two stars. However, even if you did not know that Garbo and Gilbert were lovers offscreen, you would have figured it out very quickly upon seeing them together.
There was no artifice in their scenes together. The first scene where Gilbert sees Garbo as she gets off the train at the station--that look is one of a man completely besotted by love. It gives you the chills to peek into someone's heart like that.
Here is an illuminating quote about the film, from another blog I enjoy, The Crowd Roars:
John Gilbert's friend at the time, Adela St. Johns, said many years later of the actor's love for Garbo:
"It was an explosion. I've never seen two people so violently, excitedly in love. I mean when she walked through a door if he was in the room he went white and took a great, long breath and then walked toward her as though he were being yanked by a magnet or something." ...Director Clarence Brown said that when he would shoot a love scene with the two he would finish the filming and leave them alone. "It was embarrassing," he said, feeling like an intruder.
I wish more people were exposed to and had the chance to learn to enjoy these movies. The perception that they are irrelevant could not be more untrue. To quote The Boy: Silent movies are anything but silent. The way Garbo hands Gilbert the cigarette that she has been toying with in her lips...um, that cigarette is anything but a cigarette. She knows it, he knows it, and so do you. These movies are full of moments of extreme feeling and emotion because actors need more than dialogue to tell you their story.
What I love about these films are the nuances. The things that exist between the words. If you know what to look for and even if you don't.
I would like to see all three presentations; it's just a matter if I can sit in a seat that long (if I have to pick one, I guess it will be Flesh and the Devil with Garbo and John Gilbert--real-life lovers on the silver screen):
2007 WINTER EVENT DECEMBER 1 at The Castro Theatre
Program 1--11:00am VITAPHONE VAUDEVILLE (1926-30) Program 2--2:00pm INTOLERANCE (1916) Program 3--8:00pm FLESH AND THE DEVIL (1926)
This past summer was my first exposure to the SF Silent Film Festival. It was an incredible opportunity to see these movies with live music accompaniment, lectures on film history and restoration (completely fascinating!), and the beautifully restored films on the big screen.
Here's my first post about the festival. I'll be a regular attendee from now on. It's amazing to see how some things are truly timeless and connect with people in many eras.
This weekend was the San Francisco Silent Film Festival, at the historic Castro Theatre. I managed to get over there for some part of each day of the festival, and the films were charming, glorious entertainment. I am already looking forward to next year's festival.
The highlight (for me) was the Ernst Lubitsch film, The Student Prince in Old Heidelberg. This lovely fairy tale brought a smile (and a sniffle) to everyone in the audience.
If this is the only silent movie you ever saw in your life, you would be very lucky indeed. The crisp print of the film was exquisite, and you couldn't help but fall in love with both Norma Shearer and Ramon Novarro. My only other experience with watching Shearer was in The Women (which, to be honest, I find to be an extremely annoying movie) but I could see here immediately the charisma and talent that made Norma Shearer the star that she later became.
And "the Lubitsch touch"... makes his movies worth watching over and over again. If he was Billy Wilder's favorite director...well, what more can be said?
I tried to make the picture look a little more old-fashionedy.
"It would have been more logical if silent pictures had grown out of the talkies instead of the other way around." ~ 
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