2013 San Francisco Silent Film Festival

This post has taken unusually long to write due to other time constraints.  I wish I had time to see all the movies I wanted to.  I also wish I had time to write on this blog about all the movies I've seen in a timely manner.  Of course, if I had time to see all the film I wanted and immediately write about them, I probably wouldn't have a job or the money to see all the movies I wanted to see.

The 2013 San Francisco Silent Film Festival (SFSFF) ran from July 18 to 21 at the Castro Theater.  I saw 13 of the 17 programs.

Prix de Beaute starring Louise Brooks; directed by Augusto Genina; live accompaniment by Stephen Horne; silent with intertitles; (1930)
The First Born starring Miles Mander & Madeleine Carroll; directed by Miles Mander; live accompaniment by Stephen Horne; silent with intertitles; (1928)
Tokyo Chorus starring Tokihiko Okada & Tatsuo Saitô; directed by Yasujirō Ozu; live accompaniment by Günter Buchwald; silent with intertitles; (1931)
The Patsy starring Marion Davies; with Marie Dressler, Dell Henderson & Jane Winton; directed by King Vidor; live accompaniment by Mont Alto Motion Picture Orchestra; silent with intertitles; (1928)
The Golden Clown starring Gösta Ekman; directed by A.W. Sandberg; live accompaniment by Matti Bye Ensemble; silent with intertitles; (1926)
Legong: Dance of the Virgins starring Goesti Poetoe Aloes, Njoman Nyong Nyong, Goesti Bagus Mara & Njoman Saplak; directed by Henry de la Falaise; live accompaniment by Gamelan Sekar Jaya & the Club Foot Orchestra; silent with intertitles; (1935)
Gribiche starring Jean Forest & Françoise Rosay; directed by Jacques Feyder; live accompaniment by Mont Alto Motion Picture Orchestra; silent with intertitles; (1925)
The House on Trubnaya Square starring Vera Maretskaya; directed by Boris Barnet; live accompaniment by Stephen Horne; silent with intertitles; (1928)
The Joyless Street starring Asta Nielsen & Greta Garbo; directed by G.W. Pabst; live accompaniment by Matti Bye Ensemble; silent with intertitles; (1925)
The Outlaw and His Wife starring Victor Sjöström, Edith Erastoff & John Ekman; directed by Victor Sjöström; live accompaniment by Matti Bye Ensemble; silent with intertitles; (1918)
The Last Edition starring Ralph Lewis, Lila Leslie & Ray Hallor; directed by Emory Johnson; live accompaniment by Stephen Horne; silent with intertitles; (1925)
The Weavers starring Paul Wegener; directed by Friedrich Zelnik; live accompaniment by Günter Buchwald; silent with intertitles; (1927)
Safety Last! starring Harold Lloyd, Mildred Davis & Bill Strother; directed by Fred Newmeyer & Sam Taylor; live accompaniment by Mont Alto Motion Picture Orchestra; silent with intertitles; (1923)

I didn't see any short films before the features this year.  Prior to The Weavers (or was it Safety Last!?), festival programmer Anita Monga mentioned that someone from the Alloy Orchestra had emailed her about Dziga Vertov's The Eleventh Year.  They screened the trailer for it.  She hinted it may be on next year's program.

Speaking of next year, the SFSFF has moved the 2014 festival from its traditional July timeframe to May 29 to June 1.  I was told by a fellow festival goer that it was because hotel rates are cheaper in May and the SFSFF has to book several hotel rooms for its musicians and other assorted guests.  By July, San Francisco hotels raise their room rates to summer levels.

The Patsy played at 2008 San Francisco Silent Film Festival.  I didn't recognize the title but realized within a few minutes after the start of the film that I had seen it before.

I had just seen Tatsuo Saitô in Sacramento the previous weekend in Every Night Dreams although I did not recognize him or his face in Tokyo Chorus.

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Two comedies topped the list of my favorites this year.  I mentioned that I saw The Patsy five years ago but that did not diminish my enjoyment of the film.  Marion Davies was delightful as the long put-upon younger sister.  She showed considerable comedic skills and screen presence.  I wonder how her career would have progressed if she was not William Randolph Hearst's mistress.

Harold Lloyd is indisputably a comic genius and Safety Last! his masterpiece.  One of the most iconic images of Hollywood films is that of Lloyd hanging from the hands of a large clock several stories above the street which is the capstone of Safety Last!.  Although there are several amusing scenes before the grand finale, it is the extended sequence where Lloyd is forced to climb the exterior of a building which elevates the film to the spectacular.  The audience at the Castro went crazy for the gags; both laughing uproariously and gasping in fear that Lloyd would fall.

Prix de Beaute was a showcase for Louise Brooks.  More so than any other silent film star I am familiar with Brooks is a phenomenon unto herself.  Her radiance is spellbinding in all the films which I have seen her in.  I'm racking up quite a collection of her greatest films - Pandora's Box, Diary of a Lost Girl, Beggars of Life and A Girl in Every Port.  I won't say that the bloom is off the rose after seeing Prix de Beaute but I will say that if you look closely, Brooks seems to look older than her 24 years of age.  That's not surprising given the life she lived but her appearance combined with the knowledge that this film was her last hurrah give Prix de Beaute a bittersweet quality.  The film ends badly for her character which only reinforces the tinge of melancholy throughout.

Brooks plays Lucienne "Lulu" Garnier, a typist with dreams of competing in the Miss France beauty pageant.  Her boyfriend Andre (Georges Charlia) is adamantly opposed to beauty pageants so Lulu submits her application and photos in secret.  Eventually she wins the title and must travel to compete in the Miss Europe contest.  Andre finds out and rushes to stop her at the station but just misses the train.  Lulu goes on to win the Miss Europe title and begins to socialize with the rich and famous.  All the while Andre is tracking her down and when he is finally able to confront her, he gives an ultimatum.  Despite her doubts, she chooses him and settles back into a life of domesticity.  When one of her previous admirers appears with an offer of a film contract, Lulu is once again irresistibly drawn to the limelight.  Sadly, when Andre track her down once again, he ends the relationship permanently...with a bullet in Lulu's back.

I was surprised at how the depiction of Andre highlighted several hallmarks of abusive spouses - the apologies, the controlling nature, the need to isolate, etc.  I thought these signs were categorized years after the film was made but I guess even in 1930s France, they knew an abusive husband when they saw one.

I don't want anyone to believe I didn't enjoy film.  It was quite good although Brooks plumbed darker waters in Pandora's Box and Diary of a Lost Girl. If anything, my knowledge of Brooks' life distracted me from the film itself.  If Brooks didn't look like a million bucks (as she had in her previous films), she certainly lit up the screen Prix de Beaute as few others ever have. 

The Golden Clown was a Swedish tragedy.  Gösta Ekman, whose son and grandson are prominent Swedish actors, plays Joe Higgins (an oddly Anglicized character name).  Higgins is the star clown in a small travelling circus.  He is in love with Daisy (Karina Bell), the circus owner's daughter.  Soon after their engagement, Higgins receives an offer to perform in Paris.  With his new wife and parents-in-law, Higgins settles into the high life of Parisian society.  A critical and financial success, Higgins is living the good life until his wife falls prey to a philandering couturier.  Her affair destroys their lives and leads to her death.

I have noticed that the Matti Bye Ensemble excels in mood music to accompany misery and tragedy.  Their accompaniment of The Golden Clown was the musical highlight of the festival.  Ekman has a memorable scene where he is performing musical number with identically dressed clowns (they look like Pierrot) on a steep staircase.

Gribiche was a fun film about a young boy, eponymous Gribiche (Jean Forest) although that is his nickname.  Raised by a single mother in a modest neighborhood, Gribiche's honesty attracts the attention of a wealthy American dowager (Françoise Rosay, the director's wife).  She proposes to Gribiche's mother that she take guardianship of the boy and to the mother's surprise, Gribiche agrees to the arrangement.

Most of the film depicts the boy as a fish out of water.  Awed by the lavishness and wealth of his new surroundings and overwhelmed by the structured studies which are forced upon him, Gribiche begins to reconsider his choice.  It doesn't help matters that Rosay's character begins to embellish the circumstances of Gribiche's former life.  Gribiche becomes a badge of her altruism to her friends and corroboration of her theories on social hygiene although Gribiche's previous station in life was not so debased.  Gribiche was a pleasant if not particularly memorable comedy about class differences.

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This year's festival had a palpable theme of class warfare.  The Joyless Street was set during the post-WWI deprivations in Vienna.  In a poor neighborhood, the two wealthiest people are the butcher who gouges people for his meat and the owner of a fashion boutique who runs a speakeasy/whorehouse in the back.  The film follows two poor women from the neighborhood - Asta Nielsen and Greta Garbo.  Their plotlines are not tightly interwoven.  Nielsen resorts to prostitution and witnesses a murder.  Garbo's father loses his pension in the stock market and Garbo makes nice with an American Red Cross worker (or was he an US Army officer?).  The plot was difficult to follow (perhaps due to the film be edited so many times) and what I could follow didn't make great use of Nielsen and Garbo's screen presence or acting skills.  The butcher and his large dog were the most memorable characters in the film which summarizes what I didn't like about The Joyless Street.

The Weavers was heralded as the German Potemkin (reference to Eisenstein's Battleship Potemkin).  That's quite a stretch.  I saw Potemkin prior to the festival and I saw Potemkin a week after the festival and Potemkin has an unmistakable grandeur resulting from the crowd scenes and the scenes upon the battleship.  The Weavers is cut rate agitprop by comparison.  The eponymous weavers are Silesian (where the heck is Silesia?) weavers who sell the cloth fabrics for sustenance wages.  The weavers' wages are forced down because of machine looms.  They rise up in revolt, smash the looms, send the wealthy scurrying before their enraged mob and stand up to the Army troops who are sent to quash them.  There are obviously parallels to today's economic conditions but the film was told with its political message preeminent and character development lagging far behind.  I was never able to empathize with the characters and the film's cinematography did not impress me.  The Weavers left me bored.

The Outlaw and His Wife was directed by and starred Victor Sjöström.  His real-life wife, Edith Erastoff, was the female lead.  Sjöström plays Ejvind, a stranger who is looking for work. He gets a job at Halla's sheep ranch and farm.  Halla is a wealthy widow being courted by her portly brother-in-law who also happens to be the local constable.  Ejvind is a fugitive and when his identity is discovered, he makes a run for it.  Halla, who has fallen in love n Ejvind, decides to accompany him.  They take refuge high in the mountains and make a happy life for themselves; even having a child together.  The isolation, the harassment from the police, filicide, a love triangle and the bitter cold have negative effects on Ejvind & Halla.  Eventually, they freeze to death which mercifully ends their suffering as well as the audiences'.  Whereas The Joyless Street was ponderous and difficult to follow and The Weavers was boring, The Outlaw and His Wife had its share of strong scenes.  The plot was difficult to overcome.  Sending Halla & Ejvind up the mountain and isolating them stopped the film dead in its tracks.  The plot has them living up on the mountain for 16 years and Sjöström extends the film to tortuous length to depict their lives on the mountain.  The film ran over two hours but would have been much more palatable at closer to 90 minutes.

Frankly, I don't recall much about the plot of The House on Trubnaya Square.  A woman comes from the countryside to a big city to find her uncle or something.  She brings her duck or chicken for some reason.  Eventually, she finds work as a maid in a dilapidated tenement building which by any objective standard should be condemned.  Eventually she gets elected to some Communist Party committee but its someone else with the same name?  I don't know.  The House on Trubnaya Square was a Soviet film which so alien to me that I couldn't comprehend what I was seeing.  Combining Gogol-esque absurdist humor with slapstick comedy; director Boris Barnet doesn't quite eschew plot like Vertov but does seem more interested in the visual images.  While watching the film, I kept thinking about Russian humor or Soviet humor.  If you can make a joke out of waiting in line for 7 hours in winter to get a roll of toilet paper, then I suppose The House on Trubnaya Square is a Soviet comedy.

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I enjoyed the remaining films to varying degrees.

Miles Mander was memorable in The Pleasure Garden which played at the Hitchcock 9 in June.  He plays a similar character in The First Born which he also directed.  Alma Reville was credited with half the screenplay.  In fact, I noticed the pre-screening slideshow recycled a lot of material from the Hitchcock 9.  You would have thought Hitchcock directed The First Born.  Anyway, Mander is once again a cad as he was in The Pleasure Garden although he doesn't kill anyone in The First Born.  Madeleine Carroll (who would star in Hitchcock's The 39 Steps) plays Mander's long suffering wife.  The plot is pure melodrama and there is a tidy ending involving Mander's illegitimate son which cheapens the film a bit but for the most part The First Born is an opportunity for Mander to strut his stuff front and center instead of in supporting role.  Mander has more than enough acting skills to carry the film.

Yasujirō Ozu is the director of Tokyo Chorus but it doesn't feel like an "Ozu film."  In 2011, the SF Silent Film Festival screened Ozu's I Was Born, But... (1932).  I was impressed with that film but Tokyo Chorus (1931) was not quite as impressive.  Ozu relies more on humor than his later film and the humor feels forced.  His trademark pathos isn't quite as evident in Tokyo Chorus. Tatsuo Saitô performance as the strict school instructor cum restaurateur throws off the pacing of the film.  There is a scene where Reikô Tani as the company CEO and Tokihiko Okada as protagonist match each other, movement for movement, with hand fans which was amusing.  The young children are also present to serve as a foil and conscience for Okada as their father.  I can't say I disliked Tokyo Chorus but I wish I had seen it before I Was Born, But...  The latter film shows a natural progression for Ozu when compared to Tokyo Chorus.

Legong: Dance of the Virgins was advertised as a pseudo-documentary shot on location in Bali in present-day Indonesia.  Accompanied by the Club Foot Orchestra and the enormous Gamelan Sekar Jaya (they must have had 30 people or more on stage), the Castro was packed for Legong.  Rather than having the detachment of a documentarian's lens, I though Legong was closer to a Paul Gauguin paining.  Director Henry de la Falaise appeared to have a great affection for the Balinese people which mixed the exotic with a vague sense paternalism.  The plot centered on a young man in a gamelan.  A young maiden is in love with her but he has eyes for her half-sister.  Why they bothered to make that distinction is beyond me.  Many of the characters had the same name as the "actor" portraying them so maybe the two women were half-siblings.  This love triangle has a backdrop of the daily minutiae of Balinese life.  In one scene, one of the women rhythmically and gracefully pound grain or rice with a staff and it was hypnotic to watch.  Legong is a tragedy so by the end, someone dies.  Legong was far from a great film but the exotic location and arresting score were enough to keep my interest.  There were several scenes of young women (and girls) topless.  Rather than exploitative, the scenes depict the lifestyle which existed in Bali at the time.  Actually, there is not time reference which I recalled so the film may have been set in contemporary times or centuries ago.  The score began to grate of my ears as the film went on.  It was a constant cacophony of noises which although pleasing at times, became mildly annoying at the end.  More variation in the score would have suited my tastes better.

The Last Edition was also a sellout...undoubtedly due to its being filmed in San Francisco.  If it were set anyplace else, I think I would categorize the film lower.  The plot involves a young lawyer in the San Francisco DA's office and his father who works the printing presses at the San Francisco Chronicle.  The younger man is framed for a crime he did not commit and a Chronicle reporter helps him clear his name.  It was a run-of-the-mill film with a plot that has been used many times before and since.  The attractions were the exterior shots in San Francisco and recognizing the locations.  The scenes where the paper is being "put to bed" were also interesting to me.  Apparently, the Chronicle's masthead hasn't changed in 80+ years.

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This year's festival had an odd dynamic for me.  From opening night through Saturday afternoon, I enjoyed seven consecutive films.  Then it was quite a slog to get through four of the next five films and even the exception (The Last Edition) wasn't really that good.  It was because I had not enjoyed those films that I stayed for Safety Last! which proved to be my favorite of the festival.  Typically, the films I like and dislike are more evenly spread out through the festival.

2012 San Francisco Silent Film Festival (Part 2 of 2)

I've been so busy at work that I haven't had time to keep this blog updated.  I've seen 40 films since the SF Silent Film Festival (July 12 to 15).

My favorite film of the festival was The Wonderful Lie of Nina Petrovna.  Brigitte Helm of Metropolis is the titular Nina Petrovna, the mistress of a Russian Army colonel.  Reminiscent of the intrigues of Dangerous Liaisons, Petrovna and the Colonel (Warwick Ward) alternately toy with the affections of a young and earnest Lieutenant (Franz Lederer).  What starts as a simple flirtation, spirals out of control as the Lt. appears to experience love for the first time, Petrovna is reborn by the young man's purity of heart and the Colonel seeks revenge.  As the film progresses, Petrovna transforms herself from a wealthy man's mistress into a poor man's true love.  However, the machinations of the Colonel combined with the Lieutenant's desperation result in Petrovna's ruination.  The title could refer to the lie which started the whole affair or the lie Petrovna tells to release the young man from the chains of love.

Although resembling a few von Sternberg and Louise Brooks films, The Wonderful Lie of Nina Petrovna has a certain unique flourish to it which I attribute to Ward's performance as the third lead.  Helm grounds the film in a solid performance.  Comparing Nina Petrovna to the films von Sternberg or Brooks is high praise in my book.  The screening was greatly enhanced by the score by the Mont Alto Motion Picture Orchestra.

Speaking of Brooks, her Pandora's Box was probably the most impressive film of the festival.  If Nina Petrovna is 1A, then Pandora's Box is 1B only because I had high expectations going into the screening.  Once again, Louise Brooks commands the screen.  Was there ever a role in which Louise Brooks did not shine?  Brooks is Lulu, a woman with many male (and one female) admirers and few inhibitions.  Lulu's descent into the demimonde begins when her new husband dies as a result of a botched double suicide.  Convicted of murder, Lulu escapes her prison sentence (with the aid of her son-in-law no less) but not her fate. Lulu and her band of admirers take refuge in a seedy ship/casino where she barely escapes being sold into white slavery.  Ending up in London, Lulu has a climactic encounter with a Jack The Ripper character.

The synopsis is light on details because the highlight of Pandora's Box is Brooks' spellbinding performance.  Unbelievably radiant, Brooks/Lulu uses her charms to lead men to their destruction.  But rather than a femme fatale, Lulu's as much a victim of her own charms as the men she attracts.  Lulu attracts men with such a strong pull of magnetism that they wreak havoc on themselves and Lulu.  Not unaware of the effect she has on men, Lulu is an ambiguous character.  Perhaps not fully deserving of the sympathy she evokes from the audience, Lulu is nonetheless viewed through a prism normally reserved for tragic heroines.

Pandora's Box is also notable for some of the set pieces.  There is a sequence at the theater/circus where the characters navigate an obstacle course of backstage movements which was as impressive a display of blocking as I can recall.  The squalid ship and wretched garret in London were textbook examples of mise-en-scène.

Whereas Nina Petrovna was a pleasant surprise, Pandora's Box met all my lofty expectations.

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A handful of films were quite good but, in my opinion, a step below Nina Petrovna and Pandora's Box.  

It wasn't until a few days before the screening of Docks of New York that I realized I had not previously seen the film.  Having confused Underworld with Docks of New York, it was only until I read the festival program that I realized the plot synopsis did not match my recollection of "Docks of New York."  A quick search of this blog confirmed my suspicion.  So it was that I made hasty plans to see Docks of New York and I'm grateful that I did.

At times, it becomes obvious I've seen too many films.  The plot Docks of New York begins with burly Bill Roberts, a coal stoker (George Bancroft) jumping off the docks to save a soiled dove (Betty Compson) from drowning.  Thwarting a suicide attempt, Roberts quickly wins Mae's (Compson) heart and the two have an intense night which reveals Roberts to be less brutish than first appearance and buoys Mae's spirits.  That premise - man saves woman from suicide and then quickly romances her is almost a trope but I can't quite place the films Docks of New York remind me of...and no, I'm not thinking of Vertigo.

Von Sternberg gives Compson the Full Dietrich - close-ups with soft lighting...all the better to emote with.  However, Compson is no Dietrich and the Dietrichesque character is split between Compson and the more audacious role of Bill's wife (played by the noted Russian actress/celebrity Olga Baclanova).  Yes, Roberts has a wife but the love story is between Roberts and a down-on-her luck whore.  For my tastes, Mae was too much a victim and Baclanova's role was too small to move the needle.

Docks of New York is more a paean to the masculinity of George Bancroft which in the role of Bill Roberts was considerable.  Rough and tough and lacking sentimentality, Roberts (as well as Docks of New York)  forces its way into your heart.  The film is also notable for a few of the sets - the boiler room on the ships and the raucous dive bar on the dock where Roberts holds court.

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Stella Dallas was unabashedly maudlin but undeniably effective.  Overshadowed by the Barbara Stanwyck production (1937), the silent Stella Dallas covers familiar ground.  Stella (Belle Bennett) is the overprotective and gauche mother of Laurel Dallas.  Having married Stephen Dallas (Ronald Coleman) when he was at a vulnerable point in his life, Stella and Stephen separate and ultimately divorce as Stephen's fortunes and self-respect bounce back.  Once he reunites with his childhood love, the pieces are in place for Stella's tragedy.

As Laurel makes her debut in high society, she learns that her mother is ridiculed for her fashion faux pas (her application of make-up was particularly garish) and questionable companions.  Wanting to spare her mother's feelings, Laurel attempts to retreat with her mother to their small hometown.  However, Stella is aware of the embarrassment she causes Laurel and is prepared to make the ultimate maternal sacrifice.

Belle Bennett is more than adequate as the brassy Stella and carries the bulk of the film on her shoulders.  16 year old Lois Moran is impressive as Laurel and provides the crucial counterpoint to Bennett's attention-grabbing performance.  Jean Hersholt also shines as the graceless alcoholic who is the source of several of Stella's problems.  Ronald Coleman isn't quite as effective without "the voice" but certainly doesn't hurt the film.  Douglas Fairbanks Jr. has a small and largely ornamental role as Laurel's handsome boyfriend.

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The Canadian starred Thomas Meighan & Mona Palma as a reluctant married couple.  Although the title refers to Meighan's character, it's Palma as his wife who has the meatier role.  As a sheltered Englishwoman left destitute by her parents' deaths, Nora makes her way to Alberta to live her older brother.  Conflicts with her sister-in-law (Dale Fuller in attention grabbing performance) push Nora into marrying Frank (Meighan) in order to escape her sister-in-law's wrath & ridicule.

The Cameraman is one of Buster Keaton's most famous films so I won't waste time & space on the plot.  I laughed heartily during the screening.

Wings was more enjoyable than the screening with Dennis James' accompaniment at the Stanford earlier this year.  No offense to Mr. James but the Mont Alto Motion Picture Orchestra added some sound effects to the airplane scenes which was surprisingly effective.  Being familiar with the plot, I was able to concentrate more on the original It Girl and boy did she have It!  Unlike Louise Brooks' sensitive and soiled sensuality, Clara Bow was a bundle of energy packaged in effervescent roles.  Playing a more mischievousness and cuckolding role Mantrap, it seems clear that Bow's élan vital was not going to shine through regardless of the role.  Clara Bow was the best thing about Wings and Mantrap; both of which had a lot to admire but space and time prevent me for elaborating.

Little Toys also seemed similar to a film I've seen before.  The gulf of 79 years and different cultures keeps me from fully appreciating the Ruan Lingyu film...or for that matter, Ruan Lingyu herself.  Too overtly melodramatic for my tastes, Little Toys is the final film I found worthwhile...not fully satisfying but still special in that how often are Ruan Lingyu performances screened?

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The Loves of Pharaoh (directed by Ernst Lubitsch)and The Spanish Dancer were bid budget epics which left me mostly bored.  I will say that seeing the European actor Emil Jannings (best known as the professor in Blue Angel) playing an Egyptian pharaoh was a bit of hoot.  Completely missing from The Loves of Pharaoh was the famed "Lubitsch Touch."

The Overcoat is the third adaptation of the Gogol short story which I've seen in the past few years.  My favorite was an ACT production set to music without any spoken dialog.  Although seven years ago, I can still recall it.  My second favorite was a 1952 Italian film from an Italian Neo-realism series at the PFA  in 2010.  This silent version was my least favorite.  Disjointed, replacing the surreality of the  plot with the surreality of the images and not least of which starting more than an hour late, I dozed off but even when awake, I could not engage with the film.

Finally, Erotikon was a comedy I found lacking.  I can't say I actively disliked the film but I didn't laugh much.  If I had it all to do over again, I wish I would have skipped The Overcoat and Erotikon.  The "other" Erotikon was my favorite film on the 2009 SF Silent Film Festival and this year's Erotikon was one my least.

Howard Hawks: The Second Measure of the Man

The Stanford Theater ended its Howard Hawks series in late June.  I saw six films in the series; all directed by Hawks with the exception of O. Henry's Full House which I explain later.

A Girl in Every Port starring Victor McLaglen, Robert Armstrong & Louise Brooks; silent with intertitles; live accompaniment by Dennis James; (1928)
Air Force starring John Garfield; (1943)
Red River starring John Wayne & Montgomery Clift; with Walter Brennan, Joanne Dru & John Ireland; (1948)
O. Henry's Full House; anthology; (1952)
I Was a Male War Bride starring Cary Grant & Ann Sheridan; (1949)
The Big Sky starring Kirk Douglas & Dewey Martin; (1952)

The Stanford series followed and mostly duplicated a similar PFA series of which I only saw three films.  The films I most regret missing were Paid to Love, Dawn Patrol, Viva Villa! and The Outlaw.  I have not seen the first three films and it must be 30 years since I saw The Outlaw.  Jane Russell had quite an effect on my adolescence.  I was a big fan of Paleface and Son of Paleface also (I used to know the words to Buttons and Bows).  Perhaps someone will put on a posthumous Jane Russell retrospective.

The Stanford series (called Movies to Dream By On a Desert Island) had the involvement of noted film critic and historian David Thomson (The New Biographical Dictionary of Film).  Thomson wrote the program guide included 10 pages of biographical information on Hawks as well as synopses of all of Hawks films (not just the ones screened by the Stanford).  In addition, Thomson introduced the 7:30 film on Saturday nights.

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O. Henry's Full House consisted five short film based on O. Henry stories.  Each story was directed by a different person.  The author John Steinbeck introduced each segment.  I stayed through the fourth segment, The Ransom of Red Chief which starred Fred Allen & Oscar Levant and was directed by Hawks.  By then it was almost 11:30 PM and I was getting sleepy

The preceding segments were The Cop and the Anthem starring Charles Laughton and directed by Henry Koster; The Clarion Call starring Richard Widmark & Dale Robertson and directed by Henry Hathaway; and The Last Leaf starring Anne Baxter, Jean Peters & Gregory Ratoff and directed by Jean Negulesco.  The segment I skipped was The Gift of the Magi with Farley Granger & Jeanne Crain and directed by Henry King.  Marilyn Monroe makes a cameo appearance in The Cop and the Anthem.

The fact that three of the five directors of O. Henry's Full House were named Henry makes me wonder if Hawks & Negulesco were replacements or second choices.

Full House left me near empty.  It was kind of interesting to see Charles Laughton as a bum and Richard Widmark channel Tommy Udo again but their performances seemed ham handed.  The Last Leaf was my favorite.  Anne Baxter plays a woman ill with pneumonia.  She comes to believe that when the last leaf falls from the tree outside her bedroom window, she will die.  Jean Peters plays here sister and caregiver.  Russian born Gregory Ratoff plays the tempermental artist who lives upstairs of the sister who plays a crucial role in Baxter's recovery.

Hawks' The Ransom of Red Chief  had a lighter tone than the other segments despite the fact child kidnapping and ransom were at the heart of the story.  Fred Allen & the droll Oscar Levant play kidnappers whose victim (Lee Aaker) is a hellion and then some.  The boy makes such a nuisance of himself that the kidnappers agree to pay the boy's father to take him back.  Lacking in Hawks' typical flourishes, Red Chief  never elicited more than a smirk from me.

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Air Force was a WWII propaganda film which played a loose and fast with the facts.  No need to recount the inaccuracies since there were so many.  The film follows a B-17 crew as they fly from California to Hawaii to the Philippines in the days around December 7, 1941.  John Garfield plays the hardnut side gunner who washed out of flight school.  There is another pilot named Tex who is fighter pilot but looks down on the bomber pilots.  If I recall correctly, the co-pilot (Gig Young) was dating the pilot's sister.  Frankly, Air Force wasn't worth the trip down to Palo Alto.

Similarly unimpressive was The Big Sky with Kirk Douglas and Dewey Martin as two frontiersmen making their way up the Missouri River on a keelboat.  They have a friendly rivlarly which I've seen depicted in countless films.  Arthur Hunnicutt (who would play Bull in El Dorado) plays the grizzled trapper who serves as a mentor to Douglas and Martin.  Half-Cherokee Elizabeth Threatt plays a Blackfoot princess in her lone (but memorable) film appearance.  Covering much of the same ground as Hawks' Westerns, The Big Sky never really hit its stride.

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Red River is a film I've never seen all the way through before.  For 97% of the film, it was as good as any John Wayne film I've seen.  Wayne plays Thomas Dunson, a stubborn man who gave up his true love and is willing to kill in order to be successful as cattle rancher.  Along for the ride is Walter Brennan as his second banana and Montgomery Clift as Matt Garth, his ward.  Matt's parents were killed when he was a child on the wagon train out west.  Dunson and Groot (Brennan) take him in and form a de facto, tri-generational family unit.  Dunson owns the ranch, even though Matt's cow and Dunson's bull started the herd. 

15 years later, Matt is grown up and Dunson has a herd of 1,000 head.  He can't sell them in Texas so he has to drive the herd to Missouri.  Dunson sets out with a group hired cowpokes.  He makes them all pledge to see the drive through to the end which is hypocritical since he broke a similar pledge when he left the wagon train to set up his ranch.  Among the hired hands is Cherry Valence (John Ireland) who has a rivalry with Matt that borders on homoerotic.  They literally compare the size of their pistols.

Dunson is the harshest of trailbosses.  Nothing will dissuade him from his Missouri destination including unconfirmed reports of railroad stockyard in Abilene.  When Dunson attempts to lynch two deserters, Matt leads a rebellion against Dunson.  They oust Dunson from their camp and take the herd to Abilene.  Dunson vows to kill Matt and take back his herd.

The rest of the film shows Dunson (with a group of cowboys/gunslingers) tracking Matt and the herd to Abilene.  Joanne Dru shows up as a love interest for Matt who bizarrely offers to bear Dunson's child if he will give up his pursuit of Matt.  I must have missed some of the coded messages in that scene.  The film progresses nicely until the finale when Dunson catches up with Matt in Abilene.  They begin a furious fistfight which is interrupted when Dru starts shooting (she is a marksman) at them and demands they recognize the love they have for each other.  Turning on a dime, Dunson sees the error in his ways and makes peace with Matt...even encouraging him to marry Dru so as to avoid the regret he faced as a younger man.  Complete copout at the end which isn't surprising because the film is based on a Borden Chase story which was serialized in the Saturday Evening Post.  Do they still publish that?  Anyway, the film changed the ending of the story and it sticks out like a sore thumb.

For most of the way, Red River is a great film with John Wayne giving us a preview of Ethan Edwards from The Searchers.  The film is propped up by a strong supporting cast including Clift, Brennan, Ireland, Harry Carey Jr. as a cowboy with a sweet tooth who causes a stampede and Chief Yowlachie as a poker playing Indian who wins Groot's false teeth.

I recognized one of the songs as a downtempo version of a song from Rio Bravo.  It's clear that Hawks had a stock company of actors he used in his Westerns including Wayne, Brennan, Hunnicutt, Paul Fix, et al.

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It's a bit sad to see Cary Grant dressed in drag in I Was a Male War Bride.  Fortunately, it only happens for a brief period towards the end of the film.  For the majority, Cary Grant is busy being Cary Grant.  Oddly enough, he is cast a French army officer who is assigned to find a German scientist in post-WWII Europe.  Ann Sheridan as an American WAC accompanies him on his mission for no apparent reason except so that he can have someone to banter with.  Actually, Sheridan plays a great "straight man" for Grant to bounce off of.  For most of the film, Grant is exasperated at Sheridan's actions as well as the indignities he must suffer as a man trying to marry an American military "serviceman."  The Army procedures assume an American male will marry a foreign female and Grant's situation sets this assumption on its head...to madcap results.

A lightweight film which seems to waste Grant and Sheridan's talents, I was nonetheless amused by I Was a Male War Bride at vaious points throughout the film.  That's more a testimonial to Grant & Sheridan (I just picked up on the Civil War connection...if I only I could think of a pun) than the plot.

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That leaves A Girl in Every Port with the incomparable Louise Brooks whose screen time is lamentably short in the film.  Victor McLaglen and Robert Armstrong are two sailors who go from port to port.  They have a not so friendly rivalry in trying to shack up with women in each port.  They bond over a couple of bar room fights and one saves the other from drowning and/or a night in jail.  Slapstick and broad emotional brushstrokes are the stock in trade until Louise Brooks shows up. 

What an first impression she makes!  With her trademark bob cut, she is a circus highdiver wearing a curve hugging swimsuit.  The camera follows her shimmying up a ladder to prepare for her high dive.  Brooks, Montgomery & McLaglen form a love triangle, although the audience & Montgomery know that Brooks is a gold digger as they shared a past in Coney Island or somehwere.  There is the obligatory split between the two men with Montgomery not wanting to destroy McLaglen's idealised view of the woman.  Montgomery leaves his mark on his conquests which is a small anchor & heart tattoo.  This proves crucial in tipping off McLaglen about Brook's past.

That's too much plot recounting.  The main reason to see A Girl in Every Port is to see Lulu - to admire her, to be smitten by her, to desire her and to plan to see Pandora's Box where her beauty and talents are on full display.  Pandora's Box plays at the 2012 San Francisco Silent Film Festival on Saturday, July 14 at 7:00 PM at the Castro Theater.

2010 San Francisco Silent Film Festival

The 2010 San Francisco Silent Film Festival ran from July 15 to 18 at the Castro Theater.

I saw all 12 feature length programs and only missed two programs (excluding the two free Amazing Tales from the Archives).

2010 SF Silent Film Festival - Feature Films
The Iron Horse starring George O'Brien; directed by John Ford; silent with intertitles; accompanied by Dennis James; (1924)
A Spray of Plum Blossoms starring Ruan Lingyu; silent with intertitles; accompanied by Donald Sosin; (1931)
Rotaie; silent with Italian intertitles and reader; accompanied by Stephen Horne; (1928)
Metropolis directed by Fritz Lang; silent with intertitles; accompanied by Alloy Orchestra; (1927)
The Flying Ace; silent with intertitles; accompanied by Donald Sosin; (1926)
The Strong Man starring Harry Langdon; directed by Frank Capra; silent with intertitles; accompanied by Stephen Horne; (1926)
Diary of a Lost Girl starring Louise Brooks; directed by G.W. Pabst; silent with intertitles; accompanied by Mont Alto Motion Picture Orchestra; (1929)
Häxan: Witchcraft Through the Ages directed by Benjamin Christensen; silent with Swedish intertitles and reader (Stephen Salmons); accompanied by Matti Bye Ensemble; (1922)
The Shakedown directed by William Wyler; silent with intertitles; accompanied by Donald Sosin; (1929)
Man With a Movie Camera directed by Dziga Vertov; silent; accompanied by Alloy Orchestra; (1929)
The Woman Disputed starring Norma Talmadge & Gilbert Roland; silent with intertitles; accompanied by Stephen Horne; (1928)
L'Heureuse Mort; silent with French intertitles and reader; accompanied by Matti Bye Ensemble; (1924)

Before most of the features, they screened a George Méliès short.

George Méliès Short Films
A Crazy Composer (1905); with A Spray of Plum Blossoms
Panorama from Top of a Moving Train (1898); with Rotaie
The Inventor Crazybrains and his Wonderful Airship (1907); with The Flying Ace
An Impossible Balancing Feat (1898); with The Strong Man
The Spider and the Butterfly (1909); with Diary of a Lost Girl
The Infernal Cauldron (1903); with Häxan
The Prolific Magical Egg (1902); with The Shakedown
A Trip to the Moon (1902); with Man With a Movie Camera
The Eclipse, or the Courtship of the Sun and the Moon (1907); with The Woman Disputed
The Kingdom of Fairies (1903); with L’Heureuse Mort

The programs I missed were a program called The Big Business of Short, Funny Films which consisted of Fatty Arbuckle, Laurel & Hardy and Max Davidson shorts and Variations on a Theme: Musicians on the Craft of Composing and Performing for Silent Films during which the festival's accompanists performed and discussed their craft.

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Before I speak about the films, a few notes about the festival itself.

The (SF)^2 Festival is becoming notorious for starting the films late. Metropolis started over an hour late and Häxan must have been close to an hour late. I'm not sure what causes the delays but the festival needs to do a better job. I don't think they budget enough time to clear the house and allow the musicians to do a sound check between films. Eddie Muller who interviewed the Argentinian duo responsible for finding the Metropolis footage made a joke of the tardiness. He said something to the extent, "If you have waited 83 years, what's another 75 minutes?" I stayed in the theater between screenings so I was able to read in relative comfort. However, if I had been standing in line outside the theater, I may not have been so amused.

In fact, when I entered the theater for Rotaie at around 5:30 PM, there were two women in line. I kindly informed them that they had already opened the theater for Rotaie. They replied that they were there for Metropolis which was scheduled to start at 8:15 PM. I don't think they opened the house for Metropolis until after 9 PM. Those poor women stood outside for approximately 3.5 hours.

Stephen Salmons and Melissa Chittick were honored for their founding of the festival. Salmons even reprised some of his emcee duties when he announced the winner of the raffle. I miss the admittedly silly banter between Salmons and announcer Ron Lynch. It served as a nice distraction during the time between the films.

In between films, workers (or maybe volunteers) sold panini sandwiches from Poesia Oesteria Italiana. I don't see paninis on their restaurant menu but the ones they sold in the theater were delicious. My favorite was the caprese whose main ingredients are tomatoes and mozzarella.

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The centerpiece of the festival was undoubtedly the screening of the restored version of Metropolis. The version screened at the festival restores the film to its original cut (150 minutes). I saw a version (at the Castro) a few years ago which clocked in around 2 hours if I recall. I enjoyed that version quite a bit. The version they screened at the festival didn't reveal too much. Most of the cuts seem to be to transition scenes or shortening some of the action scenes. It was easy to recognize the restored portions because they were grainy 16 mm whereas the rest of the film was in amazingly crisp 35 mm. However, the Alloy Orchestra provided a muscular and rhythmic score which enhanced the film immeasurably. Their beating of drums literally resonated through the floor and up my legs.

I think this was the fourth time I've seen Metropolis and I'm always impressed. The wanton dancing by Brigitte Helm as the robot caught my attention this time. The overt references to Christian iconography and large set pieces always catch my attention.

The fully restored version of Metropolis which screened at the festival is screening at the Castro Theater from August 13 to 15.

A recurrent theme throughout the festival seemed to be the sexual exploitation of women or prostitution. In Rotaie, a poor couple on the verge of mutual suicide find a wallet full of money. They vacation at a posh resort where the boyfriend loses everything (and then some) at the roulette table. A wealthy womanizer offer to pay off his gambling debts in exchange for one night with this girlfriend.

In Diary of a Lost Girl, Louise Brooks becomes pregnant. After giving the baby up for adoption, she is sent to a school for wayward girls. She escapes and becomes a high-end prostitute. In The Disputed Woman, Norma Talmadge (playing a French woman) whores herself to a jilted Russian suitor in order to save the life of a spy and save her country.

Other thumbnails:

While in the men’s room between screenings, I go to the urinal and think the man next to me looks familiar. After a few seconds, I realize it’s Leonard Maltin. I didn’t say anything but it seems odd to see people that I associate with television in real-life. It’s almost as if I view them as fictional characters who reside inside my television and then to see them at a place I go to so frequently is disjointing.

Dziga Vertov’s Man with Movie Camera was a dizzying documentary about Soviet life in the 1920’s. The film is filled with quick cut edits, geometric patterns and exhilirating images. When I read the synopsis, I didn’t think I would enjoy it but decided to give it a shot. Once again, the Alloy Orchestra comes through. Their fevered and rambunctious score perfectly complemented the film. Vertov’s techniques were ahead-of-their-time as they looked like modern editing.

Louise Brooks, resplendent with her black bob, lived up to her reputation in Diary of a Lost Girl. In the film, she transforms from innocent, frightened, courageous and decadent while never losing her charm. Truly a movie star, Brooks moves through the film like no one else can. Also noteworthy were Fritz Rasp as the slimy assistant who seduces and impregnates Brooks’ Thymian and Andrews Engelmann and Valeska Gert as the couple who run the facility Brooks is banished to. Engelmann is a hulking presence while Gert’s character seems to become sexually aroused by the girls’ physical torment.

I previously saw a 1968 re-release of Häxan which was narrated by William S. Burroughs. Honestly, I enjoyed that version more. Voice-over narration is well suited for describing various books and diagrams which is the first part of the Häxan. The Matti Bye Ensemble’s score was well suited to the film but given the late start time and late hour, I wasn’t in the right frame of mind to fully enjoy the film. The film seemed to drag for long stretches but I will same some of the scenes with the devil (portrayed by director Benjamin Christensen) were still disturbing.

I notice that acting styles in Chinese films are frequently more demonstrative than what Western audiences are accustomed to. A Spray of Plum Blossoms fits that mold. The villain (Wang Cilong) does some thumb-to-nose gesture (as opposed to twirling his mustache) that is absurd. Actually, his whole performance seems to be a caricature. The plot was forgetful but what I found interesting is the film was originally released with both Chinese & English intertitles reflecting the targetted audience of Shanghai films in the early 1930s.

The Strong Man and The Shakedown were entertaining comedies from Frank Capra and William Wyler, respectively. I didn't find anything particularly noteworthy about them. The Strong Man starred Harry Langdon, a screen comedian who was briefly considered an equal of Chaplin, Keaton and Lloyd. The backstory about Capra and Landgon's falling-out seemed more interesting than The Strong Man.

The Flying Ace was notable for its all African American cast and that it was shot in Jacksonville, Florida which for period rivaled Hollywood in terms movie making. I found the comedy tedious and dozed off for a bit.

L'Heureuse Mort was a French comedy made by Russian expatriates. It seems like I've seen it before although I don't see how that is possible. The premise has been frequently re-used but there were scenes where the setting and landscape invoked deja vu. I found the film amusing although a strange pick for the closing night film. The plot involves a failed playwright who is presumed drowned at sea. His death prompts a cavalcade of praise and interest in his work. Wanting to capitalize on his posthumous notoriety, the man allows the charade of his demise to continue and assumes the identity of his brother who is conveniently located in Senegal...that is until he decides to return to France to pay his respects to his late brother.

That only leaves The Iron Horse to discuss. Certainly epic in nature, I was underwhelmed by the bloated film. Director John Ford probably could have edited 30 minutes out of the film to good effect. Rather than make pointless suggestions, I will say that the cattle drive is emblematic of the shortcomings of the film. Throughout the film, there are cutaway shots of this (modestly sized) herd of cattle being driven on the open range past various scenic landscapes. The sole and belated purpose of the herd seems to be to placate some Italians on the railway gang who refuse to support their Irish co-workers unless they are paid and fed. Fortunately, the cattle drive arrives just in time and the newly unified Irish-Italian horde descends on and massacres some Indians.

Chock full of racial stereotypes that don't seem as amusing and quaint as I remembered from She Wore a Yellow Ribbon or Fort Apache, The Iron Horse looked older than its 86 years in terms of what entertained movie audiences back in the day.

Five Best Autobiographies by Actresses

I'm behind in my reading. I finally read the February 21 edition of the Wall St. Journal. There is a regular Saturday article called Five Best where guest columnists list five books that are the best in their category (in which the columnist is an expert). The February 21 article was titled Autobiographies by Actresses by Molly Haskell, author of Frankly My Dear: Gone With the Wind Revisited. Here is the link (subscription required).

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1. Scarlett O'Hara's Younger Sister
By Evelyn Keyes
Stuart, 1977

As the title of Evelyn Keyes's exuberantly clear-eyed autobiography makes clear, the woman who played Suellen in Gone With the Wind was more often bridesmaid than star. But what she was denied on the screen she made up for on the page in one of the juiciest and most shrewdly observed books ever to come out of Hollywood. The actress who grew up poor and provincial in Atlanta went knocking on studio doors with nothing more than a vague dream of stardom and a naïveté so thick it was almost a protective armor. She needed every bit of that, and her extraordinary humor, to survive the Daddy figures who served as mentors and something more: Cecil B. DeMille, Harry Cohn, Charles Vidor and John Huston, her third and most flamboyant husband. He takes her out deer hunting in Idaho and fishing with Hemingway in Key West (where the writer's wife, Maria, "cleaned her toenails with a long knife and cut the bread with it afterward"). On the Idaho trip, under Huston's tutelage, Keyes successfully kills a buck -- an experience that her husband later describes as "the best part of our life together." In "Scarlett O'Hara's Younger Sister," Keyes, who died last summer, raises unflappability to a fine art. Don't be fooled by the throwaway style: The timing is too good, the mots too justes.

2. The Lonely Life
By Bette Davis
Putnam, 1962

Any actress who can expose herself to the flesh-peddling standards of Hollywood -- surviving such confidence-shattering epithets as "little brown wren" and "as sexy as Slim Summerville" -- and still insist on a high-toned career while staring down studio bosses has chutzpah to burn. And Bette Davis, a stalwart New Englander who made three movies a year while using her excess energy to fight with Warner Bros., had it in spades. Even more important than sheer ambition, or perhaps it is one of ambition's hallmarks, was Davis's ability to put aside her East Coast theatrical snobbery and see movies as a different medium and moviemaking as a craft with different technical demands that she was determined to learn. As suggested by the title of her memoir, "The Lonely Life," Davis had little interest in false pride; she describes the highs and lows of her career and marriages, coming to the realization that you can't "have it all." Her attempts to be a "real" wife were doomed to failure, she confesses. The role of the "little woman" was perhaps the only one totally beyond her.

3. My Story
By Mary Astor
Doubleday, 1959

Though she made more than a hundred films, most of them silents, the dark-eyed beauty Mary Astor was never a mega-star, but she was more interesting than many who were. Astor was the daughter of an educated, schoolteacher mother and an ambitious German immigrant father so grasping and domineering that studio executives refused to negotiate with him. Sheltered and exploited her entire life, she hadn't had a chance to develop a moral compass or a sense of self before falling under the spell of mentor-lovers both kind (Jack Barrymore) and ambivalent (the rest), and of husbands (four in all) with a lower libido than hers. An increasingly disabling alcoholism led her first to the Catholic Church and then (with the encouragement of a
priest-psychotherapist) to the writing of this remarkable book, in which she comes to terms with the rushed-into marriages, the drinking and above all the furor in the 1930s over a diary -- which surfaced during a child-custody battle with one of her ex-husbands -- in which she recorded her affair with writer George S. Kaufman. In "My Story," Astor displays those unusual and very grown-up qualities -- refined but sensual, stand-offish but come-hither -- that sometimes were a liability in Hollywood casting but make for a complex and riveting memoir.

4. Lulu in Hollywood
By Louise Brooks
Knopf, 1982

After laboring for much of the 1920s in Hollywood, the black-helmeted Kansas-born free spirit Louise Brooks had to go to Europe to become a star. She was a revelation in two mesmerizing German silent films directed by G.W. Pabst, Pandora's Box (1928) and Diary of a Lost Girl (1929) -- but then Brooks, independent-minded to a fault, refused to compromise once Hollywood came calling, and she basically threw her career away. By the late 1940s, she was working as a saleslady at Saks Fifth Avenue in New York. She was rescued by admirers, chief among them James Card, curator of the George Eastman House film archive in Rochester, N.Y. He persuaded Brooks to move to Rochester, where she lived in the 1950s as a recluse, watched films, her own and others, and was reborn as a writer. (She was also rediscovered as an actress by Kenneth Tynan, who championed her work in an influential piece for The New Yorker.) "Lulu in Hollywood" -- Lulu was the ill-fated
innocent who drove men to distraction in Pandora's Box -- is a collection of Brooks's often brilliant essays. Some of the pieces recount her own joyous romp through the 1920s as a Ziegfeld showgirl (a job she enjoyed more than making movies) and party-girl courtesan. Other essays shimmer with insight as she discusses the work of Humphrey Bogart, W.C. Fields, Greta Garbo, Lillian Gish and others. She paints a vivid picture of Bogie, for instance, still showing vestiges of the stiff stage actor in The Roaring Twenties in 1939, when he appears helpless opposite James Cagney, whose "swift dialogue" and "swift movements . . . had the glitter and precision of a meat slicer . . . impossible to anticipate or counterattack."

5. Me
By Katharine Hepburn
Random House, 1991

Katharine Hepburn, equal to Bette Davis in ambition, seems in this memoir also to share her sense of solitary pursuit: "People who want to be famous are really loners. Or they should be." Like Davis, Hepburn put career first; unlike Davis, she never really fantasized the perfect marriage and the little white house. Until she fell for Spencer Tracy, she kept her lovers -- Howard Hughes, Leland Hayward -- at arm's length and was a shrewd businesswoman from the start. Her writing style consists of a slapdash series of jottings to self and fans, as if she were dictating while striding over a golf course. Yet "Me" captures beautifully that signal Hepburn combination of presumption and insecurity, self-love and abject humility. Should I have done this, done that? Wasn't I a bitch! And, yes, she was, often, but also an enchantress, and she is unstinting in showing us both. A superhuman resiliency allows her (like Davis) to suffer the most humiliating setbacks -- she was once famously declared "box-office poison" -- and continue going forward. Her flinty New England upbringing was both inspiration and protection: At her parents' urging, she was diving off cliffs, wrestling and competing from an early age, turning fear into something she feared so much that it made her fearless.

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The Evelyn Keyes and Louise Brooks memoirs look interesting. I discovered Keyes from Noir City and enjoyed her performances in The Prowler, 99 River Street and Hell's Half Acre. The article mentions she passed away last year. Noir City had a montage of film clips featuring actors and directors that passed away in 2008. A great scene featuring Keyes (and I believe Brad Dexter) from 99 River Street is a great example on Noir banter.

As for Louise Brooks...she was so great, they are still wearing her haircut 80 years later. Lulu was not just sexy but she was a movie star meaning I can't take my eyes off her when she is on the screen. It makes you wonder how she would have spent her youth if she hadn't been making films. The synopsis indicates she would have been a Ziegfeld girl.