Before Bernard Herman: Rediscovering Hitchcock’s Silent Period

The Hitchcock 9

Castro Theatre
June 14-16, 2013

SIFF Cinema Uptown 
July 26-28, 2013 

Ivor Novello as  The Lodger (1926) 

San Franciscans will have a rare opportunity to see the British Film Institute's loving restoration of Alfred Hitchcock's earliest surviving films. The San Francisco Silent Film Festival will present The Hitchcock 9 June 14 through 16 at the historic Castro Theatre. The series illustrates the development of the master of suspense’s directorial style from his first film, The Pleasure Garden (1925), to the one he considered "the first true Hitchcock picture,"The Lodger (1926). While all these films have been on DVD or VHS previously (often transferred from public domain prints and with less than stellar soundtracks), this event provides a chance to see the films restored to their original splendor, in a single screen cinema, and accompanied by specially commissioned scores performed by accomplished silent film accompanist.

Director Alfred Hitchcock and star Anny Ondra have a bit of fun on the set of Blackmail.

The Mont Alto Motion Picture Orchestra, a quintet dedicated to authentic silent picture accompaniment, will play for the opening night film, the silent version of the suspenseful psychological thriller Blackmail (1929). Originally produced as a silent film, British International pictures gave Hitchcock the go ahead to film a few sound sequences for Blackmail (a common practice during the film industry’s transition to sound). Hitchcock chose instead to create a second almost entirely sound version. Both were released, accommodating cinemas that had installed sound and those who hadn’t, resulting in a commercial success. Mont Alto will also accompany the boxing melodrama The Ring (1927) on Saturday and the closing night screening of The Lodger on Sunday.

As usual, the course of true love does not run smooth in The Farmer's Wife (1928)

Silent film pianist and composer Judy Rosenberg will perform her own scores for two films: The bubbly romantic comedy Champagne (1928) and the film adaptation of Noel Coward’s dramatic stage hit Easy Virtue (1927). The films play Saturday and Sunday afternoon respectively. The indefatigable composer, musician and BFI house accompanist Stephen Horne will play for the remaining four films, three of which he composed the scores for: Downhill (1927) based on the play co-written by the film’s star, Ivor Novello; the utterly charming romantic comedy The Farmer's Wife (1928); and the dark romantic triangle The Manxman (1929). Harpist Diana Rowan will join Horne for Manxman.  Horne will also accompany the backstage tale of two chorus girls (one bad, one good), The Pleasure Garden (1926).

A bad girl or a good one? The Pleasure Garden (1926)

Full program and ticket information for the SFSFF presentation of The Hitchcock 9 is available on the SFSFF's website. The series will also play in Seattle at the SIFF Cinema Uptown July 26-28. In addition, the series is set to screen in Brooklyn, Los Angeles Washington, D.C., Berkeley, Chicago, Houston, and Boston.  Each venue will feature differing line-ups of accompanists. The touring festival is a joint venture of the BFI, Park Circus/ITV Studios, and Rialto Pictures/Studiocanal. 

Blurry Pictures of Dynamic Directors, Pt. 3

All taken by me at the 39th Seattle International Film Festival.

Click here for part two (from SIFF '12).

B. Ruby Rich moderates the New Queer Cinema panel on 5/18. 

                      








I've only attended one panel at this year's SIFF. Fortunately, it was quite good. At this event, author B. Ruby Rich and her panelists talked about the New Queer Cinema of the past (Derek Jarman, Sadie Benning, etc.), its legacy, and its influence on their work. Rich also shared footage of a similar panel from the Sundance Film Festival in the early-1990s.   

Yen Tan (Pit Stop), Stacie Passon (Concussion), and Alan Brown (Five Dances).

Unfortunately, I didn't get a chance to see any of the panelist's films, though I heard particularly positive things about Five Dances. In discussing their approaches to filmmaking, Alan Brown said that he enjoys working with theater actors more than those from movies and TV, while Tan and Passon tend to work with more recognizable performers, like Amy Seimetz (Pit Stop) and Robin Weigert (Concussion).

Stan Shields, Tess Martin (They Look Right Through You), and Amy Finkel (Furever). 

Furever was one of my favorite documentaries at SIFF '13. Tess Martin's short, which preceded it, proved a perfect fit. I found both quite moving.   

Greta and her freeze-dried pom, Rudy, from Furever. 

Endnote: For more on Furever, click here for my Line Out post.

Mary Pickford: Beyond the Girl with the Golden Curls

                

Poster for My Best Girl  (1927)

My Best Girl (1927)

Musical Accompaniment by Donald Sosin on grand piano

Saturday, February 16, 2013, 7:00 PM

San Francisco Silent Film Festival Winter Event

Castro Theatre, San Francisco

The utterly charming romantic comedy, My Best Girl (1927) occupies a significant place in the life and work of actress Mary Pickford. While most of her previous films allow her some moments of comedy and romance, this film brings to the forefront Pickford’s remarkable comedic abilities as well as an adult romantic sexuality only glimpsed in those prior roles. There is also a strong element of life imitating art, as Pickford and her costar Buddy Rogers ended up marrying years later, after first meeting during the production and experiencing a mutual, but unexplored, attraction.

The film’s story concerns Maggie Jones (Pickford) a scrappy five-and-ten-cent store clerk who’s asked to train new hire Joe Grant (Rogers). Romantic sparks fly; however, there are complications: unbeknownst to Maggie, Joe’s real last name is Merrill, and his family owns the chain of stores that Maggie works for. Joe is working incognito to prove himself to his father before taking over the business. Maggie, on the other hand, is strictly working-class, doing her best to take care of her put upon postman father, her self-dramatizing mother—whose hobbies include attending the funerals of strangers and sniffing smelling salts, and a temperamental jazz-baby sister with a shady boyfriend who drags her into trouble. In addition to their class and family differences, Joe’s mother already has a society girl picked out for Joe to marry. The young lovers’ star-crossed romance and the film itself take a series of delightful twists and turns on the path to resolution.

Lunch for two. Buddy Rogers and Mary Pickford in My Bet Girl (1927).

Pickford and Rogers display remarkable sexual chemistry in their scenes together. Pickford has her longest, and most intense, onscreen love scene with him. While on break, Maggie and Joe lunch in a packing crate that they’ve turned into a little café for two. After inadvertently putting his arm around Maggie while trying to free his sleeve from a nail, Joe kisses Maggie for the first time. While the scene plays sweet and funny on the surface, there’s also an intense eroticism underlying their interplay, undoubtedly fueled by Rogers’ off-screen crush on his co-star.

Rogers remained smitten with his Pickford long after shooting ended, telling friends that he couldn’t marry because the girl he wanted was already married. He pursued Pickford diligently for four years after her 1933 divorce from Douglas Fairbanks.  For her part, Pickford states in her autobiography Sunshine and Shadow (1955) that when she met Rogers, “I had no more idea that he would one day become my husband than I had of marrying the King of Siam.” She does admit, however, that she realized at their first meeting that Rogers resembled the husband she had pictured for herself at age fourteen. 

Buddy finally gets his girl.

In addition to showing a more modern, nuanced, and sexual side of Pickford, the film allowed her to play a character who is a modern (albeit good) girl, a break from the more traditional heroines she’d been portraying.  And significantly the character is a fully adult woman, after Pickford solidified her career by playing a remarkably large number of archetypal child roles. Maggie was the type usually played at the time by younger actresses like Coleen Moore or Clara Bow. Although Pickford lacks their modern-for-1920s bobbed hair, she captures perfectly the spirit of the times. The public responded warmly to her departure from her established image, and the film was a box office success.  Director Sam Taylor, who previously collaborated on a number of films with Harold Lloyd, aided Pickford’s efforts towards updating her image and instills both deft comic touches and a dreamy romanticism to the picture. He would go on to direct her remaining films.

Notably, Girl was the last time that Pickford’s trademark long curls were seen on film, before she cut them off in the hopes of modernizing her image. This was a significant step, as the movie going public adored her hair to the extent that, two decades later in her autobiography, Pickford still questioned whether she had had “the right” to cut it.  In her next project, and first talkie, Coquette (1929) Pickford further built upon her new image: She sported her newly bobbed hair as well as a Southern accent to play a flirtatious belle who commits a romantic transgression with tragic results. That film earned over a million dollars and an Academy Award for Best Actress in a Leading Role for Pickford.

Mary Pickford before and after bobbing her hair.

On the surface, it seemed she had smoothly made the transition to sound and a modern image with Coquette and was set to successfully continue her acting career. However, she only made three more films, and then essentially became a recluse. Her withdrawal from public life was prompted not only by a series of box office failures, but also a series of personal tragedies which worsened her increasing dependence on alcohol. Pickford had never really recovered from her mother’s death in 1928. In addition, her siblings died prematurely: Brother Jack in 1933 at age 37 followed by their sister Lottie in 1936 at age 41. Compounding her grief over the family deaths was the trauma of her divorce from Douglas Fairbanks in 1933.  Neither Pickford nor Fairbanks every truly recovered from it, despite marrying others. Losing Fairbanks undoubtedly further Mary’s alcohol problem, doubly so since he disapproved of drinking, which probably helped her limit her drinking during their marriage, or at least hide it better. 

The Pickfords as children: Mary, Lottie and Jack.

While it is a shame that Pickford’s career ended prematurely, she left behind a remarkable body of work which, due to her naturalistic acting style and considerable charisma, remains enjoyable to modern audiences. In addition to the pleasure of seeing a well-made romantic comedy, My Best Girl also gives the audience the opportunity to see Pickford’s remarkable acting ability in a different light.

For screening and ticket information for My Best Girl as well as the full line-up for the San Francisco Silent Film Festival Winter Event, please visit the SFSFF’s website.

Movies for Music Lovers: 2012 Edition

Click here for the 2011 edition.

Some of these films premiered in the US in 2011, but didn't arrive in Seattle until 2012, in which case I deferred to local release dates. Some missed the city altogether, in which case I caught up via DVD. The links lead to my reviews for Amazon, Line Out, The Seattle International Film Festival, SIFFBlog, and Video Librarian (Amour hasn't been posted yet, since it doesn't open here until January 25). 

The Tops:
1. Patience (After Sebald) (Grant Gee)

In his haunting profile of an author's defining novel, Gee (Radio-
head: Meeting People Is Easy, Joy Division) created a true work of art.

2. The Turin Horse (Béla Tarr)
3. Shame (Steve McQueen)
5. Rust and Bone (Jacques Audiard)
6. The Master (P.T. Anderson)
7. Tyrannosaur (Paddy Considine)
8. Killing Them Softly (Andrew Dominick)
9. Hello I Must Be Going (Todd Louiso)
10. The Source (Maria Doumopolis and Jody Wille)



Runners-up:
1. Moonrise Kingdom (Wes Anderson)

Love the adults, couldn't stand the kids. 

2. Compliance (Craig Zobel)
3. Skyfall (Sam Mendes)
4. Bernie (Richard Linklater)
5. Amour (Michael Hanecke)
6. Miss Bala (Gerardo Naranja)

If Laura (Stephanie Sigman) comes at the trade from a different angle, Miss Bala serves as an inside-out response to Joshua Marston's Maria Full of Grace, which also centered on a sympathetic mule (and featured a strong central per-
 formance from another virtual unknown). From start to finish, Laura is neither action heroine nor passive victim, but rather stoic survivor.

7. House of Pleasures (Bertrand Bonello)
8. Silver Linings Playbook (David O. Russell)
9. Dark Horse (Todd Solondz)
10. Lincoln (Steven Spielberg)

Second runners-up:
1. Tie: The Avengers (Joss Whedon) and 
Cabin in the Woods (Drew Goddard)
2. The Sessions (Ben Lewin)
3. Holy Motors (Leos Carax)
4. Looper (Rian Johnson)

Mostly for the boy from StephenKingLand.  

5. Cosmopolis (David Cronenberg)
6. Flight (Robert Zemeckis)  
7. For a Good Time, Call... (Jamie Travis)
8. Life of Pi (Ang Lee)
9. Chicken with Plums (Marjane Satrapi and Vincent Paronnaud)
10. Magic Mike (Steven Soderbergh)

Also worthy of note: Anna Karenina, Before Your Eyes (Min Dit: The Children of Diyarbakir), Bonsái, Bullhead, Cirkus Columbia, Cloud Atlas, Coriolanus, The Dark Knight Rises, The Do-Deca-Pentathlon, Eden, Eye of the Storm, Goodbye (Bé Omid E Didar), The Hunger Games, In Darkness (W Ciemności), The Iron Lady, Policeman (Ha-shoter), Post Mortem, Rampart, Rebellion (L’Ordre et la Morale), Rent-a-Cat (Rentaneko), Roadie, Seven Psychopaths, Snowtown Murders, Sound of My Voice, The Slut, Summer Holiday (Boogie), Turn Me on Dammit! (Få Meg På, for Faen), V/H/S, We Need to Talk about Kevin, Your Sister's Sister.

 Missed (or haven't seen yet): Arbitrage, Barbara*, Bestiaire,
Chronicle, The Color Wheel, Consuming Spirits, Damsels in Distress,  
The Day He Arrives (Book Chon Bang Hyang), The Deep Blue Sea, Footnote (Hearat Shulayim), Goodbye First Love (Un Amour de Jeunesse), The Grey, In Another Country (Da-reun Na-ra-e-seo), Keep the Lights On, The Kid With a Bike (Le Gamin au Vélo), Late Quartet, Les Misérables, The Loneliest Planet, Middle of Nowhere, Neighboring Sounds (O Som ao Redor), Oslo, August 31st, A Royal Affair (En Kongelig Affære), A Simple Life (Tao Jie), Sister (L'Enfant d'en Haut), Starlet, Zero Dark Thirty.

Television notables: Boardwalk Empire - Season Two,  
Downton Abbey - Season Two, Game Change, The Good Wife - Season 
Four, Revenge - Season Two, and Vegas - Season One.

* I caught a screening on Jan. 5. Adding to my Best of 2013 list.

They've done better: Andrea Arnold (Wuthering Heights), Bob-
by and Peter Farrelly (The Three Stooges), William Friedkin (Killer 
Joe), Quentin Tarantino (Django Unchained), and Woody Allen
(To Rome with Love...which I enjoyed in spite of myself).
Top documentaries: 

Caught few big non-fiction films, but saw the small ones others missed.

1. 5 Broken Cameras (Emad Burnat and Guy Davidi)
2. The Chilean Building (Macarena Aguiló)
3. The Boxing Girls of Kabul (Ariel Nasr)
4. Taken by Storm: The Art of Storm Thorgerson
and Hipgnosis (Roddy Bogawa)
5. Paul Williams: I'm Still Here (Stephen Kessler)
6. Pink Ribbons, Inc. (Léa Pool)
7. Girl Model (David Redmon and Ashley Sabin)
8. Marley (Kevin Macdonald)
9. Bad Brains: A Band in DC (Benjamen Logan)
10. Chely Wright: Wish Me Away (Bobbie Birleffi and Beverly Kopf)


Also worthy of note: Barbershop Punk, Carol Channing: Larger Than Life, Dish: Women, Waitressing and the Art of Service, Everyday Sunshine: The Story of Fishbone, Family Portrait in Black and White, Better Than Something: Jay Reatard, Last Days Here, Last Fast Ride: The Life, Love and Death of a Punk Goddess, Made in India, Step up to the Plate, Tales 
of the Waria, and Winter Nomads (Hiver Nomade).

Missed (or haven't seen yet): Ai Weiwei: Never Sorry, Beware of Mr. Baker, Brooklyn Castle, Bully, The Central Park Five, Detropia, The Gatekeepers, The House I Live In, How to Survive a Plague, The Invisible War, Marina Abramovic: The Artist Is Present, The Queen of Versailles, Searching for Sugar Man, This Is Not a Film, and Under African Skies.

Reissues and rediscoveries: 
1. World on a Wire / Welt am Draht (Rainer Werner Fassbinder)
2. A Man Vanishes / Ningen Jôhatsu (Shohei Imamura)
3. Tie: The Connection and Ornette Made in America (Shirley Clarke)
4. Movie Orgy (Joe Dante)
5. La Vampire Nue / The Nude Vampire (Jean Rollin)

With live Demdike Stare score at this year's Decibel Festival. 

Yes, I did see: Beasts of the Southern Wild.


 
Endnote: A work in progress. Cross-posted here.  

The 2012 Stranger Genius Awards Starring Lynn Shelton and Megan Griffiths

Publisher Tim Keck and editor Christopher Frizzelle

I'm not sure,
but I think I've
received an
invitation to
every Stran-
ger Genius Award ceremony since its inception 10 years ago (I believe I got on the list courtesy of former film editor Andy Spletzer).

For the past few years, I've even been getting a VIP invitation, possibly because I've been blogging for The Stranger. Sadly, the 2012 edition marks only the second time I've been able to attend, and I'm glad I did.

Filmmaker Lynn Shelton looking sharp

I went with former SIFFBlog contributor Steven Fried, and we ran into a few notables from the local arts community, like Northwest Film Forum executive director Lyall Bush, SIFF programmer Maryna Ajaja, Stranger staffer and screenwriter Charles Mudede, Stranger photographer Timothy Rysdyke (who was videotaping the event), and music writer Gillian Gaar (also a former SIFFBlog contributor). 

Director and producer Megan Griffiths

Steven and I
weren't able to
stay until the
end, because
we were plan-
ning to catch the Raveon-
ettes-Mel-
ody's Echo Chamber show afterward (I wrote about it here), but we arrived early for the cocktail party, so it was still a pretty expansive evening. I hadn't eaten dinner beforehand, so I was grateful for the Tamarind Tree hors d'ouevres and Trophy cupcakes. The mixed drinks were good, too, despite cutesy names like The Betty White.

So, we got to enjoy the pre-ceremony festivities: a performance from Retro Verso, a dance piece from Kate Wallich, and a collaboration between cellist Lori Goldston and the Seattle Rock Orchestra.  

Your Sister's Sister director Lynn Shelton, a previous award recipient, then presented this year's statuette to her friend and associate Megan Griffiths (The Off Hours, Eden), while actress Sarah Rudinoff accepted Grady West's theater award on his behalf (I reviewed Eden here).

2004 Genius Award winner Sarah Rudinoff

Best known by
his stage name
Dina Martina,
West was per-
forming in New
York, and Rud-
inoff was ex-
pectedly enter-
taining, but the malaproptastic diva was definitely missed.

I can't claim to know West personally, but I remember when he used to wait tables at The Two Bells. The one time I mentioned his alter ego, he seemed more embarrassed than flattered, possibly because he prefers to keep the two personas separate. 

Because we left at the intermission, Steven and I missed the art, music, and literature awards, which went to ecological designer Sarah Bergmann, Lori Goldston, who played on Nirvana's MTV Unplugged in New York, and Fantagraphics graphic novelist Ellen Forney (Marbles), who has provided a few illustrations for The Stranger over the years.

The League of Geniuses, a panel of past recipients, made their choices from three nominees in each category (The Stranger arts writers selected the finalists). The winners received grants of $5,000 each. To quote Rudinoff, "When you need a new computer, the $5,000 ain't too shabby."  

Click here for Kelly O's Genius Awards photo stream.  

The Beatific Splendor of The King of Kings

THE KING OF KINGS

(Cecil B. DeMille, USA, 1927, 155 minutes) 

Monday July 30, 7pm, The Paramount, Seattle

The life of Jesus from the conversion of Mary Magdalene to the crucifixion is revealed in beatific splendor.

Directed by Hollywood's master of the spectacle, The King of Kings (1927) featured Cecil B. DeMille's by then standard combination of moralizing melodrama played against dizzying production values, monumental sets, and a cast of thousands. 

Outwardly expressing disdain for Sunday-school stereotypes, DeMille cast fifty-two-year-old H.B. Warner in the title role, dressed him in flowing robes and bathed him in glowing light, while art directors constructed scenes reproducing the work of 298 old masters. 

To sanctify Jeannie MacPhereson's anti-Semitic, evangelical Christian with-a-showbiz-twist screenplay, DeMille invited members of the clergy to visit the set, and received the stamp of approval from Will Hayes. Highlights include the spectacular palace of Mary Magdalene, the Calvary tempest and bookending Technicolor scenes.

Grauman's Chinese Theatre held the West Coast premiere for their grand opening, charging $22 a seat!

STG Presents!

Seattle Theatre Group, the Paramount Theater and Trader Joe's present Silent Movie Mondays with Cecil B DeMille's biblical epic The King of Kings, featuring live musical accompaniment performed at the Paramount's original 1928 Publix One 4/20 Wurlitzer by Jim Riggs.

King Vidor's The Patsy with Marion Davies

Sunday July 29, 4:00pm, SIFF Film Center, Seattle



"When in Bagdad do as the Bagdaddies do!"

Patsy literally gets the backside of the chicken in her household. She begrudgingly cooks, cleans, and wears hand-me-downs from her sister Grace (Jane Winton). Pat's only comfort is her dear old Dad (Del Henderson), who is equally put-upon.

Marion Davies is tearfully funny as the trod upon younger sister in her first film with director King Vidor, The Patsy (1928). As one of the greatest comediennes of the silent era, this is no great surprise. Quite unexpected on the other hand, is the outrageous performance of Marie Dressler as the girls overbearing mother, a vain and socially posturing doyenne. Davies' role as the youngster, mooning over her sister's boyfriend Tony (Orville Caldwell), her attempts to take his advice and develop a "personality" in order to win the man of her dreams - who happens to be Tony himself - followed by everyone's reactions, and an unforgettable demonstration of mimicry, are utterly priceless.

"After all, a caterpillar is nothing but an upholstered worm."

Seattle International Film Festival presents a celebration of films from the archives of the Library of Congress with W.C. Fields in 1926's So's Your Old Man and Marion Davies in 1928's The Patsy featuring live musical accompaniment performed by Donald Sosin.