The San Francisco Silent Film Festival 2014
May 29-June 2
The Castro Theatre
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| Two thirds of Undergroound's Tube set love triangle |
Film noir is a fluid genre, unlike the Western or the science fiction film, not
everyone agrees on what a film noir is. Traditionally, noir has been defined as
an exclusively American crime genre with certain stylistic and story elements:
black and white high contrast cinematography, the femme fatale and the protagonist
led to an inevitable doom. However, many
include Technicolor films like
Leave Her
to Heaven in the noir canon, and there has been a critical awakening to the
fact that countries other the U.S. in the 40s and 50s produced film noirs. Similarly,
noirs antecedents have been posited and reevaluated. Typically noir’s roots are
traced back to the German Expressionism, the Hollywood gangster films of the
30s and the Hardboiled school of pulp fiction.
The Film Noir Foundation has been trying to explore
the question of what noir is with the international bent of this year’s
NOIRCITY film festivals and expanded editorial outlook of its
NOIR CITY e-magazine which includes a regular feature entitled “Silent Noir”.
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| Will the good guy finish last? |
The FNF will be co-presenting two silent era proto-noirs at the San
Francisco Silent Film Festival, running May 29–June 1 at the historic Castro
Theatre. Renowned British director Anthony Asquith's second feature
Underground
(1928) is a working-class love story and thriller set in and around the London
Underground (subway system). The romantic triangle pits nice-guy Brian Aherne
against sinister Cyril McLaglen for the affections of beautiful shopgirl Elissa
Landi. The film's climax is a chase at a power station that rivals Hitchcock's
chase scene at the British Museum in
Blackmail. The incomparable
Stephen Horne will accompany the film on piano. Horne is the house accompanist
for
the British Film Institute and has previously accompanied Asquith's
A Cottage on Dartmoor
for the SFSFF, as well as recording his own score for the BFI's DVD and Blu-ray
release of the silent thriller.
Underground will screen on Saturday,
May 31 at 4:30PM.
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| Director Ozu proves a deft hand with the gangster genre |
The name Yasujiro Ozu brings to mind the graceful, self-contained family
drama or comedy depicting everyday life in Japan. However, Ozu worked in a
variety of genres early in his career as a studio director. In his 1933
gangster film
Dragnet Girl (Hijosen no onna), a tough gangster
(Joji Oka) finds himself embroiled in an unexpected love triangle with an
innocent shop girl (Sumiko Mizukubo) and his own tough as nails moll (Kinuyo
Tanaka) that causes him to reevaluate his criminal lifestyle. FNF president
Eddie Muller will introduce this program, playing at noon on Sunday, June 1.
The versatile Guenter Buchwald will accompany the film on piano. Buchwald is
the director of the
Silent Movie Music Company and conducts the Freiburg
Filmharmonic Orchestra, which he founded in 1992.
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| Urban despair in 1929 Berlin |
Also for the lovers of
‘the dark side of the screen’, the
Goethe-Institut/Berlin & Beyond will co-present Leo Mittler's
Harbor Drift (1929),
an eloquent German film that prefigures film noir in its depiction of
fated souls, with exquisite camerawork by Friedl Behn-Grund of the shadowy
harbor, bridges, canals and alleyways of Hamburg. The German title
Jenseits
der Strasse’s subtitle:
Eine Tragödie des Alltags—a tragedy of
everyday life—is an apt description of Germany’s unemployment and destitution
as personified in the film by an old beggar (Paul Rehkopf), a jobless young man
(Fritz Genschow), and a prostitute (Lissy Arna). The film plays Sunday, June 1
at 7:00PM. Stephen Horne will accompany the film on piano with Frank Bockius joining
him on percussion. Bockius’ musical background includes founding both a percussionist
band and a jazz quintet. He also performs with the Silent Movie Music Company.
To buy tickets or find out more about the festival,
visit SilentFilm.org
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