San Francisco Silent Film Festival presents
Silent Autumn
Saturday, September 2014
The Castro Theatre
San Francisco
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| Buster Keaton in The General (1927) playing at SFSFF's Silent Autumn |
This Saturday, The San Francisco Silent Film Festival
presents Silent Autumn, a single day sampler of their epic four-day
festival that runs each summer at the Castro Theater. This carefully curated
day of programming is the perfect introduction to the silent period for the
uninitiated, or those with just a few silent film experiences. It will also delight seasoned fans of the
Festival, a little something to keep them going till next year’s main event. The
event distills what makes the Festival’s four-day event so remarkable:
inclusive programming, the best accompanists in the world, and a chance to
travel in time by presenting these films the way they were meant to be seen on
the big screen of a movie palace like the Castro surrounded by an enthusiastic
audience.
One of the highlights of the main festival each year is
the traditional Sunday morning program of comedic shorts; Saturday’s event
kicks off with a collection of Silent Laurel and Hardy shorts. The lads still
remain the finest team in comedy and a wonderful introduction to silents for
children as well as adults. Pianist Donald
Sosin will accompany the lineup of miniatures. Sosin has composed over a
thousand scores for both live performances for film festivals across the world
like Italy’s annual Pordenone Silent Film Festival and for DVD releases such as
his scores for the Criterion Collection’s release of Three Silent Classics by Josef
Von Sternberg and Silent Ozu: Three Family Comedies.
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| Rudolph Valentino overpowers co-star Vilma Bánky in Son of the Sheik (1926) |
The Saturday event
continues with a late morning screening of a lush romantic adventure film
epitomizing the apex of Hollywood’s golden age of silents, when their technicians
and artists brought visual storytelling to an astonishing level of
sophistication. Son of the Sheik, starring the charismatic and unbelievably
handsome screen idol Rudolph Valentino, perfectly fits the bill. Valentino plays
the title character, having portrayed his father in the wildly popular precursor The Sheik. To convey Valentino’s star
power is difficult; fittingly for a Silent film icon there are no words to
describe him. The Alloy Orchestra,
a trio with a distinctly modern but effective approach to Silent film
accompaniment, will play their original score for the film. One of the trio Ken
Winokur along with Jane Gillooly restored the film from excellent 35mm negative
material.
A Night at the
Cinema in 1914 recreates the British movie goer’s experience from the year
that The Great War broke out and changed their country forever. The BritishFilm Institute curated this selection comprising travelogues, newsreels, animated,
narrative and documentary shorts, and an episode of the legendary serial The Perils of Pauline. A comedic short
by Charlie Chaplin, the biggest star of the time, tops it all off. This program
serves both as diverting entertainment as well as giving an insight into the
times from a historical and social context. Donald Sosin will provide the accompaniment.
Buster Keaton’s The
General similarly combines the historic with absorbing entertainment.
Keaton tells the true tale of a railroad conductor who ventured into enemy
territory during the Civil War to recover his beloved train The General. The
story is told with, of course, brilliant comedic embellishments. Interestingly,
Keaton changed the engineer’s allegiance from the Union to the Confederacy,
claiming “You can always make villains out of the Northerners, but you cannot
make a villain out of the South.” The
resulting film provides the laughs and breathtaking stunts expected from Keaton
as well an accurate and detailed recreation of the period, including the use of
The General’s actual engine. Keaton’s underplayed wry style and stunning action
direction make his films some of the most accessible silent films for novice
viewers including children.
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| Expresionism as well as evil abounds in The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1920) |
The dreamlike German horror classic The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari caps off the day’s programming. This
screening combines two beloved features of the SFSFF, a dedication to showing
foreign films and a late night psychotronic screening. In this eerie
masterpiece a carnival hypnotist puts a young man under his control and sends
him out each night to commit a series of murders in his sleep. Both the film’s pioneering use of Expressionism
and the flashback structure became staples of Hollywood’s film noirs in the
late 40s and 50s. This will be the U.S premier of the 4K restoration from the
original camera negative. Accompaniment by the unfailing Donald Sosin.
There truly is something for everyone at Silent Autumn regardless of their degree
of familiarity with silents, preference in genres or age. For show times,
ticket information and more on the festival visit the SFSFF’s official website
wwww.SilentFilm.org
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