Continuing a wrap-up of last year with the San Francisco Silent Film Festival's A Day of Silents:
The annual Day of Silents was held at the period-appropriate, gloriously ornate Castro Theater, & as in a few weeks the venue is being shut down for about a year & a half by its new owners in order to undertake extensive renovations (possibly, it has been suggested by many, ruinations), there was a nostalgic feeling in the air (though you will have one more chance to experience the Castro as a purely cinematic palace when the Festival presents Dreyer's Vampyr, with their signature live musical accompaniment, on 12 January).
The nostalgia was for the beloved & historic venue; there is surprisingly little nostalgia involved in seeing the films, some of which are well past the century mark in age. Perhaps nostalgia is limited to the remembered creations & moments from one's youth, & there can be few people still around who experienced silent film in its original moment. The six programs, which as usual with the Festival were wide-ranging & varied, could be seen & appreciated directly as art.
The first program, Of Mice & Men (& Cats & Clowns), with musical accompaniment by Wayne Barker & Nicholas White, was all animation, covering Émile Cohl's 1908 Fantasmagorie to Pat Sullivan's 1928 Felix the Cat in Sure-Locked Homes. Obviously Felix is the Cat referenced in the title; the clown is the Fleischer Brothers' Koko, who made an Out of the Inkwell appearance in A Trip to Mars & Vacation, both from 1924. I guess Koko was a star until he turned into a sidekick in the early sound era for the incandescent Betty Boop. Anyway, the films on the program contained an amazing level of technical innovation (mixing animation & live action, right from the start!), surreal wit, filmic cleverness, & impressive amounts of sheer though submerged labor (some of the earliest cartoons, including Winsor McKay's disturbing How a Mosquito Operates from 1912, required the artist to produce thousands of individual drawings). The designs tend to be much simpler than in the richly drawn cartoons of the 1930s. These cartoons are not the worse for that; there is a graphic boldness to them that looks clean & classic. I much prefer it to the Uncanny Valley of today's computer-produced, realism-driven works.
The second program was Ernst Lubitsch's The Wildcat from 1921, starring Pola Negri, with musical accompaniment by the Mont Alto Motion Picture Orchestra. I thought before going in that I had seen this film, but afterwards I was pretty sure I had not, as I can't imagine forgetting such a wild & fanciful foray. The set design alone (Ernst Stern & Max Gronau), with its swirling fortress in the snowy Bavarian Alps, is something that would stick in the memory. I loved the way many shots were framed so that we're mostly seeing things under arches or through circles or in some other eccentric configuration. Negri as the powerful daughter of the Chief of the mountain brigands assailing the fortress is as expected a vital & appealing force. Even if I had seen the movie before, I would would be happy to see it again: it's full of wild moments & surprises.
Next up was The Eagle from 1925, directed by Clarence Brown & starring Rudolph Valentino & Vilma Banky, with musical accompaniment by Wayne Barker. This was a lovely print & an excellent showcase for Valentino, who displays not only his graceful almost feline sexual charm but also great skill at light-comedy moments. It's based on an unfinished story by Pushkin & involves a son (Valentino) who seeks revenge on the ignoble Nobleman who has cheated his father out of his country estate. There's also Louise Dresser as a delightfully lusty Catherine the Great (someone should put together a film series of the cinematic Catherines; there's Dietrich in The Scarlet Empress & Elisabeth Bergner in the Korda-produced Rise of Catherine the Great & I'm sure there are others). She, like the audience, is drawn to the handsome young soldier. He is resistant, possibly because he's already seen golden-haired Vilma Banky, but honestly . . . Catherine is certainly older than he is, but not by that much, & she's quite attractive, &, you know, why not? But the plot requires him to flee her attentions. The sets for this one were also quite striking; designed by William Cameron Menzies, they reminded me of his elegant work for the Fairbanks Thief of Bagdad. There are certainly striking dramatic moments, particularly when Valentino is undercover in the house of the evil Nobleman (who turns out to be the father of Vilma Banky), & some striking cinematic moments, including a famous tracking shot down a banquet table that brought applause from our audience. These things, & the appeal of the characters, more than made up for some loose ends in the plot (the family estate never really does seem returned & the father avenged, but otherwise there is a happy ending all around).
Fourth was Pavement Butterfly, a German/British collaboration from 1929, directed by Richard Eichberg & starring Anna May Wong, with musical accompaniment by the Sascha Jacobsen Ensemble. Wong is receiving some long overdue recognition, & the theater was packed for this one (a friend of mine who came only to this program told me he had some trouble finding a seat). The audience included some members of Wong's family (she was a California native). Butterfly in the title might lead you to expect a story along the lines of Puccini's great opera, but though there is a lover who moves on while she stays faithful, the story is complicated in other ways & she does not die at the end – my recollection of the translation of her farewell subtitle in the film is that it was "I don't belong with you", but the article in the program book gives it as "I don't belong to you", which is something different. (The original words are Ich gehöre nicht zu euch & Google Translate agrees with the program book.) The setting is the Parisian / Monte Carlo demimonde of artists & wealthy patrons. As you might expect from a late-period silent film from Germany, the photography is stunning & the whole film is gorgeous to look at (I believe the film has only recently been restored). Wong is a subtle performer & an incandescent presence.
Since I mentioned the program book, I should emphasize that the Festival always does a wonderful job with them. They are substantial publications, with interesting articles on the programs & many attractive photographs. & the Festival doesn't charge for them!
I left after Pavement Butterfly. That had been my plan all along, as the fifth program was Harold Lloyd's Safety Last! & the final program, a melodrama titled Forgotten Faces, started late enough so that I didn't want to stick around before the MUNI/BART return to the east bay. I had some regrets about skipping Faces. The Lloyd I have seen before & if you have any sort of feelings about heights, it is difficult to watch. The first time I saw it was at the Pacific Film Archive when I was a student at Berkeley. By the time the film ended I was drenched in sweat. The second time I saw it was during the pandemic, when I finally watched the boxed set of Lloyd films I had bought years before. & though I admired Lloyd's ingenuity, & the impressive physical feat represented by the film (done though he was missing a thumb & forefinger! & those shoes he's wearing – those are regular dress shoes, with no traction on the soles!), I decided I didn't need to see the movie again. Since this is its centennial year, it made sense to have it headline the festival, but . . . not for me. When I read in the program book that when Lloyd came across the actual "human fly" who inspired the film, his "heart was in [his] throat" & he had to keep looking away. I felt considerable relief, as I was starting to feel a bit candy-ass about my inability to watch the film. I like Lloyd (though I prefer Chaplin & Keaton), but I'll stick to something like The Kid Brother.
