Classic movie aficionados lucky enough to both be within a close distance of San Francisco and have some dough-re-me on hand to spend will get quite the treat when the San Francisco Silent Film Festival hits the Castro Theatre from May 6-10.
Returning to the big screen from 100+ years ago ready to rock the house - silent movies at their operatic best, accompanied quite literally by a symphony orchestra. San Francisco's 29th Silent Film Festival will return to the hallowed "movie palace" aisles of the Castro Theatre after presenting at the Orinda Theatre in 2025.
This Wednesday evening the San Francisco Silent Film Festival returns in high style with Erich von Stroheim's wonderfully indulgent epic QUEEN KELLY (1929), starring Gloria Swanson at her unapologetically over-the-top best, with musical accompaniment by composer Eli Denson conducting the San Francisco Conservatory of Music Orchestra.
Among the international lineup of cool classic movies at the 29th San Francisco Silent Film Festival: King Vidor's innovative THE CROWD
The last film of F.W. Murnau, his collaboration with documentary filmmaker Robert Flaherty, TABU: A STORY OF THE SOUTH SEAS
Also on the 29th SFSFF bill: William Wyler's western BLAZING DAYS, Abram Room's time capsule tale of life in 1927 Russia BED AND SOFA, the 1926 "Lubitsch touch" charmer and Roaring Twenties piece SO THIS IS PARIS
And. . . William de Mille's MISS LULU BETT, the British sci-fi flick HIGH TREASON, Carl Dreyer's 1922 film LOVE ONE ANOTHER and two "city symphony" pieces from Nice and Paris, Á PROPOS DE NICE (co-directed by Jean Vigo and Boris Kaufman) and RIEN QUE LES HEURES, directed by Alberto Cavalcanti.
Matinee idol star power will be provided by the aforementioned Gloria Swanson, director/actor Harry Piel, a pre-Josef Von Sternberg Marlene Dietrich, megawatt It Girl Clara Bow in HULA, an early appearance by the great Myrna Loy and THE CAVEMAN, a witty farce featuring the tragic albeit wonderful comic character actress Marie Prevost.
Our pals Stan Laurel & Oliver Hardy will headline the Saturday morning show.
Animation, this blog's favorite cinematic genre, will be represented by the Japanese Paper Film Project. The Bucknell University-based initiative worked with Japanese museums, film archives, and individual collectors to digitize and preserve more than 200 films, in this program early animated works made on paper, not celluloid.
Chicago film preservationist Kyle Westphal adds, “the project has successfully recovered the world of lost paper print movies made expressly to be exhibited on home projectors manufactured by Osaka’s Katei Toki and Tokyo’s REFCY and Tsukiboshi firms from 1932 to 1938. With the Japanese animation industry facing hard times, these firms bypassed theaters and took their wares directly to consumers."
The free AMAZING TALES FROM THE ARCHIVES program will be back to highlight film preservationists and the great work of film archives around the world. Presenting: Kyle Westphal of the Chicago Film Society, the
Danish Film Institute’s Thomas Christensen, Filmmuseum Düsseldorf's Andreas Thein and Carlo Chatrian of the Museo Nazionale del Cinema in Turin.
Spectacular silent movies in big screen glory are never (in 1926 or 2026) actually silent, so the San Francisco Silent Film Festival presentations feature a wide array of terrific accompanists, including the Mont Alto Motion Picture Orchestra, Duo Yumeno, Stephen Horne, Mas Koga, Guenter Buchwald, Frank Bockius and Wayne Barker.
The official San Francisco Silent Film Festival press release adds:
Germany’s Weimar period was one of the most vibrant and influential moments in cinema history. Stretching from the end of WWI until the Nazi takeover, Weimar films were at the forefront of stylistic and technical innovations and created narratives that underpin film genres like horror, film noir, and sci-fi to this day.
Our friends at WeimarCinema.org write, “[Weimar] is also shorthand for all things modern, not only in its promotion of gender equality and sexual emancipation, but also in its spirit of experimentation in the arts.
Weimar is still associated with urban modernity and the ever-present dangers of a backlash. Whatever the final verdict, Weimar's tumultuous 14-year period is one of the richest and most consequential in modern history."
We are excited to present four very different, very rare, Weimar titles at this year’s festival, all in beautiful new restorations, all with live musical accompaniment!
Deutsches Filminstitut’s restoration of SENSATION IM WINTERGARTEN demonstrates Max Green’s gorgeous camerawork featuring Berlin’s fabulous Wintergarten (it didn’t survive WWII) and other Berlin locations. This rousing melodrama about a world-famous trapeze artist stars Austrian actor Paul Richter who played Siegfried in Fritz Lang’s Die Nibelungen.
Proof that film restoration can be as exciting, with as much down-to-the-wire pacing as modern film production, Filmmuseum Düsseldorf just found additional material to add to their superb restoration of HIS GREATEST BLUFF and archivist Andreas Thein is working round the clock to prepare the film for its closeup at the festival.
We’re pleased to introduce San Francisco audiences to a major star of the Weimar period who is virtually unknown today, actor/director Harry Piel. Piel’s action films were huge box office draws—this one involves priceless jewels, slick-haired crooks, and Piel in dual roles as twin brothers! And a star turn by Marlene Dietrich in one of her earliest screen appearances.
Danish director Carl Th. Dreyer, known for his silent-era masterpieces The Passion of Joan of Arc and Vampyr among others, travelled to Germany to make LOVE ONE ANOTHER in 1922. Based on a best-selling Danish novel, the film is set during the Russian revolution of 1905, a time of massive anti-Jewish violence. We are grateful to the Danish Film Institute for restoring this rarity and returning Dreyer’s moving depiction of anti-Semitism’s sinister harms to the world.
BOOKKEEPER KREMKE is the story of vainglorious payroll clerk (Hermann Vallentin) who loses his job to automation in a Germany plagued by inflation and unemployment. Ukrainian-born Anna Sten has her German film debut as his daughter Lene. This was director Marie Harder’s only narrative film, and it is a vivid portrait of its time. Harder, who was a Social Democrat went to Mexico after the Nazis banned the party and died in a plane crash near Popocatépetl in 1936. Thanks to the Deutsche Kinemathek for this dazzling restoration.
Imogen Sara Smith writes in our program book, “Watching films from the late Weimar era is both poignant and suspenseful, like watching people skate on thin ice in the last rays of sun before an approaching storm front.” There are parallels to our own time.
This weekend, we pay tribute to pioneering animation producer and director Walter Lantz (1899-1994). Posted a Lantz cartune-filled salute to Walt and Woody back in December 2024, but dang it, that ISN'T ENOUGH!
Do we LOVE Woody (both the woodpecker and San Francisco Giants curveballing LHP Kirk "Woody" Reuter), Oswald the Lucky Rabbit, Andy Panda, Buzz Buzzard, Chilly Willy, and the excellent Swing Symphonies and Musical Miniatures series?
Yes, emphatically!
Here's Walter with his wife and ace cartoon voice artist Gracie Stafford Lantz (the voice of Woody Woodpecker after the departure of voiceman/storyman Ben Hardaway).
Walter Lantz began producing cartoons for J.R. Bray back in the silent era, with the Dinky Doodle, Unnatural History and Pete The Pup series. Walter appears in many of his silent era productions!
Over his many decades producing animated cartoons, Mr. Lantz was assisted very aptly by, to name just a few extremely talented collaborators, directors Shamus Culhane, Tex Avery, Dick Lundy, Alex Lovy, Don Patterson, Sid Marcus and Jack Hannah, animators Pat Matthews, Grim Natwick, Emery Hawkins, Manuel Moreno, Bill Nolan, Clyde Geronimi, Ray Abrams, Les Kline, Laverne Harding, Paul Smith, Art Davis, avatars of layout, backgrounds and character designs Philip DeGuard, Art Heinemann, Ray Huffine and Art Landy, storymen Ben "Bugs" Hardaway, Milt Schaffer and Cal Howard, voice artists Dick Nelson, Lionel Stander, Daws Butler, Dallas McKennon and (sometimes, before 1941) Mel Blanc, plus excellent music men Jimmy Dietrich, Frank Marsales and Darrell Calker.
Indeed, our mission, just a few days short of Walter's 127th birthday on Monday, is to continue deluging you with vintage Walter Lantz "Cartunes", starting with Oswald The Lucky Rabbit.
The gang at Way Too Damn Lazy To Write A Blog remain enthusiastic about the Lantz Ozzies of the early talkie era.
Here's the color segment (preceding the Ted Eshbaugh Studio's Goofy Goat Antics and the Disney Silly Symphony Flowers And Trees) starring Ozzie from the 1930 Universal feature THE KING OF JAZZ.
A caricature of Paul Whiteman, bandleader and star of The King Of Jazz appears in an Oswald The Lucky Rabbit cartoon, My Pal Paul.
Lantz' Oswald cartoons from 1929-1931 are filled with wonderful, cartoony, imaginative, way-out ideas and Bill Nolan's extra rubbery animation.
We close this too brief homage to the great Walter Lantz with cartoons directed by the equally great Tex Avery during his brief second stint there. That's right, the Tex Avery, whose first act after leaving the employ of Walter Lantz and joining the ragtag Leon Schlesinger Studio, producers of Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies, was to create "Termite Terrace" and give the middle finger to that other more famous Walt. Avery directed Porky's Duck Hunt (1937) and A Wild Hare (1940), effectively throwing down the gauntlet.
As always, the blazing and ever-inventive comic genius of Tex Avery is quite something to behold. Too bad Tex never met Buster Keaton when they were both working on the MGM lot.
That guy responsible for the first 20th century British Invasion and the international popularity of both going out to the movies and buying home movies (on 8mm, 9.5mm, 16mm, 28mm, etc.), Charles Spencer Chaplin, was born on April 16, 1889. Let's celebrate his 137th birthday belatedly by binge-watching a slew of Charlot clips and films, shall we!
The Chaplin Mutuals are still incredibly funny after all these decades.
And Chaplin's subsequent First National short subjects have their moments as well.
Even Chaplin's earliest films for Mack Sennett's Keystone, produced in 1913-1914, can be quite hilarious.
Some Chaplin Keystones co-star the great silent movie comedienne Mabel Normand.
One favorite Chaplin Keystone is The Rounders, in which Charlie's teamed with the rotund yet graceful and inspired slapstick funmaker (as well as the filmmaking mentor of Buster Keaton) Roscoe Arbuckle.
Now MUST watch Photoplay Productions' (Kevin Brownlow and David Gill) outstanding Unknown Chaplin documentary yet again.
The athletic and winsome Wanda Wiley was among several groundbreaking women in the rough and tumble world of slapstick comedy.
She headlined a series of fast-paced action comedies for Universal Pictures.
Starting her movie career doing stunt work in westerns, Wanda, the excellent "daredevil comedienne", stuntwoman and comic actress headlined her own series for Century Comedies and J.R. Bray Productions.
A rare blend of silver screen comedienne and action hero, Wanda made 50 films between 1924 and 1927.
One of the funniest extant Wanda comedies, A Thrilling Romance, was featured on episode 16 of The Silent Comedy Watch Party.
How Wanda did not attract the attention of Universal head Carl Laemmle after these 50 films and continue her career, we'll never know.
For a stretch in the teens and early 1920's, Fay Tincher, born on April 17, 1884, was one of the top comediennes in motion pictures.
She had a 15 year movie career that spanned stints with The American Eclair Company, Komic Komedies, Triangle, Christie, and Universal.
Fay's funny and outrageous performances as the over-the-top Ethel The Stenographer in the Bill The Office Boy series for Komic Komedies made Fay a major movie star in 1914.
Fay, a reluctant comedienne of stage and screen whose background was in musical theater, went on to co-star in a series of 5-reel dramas and comedies with DeWolf Hopper at Fine Arts Film Company.
After leaving Fine Arts, she formed The Fay Tincher Comedy Company.
Fay, with ambitions to work behind the camera, produced and starred in a series for World Film Corporation.
Unfortunately, none of the three Fay Tincher Comedy Company films (Main 1-2-3, Some Job and Oh, Susie, Behave) survive. All that exists from the 1918 productions are stills.
Since film comedy in the silent era was frequently regarded as undignified and unladylike, not acceptable as a stepping stone to prestigious dramatic roles in feature films (or, for that matter, producing and directing), Fay hated getting cast as a comedy headliner and was very disappointed to see her World Film Corporation series end after three films. She headlined Christie Comedies beginning in 1919.
ROWDY ANN (1919) remains her best known film.
Most of her starring vehicles do not survive, so this diehard film buff is thankful for the few that do.
A super talented actress and comedienne, Fay retired from movies in 1930 after playing Min Gump in Universal's The Gumps series. She left show business, dropped out of the public eye and successfully evaded all interviews for the last 50+ years of her life.
And then there's that most swashbuckling of movie headliners, Harold Lloyd, whose films are still unequaled in their blend of comedy and thrills with the action hero ethos exemplified by Douglas Fairbanks, Sr.
Lloyd, the always indefatigable go-getter, regarded as one of silent comedy's Big Three, along with Chaplin and Keaton, was born on April 20, 1893.
Starting with Lonesome Luke and "glasses character" 2-reelers produced by Hal Roach's Rolin Co. in 1915-1917, Harold starred in numerous classic comedies.
In closing, here's Harold Lloyd's World Of Comedy - enjoy!
The diehard classic movie aficionados at Way Too Damn Lazy To Write A Blog salute silent comedy royalty big time! Laughs are our friend!
Today we salute the innovative producer, director and animator Norman McLaren.
A splendid post from Scotland.com adds: Norman McLaren (1914–1987) was a pioneering Scottish-Canadian animator, director, and producer renowned for his innovative work at the National Film Board of Canada (NFB).
A pioneer in hand-drawn, abstract, and pixilation animation, he won an Oscar for Neighbours (1952) and a Palme d'Or for Blinkity Blank (1955).
That means it's time to get pixillated!
NEIGHBORS may be the first pixillated film this film buff ever saw in which the menacing creatures were humans and not prehistoric monsters!
A few years before the Beatles discovered Ravi Shankar, his soundtrack is a cornerstone of pixillated McLaren opus A Chairy Tale.
Along with the films of Oskar Fischinger, McLaren's work got this movie buff, unlike the viewer played by Mel Brooks in The Critic, to be just fine with colors, shapes, lines and movement synchronized to music as the beating heart of a short film, as seen in BEGONE DULL CARE.
Also admire anyone who would think of scratching the emulsion of the film and seeing what the heck happens! No budget, no problem!
Submitted for your approval, a selection of vintage Norman McLaren art films - he made over 60 - that make this blogger want to see them again.
Why are these shapes and designs so hypnotic? I don't know - play it again!
Here at Way Too Damn Lazy To Write A Blog, today's holiday means Easter movies, rabbit-laden cartoons and TV show clips.
Kicking off the compendium of rabbit-packed Easter cartoons, here's the Easter egg-filled and downright rabbit-infested Silly Symphony Funny Little Bunnies.
That would be Easter Yeggs (1947), one of the very best cartoons ever helmed by director Robert McKimson.
We're delighted that METV has shown the Walter Lantz Studio's contribution to the Easter cartoon genre, Oswald The Lucky Rabbit in The Egg Cracker Suite (1943).
The Egg Cracker Suite is the last of the theatrical Oswald The Lucky Rabbit series.
Ozzy was subsequently purloined, along with all but a couple of the Disney animation staff, by Charles Mintz.
After a year of Winkler Oswalds, Mintz received the heave-ho from Carl Laemmle and Walter Lantz took over the character and made a gazillion Ozzy toons for Universal Pictures.
Happy Easter to all from Oswald, Bugs Bunny and Way Too Damn Lazy To Write A Blog!
Today
we
spotlight
the
post-WW2
UK
heroes
of
comedy:
the
British
invasion
that
preceded
the
Rickenbacker-brandishing
lads
from
Liverpool,
beginning
with
The Goon Show
Today, March 21, is World Puppetry Day. While this blog has not posted specifically about puppetry before, we've covered stop-motion animated films many times. The January 27, 2024 post Stop-Motion Saturday was devoted to a slew of puppetmaster/filmmakers, including Wladislaw Starewicz, Joop Geesink and George Pal.
Of course, World Puppetry Day invariably gets me thinking of the following tune!
As fate would have it, the singularly most perverse “golden age” animated cartoon features puppets. That would be the 1935 Charles Mintz Studio/Screen Gems opus, The Puppet Murder Case (1935), a brutal beaut from the often twisted crew led by Sid Marcus and Art Davis. Is this a sadistic cartoon? Yes. Kafka-esque? Indeed. Did this particularly vicious version of Scrappy richly deserve to be strung up like a puppet (as he does to Oopy/Vontzy, his hapless little brother)? Yes!
Only slightly less sadistic than Scrappy is the following Popeye cartoon, Puppet Love (1944), notable for the imaginative and bizarre animation of Jim Tyer. Just because he could, perennial bad guy Bluto builds a Popeye puppet which, of course, turns out to be a violent psycho. Boomerang actually ran this twisted cartoon!
Getting back to the topic of World Puppetry Day, here's some stop-motion fun from Bryclreem! Bear in mind, us guys who were never even close to tall, athletic and movie star handsome could squeeze the contents of an entire tube of Brycreem on our heads and definitely NOT get the result the puppets and humans in the following commercial enjoyed.
Cohl made a film titled Puppet’s Nightmare in 1908.
Back in the 1920's, stop-motion innovator Lotte Reineger animated using paper cut-outs in silhouette.
Our friend Steve Stanchfield has been posting some very cool stop-motion films on the Cartoon Research website. Here are two by puppetmaster Lou Bunin.
Bunin's stop-motion Alice In Wonderland is an amazing film.
Much enjoyed the two Stop-Motion Marvels Blu-rays that Steve and Thunderbean Animation staff put together.
Continuing on the topic of puppets, there's fantastic news regarding a new Blu-ray of The Puppetoon Movie.
Does the gang here love George Pal Puppetoons? Yes!
First saw The Puppetoon Movie, a feature-length compilation put together by George Pal and stop-motion historian Arnold Leibovit on the big screen back in 1987. After numerous viewings, still find George Pal's stylish 1930's musicals for Horlick's Malted Milk and Philips striking and weirdly beautiful.
Arnie Liebovit elaborates on his work restoring George Pal's work in the following podcast.
Another inventive puppetmaster/animator/filmmaker was Karel Zeman. Thanks to Castle Films, lots of us 16mm collectors are familiar with REVE DE NOEL (1945) a.k.a. A CHRISTMAS DREAM.
Karel Zeman's Adventures Of Baron Munchausen in particular is a must-see.
Another devastatingly imaginative animator who made cinematic magic from puppets was Wladislaw Starewicz (1882-1965).
Hope to see such outstanding Starewicz films as The Magical Clock released on Blu-ray in the United States.
The Starewicz family and Doriane Films have made a few of these terrific films available on Blu-ray and DVD in Europe.
Wladislaw (a.k.a. Ladislaw Starewicz, Ladislas Starevitch, Ladislaw Starevitch and Ladislaw Starewitch) created astonishing cinematic works.
Starewicz, an entymologist turned animator, began making stop-motion films in 1912.
He began his career in Russia and relocated to France as a result of the 1917 revolution.
Wladislaw and Irina Vladislavovna Starewicz produced stop-motion films through 1958.
The Mascot (1933) packs more startling imagery into its 33 minute length than can be found in 140 minute feature films.
IIRC, the following Starewicz DVD is still available.
The visionary films of Starewicz inevitably compel one to delve deeply into a Willis O' Brien playlist.
Next up on World Puppetry Day: a piece on the great artist O'Brien mentored, Ray Harryhausen.
Another all-time favorite is the great Charley Bowers.
Bowers' last stop-motion film was Pop & Mom In Wild Oysters (1941).
Bowers' blends of stop-motion animation with silent era slapstick remain astounding 100 years after they were produced.
How do we close a World Puppetry Day post? With Jim Henson commercials, of course. This blogmeister is preparing a pot of hot Wilkins Coffee for the occasion.
