This correspondent will not be able to attend the 2019 San Francisco Silent Film Festival at the Castro Theatre, which opened last night, but shall recommend it strongly to classic movie fans.
In the following interview, San Francisco Silent Film Festival board president Rob Byrne elaborates further about silent movies, the festival and film preservation.
The 2019 festival shall present 25 programs, including an illustrated lecture presentation at the Pacific Film Archive in Berkeley, all with live musical accompaniment.
The San Francisco Silent Film Festival will feature movies from ten different countries — Bali, Czechoslovakia, France, Germany, India, Italy, Japan, Sweden, the United States and the USSR. The cool silent movies shall be accompanied by 40 brilliant musicians from around the world.
This year's festival is bookended by The Cameraman and Our Hospitality, two unbeatable classic films starring Way Too Damn Lazy To Write A Blog favorite Buster Keaton.
Buster's 1928 opus The Cameraman kicked off the festival in style last night.
While a terrific movie and fitting swan song for the silent era, The Cameraman, as A Night At The Opera does for The Marx Brothers, represents the beginning of the end for The Great Stone Face. We at Way Too Damn Lazy To A Blog regard the film with mixed emotions.
Keaton's era as a brilliant director and filmmaking innovator who created such masterpieces as The General came to an end when he signed with Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, although his genius as a comedian and comic actor remained undimmed right up to his last film appearances. Since The Cameraman was Keaton's first starring feature after signing the contract with Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, it fills this writer and Buster fan with a certain amount of foreboding.
As great a feature film as The Cameraman is, all this film buff can think of is MGM's reputation as a notorious comedy-killer with everyone not named William Powell and Myrna Loy.
Nonetheless, go see The Cameraman and Our Hospitality in proper big screen glory. Buster's cinematic brilliance fills a movie palace as powerfully as it did in the 1920's.
The complete San Francisco Silent Film Festival schedule can he found here.
Two writers we follow and think highly of are offering their two cents on on this year's San Francisco Silent Film Festival. Mary Mallory of Hollywood Heritage Museum (and the co-author with Karie Bible of several books), has posted one of her customary thoughtful and well-written reviews, while the writer of one of our favorite classic movie blogs, Silentology, Minnesota film historian Lea Stans, shall review every program!
Silentology, as expected has covered the 2019 San Francisco Silent Film Festival in detail. This is good, as this correspondent's eyeballs can no longer hold out beyond Day 2 of a massive film festival before saying "no mas, no mas" anymore. So kudos to these writers and everyone involved with this epic film festival.
In addition to documentaries about far-flung topics (including silent movies), all kinds of stuff can be found on YouTube, including . . . merry May pole dancers!
Now, in all honesty, if this writer, never the most coordinated or athletic of individuals, took a stab at May pole dancing, he would run INTO the pole instead of prance around it.
Yes, Way Too Damn Lazy To Write A Blog has indeed posted clips from the following randy yet cheesy 1932 musical short subject, Over The Counter, directed by future producer and director of big budget MGM features Jack Cummings, before. This 2-reeler, a veritable cheese whiz, screams PRE-CODE from the rooftops and includes scantily clad showgirls doing a May pole dance which is about as subtle as a stainless steel shovel in the face (starting at 6:21). Due to our 3 1/2 degrees of decorum, we won't use the word "climax."
In closing, if you and yours are able to get your classic movie lovin' derrieres to the Bay Area and afford to spend the dough-re-me on the 2019 fest by all means get your movie lovin' derrieres to the Castro Theatre.
Photo by Tommy Lau
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