Showing posts with label Napoleon. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Napoleon. Show all posts

Saturday, March 10, 2012

Only two weeks till Napoleon

The San Francisco Silent Film Festival's monumental presentation of Abel Gance's 1927 masterpiece NAPOLEON is only two weeks away! Watch for major coverage of this event in and on...
NY Times
 LA Times
Wall Street Journal
NPR
SF Chronicle.
... and other major local and national media outlets. But don't wait for the press to break... IT'LL MIGHT BE TOO LATE! This event will NOT be presented again in any other American city. There are absolutely, positively FOUR PERFORMANCES ONLY: March 24, 25, 31, and April 1 at the Paramount Theatre in Oakland, CA

Tickets are going fast, don't delay -- BUY YOURS NOW!
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"A MAJOR EVENT! Don't wait for it to come to a theater near you - getting Gance's magnum opus up on a screen is a herculean task!" - Martin Scorsese, Vanity Fair
 
"In 10 or 20 or 30 years, when this screening of Napoleon is only a memory, film lovers will ask -- were you there? 'Did you see the Napoleon  at the Paramount in 2012?'" - Thomas Gladysz, Huffington Post
 
"You don't want to kick yourself afterwards for missing out on this experience!" - Leonard Maltin, Movie Crazy
 
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TCM Sponsor Logo
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NAPOLEON SPONSORS

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NAPOLEON PROMOTIONAL PARTNERS

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NAPOLEON COMMUNITY PARTNERS


Silent Film Director App
OFFICIAL MOBILE SPONSOR of SFSFF
We are proud to announce Silent Film Director for iPhone as the official mobile partner of the San Francisco Silent Film Festival. Silent Film Director brings the magic and elegance of the silent era to the iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad, allowing you to shoot, edit and share your own silent films. With just a few taps you can add music, title cards, transitions, customize soundtracks, video effects and more. Coming soon, MacPhun LLC - the developer of Silent Film Director - will announce an international silent film contest, where everyone with an iPhone will have a chance to create their own silent masterpiece. Maybe it won't be another Napoleon or The Artist, but it will be your work of art and you will be the Silent Film Director.
 

Monday, February 27, 2012

Napleon not to be missed

When Kevin Brownlow's first restoration of Abel Gance's epic silent film, Napoleon (1927), played at the 6000 seat Radio City Music Hall in New York City in 1981, it sold out. As a matter of fact, it sold out again and again and again as additional screenings were hastily added for what was then described as the "movie event of the year."

Now, Brownlow's second major restoration of Napoleon is set to play in Oakland, California in what is being described as the "cinema event of a lifetime." Hyperbole? Not really. Bigger and better than ever before? Decidedly yes.

The San Francisco Silent Film Festival is presenting Gance's masterpiece – unseen in the United States for nearly 30 years – for four performances only on March 24, 25, 31 and April 1. This exclusive engagement marks not only the U.S. premiere of what is being billed as a complete restoration by Brownlow – an Academy Award honoree in 2011 – but as well the U.S. premiere of an original score by acclaimed composer Carl Davis, who is coming over from England to conduct the Oakland East Bay Symphony.

According to Brownlow and those involved in putting together this monumental undertaking, there are no plans for the film to show anywhere else in the United States – due in part to the extraordinary costs and technical challenges of mounting this "live cinema experience." And, should you be wondering, there are no plans for many of the same reasons for the film to be shown on television or to be released on DVD or Blu-ray. In other words, this really is a "cinema event of a lifetime."

If you love silent film, or if you love the movies in general, and if you are not yet convinced that you need to see this rarely screened masterpiece, here are ten reasons why you shouldn't miss Napoleon.

10) BACKGROUND: For Brownlow, it’s personal. The English film historian, who will be on hand for the event, first came across a fragment of Gance's 1927 masterpiece as a film-obsessed teenager more than 50 years ago. He was wowed. Since then, he has spent much of his life piecing together this lost masterpiece which had been dismissed, neglected, cut up, reworked, and scattered by the winds of time.


 9) KEVIN BROWNLOW: In 2010, this author, documentary filmmaker, and preservationist became the first film historian to win an Academy Award. In an industry which is always looking forward and very seldom backward, that is something special. Brownlow's reputation is legendary. He has authored a handful of classic texts including The Parade's Gone By (1968), a book which helped shape a generation of film scholars and film buffs. [It includes a note of thanks to Louise Brooks and acknowledgement of a debt to the actress "for acting as a prime mover in this book's publication."] The Parade's Gone By is still in print after more than forty years. Brownlow has also made more than a dozen extraordinary documentaries including the 13-part television series, Hollywood  (1979), which aired to great acclaim on both the BBC and PBS. It set the standard for every serious film documentary which followed. [It too includes footage of Louise Brooks.]  Brownlow has, as well, been involved in the restoration of a number of other landmark films, among them The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse  (1921), The Thief of Bagdad  (1924), King Vidor's The Crowd  (1928), and nearly two dozen others including the first film to win an Oscar, Wings  (1928). In the March issue of Vanity Fair, Martin Scorsese wrote "If you love silent movies, Kevin Brownlow should be your hero."

8)  SETTING: It's said that a theater can enhance a film experience. That’s true for the Oakland Paramount, a 1931 Art Deco movie palace designed by the celebrated Timothy L. Pflueger. Still gorgeous after all these years, the 3,000 seat Oakland Paramount has gone through its own restoration and is today entered into the National Register of Historic Places. Thanks in part to this historic venue – a temple to the motion picture experience, movie-goers who attend Napoleon  should expect to find themselves spellbound in darkness, as were those who attended the film's premiere at the Paris Opera in 1927.

7)  MUSIC: The eminent British composer and conductor Carl Davis will lead the Oakland East Bay Symphony (whose home is the Oakland Paramount) in Davis' own score for Napoleon. Written over 30 years ago, it is a marathon and masterful work of film scoring which has twice been expanded to keep up with newly found footage.


 6)  CARL DAVIS: Since 1961, this American born artist has made his home in the UK, where he serves as a conductor with the London Philharmonic Orchestra while regularly conducting the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra. Carl Davis has written music for more than 100 television programs and feature films, but is best known for creating music to accompany silent films, including key Brownlow restorations. Davis has also assisted in the orchestration of the symphonic works of Paul McCartney, been given a Honorary CBE from Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II, and won a BAFTA Award for Best Film Music.

5) BIGGER AND BETTER:  This current and perhaps final restoration, completed in 2000 but not previously seen outside Europe, reclaims more than 30 minutes of additional footage discovered since the earlier restorations while visually upgrading much of the film. This unique 35mm print, made at the laboratory of the BFI’s National Archive, uses traditional dye-bath techniques to recreate the color tints and tones that enhanced the film on its original release, giving a vividness to the image as never before experienced in this country.

 4) GREATEST FILM EVER MADE: Over the years, many films have been said to be the greatest film ever made. For reasons of film history, for reasons having to do with its own history, and for reasons of artistic achievement, this may be the one film most deserving of the claim. Here is what Vincent Canby had to say in 1981 in the pages of the New York Times. "As one watches Napoleon, one suddenly realizes that there once was a film that justified all of the adjectives that have subsequently been debased by critics as well as advertising copywriters. Napoleon  sweeps; it takes the breath away; it moves (itself as well as the spectator); it dazzles."

3)  POLYVISION: There are few movies so innovative, so daring and so hugely ambitious as Napoleon. In a way, it is a cinematographer's textbook, and what's more, Gance repeatedly broke new ground in this seminal film. To involve the viewer with the drama on the screen, Gance employed rapid cutting and swirling camera movements and put the camera where it had not gone before – like freely hanging from a balloon or handheld on horseback. And suddenly, you are there in history. One of Gance's great innovations was Polyvision. For thefinale, the screen expands to three times its normal width – a kind of triptych – while showing panoramic views and montages of images. There really hasn't been anything else like it, not even Cinerama, which was developed 30 years later. To present Polyvision at the Oakland Paramount, three projection booths equipped with three perfectly-synchronized projectors will be specially installed, along with a purpose-built three-panel screen which will fill the width of the auditorium.

2)  VALUE:  As movie tickets go, these are expensive tickets. They range between $45.00 and $120.00 dollars per person. However, for a five and a half hour movie (the length of three contemporary films) accompanied by a live symphony orchestra (a concert ticket too), the ticket prices to Napoleon are – when everything is added up – rather inexpensive.

1) EXPERIENCE: This presentation of Napoleon is likely the closest we will ever come to experiencing Gance's masterpiece as the director intended it. According to on-line message boards, film goers are flying in from all over the United States and Europe. In ten or twenty or thirty years, when this screening of Napoleon is only a memory, film lovers will ask – were you there? "Did you see the Napoleon at the Paramount in 2012?"


 Kevin Brownlow’s restoration of Abel Gance's Napoleon is being presented by the San Francisco Silent Film Festival in association with American Zoetrope, The Film Preserve, Photoplay Productions, and BFI (British Film Institute). Each screening of the 5 1/2-hour epic will begin at 1:30 in the afternoon and will be shown in four parts with three intermissions, including a dinner break. Local restaurants are creating special Napoleon-themed menus for the event, which is expected to end by 9:30 pm. Further information and ticket availability here and at http://www.silentfilm.org

Sunday, February 12, 2012

Those without a time machine need not despair

Had you been alive and living in Charleston, West Virginia in mid-November of 1928, you could have gone to a local movie theater and taken in not only Abel Gance's Napoleon but also William Wellman's Beggars of Life, starring Louise Brooks. Regrettably, the Gance film was being shown in a severely truncated version - cut down from six hours to 80 minutes by MGM, its American distributor. Which version of Beggars of Life was being shown is not certain. Perhaps it was the silent version or perhaps it was the version with added sound effects and a musical score including Wallace Beery croaking out a version of the once popular theme song. Beggars of Life has the distinction of being Paramount's first sound film.

The newspaper page shown below includes Albert Dieudonne as Napoleon depicted in the upper right. Beery, Richard Arlen and Brooks are depicted in a scene from Beggars of Life in the middle left. The Brooks film is also noted as a future attraction in the lower right.


Those without a time machine need not despair! Beggars of Life will be screened in New York City on Monday, February 20, 2012 as part of the Film Forum's ongoing William Wellman tribute. Musical accompaniment will be provided by Steve Sterner. More info on this event can be found on this webpage.

And, on March 24, 25, 31 and April 1, the San Francisco Silent Film Festival is presenting Kevin Brownlow's epic restoration of Abel Gance's epic masterpiece Napoleon (1927) in a as-complete-as-it-will-ever-be five and one-half hour version with its original three screen finale and live musical accompaniment by Carl Davis leading the Oakland East Bay Symphony. More info on this extraordinary event can be found on this webpage.

Oh, and in case you are curious, here is a copy of the newspaper advertisement for Napoleon which ran on November 14, 1928 - which also happened to be Louise Brooks' 22nd birthday. At the time, the actress was in Berlin filming Pandora's Box.

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