San Francisco Silent Film Festival 2017 - Day 4
The Doll (Die Puppe) (1919)
Master director Ernst Lubitsch sets out his intentions early as we see him construct a toylike world in which his fantastical characters soon come to life. Wealthy milquetoast Lancelot (Herman Thimig, resembling a more effete Willy Wonka), startled by the prospect of marriage, seeks refuge at a monastery full of some very fat and self-satisfied monks, who concoct a crazy solution to his problem. Why not buy a realistic talking doll and marry her instead? The one he selects happens to be a replica of the dollmaker’s daughter Ossi.
When the doll is broken, the real Ossi (the hilarious and exuberant Ossi Oswalda) steps in to replace her, and madcap hilarity - along with a generous dose of unapologetic sexual innuendo - ensues. As you might expect from Lubitsch, it’s a well-handled, inspired piece of entirely entertaining silliness, and one of the funniest films of the festival.
The productions of Cecil B. DeMille’s short-lived PDC Productions of the late 1920s can be quite uneven - on one hand, there’s the excellent Chicago (1927) and Eve’s Leaves (1926); on the other, there’s forgettable fare like Hold ‘Em Yale (1928) and Midnight Madness (1928). Happily, Silence, recently rediscovered at the Cinematheque Française, is one of the better productions, a well made and glossy melodrama from The Phantom of the Opera helmer Rupert Julian.
Though the storyline would win no awards, it’s lifted by the always likeable H.B. Warner as a man whose girlfriend (Vera Reynolds) adopts a more suitable candidate as the ‘father’ of her illegitimate daughter. When the ruse is uncovered by a slimy conman (Raymond Hatton), the now-grown daughter (also played by Reynolds) takes matters into her own hands, with potentially tragic consequences. The Mont Alto Picture Orchestra provided a particularly good and at times unusually percussive accompaniment that greatly contributed to the suspense of the early scenes. Given how many of these DeMille productions have been rediscovered in only the past decade, there may be plenty more treats lying in wait for us.
Terje Vigen (A Man There Was) (1917)
This Swedish film is a lyrical tone-poem of a feature, with a storyline just strong enough to move you but not so complex as to distract from its vivid imagery of the Scandinavian coastline. Based on a well-known poem by Henrik Ibsen, it tells of the tragic impact of the British blockade of Norway during the Napoleonic Wars upon a simple Norwegian sailor (Victor Sjöström, who also directs) and his impoverished family.
If you’ve seen Sjöström’s Hollywood classics such as He Who Gets Slapped (1924) and The Wind (1928), you won’t be surprised by his deft handling of such delicate material, but you will also find him a fine and subtle actor, conveying grief more eloquently with a single agonised glance than any amount of histrionics. To my mind, this was a far more successful experiment in capturing the rhythms of a piece of Scandinavian literature than Pan (1922), shown at the festival a few years ago. The Matti Bye Ensemble provided a suitably atmospheric accompaniment.
Most silent film fans would be familiar with this property, but who can say they’ve actually seen the film? Almost nobody living, thanks to the purchase and destruction of all available prints in the late 1920s. David Shepard and Serge Bromberg spent years examining surviving footage of variable quality and completeness to assemble this, the closest thing we may ever see to the original ten-reel version.
In this restoration, The Lost World finally reveals itself as a fully realised precursor to the action blockbusters of the current day. Jurassic Park (1992) is the obvious comparison, but there are also moments that evoke everything from the Indiana Jones series to the disaster pictures of the 1970s, to the current cycle of effects-driven superhero films.
Wallace Beery is perfectly cast as the eccentric Professor Challenger, who leads a ragtag expedition to prove the existence of dinosaurs on an isolated South American outcrop. The world of the movie, and especially the love affair between Bessie Love and Lloyd Hughes’ journalist character, are more satisfyingly fleshed out than in previous truncated versions. It’s absurd, it’s sometimes cheesy - but it’s a whole lot of fun. The Alloy Orchestra’s stark, unorthodox score was one of their best and a great match for the picture, with the dinosaur’s cries chillingly rendered.
Image from Internet Movie Database
Two Days (Dva Dni) (1927)
Any film that begins with the callous death of a puppy and only becomes more depressing thereafter is not going to be a laugh riot, but for those with sufficient intestinal fortitude, this bleak Ukranian film has much to recommend it.
After an aristocratic family flees the Bolsheviks, their faithful servant (Ivan Zamychkovskyi) remains to guard their valuables. He soon finds himself torn between his worship of his son (Sergey Minin) despite his allegiance to the boorish Bolsheviks who take command of the house, and that of the son of his employer (Valeriy Hakkebush) who, when the tables turn, reveals himself no less thuggish than the invading enemy.
There’s shades of Emil Jannings’ downtrodden doorman from The Last Laugh (1924) in Zamychkovskyi’s performance, and while the film’s brutal, uncompromising vision makes it hard to love, its central message - that extremist ideology of any stripe is capable of distorting minds and destroying families - is undoubtedly a timely one.
The Three Musketeers (1921)
Like The Mark of Zorro (1920) before it, Fred Niblo’s epic starring vehicle for Douglas Fairbanks is the origin story of a hero. The supreme egotist in real life, Doug’s artistic ego was sure enough to know that you don’t need to be on screen every moment to still be the star of the show. It is only after a good deal of set-up about palace intrigues involving France’s King Louis XIII (Adolphe Menjou), his Queen (Mary MacLaren) and the treacherous Cardinal Richelieu (Nigel de Brulier) that Fairbanks’ character of D’Artagnan even makes his first appearance, beginning the story as a rather crude country youth. It takes an allegiance with the legendary Three Musketeers (Leon Barry, George Siegemann and Eugene Pallette) and his involvement in a plot to clear the Queen’s name to earn his status as a national legend.
Doug is as effortlessly charismatic, athletic and humorous as always, and the multiple moving parts of a storyline that easily might have sprawled into confusion are deftly handled, painted with broad enough strokes to be easily understood, but containing enough detail to gain an immersive sense of the period, which is lavishly rendered. The image quality for this new restoration is top notch, derived from Fairbanks’ own print that was deposited at the Museum of Modern Art in New York in the 1930s.
Don’t let its lengthy two-hour running time act as a deterrent - it all passes in the blink of an eye, without a moment’s drag. What a rip-roaring way to end the festival!
As always, I had the opportunity to catch up with a number of friends and fellow film bloggers both new and old, including Pamela Hutchinson, whose excellent Silent London website is well worth your time; Thomas Gladysz, director and founder of the Louise Brooks Society, Mary Mallory of The Daily Mirror, the indefatigable Donna of Strictly Vintage Hollywood, Beth Anne Gallagher of Spellbound by Film, and FilmRadar’s Karie Bible - most of whom have penned their own recaps of the festival that I urge you to read.
The silent film community is full of passionate and wonderful people who are dedicated to keeping this art form alive, and I’m proud to be a part of it. Thank you to all who contributed to another wonderful weekend of silents!
