Showing posts with label Virginia Valli. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Virginia Valli. Show all posts

Friday, June 14, 2013

Alfred Hitchcock's silent films

Polish-Czech-Austrian-German-French actress Anny Ondra.
In 1931, she appeared with  Fritz Kortner, Francis Lederer,
and Fritz Rasp in the film Die Grosse Sehnsucht.
In a career spanning more than half a century, Hitchcock fashioned a distinct directorial style which helped redefine the act of film. Above all, Hitchcock told stories visually. He employed innovative camera angles and editing techniques, and reveled in shots framed to heighten a scene's sense of trepidation. At times, his use of the camera could border on voyeurism.

Recognized as a master of suspense, many of Hitchcock's films have suprise endings, and employ decoys or "MacGuffins" that serve the film's themes and allow for examination of character psychology. Frustration, criminal behavior, muted violence, and murder run throughout -- as do individuals on the run from the law alongside alluring, icy blonde women, the latter being a Hitchcock obsession.

A somewhat quiet Catholic boy from London's East End, Hitchcock (1899 - 1980) began as a production designer during the silent era. He moved up the ranks, and eventually became Britain's leading director before heading to Hollywood in 1939. Hitchcock completed ten films in England before the talkies took over. Nine of those silent films still exist.

Recently, the British Film Institute set about restoring Hitchcock's surviving silents. Missing footage was restored, and decades of damage and dirt removed in what is being described as the largest restoration project ever undertaken by the BFI, which holds some of the earliest surviving copies of the director's silent work.

These little-seen films, which have come to be known as the "Hitchcock 9," reveal the seeds of genius. They show an artist starting to work with the themes, motifs and obsessions which were the hallmark of his best movies. The "Hitchcock 9" includes the director's first completed film, The Pleasure Garden (1925), about chorus girls in London, as well as such rarities as Downhill (1927), Easy Virtue (1928), Champagne (1928), and The Farmer's Wife (1928).


The now familiar Hitchcock style is already evident in four of the films, Blackmail (1929), The Ring (1927), The Manxman** (1929), and The Lodger (1927). The director himself dubbed the latter film "the first true Hitchcock picture." It also features his first cameo appearance, and shows the influence of German directors like Fritz Lang and G.W. Pabst. In fact, prior to making The Lodger, Hitchcock had visited Germany to study its film industry.

Hitchcock once said, "The silent pictures were the purest form of cinema." These early works, starring the likes of handsome Ivor Novello and the gorgeous European actress Anny Ondra, shouldn't be missed. Notably, The Pleasure Garden stars Virginia Valli, one of the stars of the 1927 Louise Brooks' film, Evening Clothes. It also stars Carmelita Geraghty, the daughter of screenwriter Tom Geraghty, who wrote another 1927 Louise Brooks film, Now We're in the Air.


A national tour for the "Hitchcock 9" begins at the Castro Theatre in San Francisco (June 14-16) in an event sponsored by the San Francisco Silent Film Festival. Hats off to them for debuting these historic works. The films then make their way to the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences (June 18, featuring only the silent and sound versions of Blackmail), and BAMcinématek in Brooklyn (June 29- July 5).

Additional screenings are also in the works for Washington D.C., Berkeley, Chicago, Seattle, Houston, Boston, and other American cities. Both the San Francisco and Brooklyn events will feature live music performed by the renown Colorado-based Mont Alto Motion Picture Orchestra, acclaimed British composer-pianist Stephen Horne, and other musical accompanists.

** The Manxman was based on a popular novel by Hall Caine, a well known writer of the day. Caine was also a literary critic who publicly praised Margarete Bohme's The Diary of a Lost One (the English title for The Diary of a Lost Girl) when it was first published in England.

Friday, October 5, 2012

Virginia Valli and Margaret Livingston on screen at Niles in October

The Niles Essanay Silent Film Museum in Fremont has an October schedule worth checking out - especially if you don't mind a little fright. There is an early Douglas Fairbanks comedy - before he turned swashbuckler, a quirky, forward-looking 1925 film featuring a Tele-Visionphone (think smart-device), a downright creepy Lon Chaney movie before Halloween, a couple of Koko the Clown cartoons, and a film featuring two actresses who were once Louise Brooks co-star. Each is presented with live musical accompaniment. Here's what's playing.

"Saturday Night at the Movies," with Judy Rosenberg at the piano
Saturday, October 6 at 7:30 pm

Douglas Fairbanks and Constance Talmadge team up in The Matrimaniac (1916, Triangle), a romantic comedy written by the legendary husband and wife team of John Emerson and Anita Loos. The film tells the story of young lovers who elope but are separated before they can secure a minister and marry - all the while, the bride's irate father and a group of lawmen are in hot pursuit. Among the noted actors in uncredited parts in support of Fairbanks and Talmadge are Monte Blue, Mildred Harris, and Carmel Myers, while future great Victor Fleming (Gone with the Wind, The Wizard of Oz) served as cinematographer. This rarely screened feature will be preceded by two shorts, The Dumb-Bell (1922, Hal Roach Studios) with Snub Pollard, and The Surf Girl (1916, Keystone) with Raymond Griffith and Ivy Crosthwaite.

"Saturday Night at the Movies" with Frederick Hodges at the piano
Saturday, October 13 at 7:30 pm 

Virginia Valli
Loosely based on a Broadway play by Owen Davis, Up the Ladder (1925, Universal) is something of a curiosity, with a plot involving the invention and use of a Tele-Visionphone. Directed by Edward Sloman, the film stars former Essanay Chicago studio actress Virginia Valli (Evening Clothes), Margaret Livingston (Canary Murder Case), as well as Forrest Stanley. The remarkable in-camera special effects are by cinematographer Jackson Rose, who also got his start at Chicago Essanay. 

Also in the cast is Olive Ann Alcorn, another beauty, who despite small roles in Chaplin's Sunnyside (1919) and Phantom of the Opera (1925), is best remembered today for the stunning nude photographs of her taken by the Alta Studio of San Francisco. Those images, reminiscent of the Louise Brooks nudes, are still in circulation today. Up the Ladder will be preceded by two shorts, Koko’s Field Daze (1928, Out of the Inkwell) with Koko the Clown, and Mystic Mush (1920, Hank Mann Comedies) with Hank Mann and Vernon Dent.
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