San Francisco Silent Film Festival 2015 Day #04: Charlie Bowers, "Emak-Bakia", "Ménilmontant", Why Be Good?, Norrtullsligan, Sherlock Holmes (1916), and The Swallow and the Titmouse

Sherlock Holmes Day!!!!

That's roughly what my social media output looked like Sunday morning, as the interest that had been there since the discovery was announced and built up slowly as I convinced myself to go to the festival, regressing a bit when moving expenses and stuff came up, and then saw a steady increase as I actually got there, finally exploded into "holy crap, I'm going to see a performance I've read about ever since I first discovered Sherlock Holmes in elementary school, this is a huge deal!!!!"

SFSFF allows you to camp out, so even if I wasn't going to be getting the most I could from my pass, I would have shown up at 10am for the Charlie Bowers program anyway. You almost had to if you wanted a good seat - with the front row blocked off so the tech crew and musicians could have the front of the auditorium to themselves (often giving a tantalizing view of the organ underneath the stage that strangely never got used during the weekend), and an extra four or five rows marked as being reserved after 6pm on top of the six rows in the center of the orchestra section that had been reserved all weekend, you had to claim space early. I grabbed a second/third row center seat and declared it mine just as soon as I was done with the delicious stuffed french toast at Orphan Andy's around the corner.

First up was the Charlie Bowers program, which is some pretty astonishing live-action cartoon stuff, both in terms of how accomplished and how incredibly broad it is; we always talk about how the silent masters were doing their thing without CGI and the like, but Bowers was blending live action, animation, and visual effects in the same way much later filmmakers would, creating some of the weirdest and funniest silent shorts you'll see. Many were lost and only some have been rediscovered, and though made in Hollywood, Serge Bromberg felt it appropriate to present them in French with subtitles, as that is where "Bricolo" re-emerged and found some appreciation later on.

We stayed in France, more or less, for an "Avant-Garde Paris" program after that, and, man, if I were the break-taking type, that would have been the time, because the sound checks between programs hinted at just how painful the first short ("Emak-Bakia") and its accompanying music by Earplay was. Mainline a whole festival, and the odds are that something will disagree with you, but that was a rough one. Liked "Ménilmontant" a fair bit, though.

I went for lunch after that, but I had the sort of paralysis that comes with too many options, walking around Castro street until the Sliders burger shop became the best choice time-wise. Not a bad one - I respect any restaurant that has a great big charcoal grill right out where you can watch your burger get cooked - but I tend ty Yo over-think this sort of thing a lot when you're in an area with a lot of places to eat with only so many meal slots to visit them. It's a real peril when trying to vacation spontaneously.

I did make sure that something was left in my seat, so it was still waiting for me when I got back for Why Be Good?, which wound up forming something of a prototype female-empowerment double feature with the one that followed, Norrtullsligan (it's from Sweden). Both are darn entertaining movies, although there were times when the cheering in the middle came less from a well-executed joke than by women in the 1920s calling men on their exist double-standard crap. Of course, it being the 1920s, there was a bit of a limit to how progressive these movies were going to be - where the former seems to get to the right ending for the wrong reasons, the latter is just puzzling. I guess you just have to cheer baby steps in the past while working for big strides in the present and future.

That brings us to the main event, when stuff like this started showing up on screen:



Was I getting excited? You bet. I'm not the most serious Sherlock Holmes fan you'll find by a long shot, I've read about Gillette's tremendous popularity and influence on the public image of this character, along with the popular exchange of Gillette asking Arthur Conan Doyle if he could have Homes get married, to which Doyle replied he could kill Holmes for all he cared, from early on, and to be to actually see it... It's a big deal.

Because its such a big deal, I'm not sure I can assess the quality of the film with any degree of accuracy. It's pretty good, maybe great, certainly seldom disappointing, enough so that is starts to blend in with the buzzy feeling of seeing something precious thought lost. Maybe I'll be better able to render judgment with a few more viewings (I've got the Blu-ray on pre-order and hold out hope for screenings in Boston and maybe at Fantasia), but that can wait.

Knowing that it's hitting home video in October, though, does mean people are going to be able to take it for granted that it exists very quickly, especially if they're among the large folks who come to fandom via the recent explosion of new Sherlock Holmes material and adaptations. That's especially relevant given that the producers of the BBC'S Sherlock are prominently acknowledged in the credits for the restoration. It's also a good thing, I wager; as intriguing as lost art is, it's much better to have the thing than to not have it and be able to look down at those one deems ungrateful.

As expected, the film got a lot of applause from the audience, probably nearly as much from those who are silent fans as the Sherlock Holmes people. All of us, after all, enjoy the discovery of something previously hidden.

And, finally, The Swallow and the Titmouse, serving as something of an encore. That one has an interesting story as well; it was made in 1920 but put on the shelf by its studio, who apparently found its hyper-realistic style too unusual; when it was rediscovered sixty-two years later, the edit had to be recreated from six hours of raw footage. The result is impressive, even if, like the feature the occupied the 10pm slot the night before, it's material for an audience that enjoys both silent and art-house films.

Sometime during the evening, I got an email from United saying that my flight had been canceled to switch airplanes, which put a hitch into Monday which would have been more frustrating if the Red Sox game I was now not going to be able to make hadn't been postponed (that I didn't make it anyway, because getting Wednesday afternoon off just wasn't happening, is kind of neutral itself. If I were smart, I'd have taken advantage of the situation and done some touristy stuff Monday morning and caught The Deadlier Sex and Bert Williams's Lime Kiln Club Field Day (arguably a far more important rediscovery and presentation than Sherlock Holmes as one of the few silents made with a black cast) and then did what I could to sleep on the flight home, but I was wisely or sadly thinking in terms of being able to get into Boston before the T shut down. A missed opportunity, for sure.

I've got to say, though, if you like silent film, you owe yourself a trip to San Francisco some year. It probably won't become a part of my regular routine, unless something else grabs m my attention like Sherlock Holmes, but it's a great event in a cool location, relaxed in knowing it's a niche without becoming snobbish. It's jumping right up to the same "favorite, even if I can seldom go" level as New York Asian.


"A Wild Roomer"

* * * (out of four)
Seen 31 May 2015 in the Castro Theatre (San Francisco Silent Film Festival: The Amazing Charley Bowers, 35mm (?))

The first of the four Charley Bowers shorts to play Sunday morning can't exactly be called conventional, but you can sort of fit it into a type (the highly-mechanized house) if you're of a mind to. At first, it doesn't necessarily seem like a particularly brilliant example; it goes from a few disappearance effects of escalating complexity to something of a dragged-out plot where "Bricolo" (as writer/director/star/animator Bowers's character was known in France, the source of the print) must demonstrate a home-automation invention successfully in the forty-eight hours to inherit a great deal of money.

The jokes are of a type, but the execution isn't; Bowers creates a mechanism that can do anything with its dozens of buttons and then has it do so with stop-motion good enough to occasionally pass as puppetry. It's after that when things truly get anarchic, as Bricolo climbs on this thing and starts tooling around like it's a locomotive, smashing through anything in his way after teasing the audience with hints of Buster Keaton-like precision.

In many ways, this resembles a Keaton short (specifically "The Electric House"), but Bowers isn't Buster - he's not quite a natural performer, and his particular skill is not as immediately visible as the great silent comedians. It doesn't stop him from making a pretty funny movie, though.

"Now You Tell One"

* * * ¾ (out of four)
Seen 31 May 2015 in the Castro Theatre (San Francisco Silent Film Festival: The Amazing Charley Bowers, 35mm (?))

Charley Bowers spent most of his career doing cartoons, both on paper and film, and I wouldn't be surprised if "Now You Tell One" is his best job of merging that medium with that of silent comedy . It's an extremely funny short, even as it's thoroughly crazy.

It starts with a local liars' club and tales that involve, among other things, elephants in the capitol, but those lies are too pedestrian. One finds Charley "Bricolo" Bowers with his head in a cannon, and while that doesn't get explained, we learn about his miracle grafting formula, which he proposes to use to help a pretty girl rid her farm of a very aggressive mouse infestation.

How aggressive? Sorry, that's one of the short's funniest visual gags and there's no way I'm ruining that for anybody. I laughed hard, though, at the sheer cartoony goofiness of the joke and how impressively Bowers and company animated it. Throughout the movie, Bowers (and co-conspirators Harold L. Muller & Ted Sears) set up and knock down a lot of jokes like that, creating an obvious punchline and then a spiffy visual denouement. It's a constant stream of good gags, at just the right spot between animated cartoons and deadpan silent comedy to excel at both.

"Many a Slip"

* * * (out of four)
Seen 31 May 2015 in the Castro Theatre (San Francisco Silent Film Festival: The Amazing Charley Bowers, 35mm (?))

Banana peels, we're told with all seriousness near the start of "Many a Slip", are responsible for over seventeen thousand broken legs every year. This may well be true for people living in a world of slapstick comedy, as is the idea that "inventor" of Rube Goldberg contraptions can be an entirely reasonable job description for one like Charley Bowers's "Bricolo" character. Put them together, and you see him hired to create a high-friction banana.

It's goofy as heck, but Bowers and his usual cohorts squeeze a fair number of gags out of it, both with large-scale gadget humor and animations of the "slipperiness germs" (Bowers's science may have been a bit fanciful). Bowers plays off Corinne Powers as his understanding wife quite well, and while the ultimate revelation is a bit of a cliché, there is something pretty clever about winking at the audience about how this slapstick bit has become a standard and then making the opposite of the usual gag even funnier.

"There It Is"

* * * (out of four)
Seen 31 May 2015 in the Castro Theatre (San Francisco Silent Film Festival: The Amazing Charley Bowers, 35mm (?))

It's a bit odd to see Charley Bowers, after three other shorts where he is basically playing "Charley" (or "Bricolo" in France) playing such a speciic character, in this case "Charley MacNeesha", a kilted detective from Scotland Yard who has come to America to figure out what is going on in an old house, specifically as regards "The Fuzz-Faced Phantom" (Buster Brodie).

That Phantom is right out of a 1920s comic strip - I've seen dozens of characters with his short stature, bald head, and busy facial hair flipping through collections of old comic strips - and, wow, does he look weird transplanted that directly to live action. He's in the middle of a bunch of absurd slapstick that makes almost no sense (think the characters who pop out of every door or window in a cartoon), but which gives things a frantic absurdity. That's matched by Bowers playing MacNeesha as a fairly exaggerated Scot, blunt and cheap as well as tending toward traditional dress. Oh, and he's got an animated insect sidekick named MacGregor.

Even more than Bowers's "Bircolo" films, this movie is a constant stream of gags with little to no set-up - presenter Serge Bromberg compared it to a live-action Tex Avery cartoon, and while Avery isn't necessarily my favorite of the classic cartoon directors - deadpan Droopy is my favorite creation of his, and I kind of liked the more straight-faced Bowers films a bit more than this. That's a relative statement, though - there are a lot of funny moments in "There It Is", and Bowers can still make a twenty-minute film zip like one that only runs ten. That's a great skill to have, and it's a shame that Bowers is one of the more forgotten silent comedy geniuses.

"Emak-Bakia"

* * (out of four)
Seen 31 May 2015 in the Castro Theatre (San Francisco Silent Film Festival, 35mm (?))

I'm afraid I don't have much to say about this "cinepoème" by artist Man Ray; it's got a lot of nicely photographed images, but, boy, do they seem random on first blush. Many of them are spinning or fairly extreme close-ups, which makes discerning any sort of meaning or idea from them much harder.

It might have been more bearable if not for the discordant music provided by Earplay. Sitting in the theater between shows, I was hoping that they were all just warming up individually so that it sounded weird together, but, no, that's how it was meant to hit your ears. It's probably somewhat in the spirit of what Man Ray was trying to do but in the middle of everything else, I found it extremely grating.

"Ménilmontant"

* * * ½ (out of four)
Seen 31 May 2015 in the Castro Theatre (San Francisco Silent Film Festival, 35mm (?))

I was dealing with some serious film-festival fatigue by the time "Ménilmontant" played, but even if that had me a little reluctant to love the film whole-heartedly, or fully connect all the dots of the story (I initially thought it was a flash-forward/catch-up thing, and it's hard to get out of that mindset), but there's no denying that Dmitri Kirsanoff made an exceptional short film, really mastering the tools of cinema (silent and otherwise) in telling his story.

Take the opening sequence, a picture of desperate, shocking violence that immediately grips the viewer and then lets him or her imagine the worst. It's a horrifying bit of crime that shocks all the more because Kirsanoff doesn't add much in the way of context; it's just assumed that this is common. Then it moves to the country, and two small girls whose life seems like an idyllic contrast until we see them visit their parents' graves. Then they are older, back in the city, but soon pulled down to the same sort of sad circumstances as their murdered parents.

Kirsanoff produces, writes, shoots, directs, and edits, and in some ways it is the last that is the most impressive as he fits two decades into a 38-minute short, ruthlessly picking out the defining moments and sharply jumping between them. Despite that, he also finds time to explore those moments fully, building human drama around the two young women rather than simply showing them as part of the urban underbelly that grinds through people with no care for them as individuals.

That leaves Nadia Sibirskaia and Yolande Beaulieu doing the only things Kirsanoff can't directly handle himself in bringing these characters to life, and while they aren't doing the most complex acting job, the deliver the heightened emotion needed without overdoing it, both in their individual stories and as they re-encounter each other toward the end. They become the final pieces needed to make the film heartbreaking rather than clinical, even if it may not necessarily be completely tragic.

"Ménilmontant" is an impressive small film, and I half-suspect that the places where it seems to fall short may be more on me than the material. I hope to see it again under different circumstances to see if it just clicks then.

Why Be Good?

* * * ½ (out of four)
Seen 31 May 2015 in the Castro Theatre (San Francisco Silent Film Festival, 35mm)

A modem viewer might, at times, find himself or herself winging hands while watching Why Be Good?, feeling like the filmmakers were so close to being on the right track with its message. I'd remind those folks that it was probably fairly progressive for 1929, and that focusing on the moment or two when it isn't means missing out on all the things that make it a charming and funny romantic comedy.

It wastes little time introducing us to its two halves. First up is Winthrop Peabody Jr. (Neil Hamilton), the dashing scion of a millionaire department store owner (Edward Martindel), having one last blast as a free man before being employed the next day. Then there's Pert Kelly (Colleen Moore), an aptly-named flapper who can out-Charleston anybody on the dance floor and isn't exactly shy off it. They met at a nightclub called "The Boiler" and hit it off, making a date for the next night, but that's before a tardy Pert gets called in to see the new personnel manager at work the next morning, creating a sticky situation that Winthrop Sr. only makes worse.

We may see Neil Hamilton first, but there is never much doubt that this is Colleen Moore's movie. She spent a fair chunk of her career playing characters like Pert Kelly, and if it was generally with the same sort of energy she brings to this one, it must have been an enjoyable run. Pert has a winning confidence and enthusiasm when she's out on the town, sure, but it transforms rather than disappears when she's at work or arguing with her father. Moore makes silent dialogue "sound" snappy by how she moves when delivering it, and she makes the most of an expressive face, especially when Pert's impulsiveness has her s seeming to switch directions quickly. She's naturally very funny, and doesn't have to change things up much when the writers give her material that they want the audience to take seriously.

Full review on EFC.

Norrtullsligan

* * * ¾ (out of four)
Seen 31 May 2015 in the Castro Theatre (San Francisco Silent Film Festival, 35mm)

I wonder, half in jest, if today's independent and foreign film fans had great-grandparents who hoped for movies like Norrtullsligan to play their city, grumbling that every terrible Poverty Row slapstick one-reeler showed up at their neighborhood theater but not an intelligent, true-to-life drama about working women from Sweden. If it did - without being cut to pieces with new intertitles that changed the whole story - those early cineastes were lucky; there is a lot going on in this feature that one doesn't see that often in the best-remembered American films from the silent era.

The title refers to a group of four secretaries living in an apartment, mostly working for the same large company, although Eva (Renée Björling) works for an undertaker, figuring she'll be dealing with a better class of people than, say, Pegg (Tora Teje), whose boss (Egil Eide) is described as understanding but shown as touchy. The other two flatmates are Emmy (Linnéa Hillberg), who has been at it the longest and has an aching back to show for it, and Baby (Inga Tidblad), young and optimistic to be an easy target for both men and union organizers.

Pegg is not just the film's protagonist - the other girls are her friends and we also meet the boy she's working to put through school (Lauritz Falk) but her cousin and rich aunt (Stina Berg) - but also its narrator. That may seem like an odd thing for a silent movie to have (and I wonder if it's a Scandinavian thing; Norway's Pan was also told though not shot first-person), but it's not, really. Many silent films will often precede a scene with an ironic title card; having it clearly come from Pegg rather than some arch omniscient writer gives these words a bit of teeth. Pegg confronts bitter ironies rather than winnking ones, and when she notes a social ill, it's a source of genuine frustration rather than something to be shrugged off as just the way it is. It also gives director Per Lindberg and star Tora Teje the chance to play her character as keeping her head down and trying to get by without feeling like she's passive or unengaged compared to the rest of the cast.

Full review on EFC.

Sherlock Holmes (1916)

* * * * (out of four)
Seen 31 May 2015 in the Castro Theatre (San Francisco Silent Film Festival, 35mm)

Last October's announcement that a complete nitrate negative of a Sherlock Holmes film starring William Gillette made in 1916 had been found in the Cinemathèque Française may not have had quite the same impact on the film world as, say, a similar announcement about Fritz Lang's Metropolis a few years prior, but it's still a big deal to film-lovers in general. For fans of the character, it's mind-blowing; as many pieces of imagery associated with Holmes comes as much from Gillette's much-revived 1899 play as Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's original stories, but for many decades, we've had to take the scholars' word for it. Now it can be up on the screen in tinted black-and-white for the first time in nearly a century, and generations of fans should be pleased.

It follows the stage production closely, introducing Alice Faulkner (Marjorie Kay), whose sister has recently died leaving her in possession of correspondence that could undermine the Grand Duke of a small European country, and when she refuses to hand it over, a pair of nearby grifters (Mario Majeroni & Grace Reals) see an opportunity. Once they hear that the government has hired Sherlock Holmes (Gillette) to retrieve the letters, they join forces with James Moriarty (Ernest Maupain), a master criminal intent on both blackmailing the Duke and having his revenge on Holmes.

Though one of America's most celebrated actors at the turn of the Twentieth Century, Gillette only made this one film (he was also meant to adapt his other hit play, Secret Service, but that did not happen); he was sixty-two in 1916, wasn't likely to be a leading man in productions other than this one, and by many accounts ignored director Arthur Berthelet in favor of longtime compatriots from his touring company. It's not surprising, then, that the film's Holmes looks a bit weary, but in certain ways that makes the story work even better than it might have: Moriarty needs no introduction to those who don't know the name, as it is clear just by looking at the pair that Holmes and Moriarty have been battling for some time, and though Gillette was initially nervous about giving Holmes a love interest, he does have the air of someone ready to have more to his life than crime-solving.

That trait is not the dominant one, though, and one can immediately see why Gillette was said to embody Sherlock Holmes from the moment he took the stage in 1899. His Holmes is stern, sometimes bordering on cold, but unlike Benedict Cumberbatch's high-functioning psychopath, possesses the sort of empathy that would see him dismiss crimes the police couldn't ignore. While it's a bit jarring to see his heart skip a beat upon meeting Alice, it is something Gillette quickly integrates into his character. The overall impression is of a man who is capable enough to be in control of most situations without and can assert his intellect while only seeming a little boastful. His active mind, probing senses, and general curiosity are on display from the start, making his methods clear enough that this silent version of the play need not stop for long, multiple-title-card explanations.

Full review on EFC.

L'hirondelle et la mésange (The Swallow and the Titmouse)

* * * ¾ (out of four)
Seen 31 May 2015 in the Castro Theatre (San Francisco Silent Film Festival, 35mm)

It's kind of surprising to see that The Swallow and the Titmouse was considered so non-commercial as to go unreleased when it was made, and kind of not; the audience that would go for its style of storytelling today is a niche one, although the appeal of its inside look at the rivers of France and Belgium must have been even greater. That's what happened, though; the film vanished into obscurity even before leaving it until an assembly cut was found sixty years later and restored, demonstrating that the film business has been making great art difficult to see since the 1920s.

L'Hirondelle and La Mésange of the title are not birds but barges working the rivers. Pierre Van Groot (Louis Ravet) is their captain, and the crew is mostly family: his wife Griet (Jane Maylianes) and her sister Marthe (Maguy Deliac), along with their dogs, chickens, and other small animals. They lack a pilot, but hire Michel (Pierre Alcover) in Antwerp, where Pierre also obtains diamonds to smuggle into France, as one does. Affection soon blossoms between Marthe and Michel, encouraged by Pierre, but he may be more interested in that secret cargo.

This may be an art movie, but it's one with a pretty straightforward plot when you get right down to it, and while the suspense is a bit muted compared to some of the more melodramatic movies with similar plots, it develops into something enjoyably noirish as the film goes on. It never completely becomes a thriller, but it's a great deal of fun to watch as director André Antoine and writer Gustave Grillet tease the story out and Antoine even applies some flourishes that have characters emerging from the shadows in a way that presages film noir, while the methodical way things are laid out will later be echoed in policiers. It's got an ending to match, too.

Full review on EFC.

San Francisco Silent Film Festival 2015 Day #03: Speedy, Visages d'enfants, The Donovan Affair, Flesh and the Devil, and Pan

I am not, by and large, a big balcony person when I go to movies, having at some point absorbed Gene Siskel's reasoning that one of the reasons movies are more exciting than television is that you look up, rather than down. Getting down in the lower rows makes the screen bigger, too. But, hey, might as well try a show or two there, just to get better feel of this theater in its entirety:



Kind of pretty, isn't it? I'm torn between thinking it could use a little touching up and liking that the place is showing some age and wear.

The first thing seen from that vantage point was Speedy, the latest to get a touch-up and stand-alone release from The Harold Lloyd Trust, Janus Films, and The Criterion Collection. It was his last silent, if I remember correctly, before he wound up in the awkward position of being excited about the new technology of synchronized sound, fully committed, but not really suited to it. Granddaughter Suzanne Lloyd was there with stories of her grandfather.

Next up was the fairly fantastic Visages d'enfants, looking gorgeous and demonstrating that the French have excelled at this sort of relatively unadorned look at how a child's mind reacts to traumatic situations for roughly as long as there have been movies. Really great, and readily available, but I don't know if I ever would have thought to check it out if I wasn't at the festival.

Then - lunchtime! My sister-in-law Lara recommended Ike's Place, which was a little ways up the road and had a line, but it was absolutely worth it; I had a "Super Mario" sandwich (meatballs, marinara, and mozzarella sticks) on their signature Dutch Crunch Bread, along with chips and a Dang! Butterscotch Root Beer. That is some really good food, and I missed the caramel-green apple lollipop in the bag until Lara mentioned it. Suffice it to say, it all comes highly recommended.

I was going to go back down to ground level after that, but those seats were pretty full up, so I headed back upstairs for the rest of the day. Probably for the best, as I think being close to the cast they had acting out The Donovan Affair might have been even more distracting. They had that cast because the print of Frank Capra's all-dialogue picture in the Library of Congress was missing its soundtrack, and nobody could find Vitaphone discs to match the print. Thus, when it's shown, a cast of voice actors does what they can to line up with it. I'm not sure that I am tremendously fond of the execution - it feels like they sort of skipped past dubbing a comedy to parody - but this "accidental silent" is a different experience, and comes with tales of trying to track down the original play, censorship logs, lip-reading and trailer audio that has no video.

That got us to 7pm, which tends to be the easiest sale of the day, in this case Greta Garbo and John Gilbert in Flesh and the Devil. A local mattress company also handed out fans in the shape of Garbo's face, which... Okay. I don't know if this was necessarily as steamy a movie as the opening talked about, but I did have to take my Brattle hoodie off. I'm going with "heat rises" versus the lower seats having a draft.

Also mentioned in the intro, and probably going to get special notice when you see the movie in San Francisco's Castro district anyway, is that this as much about the two guys as the femme fatale. One really does want to see them just kiss at the end. Given that the filmmaker talked about it killing him to tack a happy ending on for the studio (which was removed, at least for this screening), I wonder if he might have really meant a scene or two that misses the point instead.

Then, finally, Pan, which was probably the most divisive one in the program for the whole weekend, as much as a program of films 85 years old, minimum, is going to be controversial. This Norwegian film was slow and more than a bit weird, with an epilogue that just went on and on (half of the epilogue was said to have been lost until recently, and there were many comments that this may have been for the best). My favorite theory that I heard on the bus back to the hotel and the next day was that the main character introduced it by talking to his dog, and what came after was a dog's understanding of human relationships. Which is goofy, but when a movie has audience members even semi-seriously advocating such an idea, it's a little nutty.

Then it was back on the F-Line - and is it just me, or is it kind of disappointing when that means a regular bus rather than a vintage streetcar? - in order to do it one last time on Sunday.

Speedy

* * * ¾ (out of four)
Seen 30 May 2015 in the Castro Theatre (San Francisco Silent Film Festival, 35mm (?))

The Brattle having two solid weeks of Harold Lloyd movies a decade ago - just before I went to my first Fantasia Festival, if I remember correctly - is a big part of what got me going to silents on a regular basis, but despite having the nifty box set that New Line put out that year, I haven't watched most of those movies since, other than the odd glut of Safety Last! screenings when that was the Janus/Criterion release du jour. A shame, because there are some really funny movies in there, including Speedy.

It is kind of odd now, both with the current economic situation and knowing that The Great Depression was just around the corner, to hear Lloyd's Harold Swift shrug off losing another job, because he can easily get another. Part of the fun of the movie, though, is looking at it as a time capsule of Twenties New York, from the fantastic Coney Island at night footage to just watching a ballgame. It's plenty funny around that, too, with Ann Christy proving one of Lloyd's best female foils, plenty of rapid chases, and energetic slapstick. I still think that the Civil War vets are kind of absurdly active even if you consider that a lot of people enlisted young, but that is a tremendously minor comparing about an extremely entertaining movie.

Original review on EFC.

Visages d'enfants

* * * * (out of four)
Seen 30 May 2015 in the Castro Theatre (San Francisco Silent Film Festival, DCP)

French cinema is speckled with movies that play out from a child's point of view almost exclusively, without a flashback structure to remind the audience that the events shaped the protagonist's adult views or moments that make the kid too witty or clever. Not a great deal - it's a tremendously difficult thing to pull off - but enough for the past ten to stick in one's head. Visages d'enfants demonstrates that this goes back to 1925, and was being tremendously well-done then.

It starts with a funeral, as Jean Amsler (Jean Forest), a boy of about nine, sees his mother laid to rest. He mourns seriously and deeply, visiting the grave every Sunday and seeing his mother's portrait move when he says his evening prayers. Some time away from home is considered a good idea, but summer ends, and when he returns home, it is not just to father Pierre (Victor Vina) and little sister Pierette (Pierette Houyez), but to a new stepmother (Rachel Devirys) and her daughter Arlette (Arlette Peyran). He immediately resents Jeanne, but he hates Arlette, and she is none too fond of him either.

It is natural, and almost unavoidable, for filmmakers to approach stories along these lines in adult terms; even films like this with primarily young casts are generally being made for an adult audience, after all, and they often have the most active, pointed responses. Filmmaker Jacques Feyder, then, must make something that is simultaneously direct and indirect, showing the kids doing fairly ordinary things under a sometimes smothering layer of emotion, but also not burying it, either. Kids may sometimes go quiet instead of yelling, although that is generally not Jean's way, especially once the step-people are in the picture. So for much of the movie, the action is less about what these children are doing than the way that they are doing it.

Full review on EFC.

The Donovan Affair

* * * (out of four)
Seen 30 May 2015 in the Castro Theatre (San Francisco Silent Film Festival, 35mm with live dubbing)

I wonder how unusual for films to be half-lost in the way that Frank Capra's The Donovan Affair is. Usually, it seems, some percentage of the film's length is gone, either due to misplaced reels or capricious cutting; here, the entire length of the film is present but the soundtrack is missing. That's a bit of a conundrum for what was billed in 1929 as Columbia's first all-dialogue picture, and though there's no perfect solution, some compromise is worth it, because it's an energetic little murder comedy.

The body-to-be is Jack Donovan (John Roche), who owes money to Mr. Porter (Wheeler Oakman) and a number of other gangsters and had insinuated himself quite thoroughly into the household of millionaire Peter Rankin (Alphonso Ethier) - he's just getting around to dumping Mary (Virginia Brown Faire), the family's maid; friends with daughter Jean (Dorothy Revier), and blackmailing Peter's second wife Lydia (Agnes Ayres). Why he's invited to Peter's birthday party is anybody guess, but there he is, along with Porter, Jean's fiancé David (William Collier Jr.) and family friends the Lindseys (Hank Mann & Ethel Wales), with butler Nelson (Edward Hearn) making sure it all goes smoothly. Well, at least until the lights go out and Inspector Killian (Jack Holt) and rather less brilliant partner Carney (Fred Kelsey) are on the case.

The screwball mystery is a neglected genre today - I'm not sure how often it even shows up on stage, which was the original home of The Donovan Affair and probably where the genre works best. This is a good one, serving the audience a good mix of characters with some motive or another without requiring the party to be almost entirely an assembly of horrible people, which is nice, if you're going for light comedy rather than a group of psychopaths. The script is mostly fun, and does the audience the service of making sure that when it is stupid, there's some sort of payoff for it.

Full review on EFC.

Flesh and the Devil

* * * ½ (out of four)
Seen 30 May 2015 in the Castro Theatre (San Francisco Silent Film Festival, 35mm)

Though Flesh and the Devil was both the film that solidified Greta Garbo's image as a sex symbol in America and where she and co-star John Gilbert began their passionate real-life love affair, it's also the sort where one eventually wishes the two male leads would just kiss already. That's not happening in 1926, obviously, and trying to make the movie fit that narrative means discounting a lot of what's actually going on, but... Well, this film has enough heat for the main pot to boil over, and the overflow's got to go somewhere!

It starts in the army, where aristocratic young soldier Ulrich von Eltz (Lars Hanson) is frantically trying to cover for bunkmate and lifelong friend Leo von Harden (Gilbert), who has been on the town into the wee hours again. Though put on grunt duty, they are eligible for furlough a few weeks later, and at the first dance of the season, Leo ignores Ulrich's sister Hertha (Barbara Kent) and makes a beeline straight for the sultry Felicitas (Garbo). Alas, she turns out to be married, which leads to a duel, which leads to an exile to the African colonies, and when Leo returns, it seems everything but his and Felicitas's attraction has changed - but not to make things simpler.

The stories of how Gilbert and Garbo came together on this set - including a day where director Clarence Brown didn't yell "cut!" but just quietly speed the camera and left the set with the crew so that the stars could take the love scene to its logical conclusion - are Hollywood legend, and that heat certainly does make the screen. There's a fiery directness to Garbo's Felicitas, whether lusting after Leo or reacting to Ulrich innocently mentioning that he is quite wealthy; even after the audience gets some idea of how mercenary she can potentially be, it's not difficult to recognize her ability to draw men into her orbit at all.

Full review on EFC.

Pan (1922)

* * * (out of four)
Seen 30 May 2015 in the Castro Theatre (San Francisco Silent Film Festival, DCP)

There were some weird theories being spun on the bus after this screening of Pan, one of the relatively few films to come out of Norway during the silent era. That's okay; it's an odd movie that will occasionally try the patience of viewers looking for something out of the ordinary (which, admittedly, is nearly everybody going to a Norwegian silent movie at 10pm on a Saturday night). I mostly liked it, but of all the films at this festival, it's the one I'm least likely to recommend to my friends who don't already really like silent and/or foreign films.

After a brief introduction that says "this happened two years ago", the audience is given a proper introduction to Lt. Thomas Glahn (Hjalmar Fries Schwenzen), who lives in a cabin in the north of Norway and, being an excellent hunter, is able to live off the land with his dog Aesop. He's not a complete recluse, though, and becomes friends with Mack (Hans Bille), a local merchant, and as such acquainted with his daughter Edvarda (Gerd Egede-Nissen). Their attraction is immediate, but jealousy is not far behind, as Edvarda is also getting attention from the local doctor (Rolf Christensen) and Glahn has noticed the blacksmith's daughter Eva (Lillebil Ibsen).

Pan is a love story, though the introduction hints at something that doesn't last. It's got an air that isn't quite muted but which nevertheless seems to skip some of the high points one frequently sees and inverts others. And yet, for all that the emotional volume isn't turned up to the maximum, Glahn and Edvarda are having a frequently unnerving courtship, filled with jealousy, actions which admittedly are likely to raise more eyebrows now but were likely still off-putting ninety years ago (and others which seem utterly random), and oddly-reserved reactions. It is like watching two people who don't know how to be in love stumbling far worse than most who find themselves in such a situation.

Full review on EFC.

San Francisco Silent Film Festival 2015 Day #02: Amazing Tales from the Archives, Cave of the Spider Women, When the Earth Trembled, The Last Laugh, and Ghost Train

Arriving bright and early, after discovering that the donut shop near the hotel is the cheapest/easiest/tastiest way to get something close to exact change to ride the F Line from 6th Street to the Castro.



Second only to not being able to get to a Giants game during this trip in terms of things I'm sad to have missed is the Castro's regular programming, if it can be said to have such a thing. It was closed to the public for a few days leading up to the festival, and though ii found things to do those evenings, the place is famous as a rep house for a reason.

The first show off the day was "Amazing Tales from the Archives", a free showcase that was split into four presentations all touching on film rediscovery and restoration. I didn't get any photos, as the house lights were pretty much down and nobody else had their phones out, so you are spared that.

First up was Jennifer Miko of Movette Film Transfer, a local preservation and digitization business, with a story of how a representative of the Hearst Company came in about a year earlier with some fairly unusual material with emulsion on both sides. It turned out to be Technicolor Process Two footage of William Randolph Hearst and architect Julia Morgan shot at the family estate. What they showed us was un-restored, but transferred, and while it was as inconsequential as most home movies, it still looked great for being about 90 years old, and tossed reds and greens popped.

Next up was Robert Byrne, who was one of the restoration team leaders for the 1916 Sherlock Holmes, the festival's main event on Sunday. We got a little history - it was made in 1916, not initially experts because there was a war on, and then finally sent to France as a four-part serial in 1919, and it was a nitrate negative for that version w which was found in the Cinemathèque Française 95 years later. While it needed some work, it seems to have been in pretty good shape, without a lot of reconstruction needed; there was even a single positive frame included for orange tinting of the indoor scenes, though they had to do some research/estimation to choose a "bleu noir" for the outdoor scenes. Then there were some questions about the translation; the "flash" intertitles were in French (an allegedly fairly brutal initial translation), so they had to be brought back to English, which was a bit of a guessing game itself. For instance, the French titles would refer to the title character as "Sherlock", but despite the dialogue they give Lucy Liu on Elementary, he is almost always addressed as "Holmes" in the Canon, and even though trying to recreate the original 1916 film which may have referred to him by his first name, he bent to the Holmesians on that.

Then there was a brief side-by-side of the original and unbaked versions, and while I've been second-guessing my choice to attend this festival, especially once m moving expenses stayed to rear their heads, I cannot wait to see this on Sunday night.
But, the presentation was only halfway over! Up next was Bryony Dixon of the BFI with an overview of newsreels and other material about the sinking of the Lusitania in 1915, an action that accelerated U.S. involvement in World War I. One bit of interesting connective trivia was that actor William Gillette of Sherlock Holmes fame had been expected to travel on the ship but did not.

There was actually film recovered from the wreck decades later - a reel of the otherwise-lost Carpet from Baghdad - but the pictures they showed had it too mutilated to be restored. Instead, we got some newsreel footage and Windsor McKay's animation of the sinking (which is pretty nifty), with actor Paul McGann - an avid WWI aficionado who starred in the failed Doctor Who pilot in the 1990s and did many audio dramas in the role after that - reading accounts of survivors and others connected to the tragedy while Donald Sosin accompanied on piano.

The final leg was given to Serge Romberg of Lobster Films, who initially eschewed a sideshow to tell the tale of how something came into his hands, starting with a vintage Buster Keaton poster coming up for sale, and then several more indicating someone had a cache. They had actually been appropriated by the nephew of Gilles de Metries, and when he died, the nephews had the Lobster guys come out to inventory their 1500 cans of film, the only things left in the house because he bequeathed both his two nephews and longtime maids one of his the houses and its contents, and the maid had everything of obvious value moved to her house. Uncle, nephews and maid were all pieces of work, and it took some time to actually get their hands on it, and the last can they opened had the sort film they ran, "Figures of Wax", in rough condition.

After that, there was a good long delay, and then Cave of the Spider Women, which took a circuitous path to get here: Made in Shanghai in 1927, it was found in Norway, where it was found under the title "The Spiders", restored, and then returned to China. For this screening, a new English translation was done, as the original Norwegian distributor apparently took the Chinese intertitles, flipped, repeated, and rearranged them, and then added Norwegian titles that didn't necessarily translate the Chinese faithfully. The new translation attempted to do so, and it was read aloud, so there were potentially the doesn't versions competing for multilingual viewers' attention. "Fortunately", I only recognized the English, so there was no conflict.

Another good chunk of time between movies and then it was time for When the Earth Trembled, which was crazy and preceded by two shorts: The first of several one-minutes snips of footage from the Panama Pacific International Exposition in 1915, and a restored version of "A Trip Down Market Street Before the Fire", which pieces together all the extant footage for the longest version of this short famous in large part because it was taken mere days before the 1906 earthquake and fire. Happily, playing tourist got me just a bit more context; the railway museum was showcasing the PPIE for its centennial, and had the video playing on a loop. It's one of those things whose natural environment seems to be playing on a loop in a museum, and seeing it stretched out to maximum length in a theater was, well, not the best way to experience it.

After a brief break for dinner in which someone noticed and commented upon the Brattle hoodie I've been wearing all week because this city is chilly, there were other visitors from Boston in attendance: The Berklee Silent Film Orchestra was accompanying The Last Laugh, and I'm not sure whether it worked out okay that I skipped these guys accompanying this movie at the Coolidge at the beginning of the month or whether that made it a missed opportunity to go see the Giants in AT&T Park. I fall more toward the former, as I would have had to skip the next movie, too, but it's kind of weird to travel all the way across the country to see something local, isn't it?

(Also, how is The Last Laugh not on Blu-ray? That's nuts!)

Finally, Ghost Train, and though I didn't see formats listed for these movies anywhere, you know it's in 35mm when the intertitles are in French and they decide to have translations read/performed. Sadly, Paul McGann didn't get up on stage for a curtain call afterward, so no horrible photography.

Then, it was a snack at "Hot Cookies" (with the obligatory innuendo-laced name) and back to the hotel on the F line to do it again the next day!

"Figures de Cire" ("The Wax Museum" aka "The Man with Wax Faces")

* * * (out of four)
Seen 29 May 2015 in the Castro Theatre (San Francisco Silent Film Festival: Amazing Tales From the Archives, digital (?))

"Figures de Cire" is notable for being the first (extant) film by Maurice Tourneur, who would go on to do a great many in both Hollywood and France. It's the sort of basic horror that maybe want so basic in 1913: Pierre (Henry Roussel), who claims to have no fear, bets his friend Jacques (Emile Tramont) that he can withstand any spooky situation into which he is placed, so 500 francs rests on him spending the night I in a was museum run by a shady-looking character (Henry Gouget).

Is it contradictory for me to say that was museums aren't scary but that San Francisco is something love the fourth city where I've skipped Madame Tussaud's because I find the places creepy? Perhaps. I actually think Tourneur does a fair job putting that dichotomy to use, as it's very easy to see why Pierre is not initially frightened but does rapidly deteriorate when another element is introduced. Even for a short, it's a quick jump to madness, but Tourneur and his cast do a fine job of making that leap. Not many years later, they would probably have to do more, but this still holds up quite well for a century-old spooky short.

Cave of the Spider Women

* * * 1/4 (out of four)
Seen 29 May 2015 in the Castro Theatre (San Francisco Silent Film Festival, 35mm)

As a fan of a fair number of things that intersect in Cave if the Spider Women, I'm curious to what extent China is re-embracing, locating, and restoring the silent fantasies made in Shanghai before much of the movie industry fled to Hong Kong. Even in incomplete form, these movies are a lot of fun, ripe for rediscovery by those who like Asian action or silents, let alone the combination.

This one is a tale from The Journey to the West, with virtuous monk Xuanzang (Jiang Meikung) charged with fetching a set of sacred scrolls from India. On the way, he and his party meet a group of beautiful women whose leader (Yin Mingzhu) apparently sees him as a potential husband - although, given that she is actually a spider spirit, he should probably be more cautious, considering what those arachnids often do to their mates. Trusting as the monk is, it may be up to his half-human disciples Pigsy (Zhou Hongquan) and Monkey King Sun Wukong (Wu Wenchao) to extricate him from this situation.

The restored version from the National Library of Norway runs about an hour and is missing both the first reel and some footage in the middle, but that doesn't make it particularly difficult to follow, especially for those who are already familiar with Journey to the West. The chapter gains indicate that it was originally a serial, but the restored feature version doesn't regularly do much to catch the audience up; director Dan Duyu figures you're there for action and gets to it, even if there is a slightly episodic feel.

Full review on EFC.

"A Canine Sherlock Holmes"

* * * ¾ (out of four)
Seen 29 May 2015 in the Castro Theatre (San Francisco Silent Film Festival, 35mm)

The only cast member listed on IMDB for "A Canine Sherlock Holmes" is Spot the Urbanora Dog, which strikes me as entirely proper. There is a human cast, sure, and they are often fairly entertaining, especially the fellow playing Detective Harshaw, the fellow who knows he can leave the heavy lifting to his dog. And Spot is a great movie dog, outsmarting every two-legged criminal he comes across and engaging in some of the action that gives the impression of superior intelligence.

Mostly, though, it's wonderfully playful. The gimmick for the inciting robbery ("poisoned gold!") is kind of absurd in concept and just as funny in execution, and the film continues in that vein for its entire runtime. Sure, that's probably less than ten minutes, but they're ten minutes where something entertaining is always happening and there is no overstaying the movie's welcome.

"When the Earth Trembled" ("The Strength of Love")

* * ½ (out of four)
Seen 29 May 2015 in the Castro Theatre (San Francisco Silent Film Festival, 35mm)

There's unapolagetic melodrama, and then there's this thing, which is boastful about the sort of movie it is, to the point when it almost becomes self-parody. It's some of the more ridiculous "and then, and then, and then" plotting I've ever seen, but at least it sort of works on those terms.

As it starts out, Mr. Giraud (Bartley McCullum) and Mr. Sims (Richard Morris) are business partners, at least until Sims telegrams attorney John Pearce (Peter Lang) that Aims is an idiot, he's dissolving the partnership, and instead going into business with Paul Giraud Junior (Harry Myers), who has met and married Sims's daughter Dora (Ethel Clayton) in Paris. Giraud does not appear to be an idiot, but he is vengeful, setting out to ruin the new partnership, not realizing that it will culminate in his son being lost at sea six years later, just as Dora and their kids are left homeless by the San Francisco Earthquake of 1906.

Forty-eight minutes was long for a movie in 1913 - three whole reels! - and just doing half again as much as a typical two-reeler didn't seem to be enough. That's not always a bad thing, but it quickly starts to play like the story was just a list of events with little room to breathe or get any sense of the characters beyond what leads to the next scene. Its short length may not make it able to hold the record for "x days later" captions in a film, but it may still be the benchmark for number per hour as they lurch the movie forward because this crew hasn't yet figured out how to show the passage of time through visual cues and editing.

Still, the very ambition of the movie, despite being well beyond the storytelling tools that the filmmakers have mastered or developed, is appealing. This thing does its best to stretch from Philadelphia (where it was actually made) to Australia over the course of its running time, and even if its destruction of San Francisco is limited to a few buildings coming apart inside, that's sharp (if dangerous!) special effects work. And when it gets to the end and a character literally pulls the plot device of the previous ten minutes off and throws it away, that's almost a wink at the camera played perfectly straight.

The movies were evolving quickly in their early days, which is why "When the Earth Trembled (or The Strength of Love)" can be both an impressive leap forward and something quickly surpassed. It's a missing link of sorts, but one that can still entertain if you accept its limitations.

Der Letzte Mann (The Last Laugh)

* * * ¾ (out of four)
Seen 29 May 2015 in the Castro Theatre (San Francisco Silent Film Festival, 35mm)

The Last Laugh is a remarkable movie in almost every respect, from the central performance to the direction, and the way studio interference changed the ending. It is, in many ways, a film about a tiny story told in the grandest possible style, deservedly considered a classic.

That small tale is that of the doorman at the Atlantic Hotel (Emil Jannings), who has been the job for a long time and takes a great deal of pride in it and the fancy uniform he wears; he is generally liked in his working-class neighborhood as well. One morning, just a day after the manager sees him need a rest after moving a heavy trunk, he arrives at work to find that another man has replaced him, and he had been reassigned as a lowly bathroom attendant. Though expected to turn in his uniform, he spirits it away so that he can wear it as he leaves his apartment and returns at night, lest his neighbors learn if his demotion.

If you have never seen this particular F.W. Murnau classic, open another window and find a picture of Jannings and, in particular, the mustache he sported in the film. That is some amazing facial hair, and in some ways it exemplifies what is going on with this prideful character as much as anything else Jannings and Murnau do: It is a surface-level affectation that impresses when seen in its full glory, but which requires a great deal of preparation and maintenance to be just so; make that difficult and it's a shambles. Jannings's theatrical performance emphasizes that about the man himself, not so much adding and collapsing when his point of pride is taken away, hobbling through the movie with such exaggerated feebleness that a modern audience used to seeing little but naturalism will perhaps scoff, seeing it as either scenery-chewing or as evidence that the manager did not go far enough. Let it sink in a bit, though, and Jannings is doing exhilarating work, communicating with terrific clarity but still having a level of nuance that reveals itself when Murnau zooms in to show detail.

Full review on EFC.

Ghost Train (Der Geisterzug)

* * ¾ (out of four)
Seen 29 May 2015 in the Castro Theatre (San Francisco Silent Film Festival, 35mm)

Ghost Train is long for a silent film, or at least one that is not a prestige drama, at 93 minutes, and you can see that filmmakers trying to fill it - which is kind of odd, considering that the original play must run roughly this length or more, and doesn't have some of the bits clearly designed for film that this one has. It's a fun little movie at times, but it's not hard to see why it sort of fell by the wayside.

If I were laying out a nation's railroad system, I think I might avoid making my passengers transfer at a place named "Hellbridge". In fact, I have some real questions about the people who both decide that this would be a fitting name for their community and continue living there. But, that's the name of the town where one transfers to get from Andover to London, and some folks are about to be stuck there: Miss Ophelia Borne (Ilse Bois), a priggish temperance activist; newlyweds Peggy (Hilde Jennings) & Charles Murdock (John Manners), newlyweds on the way to their honeymoon; Richard (Erno Verebes) & Elsie Winthrop (Agnes Korolenko), not-so-newlyweds heading for a divorce; and Teddy Deakin (Guy Newall), who caused them to be late by pulling the emergency stop when his hat flew out the window. Now they're sick in the station overnight, with station-master Saul Hodgkin (Louis Ralph) seeing the scene by telling them about how the previous person in the job caused a derailment by dying at the switch, leaving the station haunted and prone to mysterious deaths ever since.

The film starts off with some slick opening titles, as a skull's eye sockets dissolve into tunnels from which model trains emerge, and that's not the end of the nifty special effects that pop up in this movie. The train derailment is some very nice miniature work, for example, and while the ghosts are primitive in appearance, director Géza von Bolváry uses them effectively, either for scares or comedy, when the right moment arrives. There's even some impressive mixing of live-action and animation when a character gets drink enough to start seeing things.

Full review on EFC.

San Francisco Silent Film Festival 2015, Day #01: All Quiet on the Western Front

Yesterday was the end of doing typical tourist stuff, and I kind of ran down by mid-afternoon, but not not quite enough that I was at the Castro early enough to get much more than one quick picture before picking up my pass and sitting down:



It's a nice looking place; I'll share some better looks at it with later entries, when I've got a little more time to take them. I really like this theater so far.

It being opening night, there were some guests before the films making a few words and announcements. One was from NBC Universal; they sponsored the opening night program and announced that they were expanding the restoration efforts announced for their 100th anniversary a few years ago, with fifteen more silent films being restored within the next three or four years. After that, the film itself was introduced by a man from the Library of Congress.

One thing that was kind of cool during all this was that there was an ASL interpreter on the stage during the intros, and a whole section of seating for the deaf/hearing-impaired where he could easily be seen. Kind of a nifty "hey, why don't we do that" thing to consider for the Boston area's silent screenings.

All Quiet on the Western Front (1930, silent version)

* * * ¾ (out of four)
Seen 28 May 2015 in the Castro Theatre (San Francisco Silent Film Festival, 35mm)

Film length can be a killer. At two and a quarter hours, the 1930 sound version of All Quiet on the Western Front is long, especially for its period, but not uncomfortably so. That's a really long silent, though, enough that the intermission is much appreciated, though it still manages to wear.

Even taking that into consideration, this is still an excellent movie, one that says just about everything about war, from the march to it to PTSD afterward, and which has seldom been matched in that area in the eight-five years since its release. Lacking sound does nothing to diminish its power.

What it does highlight is just how much it did, in some ways, always resemble a silent as much as the early talkies, with fantastic cinemtography and editing (the film is re-cut by Milton Carruth for the silent version, but I don't believe he changed it too much), just as intent on telling the story visually as through dialogue and sound. I suspect this gets mired in conversations that go on a bit long less, but it also never feels like the film is trying to avoid dialogue, either.

It helps immensely that there was great accompaniment by the Mount Alto Motion Picture Orchestra, one of the best groups I've ever heard doing this peculiar but exciting sort of work. If Universal includes this version on a future Blu-ray release of the film, I hope they keep this soundtrack. One of the things I liked was how, during combat, the orchestra actually pulled back and let the sound effects guys do their thing. I'm kind of glad I didn't see how they were actually doing the work until afterward; the bass drum rumbling like thunder was obvious, but the microphone which must have been stuck right inside an old mechanical typewriter to give the impression of rifle shots was even better (though it might not have been if I knew what it was beforehand).

Full review on EFC (sound version).

A pretty good first night, and now it's off to the first full day's worth of films!