San Francisco Silent Film Festival Wrapup

The 2011 San Francisco Silent Film Festival came loaded with potential scene-stealers. A long-lost John Ford film screened. I Am Cuba director Mikhail Kalatozov’s rare 1931 Russian propaganda reject The Nail in the Boot wowed festival-goers with its brilliant photography and editing, accented by the great accompanist Stephen Horne. New restorations introduced many films—including Douglas Fairbanks in Mr. Fix-It—to North American audiences for the first time. And The Matti Bye Ensemble’s accompaniment unforgettably brought out the pounding circus nightmare of Victor Sjöstrom’s classic He Who Gets Slapped.

But the biggest event of the festival was not a film screening. It was the news that one of the greatest spectacles of all time would return after an absence of more than 30 years.
In March 2012, the festival will bring Abel Gance’s legendary 1927 epic Napoleon—in all its three-screen glory—to Oakland’s Paramount Theatre for its winter event. (I never thought I’d write this, but the festival’s longtime venue, the Castro Theatre, is too small to contain the film and its accompanying orchestra.)

A Gargantuan Little General

At the end of the festival’s opening screening on July 14, a trailer started. Ten or fifteen seconds of stark silence passed as the different presenters of the event were listed on titles. Then, with a loud orchestra hit, these words flew onto the screen: “THE CINEMATIC EVENT OF A LIFETIME!” The crowd quickly figured out what the announcement was and burst into applause. It was exhilarating, even for those who knew what was coming. (British composer Carl Davis, whose score will be heard for the first time in the U.S., accidentally spilled the news on Twitter several hours early, perhaps because he forgot about the time difference.)

_Napoleon _has not been screened in the U.S. since 1980, when sold-out shows at the Radio City Music Hall started a nation-wide tour of Gance’s sprawling, experiment-laden historical drama. Even those U.S. screenings that are still so well remembered in film circles were incomplete and projected at the wrong speed. Preservationist Kevin Brownlow, who has devoted his life to the restoration and advocacy of silent film in general and Napoleon in particular, has found new footage since. The movie lasted four hours in those 1980 screenings. It’ll run five and a half in the four screenings on March 24, 25 and 31 and April 1.

“It’s not the kind of thing you get to see every decade,” said Rob Byrne, president of the festival’s board of directors. “‘Once in a lifetime’ is hype, but I’ve never seen this film except on VHS. Everybody I talk to that saw the film last time it was around—in the shorter version—gets this far-away look in their eyes when they talk about it. You can see them looking at images in their head.”

Even without the copyright issues that have mired the film for years, presenting _Napoleon _in its full-blown glory would an epic endeavor. In its famous triptych finale, two extra screens are unveiled to create a frame significantly wider than 2.35:1 CinemaScope. In the sequence, Gance uses his “Polyvision” format in many different ways: Vast panoramas, split screens and expressionistic avant-garde experiments all factor in. According to Byrne, the screening requires three temporary projection booths to be built in the Paramount to accommodate the synchronized projectors.

“This is a spectacularly expensive thing to put on. We’re not just running a movie—we’re not even just running a movie with an orchestra,” said Byrne. “And there’s no law that says if we put this on people will come. It’s a big risk, but we believe in it.”

The morning of July 17, Brownlow worked his British charm as he spoke about his lifetime of work preserving Napoleon. As a film-loving teenager, he obtained an excerpt of the film in the form of a 9.5-mm reduction print, and soon set to work trying to gather the rest. A few years later, his mother pulled her obsessed son out of school in the middle of exams because she found out Gance was in town and knew he’d want to meet him. Brownlow described such quests as locating the original rapid-cut climax of young Napoleon’s snowball fight at school, which long eluded him until it turned up in the 1970s, curiously sorted with behind-the-scenes footage. He also recalled his decision to covertly copy the Cinematheque Française’s print after he became persona non grata at the institution. That proved to be a wise law-breaking decision: The original was later lost, along with other films, in a fire.

Later that day, Brownlow explained why he considers _Napoleon _the greatest film of all time. “It’s the most innovative,” he said. “Not even Citizen Kane has so many ideas as this one has, but of course it’s twice the length or more. It is so authentic, so brilliantly conceived and incredibly executed. I’m just lost in admiration. I’ve seen it hundreds of times and I never get tired of it.”

Preserving an Era

Brownlow was also a key figure in the festival’s screening of Clarence Brown’s The Goose Woman, starring Louise Dresser. The UCLA Film Archive, which received the festival’s honorary award this year, created a restored copy of the film from two prints, one of which Brownlow contributed. “I’ve wanted to see [the film] restored and made available for years,” he said. “It finally happened. And in it were scenes that I’d never seen before, that were missing from my print.” Brownlow recalled that he purchased his print from a library in Coventry, England, for 2 pounds a reel—“eight reels, so 16 pounds plus postage.”

Film collecting has changed a lot since the 73-year-old started amassing his collection in the 1950s. “DVD makes it so much easier in many respects,” he said. “Somehow the thrill of it is less when you get something you can slip into your pocket. The hunt for the prints was really dramatic. But since I’m the age I am, I’m very grateful I don’t have to lug these prints about anymore.”

The race continues to find lost films and preserve the contents of archives. In the “Amazing Tales from the Archives” presentation on Saturday, preservationists discussed a number of topics, including tricks to pinpointing what year a film was shot, re-creating intertitles and identifying unlabeled film fragments. The Fairbanks film Mr. Fix-It only existed as an Italian print, with titles made by the foreign distributor. It had to be translated back to English (during which time jokes and/or wordplay were likely lost) and typeset based on other films from the same studio and year.

Awake and Dreaming

The need to preserve silent film goes beyond the standard reasons of historical record. Yes, the films are important windows into the lifestyle and culture of the past, but many stand out as great art. The medium evolved at an unprecedentedly rapid pace. To watch silent films isn’t simply to see early uses of the same film language that exists now. The filmmakers were in awe of the medium, and they mastered it.

The lack of sound drove a deep understanding of visual storytelling. Without long strings of dialogue, ideas had to be communicated through the camera. Special effects can be particularly inspiring when you realize that they were done in-camera, with no assistance from optical printers, let alone computers.

Sideways director Alexander Payne, who introduced He Who Gets Slapped, spoke of the oneiric quality he loves in silent films. He said, “One of my aspirations is to achieve—one day, in a film of my own—a passage, even a brief one—I’ll take 20 seconds—that can approach the direct and mysterious cinematic beauty we see in great silents.”

There were no small screens at the time, so DVDs don’t come close to relaying the experience of seeing films on 35-mm prints with live music. That said, I’m not sure how many places ever were as grand as the the festival’s beloved venue, one of the best places in the world to watch movies. "The sheer size of the screen here at the Castro is exciting,” film critic Leonard Maltin said. Festival attendees enjoy the extravagant architecture, watch well-researched slideshows, go to book signings on the mezzanine and chat each other up between screenings.

“Pictures of course don’t do it justice until you’re actually in here and get the atmosphere,” said Giovanni Spinelli, who debuted his new solo-guitar score for F.W. Murnau’s 1927 masterpiece Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans.

The live music builds a link to the films and enhances the communal experience, especially when performed at the caliber of the festival’s musicians. Organist Dennis James and string, horn and piano ensemble The Mount Alto Motion Picture Orchestra use authentic music of the era, attempting to replicate the kind of music that would have likely been heard when the film first screened. Others, like pianist Donald Sosin, who brought in a lovely drum-and-string ensemble for Upstream, compose original scores.

The Matti Bye Ensemble, from Sweden, combine melodic music with soundscape experiments. Bye’s music ranges from the quiet, squeaking ice in the band’s accompaniment to The Great White Silence, a British documentary about a doomed 1910 Antarctic expedition, to the deranged, bombastic themes that underscored He Who Gets Slapped, Sjöstrom’s tragic story of a mad clown, starring Lon Chaney.

Stephen Horne has become known at the festival for both his haunting and ambitious musical interpretations of some of the silent era’s most audacious films, and for his ability to play flute, accordion and piano at the same time. He can bring out the subtle beauty of a film like Yasujirō Ozu’s_ I Was Born, But…_ (1932) or go all out to match the stylish military barrage of The Nail in the Boot.

The most controversial piece of the festival, Spinelli’s textured, effects-heavy guitar score to Sunrise, involved distortion, looping, a violin bow and even a milk frother. Some thought parts were distracting, others thought it was sacrilege, and others loved it. While it may not have been the perfect score for the film’s lighter moments, it emphasized the dark emotional struggle at the film’s core. The suspenseful first boat trip into the city reached heights that I’d never experienced in many previous viewings.

The Golden Rule

Some might have the impression that silent film enthusiasts are all stuffy academics, but the atmosphere at SFSFF proves otherwise. Esteemed film writers chat with accountants who took a long weekend off from their day jobs to attend. Both are happy to feel that special bridge between past and present that only comes with a live silent screening.

“It’s absolutely wonderful,” Brownlow said. “I wish I could come to it every year. The enthusiasm of the audience is what gets me…. You meet people you don’t expect to meet, like the grandson of Katherine MacDonald and somebody who knows the star of James Cruze’s Hollywood.”

Maltin said that when the festival started 16 years ago, it played a lot of standards, introducing the community to the great, neglected art form. Since then, it has become a festival of discovery, where film fans commune and prepare to see things they’ve never seen before alongside established classics.

Payne was seen at almost every screening. This was his first year at the festival, but he said he feared he might become “a lifer.” “I like seeing silent films and nerding out with other film nerds,” he said. “I go to a lot of film festivals, and I watch a lot of films when I go. When I have a film playing in a film festival, I make a point to watch a lot [of films.]”

The organizers are never afraid to go for comedy, and occasionally even the introductions reach a level of absurdism. While introducing the Italian vamp drama Il Fuoco, musician and former Modern Lovers frontman Jonathan Richman began rambling about an unrelated Neapolitan filmmaker and the Naples film industry. He went on for a while, until the always-present “voice of the festival” Ron Lynch interrupted over the sound system. “What does any of this have to do with the movie?” he asked.

“The golden rule,” Richmond explained. He enjoys films most when he goes in clueless and is completely surprised, he said, and was treating the audience as he would want to be treated. He then declared his mission accomplished and hurried off the stage.

New Old Ford

The festival opened with John Ford’s Upstream, which was long thought lost until a print was discovered in New Zealand last year. While Ford is best known for his westerns in both the silent and sound eras, this light backstage comedy showcases his gift for intimate humor. The film is full of clever, memorable visuals in its portrayal of a mosaic of poor stage actors who live in a dingy boarding house while dreaming of something greater.

While Ford’s bona fides were never in question, actor Earle Foxe stands out as the film’s discovery. Foxe plays Eric Brasingham, a talentless, laid-back rascal with no aspirations, who only gets the cruddy work he does because he comes from a celebrated family of actors. It’s only fitting that the most apathetic character gets a shot at a big break to leave America and play Hamlet in London—solely due to his family’s name—while his dreamy-eyed friends are left on the less respectable stages.

Ford manages to be exquisite and satirical at the same time. Early in the film, a famous agent enters the boarding house to see one of its residents. The camera circles the table, showing all the residents excited to find out whom the man will bless with a great stage opportunity—except Brasingham, who continues to dig into his dinner without giving it a second thought. He doesn’t even care enough to relish the opportunity.

However, once he learns he will be Hamlet, his personality shifts in a brilliantly played scene. Looking at his reflection in a grimy mirror, he wipes it clean and sees himself reborn as a pompous ass.

_Upstream _is a multi-character study of people moving in different directions, and Ford sees fit to let the story speak for itself without any belabored morals or life lessons. He charms us and leaves it at that. Hopefully the film will be released to a wider audience, and any disc will include Sosin’s rollicking score, which is one of the accompanist’s best.

Soviet Cinema Gone Awry

While Ford’s film seduces its audience subtly, The Nail in the Boot is a full-on assault. Kalatozov crafted a harrowing battle in which a stranded tanker train tries to ward off encroaching enemies while a sole soldier attempts to deliver a call for backup while traveling on an injured foot. Kalatozov depicts the experience with kinetic editing and gorgeous, shimmering, expressionistic cinematography. One of the most haunting shots tilts slowly to the bottom of a near-empty ammunition crate. Another shows the inescapable barbed wire that hinders the messenger’s progress.

The setting of the film’s second half, a trial to determine who is to blame for what happened, is inherently less cinematic, and relies on intertitles to make the proceedings clear. But the filmmaker still executes it with the same gripping panache, dramatic angles and tense editing.

Kalatozov made the film in 1931 as a Soviet propaganda parable, but the authorities banned it on the grounds that it was too formal and didn’t adequately employ the dialectic approach of Soviet propaganda. Indeed it doesn’t—it’s visceral and exciting, and captures the desperation of an experience, rather than a propaganda message. If the Soviets couldn’t appreciate that back then, it’s a good thing the film survived to be admired now.

The Question of Music

The festival’s jovial atmosphere doesn’t mean everyone is singing “Cumbayá.” There are differing opinions on many aspects of preservation and exhibition, including the type of music that should accompany films.

During a panel on accompaniment, organist Dennis James took issue with those at the festival who write new scores for silent films when period music—and sometimes scores commissioned for specific films—are available. He went so far as to term the work of many artists who were also on the panel “graffiti,” and interrupted several musicians who were answering questions about their creative process to repeat his point.

James believes that the work of the composers and performers of the silent era, who trained to accompany films, should be respected and remembered. And he made a strong case when he played period-correct scores for films like Mr. Fit-It and Shoes. If you want to write new silent film music, he said, make new silent films.

But it’s hard to agree with him after witnessing the power that the new scores brought to the films during the festival. Music can bridge gaps between periods, giving audiences—especially those with no background in 1920s music—cultural cues to the film that are valuable and perhaps have more contemporary meaning. Plus, even when scores were commissioned for films, they weren’t performed at all (or even most) screenings.

“Dennis James, we had a lovely conversation today. He was very apologetic, I said you have nothing to apologize for,” said Spinelli the day after the panel. His score was the most controversial of all. “If I had dedicated my whole entire career to that art form, I’d be pretty defensive about new people coming in.”

James’s opinions are held for noble reasons and understandable, but the loss of some of the festival’s great accompaniment would be reason enough for me to reject the notion that contemporary scores have no place in silent film.

I was already a great admirer of He Who Gets Slapped. Leaving the festival after the closing screening with Bye’s score, I’d connected with it as I never had before. It was great music, yes, but it served the greatness of the film. I was once again chilled by that journey into darkness, created nearly 90 years ago but still very much alive.