Here is the line-up of films for the upcoming San Francisco Silent Film Festival winter event, which is taking place at the Castro Theater in San Francisco on December 2. It is a terrific line-up of movies. The link to ticket information can be found HERE.
I will be attending part of the event, and for those interested, I will be signing books, including the RECENTLY released Beggars of Life: A Companion to the 1928 Film and the NEWLY released Now We're in the Air, following the showing of The Last Man on Earth (at approximately 1:15 pm or so). I will also have a few copies of my DVDs and the "Louise Brooks edition" of The Diary of a Lost Girl on hand.
This promises to be a special signing, as it will be taking place in the very theater were the "once lost" Louise Brooks film, Now We're in the Air, was first premiered earlier this year. Joining me will be Robert Byrne, who uncovered the film and wrote the foreword to this new book.
The first full-length animated feature ever, Prince Achmed is loosely based on tales from The Arabian Nights.
This enchanting film tells its story—an evil sorcerer trying to best
the princely hero—entirely through cut-paper silhouettes against tinted
and toned backdrops. Director Reiniger’s exquisitely expressive cutouts
depict magical scenes of adventure involving flying horses, Aladdin, the
Witch of Fiery Mountain, and the beautiful Princess Pari Banu, among
others! A treat for all ages!
Tol'able David
The Rat
Lady Windermere's Fan
I will be attending part of the event, and for those interested, I will be signing books, including the RECENTLY released Beggars of Life: A Companion to the 1928 Film and the NEWLY released Now We're in the Air, following the showing of The Last Man on Earth (at approximately 1:15 pm or so). I will also have a few copies of my DVDs and the "Louise Brooks edition" of The Diary of a Lost Girl on hand.
This promises to be a special signing, as it will be taking place in the very theater were the "once lost" Louise Brooks film, Now We're in the Air, was first premiered earlier this year. Joining me will be Robert Byrne, who uncovered the film and wrote the foreword to this new book.
The Adventures of Prince Achmed (Die Abenteuer des Prinzen Achmed)
10:00 AM (72 min)
The Last Man on Earth
12:00 PM (70 min)
This gender-bending 1924 comedy imagines the year 1954 when an epidemic
of “masculitus” has wiped out the male population, except for one sad
sack, Elmer Smith (Earle Foxe). Gertie the Gangster (Grace Cunard)
discovers the hermit Elmer and sells him to the government—for a hefty
$10 million—where his fate will be decided in a boxing match on the
floor of the US Senate!
Tol'able David
2:00 PM (94 min)
D.W. Griffith’s Broken Blossoms made Richard Barthelmess a star, but it was Henry King’s Tol’able David
that cemented his place in the silent firmament. Barthelmess is the
sensitive young David forced to confront brutal Goliaths in King’s
rustic American coming-of-age tale. David’s serene Appalachian childhood
comes to an end when a trio of outlaws terrorizes his town, crippling
his brother and causing the death of his father.
The Rat
4:30 PM (78 min)
Set in the criminal underworld of Paris, this 1925 British box-office smash hit features the beguiling Ivor Novello as the apache Pierre Boucheron, aka The Rat. Novello would go on to star in Alfred Hitchcock’s The Lodger (1926) and Downhill (1927), but it was The Rat
that made him a Valentino-like sensation. Novello’s knife-throwing Rat
(a role he created for himself on stage) is dangerous to men,
irresistible to women—especially to slumming aristocrat Zélie de Chaumet
(Isabel Jeans). Director Cutts does a splendid job bringing Belle
Époque Paris to life in his London studio.
Lady Windermere's Fan
7:00 PM (90 min)
Silent Oscar Wilde! If any filmmaker in history could convey the wit of
the audaciously verbal Wilde in purely visual terms, it was the
audaciously clever Ernst Lubitsch, aided here by a superb cast: May
McAvoy as Lady Windermere, Ronald Colman as Lord Darlington, and Irene
Rich as the notorious Mrs. Erlynne. Wilde’s biting comedy of social
affectation and hypocrisy finds perfect expression under Lubitsch’s deft
direction. The two masters shared an ethos, voiced here by Wilde’s Lord
Darlington: “Life is far too important a thing ever to talk seriously
about it.”
Sex in Chains (Geschlecht in Fesseln)
9:15 PM (92 min)
William Dieterle, who would go on to direct Hollywood classics like The Hunchback of Notre Dame and The Portrait of Jennie, started his career as actor/director Wilhelm Dieterle in Germany. Despite its lurid English translation, Sex in Chains
is actually a message film about the human cost of imprisonment—for the
imprisoned and society—that argues for prison reform. Dieterle himself
plays the protagonist Franz Sommer, in jail for involuntary
manslaughter, who turns to his cellmate for companionship. The film’s
depiction of prison homosexuality was far ahead of its time, and so bold
as to acknowledge that it could even lead to love.
Fans of Pandora's Box may recognize someone in this still. |
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