Trainwreck

Last weekend, I saw Trainwreck at the Balboa Theater.  I had intended to spend some time reading and updating this blog at La Promenade Café which is across the street from the Balboa.  Seating was limited and when I finally got a seat some weird jackass with a directional microphone wouldn't stop asking me questions.  I finally got up and left.  I walked across the street and Trainwreck was starting in 15 minutes so I decided to take a chance.

Trainwreck starring Amy Schumer & Bill Hader; with Brie Larson, Colin Quinn, Tilda Swinton, Vanessa Bayer, Daniel Radcliffe, Marisa Tomei, Lebron James & John Cena; directed by Judd Apatow; (2015) - Official Website

Judd Apatow has his name attached to so many projects, it's hard for me to keep track.  Looking at his filmography, the only film which he directed that I've seen is The 40 Year Old Virgin. I'd never seen Amy Schumer before although I did read a memorable profile of her in GQ a couple of months ago.  Trainwreck has garnered mixed reviews.  My expectations were moderate going into the film.

Trainwreck is about Amy, a writer who works at a wonderfully trashy tabloid magazine.  Her personal life is a wreck mainly due to the influence of her father (Colin Quinn) who cheated on Amy's mother with regularity but without remorse.  At the beginning of the film, Amy has a boyfriend played by John Cena.  A sensitive athletic trainer with not-so-latent homosexual tendencies, he is a complete mismatch for Amy.

When Amy gets an assignment to profile an orthopedic surgeon (Bill Hader) who has developed a revolutionary technique, she is drawn to him despite their differences and her better judgment.  He's successful and nice...not a borderline alcoholic...and can count his sexual partners without the help of a database.  It's clear that Amy Schumer (also the screenwriter) has created the character of Amy as
flawed if not amusing lead character.  That fact that that type of character is female has drawn some commentary but I didn't find her gender to be that much of an issue.  Would I want to date the character of Amy?  Not in a million years but like in the film, she would be a source of endless amusement if you are not emotionally invested in her.

More interesting to me is the implication that the Amy in Trainwreck is a thinly veiled version of real-life Amy Schumer.  In the film, Amy's sister is named Kim (Brie Larson).  In real-life, Amy's sister is named Kim.  In the film, Amy's boyfriend is played by John Cena (a WWE wrestler) and they break up.  In real life, Amy Schumer ex-boyfriend is professional wrestler Dolph Ziggler.  There are several parallels between Amy's father & Amy Schumer's father.  The outrageousness of some of the scenes makes one wonder how much of a confessional Trainwreck really is.  Where does fact end and fiction begin?  It takes some courage on Schumer's part to put her life out there for comment although I doubt Schumer is a shrinking violet in her personal life.

Trainwreck follows several of the tropes of a romantic comedy with the typical Apatow flourishes which are slightly askew because they are performed by women (Schumer, sometimes Vanessa Bayer as Amy's coworker and Tilda Swinton who stands out as the overbearing editor at the magazine where Amy works).  Relegated to be Amy's sounding board is Brie Larson as Amy's married & reasonable little sister who lives in the suburbs.

A film like Trainwreck follows a formula - Girl Meet Boy, Girl Falls in Love with Boy, Girl Acts Like a Jerk, Girl & Boy Break Up and finally Girl & Boy Get Back Together.  The humor & originality in Trainwreck come from inverting the gender roles with respect to the traditional romcom.  Schumer gets to act like the lecher & Hader largely plays "the girl."  Set in New York City, Apatow & Schumer add numerous sports celebrities to punch up the film.  Hader's best friend is Lebron James playing Lebron James who is surprisingly invested in the specifics of romantic aspects of the relationship.  When they break up, James arranges an intervention for Hader's character with Chris Evert, Matthew Broderick & Marv Albert.

The laughs come moderately fast & mildly furious in Trainwreck.  Some gags fall short but Apatow, Schumer, et al. keep swinging away.  Daniel Radcliffe & Marisa Tomei turn up in a film-within-a-film called The Dogwalker - a romcom spoof which of course, Trainwreck also is.

Trainwreck was an entertaining evening.  If I had planned out the evening, I would have undoubtedly chosen a different film & likely would have not have regretted missing Trainwreck but as it turned the film was a modest serendipity.

The Puzzle Within the Castro Theater's September 2015 Calendar

The Castro Theater's organ was removed after the August 30 screening of The Crowd.   As you may recall, the organ's owner wanted to remove it.  I first heard about this over two years ago.  Long time Castro Theater organist David Hegarty started a non-profit to save the organ called the Castro Organ Devotees Association (SF CODA).  I never did donate.  I forgot about the issue.

Apparently, SF CODA was successful.  It is designing an organ with 400 ranks and 7 manuals.  Frankly, I don't know what an organ rank is and I can only guess that a manual is essentially a keyboard.  Regardless, it sounds impressive and I'm glad an organ will remain at the Castro Theater.  I haven't read or heard when the new organ will be installed.

By the way, I notice the custom of clapping while the organ plays "San Francisco" and descends into the pit is going by the wayside.  I'm not sure if it is because new people don't know about the custom.  I usually clap but I don't like to clap too early because it gets tedious.  However, if the crowd response isn't there from the beginning, the clapping usually dies out by the time I'm ready to start clapping.  I feel silly clapping by myself so sometimes I don't clap.

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I had to cheat by using Google Image Search for both clues in this month's Castro Theater calendar..

September 21 - so familiar but I could not place him.  It's Jean-Luc Godard.  The photo is likely from the late 1950s or 1960s.

September 28 - another face that I knew but could not name.  It's Paulette Goddard also known as the third and penultimate Mrs. Charlie Chaplin as well as the third and penultimate Mrs. Burgess Meredith.

Godard and Goddard - both derivations of the German surname Gotthard which translates to God Hard.  That got me thinking about the names.  Jean-Luc & Paulette anglicized and masculinized become John and Paul as in Pope John Paul or Pope John Paul II.  I have a co-worker who is spending time in Philadelphia and he told me that the City of Brotherly Love is in a tizzy over the upcoming visit by Pope Francis on September 26-27.  That reminded me that Pope John Paul II visited San Francisco in the 1980s.  I looked up the dates of John Paul II.  He was in San Francisco from September 17 to 18, 1987.  The most famous part of that visit was the Catholic Mass he led at Candlestick Park where it was reported that 70,000 attended.

Less well know is that the Pope visited Mission Dolores and the Golden Gate Bridge the day before.  Those two locales feature prominently in Vertigo which screened from September 4 to 7 in 70 mm.  That may be too much lateral thinking:  Jean-Luc Godard & Paulette Goddard to a Pope John Paul II visit 28 years ago to Vertigo.

On that same trip the Pope flew into Monterey Peninsula Airport and met then Carmel Mayor Clint Eastwood but that doesn't seem relevant because I don't see any Eastwood films or Carmel/Monterey set films on the calendar.

Pope John Paul II (center); September 17, 1987

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The September calendar leaves me mild.  I have seen at least 15 films on the schedule.  I may not go to the Castro during the month of September 2015.

The highlight is the Vittorio de Sica triple bill on September 26 presented by Cinema Italia SF.  I am particularly keen to see Two Women (1960) with Sophia Loren and Jean-Paul Belmondo.  Unfortunately, I have another commitment that day.

Tangerine on September 22 has been garnering strong reviews but is playing also playing at the Roxie starting tomorrow.

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Castro Theater Calendar - September 2015

It's a Mad, Mad, Mad Max World

The summer of 2015 will go down as the one where I rediscovered the Mad Max franchise.

On July 15, I watched Mad Max 2:  The Road Warrior as part of a Midnites for Maniacs triple bill at the Castro Theater.

In the early morning hours of August 22, I caught a midnight screening of Mad Max at the Landmark Clay.

Most recently, I watched Mad Max:  Fury Road on August 26 at the Castro Theater.

Mad Max 2:  The Road Warrior starring Mel Gibson; directed by George Miller; (1981)
Mad Max starring Mel Gibson; directed by George Miller; (1979)
Mad Max:  Fury Road starring Tom Hardy & Charlize Theron; directed by George Miller; (2015)

The flurry of Mad Max films is no doubt a result of the release of Mad Max:  Fury Road.  If I had planned more in advance, I could have seen the entire tetralogy this summer.  I remember  Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome screened in a Bay Area theater somewhere this summer.  I can't find the listing now.

Actually, a fifth film in the series has been announced - Mad Max:  The Wasteland with potentially two more after that so I shouldn't be calling it a tetralogy but rather a planned septology.

I guess I'll write about the films in chronological order rather than the order in which I saw them.  I have seen all four films before but I may have seen The Road Warrior before Mad Max.  The Road Warrior was on television quite a bit in the 1980s and 1990s.

Mad Max (George Miller's feature length directorial debut) introduces the character of Max Rockatansky (Mel Gibson).  While watching the film at the Clay, I thought it resembled Death Wish.  The setting of the film is left vague.  I think it makes some references to Australia but it has a distinctly dystopian future feel.  Lawlessness is rampant and Max plays a hotshot highway patrolman who is burnt out with dealing with the dregs of society and wants to spend more time with his wife and son.

The film starts immediately with a lunatic called the Nightrider (Vincent Gil) shooting some police officers and speeding away in their car with his girlfriend.  After easily handling the police pursuit, the Nightrider encounters Max on the road and a high-speed game of chicken causes the Nightrider to back down, lose his nerve and die in a fiery crash.

It turns out Nightrider isn't a lone nutjob but part of a gang and the gang has now declared war on the highway patrol in general and Max specifically.  After some preliminaries where Max's best friend on the force is disfigured and Max's wife and child are killed, Max retaliates against the motorcycle gang led by Toecutter (Hugh Keays-Byrne) and his first lieutenant Bubba (Geof Parry).

In hindsight, the film serves to establish Max's conditions (physically & emotionally).  Max's knee brace & limp in The Road Warrior & Beyond Thunderdome are explained by a wound he suffers in this film.  His loner nature is explained by the pain of seeing his family murdered and his own response to those murders.

In the end, Max abandons all pretense of law enforcement and become a vigilante.  As a revenge tale, Mad Max is a solid film.  It's nowhere near as elaborate as the films that would come after it, Mad Max has that Ausploitation feel - murder, mayhem, rape, et al.  The scene where the bikers run over Max's wife & son is iconic.  Similarly, the Nightrider's ramblings over the police frequency radio are memorable.  I remembered both scenes from my last viewing of the film which must have been over 20 years ago.

Gibson is wooden at times but a film like Mad Max belongs to the villains - the psychotic Nightrider, the intimidating Toecutter & the quietly menacing Bubba.  The female characters in the film are, without exception, victims or ineffectual although Max's wife puts up a fight before eventually being run down by the bikers.

Little did Mad Max portend the rest of the series.  There were small signs in Mad Max that look significant with the hindsight of The Road Warrior but for the most part, Mad Max is set in a world which is recognizable to our own.  With a bigger budget and some creative freedom, Miller uses Mad Max as a launching point for his imagination in future films.  The Road Warrior is set in some other world...where gay men with leather fetishes have become marauders.  I guess within the context of the dystopian world of Mad Max it would make sense.  In a world where women are scarce, men resort to homosexuality.

Oil/gasoline is scarce in this film so the world has fallen into chaos.  This was a common theme in the 1970s and 1980s due to various oil embargos and gasoline price spikes.  Max sees the aforementioned band of marauders attack a small group near a functioning oil extraction/gasoline refining facility.  Honestly, it doesn't look anything like the oil refineries in Rodeo or Richmond but that's not the point.  Max makes a deal to return the sole survivor of the attack back to his tribe in the refinery in exchange for one tank of gasoline.

Once in the refinery, Max gets caught up in the war between the marauders led by a muscular man in a hockey mask called Lord Humungus and the oil refiners led by Pappagallo.  Eventually siding with the refiners out of necessity, Max drives an oil tanker to their new location.  This is the highlight of the film.  It's an extended sequence where Max drives the tuck as he is constantly attacked by the bikers.

Director George Miller manages to populate the The Road Warrior with more interesting characters than Mad Max.  Among them are the Feral Kid (Emil Minty), the Gyrocopter Pilot (Bruce Spence), Wez (Vernon Wells) and the Warrior Woman (Virginia Hey).

The Feral Kid reminded me of The Wild Child, a François Truffaut film about a child raised in the wilderness and Lucan, a short-lived television series about a boy raised by wolves.  The Feral Kid had impressively feathered hair.  Bruce Spence as the Gyro Captain stole the show in my opinion.  Picaresque and with a toothy grin that would make Austin Powers cringe, Spence is memorable indeed.  Wez spends the entire film in ass-less chaps (with a codpiece in front and a tastefully placed fox tail in back), football shoulder pads and a mohawk.  He was clearly the prime inspiration for the popular 1980s wrestler duo The Road Warriors; Hawk & Animal didn't dress like The Feral Kid or Max.  Wez is particularly aggrieved at the refiners because the Feral Kid planted a sharpened boomerang into his "friend's" head.  Finally, I had forgotten about the Warrior Woman but upon rewatching the film, I see that she probably inspired Tina Turner's character in Beyond Thunderdome, Charlize Theron's character in Fury Road and possibly Rambo's use of a compound bow in the Rambo films.

With The Road Warrior, Miller begins a Mad Max tradition of creating these intricate and detailed alternate realities.  Compared against modern reality, they are ridiculous but within their own context, they are real enough.  The Road Warrior sets the mold that Beyond Thunderdome and Fury Road follow - mayhem in an unfamiliar post-apocalyptic environment where Max, the anti-hero, grudgingly throws his lot in with the underdogs or oppressed.

I've read that the Mad Max series consists of Western (as in Western movies) morality tales set in a punk environment.  The Road Warrior has some plot parallels with The Magnificent Seven but then again The Magnificent Seven was adapted from the Japanese film The Seven Samurai.  I think what distinguishes Gibson's portrayal of Max is his detachment from everyone else; a detachment born out of the pain of losing everyone he ever cared for.  That's neither unique nor original in films but give Gibson/Miller credit for not amping up Max's character.  We later see Gibson's performances of a similar character (Martin Riggs from the Lethal Weapon series).  Two protagonists with a similar backstory and outlook on life played by the same actor but with very different results.  Max is the locus around which memorable maniacs gather.  Riggs is the maniac around which more homicidal maniacs gather.

I can't remember Beyond Thunderdome very well.  I seem to recall it being the least favorite of the three Mel Gibson films.  Beyond Thunderdome received a PG13 rating whereas as the other two films (and Fury Road) received R ratings.

For Fury Road, Miller took the universe of The Road Warrior and Beyond Thunderdome and turned the volume up to 11.  After Mad Max, Miller striped away direct references to Max's backstory and motivations as well as expository dialogue  or narration to help explain the world the audience is seeing on the screen.  Miller continues that in Fury Road but with a bigger budget and almost operatic ambitions.  In one scene, the pursuing army of ragtap vehicles is lead by a truck with six drummers sitting at an angle on the bed play extremely large drums and a guitarist hung from a crane in front of the truck with a wall of speakers behind him.  It's funny and outrageously over the top but yet when I thought about it I guess the setup could be used to communicate orders to the caravan like the drum and bugle corps used to do with armies.  I will say that the flames shooting out of the guitar's neck was a particularly rococo flourish.

It's as if Miller decided to pick and choose from his previous films.  There are brief flashbacks to Max's backstory that seem similar to Mad Max.  Most of the scene involves Max, et al. running a gauntlet in a tricked oil tanker truck similar to the end of Road Warrior.  Miller even brings back Hugh Keays-Byrne (Toecutter) to be the main bad guy in Fury Road.

How to describe the film?  There is a Mad Max Wiki to help but I went in cold.  Max (Tom Hardy) is captured by some warriors (known as war boys) who are pasty white, bald headed and heavily scared.  He is taken to the Citadel which is ruled by Immortan Joe (Keays-Byrne).  The source of his power is the aquifier under the Citadel.  In this universe, water is scarce as is gasoline & bullets.

Between the war boys & Immortan Joe in status are Imperators of which Furiosa (Charlize Theron) is foremost.  Joe has five wives whom he keeps as essentially procreation slaves.  Beyond them, there are a lot of weird looking people at the Citadel.

Fed up with the way he treats his wives, Furiosa smuggles them out of the Citadel in a war rig (a beefed up oil tanker).  When Immortan Joe realizes his wives have been taken he sets out with a motley assortment of vehicles and one war boy, Nux (Nicholas Hoult) takes Max along as a good luck charm.  Max is strapped to the front of a car like a hood ornament.

Eventually, out of necessity as usual, Max & Nux fall in with Furiosa and the five wives.  Furiosa is escaping to the Green Place where she grew up.  To get there, they will have to go through hellacious dust storms and swamplands while fighting off Immortan Joe's war boys and allies.  I won't give away the ending but let's just say climate change plays a role.

Miller strips away all unnecessary dialog and much of what remains was inaudible to me due to muffled voices or background noise.  I couldn't understand Immortan Joe's growl so I probably lost some thing from the experience.  Instead, Miller just shows Max & Furiosa doing there thing, largely without dialog.  I can't recall a single line of dialog from Max.  Although the title was Mad Max, it could have just as easily been Imperator Furiosa.  Sporting a buzz cut & prosthetic arm, Theron commands the screen.  Note:  it seemed as though the more hair you had, the higher your social status at the Citadel.

Miller litters Fury Road with so many flourishes and details that the effect is not overwhelming but actually the opposite.  I started to strip away all my questions and focus on whether Max, Furiosa and the gang to make it out alive.

Among my favorite moments - when war boys begin to use long poles like pole vaulters do to move from vehicle to vehicle during the high speed chase and one of Immortan Joe's advisers is this little person (dwarf?) with a face like a middle aged man and body like a baby...it was something straight out of Freaks.

Fury Road was a favorite of the critics at the Cannes Film Festival this year.  Reading not their reviews but articles about their near unanimous praise of the film, I reversed my decision about seeing Fury Road.  Ultimately, the film is a long chase scene but well choreographed stunts, an imaginative setting, Theron's acting and the Mad Max brand elevate Fury Road above the numerous action films I've seen.  I like action films.  I was going to write "I like an action film as much as the next guy" but that's probably not true especially if the next guy is an American between the ages of 15 and 35.  I'm frequently disappointed and bored by action films and that was not the case with Fury Road so I guess that is my ultimate recommendation - it didn't bore me to sleep but then neither did Mad Max or Road Warrior.  George Miller is doing something right with these Mad Max films.

Samba

The opening night film of the 2015 Sacramento French Film Festival was Samba.  I was not able to attend the June 19 screening but I was confident in my knowledge that it was coming to the Landmark Theaters.  Samba has come and gone from local area theaters but I was able to catch it a couple of weeks ago at the Opera Plaza.  The Opera Plaza is looking a little threadbare.  Reading how the Landmark Theaters renovated the Aquarius in Palo Alto only after a new lease had been signed, I suspect this has to be the case with the Opera Plaza which have had the same movie posters in the lobby since I first visited.  I can remember that first movie at the Opera Plaza.  It was The Lover with Jane March and Tony Leung Ka Fai Leung in 1992 or 1993.  The screening room it screened in was likely the smallest theater I've been in (possibly still the smallest).  The seats and screen look the same as I recall.  I wonder how much longer the Opera Plaza Theater's lease runs.

Samba starring Omar Sy & Charlotte Gainsbourg; directed by Olivier Nakache & Eric Toledano; mostly French with subtitles; (2014) - Official Website

Omar Sy is the epnonymous Samba, a Senegalese (& undocumented) immigrant in France.  Caught in an immigration sweep, the good-natured Samba is held in a detention center to await his fate.  While there, he meets Alice (Charlotte Gainsbourg) who is a volunteer for an organization that provides legal council to immigrants.

I have missed (avoided?) Charlotte Gainsbourg's well-known collaborations with Lars von Trier (Nymphomaniac, Melancholia & Antichrist).  Looking at her filmography, I can only identify one other film that I've seen.  My sense is that Gainsbourg is well known & mildly controversial in Europe.  Her role in Samba reminded me of various performances I have seen of Valeria Bruni Tedeschi - a meek woman with repressed passions.

Samba is a like Gainsbourg's character in that you suspect there is more than meets the eye but you never really see what the film hints at.  Samba and Gainsbourg's Alice strike up a tentative relationship but it was the supporting cast that seemed more interesting.  Tahir Rahim is a fellow undocumented immigrant who gives Samba some help since he was indirectly responsible for his detention.  Rahim's character claims to be Brazilian but is actually Arab.  He maintains the charade because Brazilians do better with the ladies.  Sure enough, he begins dating a co-worker (Izïa Higelin) of Alice...the same co-worker who warns Alice not get involved with their clients.

Anyway, Samba (both the film and character) is amiable enough but not particularly satisfying.  Its feelgood ending is predicated on a hard-to-believe contrivance that borders on racist. If the film is any indication, there are a lot of parallels between undocumented immigrants in the US and France but all said, they seem to be treated better in France.  I'm not sure what elevated this film to opening night status at the Sacramento French Film Festival.

2015 San Francisco Silent Film Festival (Part 1 of 2)

The 2015 San Francisco Silent Film Festival (SFSFF) ran from May 28 to June 1 at the Castro Theater.  The festival ran a record five days this year (Thursday through Monday).

I saw 16 feature films.

All Quiet on the Western Front starring Lew Ayres; directed by Lewis Milestone; silent with intertitles; live accompaniment by the Mont Alto Motion Picture Orchestra; (1930)
Cave of the Spider Women starring Yin Mingzhu; directed by Dan Duyu; silent with intertitles narrated by Lucy Laird; live accompaniment by Donald Sosin & Frank Bockius; (1927)
When the Earth Trembled starring Harry Myers; directed by Barry O'Neil; silent with intertitles; live accompaniment by Stephen Horne; (1913)
The Last Laugh starring Emil Jannings; directed by F.W. Murnau; silent with intertitles; live accompaniment by the Berklee Silent Film Orchestra; (1924)
Ghost Train starring Ilse Bois, Hilde Jennings; directed by Géza von Bolváry; silent with intertitles narrated by Paul McGann; live accompaniment by Stephen Horne & Frank Bockius; (1927)
Visages d'enfants starring Jean Forest; directed by Jacques Feyder; silent with intertitles; live accompaniment by Stephen Horne; (1925)
The Donovan Affair starring Jack Holt; directed by Frank Capra; silent with intertitles; live accompaniment by the Gower Gulch Players with Bruce Goldstein on Piano; (1929)
Flesh and the Devil starring Greta Garbo, John Gilbert & Lars Hanson; directed by Clarence Brown; silent with intertitles; live accompaniment by the Matti Bye Ensemble; (1926)
Pan starring Hjalmar Fries Schwenzen; directed by Harald Schwenzen; silent with intertitles; live accompaniment by Guenter Buchwald; (1922)
Why Be Good starring Colleen Moore & Neil Hamilton; directed by William A. Seiter; silent with intertitles; live accompaniment by the Mont Alto Motion Picture Orchestra; (1929)
Norrtullsligan starring Tora Teje, Inga Tidblad, Renée Björling & Linnéa Hillberg; directed by Per Lindberg; silent with intertitles; live accompaniment by the Matti Bye Ensemble; (1923)
Sherlock Holmes starring William Gillette; directed by Arthur Berthelet; silent with intertitles; live accompaniment by the Donald Sosin Ensemble; (1916)
The Swallow and the Titmouse starring Maguy Deliac, Pierre Alcover, Louis Ravet & Jane Maylianes; directed by André Antoine; silent with intertitles; live accompaniment by Stephen Horne & Diana Rowan; (1920)
The Deadlier Sex starring Blanche Sweet & Mahlon Hamilton; with Boris Karloff; directed by Robert Thornby; silent with intertitles; live accompaniment by Guenter Buchwald; (1920)
Lime Kiln Club Field Day starring Bert Williams & Odessa Warren Grey; directed by Edwin Middleton, T. Hayes Hunter & Sam Corker Jr.; live accompaniment by Donald Sosin; (1913)
Ben-Hur:  A Tale of Christ starring Ramon Novarro & Francis X Bushman; directed by Fred Niblo; silent with intertitles; (1925)

There were a few firsts for this festival beyond its five day length.

The Donovan Affair was not a silent film.  It was a talkie but the sound discs were lost.  At a Frank Capra festival at the New York Film Forum many years ago, the dialog was recreated live by voice actors.  The performance was repeated last year at the Film Forum and this year at the SFSFF.  You can read Bruce Goldstein's (director of repertory programming at the Film Forum) article or an article in the SF Chronicle for more information.

Lime Kiln Club Field Day was abandoned in post-production so it has never been released theatrically.  The Museum of Modern Art acquired the film footage in 1938 and have sat on them until recently.  What was shown at SFSFF was not a film.  It was a long PowerPoint slide about Bert Williams and the making of the film.  That was followed by some footage including multiple takes of the same scene.

Ben-Hur:  A Tale of Christ did not have live accompaniment.  The soundtrack to the film (it may have been a digital projection) was by noted film composer Carl Davis and probably recorded in 1989 with the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra.

Those are three firsts I don't recall from previous festivals.  They screened a talkie, a silent film without a live accompaniment and something that can't be called a film.

I've complained in the past that SFSFF does not allow enough time between programs to allow for any contingencies.  Many films at past festivals have started more than an hour late due to technical difficulties.  This year, the schedule was adhered to like a train schedule in Mussolini's Italy.

Lucy Laird who read the translated subtitles for Cave of the Spider Women is the Operations Director of the SFSFF.  I'm not sure what her experience is with voice overs and voice acting but she had enviable diction and elocution.  I recall that without notes and two months after the fact.

1915 is the 100th anniversary of the Pananma-Pacific International Exposition (PPIE).  An untitled PPIE short film (typically a home movie) screened before each feature.

The following "formal" short films screened during the festival:

Modern China; documentary; (1910)
A Trip Down Market Street; documentary; (1906)
A Canine Sherlock Holmes starring Spot the Urbanora Dog; directed by Stuart Kinder; (1912)

Modern China preceded Cave of the Spider Women.  A Trip Down Market Street & A Canine Sherlock Holmes preceded When the Earth Trembled.

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Flesh and the Devil was my favorite film of the festival.  That was due, in no small part, to Greta Garbo's screen presence.  21 years old at the time of filming and in the midst of a legendarily torrid affair with her co-star John Gilbert, Garbo shined on screen like few have before or since.

The film is a romantic triangle with Gilbert as Leo and Lars Hanson as Ulrich.  Best friends since childhood, Leo & Ulrich are junior army officers who return home while on leave.  Leo quickly catches the eye of Felicitas (Garbo) a countess new to the area.  It would be too simplistic to call Felicitas a femme fatale.  She is an undeniably appealing woman who is aware of her charms and not inclined to hide her light under a bushel.  As in real life, Leo & Felicitas engage in a passionate affair but in the film, it is interrupted by the unexpected return of the Count, Felicitas' husband.  The Count challenges Leo to a duel but has one condition.  In order to protect the reputation of everyone involved, they will claim that their disagreement is over a card game.  Leo agrees; he is an officer & a gentlemen...albeit one who knowingly cuckolds another man.  Leo has kept his affair with Felicitas a secret from everyone (including Ulrich).

Leo wins the duel, leaving Felicitas a widow.  For the scandal of killing a man in a duel, Leo is transferred to a remote outpost in Africa.  Before leaving, he makes Ulrich promise to look after the Felicitas under the ruse that he is so upset at making her widow.  In reality, he wants Ulrich to scare off any suitors but unfortunately he is not explicit enough in his instructions.  Upon Leo's return from Africa, he finds that Ulrich has married Felicitas.  Ulrich is still unaware of the truth about Leo's duel with the Count or even Leo's feelings about Felicitas because she has forgotten to mention it.

Before long Leo & Felicitas are at it again.  Leo feels tremendous guilt due to cheating with his best friend's wife but not enough guilt to stop.  Felicitas is more dispassionate about the affair and its effect on Ulrich.  Although she is conflicted about her actions, her cool demeanor is easily interpreted as toying with the affections of both men.  Unable to commit to either man, her faltering actions lead the men to an unavoidable conflict.  I won't give away the ending except to say the film is a tragedy.

As I mentioned, Garbo is luminescent in the film and her love scenes with Gilbert stand out.  Hanson has the unenviable task of being third banana.  That's not because his character is less developed but even the brightest light would be eclipsed by the star power Garbo & Gilbert.   I also notice that Flesh and the Devil was accompanied by the Matti Bye Ensemble.  I think that of the musicians that regularly play SFSFF, the Matti Bye Ensemble best evoke pathos & tragedy with their music.  Despite the passion Felicitas inspires in the men in her orbit, ultimately tragedy befalls all whom she bestows her attention.   It as if she is modern day Helen of Troy except more willfully active in the discord she causes.

Flesh and the Devil is one of the best silent films I have seen. After a few years of being less than enthused by the silent films at the festival, Flesh and the Devil reminded me of when I first came to love silent films.

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If Flesh and the Devil re-energized my affection towards silent films, there was an unusually strong  program of films which almost daily reinforced the feeling.

All Quiet on the Western Front - I remember seeing the sound version of this film as a boy (most likely the Family Film Festival).  I also remember a TV movie with a memorable performance by Ernest Borgnine.  I always thought the 1930 film was a European production but it was a Hollywood film.  AQOTWF was made on the cusp of the transition between silent films and talkies.  The silent and talkie versions were filmed simultaneously.

In the opening days of WWI, a group of German college classmates enlist in the army.  We watch as this cohort of men go through basic training and combat.  Along the way, their ranks dwindle due to casualties.  The group of younger men are assigned to a squad led by a grizzled combat sergeant (Louis Wolheim).  In the 85 years since AQOTWF was released, its general plot line has been repeated to varying degrees of success in other films.  In a nutshell, young men are disabused of any romantic notions of warfare and either become that which they initially scorn or ridicule or retain their initial humanity.  Paul (Lew Ayres) has a pacifist tilt and is the most reluctant of his classmates to enlist.  The most psychologically harrowing scene involves Paul and a French soldier whom he has bayoneted.  Heavy shelling keeps Paul trapped in the foxhole while the French soldier slowly dies before his eyes.

There is also a memorable scene where a pair of high quality boots are worn by soldier after soldier as each one is killed in combat.  The camera focuses on the soldier's legs until the man falls.  The viewer doesn't know who is killed as the soldiers become interchangeable like it was in WWI where endless waves of men were ground up by machine guns and artillery shells.

Maybe the plot is no longer new or surprising because of subsequent films but the impact remains powerful.  This group of  young men are decimated by the war and the survivors are left broken in body & spirit.  Director Lewis Milestone and Lew Ayres capture the futility of war and the lasting effects of combat on the soldiers after the fighting as stopped.  AQOTWF remains a powerful film.

The Last Laugh - over the years, I have become quite a fan of Emil Jannings.  His performances in The Last Command and Blue Angel are among my favorite.  I can add The Last Laugh to that list.  Jannings plays the chief doorman at a luxury hotel.  I don't believe any of the characters in the film were ever given names.  Like other Murnau films, it has few intertitles.

Jannings takes great pride in his position.  He has a uniform that looks like something an army general would wear.  He literally struts around the neighborhood in it.  He is esteemed by his neighbors in no small part due to his grand uniform.  He is glimpsed by the hotel manager on a rainy night while struggling with heavy luggage (the younger porters are unavailable).  The manager decides the position of chief doorman is too much for the aging Jannings.  He is demoted to men's room attendant and forced to relinquish his prized uniform.  Unable to face his neighbors, his daughter or her in-laws, Jannings steals the overcoat and wears it home as if nothing has changed.

The charade continues until Jannings' in-law sees him at the hotel (and shrieks in horror).  News of his reduced stature quickly makes the rounds.  When he returns home, he is mocked by his neighbors and his daughter & in-laws shun him.  He is left a broken man...until Murnau inexplicably tacks on a happy ending where Jannings wins the lottery.  A title card apologetically sets ups the ending which is played as a farce.  You can almost sense Murnau's reluctance to film the footage.  I've read that Jannings requested the ending or that the German studio requested it.  I've also read that Carl Mayer (the screenwriter) had the ending in his original script.

The Last Laugh is only partially marred by the ending and Murnau softens the blow by way of an introductory intertitle card and the broad farcical overtones.  However, the film is memorable for Jannings performance and the innovative camera movements.  It was based on the critical and box office success of The Last Laugh that Murnau was signed by Fox Studios (pre-merger with 20th Century Pictures) and made Sunrise and the lost film 4 Devils.

When I read the title of The Swallow and the Titmouse, I first thought "Exactly what is a titmouse?"  I thought it was type of mouse - a house mouse, a pack rat, a field mouse and a titmouse.  It turns out that a titmouse is a bird.  My second thought was the film title sounded like something a porno film would be called.  I'm glad that my taxonomic ignorance, shameful affinity with exploitation films and the late showtime did not deter me from seeing The Swallow and the Titmouse.

It has been noted that The Swallow and the Titmouse bears a strong resemblance to L'Atalante, a Jean Vigo film made in 1934.  I enjoyed L'Atalante very much.  The titular Titmouse is the name of a river barge and its sister ship is the Swallow.  The film is a chamber piece set on the two barges with a generous serving documentary like footage of the life of a bargeman.  There are four primary character in the film.  Pierre (Louis Ravet), the owner and captain of the barges, Griet (Jane Maylianes), Marthe (Maguy Deliac) who is Griet's younger sister and Michel (Pierre Alcover) who is Pierre's new first mate.  The four of them live on the barge as it travels between Belgium and France.  The pace of the film is very much in tune with the pace of the barges - deliberate and unhurried.

The film focused so much on the landscape and barge operations that the producer of the film refused to release the film.  The film sat unedited for over 60 years until la Cinémathèque française found it and assembled it in the 1980s.  Given that provenance, any similarities between The Swallow and the Titmouse and L'Atalante must be coincidental.

The director André Antoine cast non-actors in the main roles to better achieve sense of realism or naturalism.  The plot of the film is simple but multi-layered.  Pierre makes some money under the table by smuggling items across the border.  Michel spies Pierre accepting a package from a diamond smuggler and quickly applies for the job of first mate.  The audience is aware of Michel ulterior motives but the character only slowly begin to suspect something is amiss.  Marthe is immediately attracted to Michel and Pierre approves of their budding relationship.  Griet is more circumspect of the new sailor.  As the film progresses, I wondered how Michel would reconcile his feelings for Michel with his desire to steal the diamonds (he does not know where the diamonds are hidden).

Antoine adds a final layer to the plot.  While alone, Michel makes clear his attraction to Griet which forms a love triangle that complicates the interlocking relationships.  Michel never wavers from his goal of having the diamonds for himself.  I won't give away the ending but will say that Pierre handles the situation in a phlegmatic manner which suggests that no matter what the tragedy or obstacle, he will continue with his life undeterred...tote that barge, lift that bale.

The Swallow and the Titmouse clocked in at an appropriately spare 79 minutes but the film achieved an oversized emotional impact on me.  For such a lean film with long segments on the river (Rivet & Alcover must have had experience working on a barge), I was strangely drawn into the plight of the four characters.  It's a sign of a superior film that despite all the reason to be underwhelmed by the film, I find it mesmerizing.  I find the most surprising films are inexplicable.

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Visages d'enfants starred Jean Forest who was the star of Gribiche at the 2013 SFSFF.  Forest plays Jean, a young boy whose mother has recently passed.  He and his father settle into a routine in their small village in Switzerland.  Sensing that Jean would be content living with just the three of them (Jean has a younger sister), Jean's father embarks on a surreptitious romance with the widowed neighbor Jeanette (Rachel Devirys).  Eventually Pierre sends Jean off on a multi-week journey with his godfather who is a priest.  The trip is a ruse as Pierre plans to marry Jeanette during Jean's absence and it is decided the priest will break the news to Jean prior to their return.  I thought that was a cowardly thing to do and would be resentful myself if that happened to me.

Although's Jean's initial intentions are to respect his father's decision, he quickly butts heads with his new stepsister and resents his stepmother's actions which he considers disrespectful of his late mother.  The blended family's dynamics deteriorate as time passes.  The nadir is reached during winter when Jean tosses his stepsister's beloved doll from a moving sled without her noticing.  When they arrive home that night, she is upset.  Jean tricks her into sneaking out of the house to find the doll.  She gets lost and eventually trapped in a old chapel after an avalanche.  Eventually, Jean's guilt gets the better of him and he admits his transgression to his father.  Although the girl is rescued, Jean receives the silent treatment from his family.  He decides to kill himself by drowning but just as he jumps into the river, his stepmother rescues him.  The film ends with the impression that the family has turned a corner and will live more harmoniously in the future.

I was drawn to the film and Jean's situation more than I would have imagined.  There was something about Forest's portrayal of the boy's grief and misguided resentment that struck a chord with me.   I think the film was more complex given the way the marriage was hidden from Jean.  He had reason to be resentful as his father made a decision without informing him.  I think it is important to make the distinction that Pierre certainly did not need his son's approval to re-marry but he owed his son the courtesy of telling him of his decision rather than leaving it to someone else and giving his son no time to prepare for the change.  The  film covers this decision with a scene between Pierre and the priest.  I'm not sure if the decision was consistent with the era's thinking or if the screenwriters decided to make the plot choice to add some depth to Jean's character.  I'm beginning to think the latter.  Regardless, this was key to the story because without it Jean would have been a petulant boy unable to get over his mother's death.  In fact, in the sequence where the stepsister is lost in the snow, Jean seeks solace from his mother's painting which has interacted with the boy in his imagination.  At this crucial moment, the image is faded and nearly vanished which symbolically represents Jean's self-awareness at a subconscious level that he cannot use his mother's death as an ongoing excuse for his bad behavior.  This is a crucial step in Jean's grieving process; albeit he nearly killed his stepsister to reach it.

Visages d'enfants turns on Forest's performance.  Forest deftly walks the line between sympathy and resentment.  In this regard, he plays off fine performance by Rachel Devirys & Arlette Peyran as his stepmother and stepsister, respectively.  Combined with his performance in Gribiche, I have to think that Forest was the preeminent French child actor of the silent era.  Although he lived until 1980, the majority of his IMDB credits occur in the 1920s between the ages of 10 and 15.  He has no credits after 1935, the year he turned 23.

The Puzzle Within the Castro Theater's August 2015 Calendar

The clues in the Castro Theater's August 2015 calendar were easy to solve.

August 4 - I immediately recognized Omar Sharif since he passed away on July 10 and had been in the news lately.

August 10 - having recognized Sharif and even suspecting the August 4 photo was from Dr. Zhivago, it was easy to identify Julie Christie (again the photo is from Dr. Zhivago).

Seeing a pattern with Dr. Zhivago & the Russian headgear in the photos, I quickly identified August 17 & 24.

August 17 - Geraldine Chaplin

August 24 - Rod Steiger

August 31 - this took me a bit of time but browsing through photos of the cast of Dr. Zhivago, I found this was Rita Tushingham whom I recall from The Knack ...and How to Get It.

So the clues are screaming Dr. Zhivago but that film is not on the calendar.  I'm a little surprised that there are no Omar Sharif films on the calendar to pay tribute to the actor.

By the way, 2015 marks Dr. Zhivago's 50th anniversary.  Regarding the puzzle in the calendar, I'm not sure if it is pointing to any specific film or event other than Sharif's death.

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Another month, another screening of Blade Runner at the Castro.  I guess it packs them in.  Having seen the film so many times, I'll probably skip the August 9 screening.

The Muni Metro will be closing at 9:30 PM every night for the next six months.  I typically take the K, L or M to Castro Station when I go to the Castro Theatre.  Muni will run bus shuttles between West Portal & Embarcadero Stations during the closure.  I have yet to experience the bus shuttles so I cannot say how much (if any) delay is caused by the closure.

Thursday nights in August (up to September 3) at the Castro are programmed by Elliot Lavine and are collectively called I Wake Up Dreaming.  Lavine has moved his popular series from the Roxie to the Castro.  The move caught me by surprise.  Somehow, I missed the news.  Five consecutive Thursdays is preferable than 10 consecutive days which they did at the Roxie.  However, of the 12 films being screened over the five Thursdays, I have seen 10 (possibly 11) of the films.  I will likely be skipping I Wake Up Dreaming this year. 

The Castro is closed for six days in August which seems high.   Even though the printed calendar states "TBA" for August 11, their website states the theater will be closed on that date.  August 18 & 25 are still TBA on the website.

What will I be seeing at the Castro this month?

August 5 (today) - a Maysles Brothers documentary double feature:  Grey Gardens is about the impoverished aunt and first cousin of Jackie Kennedy.  Iris is Albert Maysles final film about New York fashion maven and nonagenerian Iris Apfel.

August 12 - Blue Steel is director Kathryn Bigelow's effort in between Near Dark & Point Break and I have read it features a strong performance by Jaime Lee Curtis.  Blue Steel is paired with James Cameron's Aliens.  Cameron is Bigelow's ex-husband.

August 22 - Capricorn One; a cult film which has escaped me for many years.  In this one, NASA fakes a manned landing on Mars (with OJ Simpson as one of the astronauts!).

August 23 - Zardoz; another cult film which has escaped me.  Starring Sean Connery & directed by John Boorman, this 1974 sci-fi film has the added bonus of creating an Easter egg on the calendar.  The title of the film is derived from the book The Wonderful Wizard of Oz which is the source material for the 1939 film The Wizard of Oz which screens August 14-16.  Capricorn One & Zardoz screen with 2001: A Space Odyssey.

August 26 - Mad Max: Fury Road was the critics' darling at this year's Cannes Film Festival.

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Castro Theater Calendar - August 2015

Wet Hot American Summer

Last Friday (technically early Saturday morning), I saw a midnight movie at the Landmark Clay.

Wet Hot American Summer starring Janeane Garofalo, David Hyde Pierce, Michael Showater & Marguerite Moreau; with Paul Rudd, Christopher Meloni, Bradley Cooper, Amy Poehler, Elizabeth Banks, Molly Shannon, Joe Lo Truglio & Michael Ian Black; directed by David Wain; (2001) - Official Website

Before I forget, the Landmark Aquarius in Palo Alto reopened on July 24 after being closed for remodeling for almost four months.  Included among the renovations are "the addition of larger screens; luxury leather seats and recliners; a new sound system, acoustics and lighting; updated bathrooms; a new marquee and a restructured lobby including a concession stand serving gourmet hot treats like sweet potato fries and Gouda macaroni-and-cheese bites."  Beer & wine service is also forthcoming.  The general admission price has increased from $10 to $12.

From the photo below, the auditoriums look smaller.  Theater #2 is eight seats wide with one aisle.  Granted, the new seats are wider than the old seats but the photo below makes the room look thinner and shorter.

Aquarius Theater #2

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Wet Hot American Summer (WHAS) has been a cult film for years.  I've heard about it but had never seen it.  The film had a very limited theatrical release in the summer of 2001.

The film has received renewed attention as of late due to an eight episode prequel miniseries on Netflix.  The conceit of the original WHAS is the actors were portraying characters 10 to 20 years younger than themselves.  The prequel, called Wet Hot American Summer: First Day of Camp, is set a few months before the events depicted in WHAS.  Now, 14 years after the original film, most of the principal cast has returned to play the same characters which they are now 25 to 30 years older than.

WHAS is set in 1981 & is a parody of (primarily) summer camp films of which the only one I can recall by name is Meatballs.  However, at various points, WHAS parodies Rocky 3 & various science fiction films.  It throws in some gay sex and even makes fun of heroin junkies shooting up (Trainspotting reference?).  The plot is nothing more than a fig leaf for the cast perform some sketch comedy scenes...and what a cast.  Janeane Garofalo & David Hyde Pierce had the biggest profiles in 2001 but the supporting cast went on to have tremendous careers.  Paul Rudd plays a sexist & boorish womanizer, Bradley Cooper plays one half of the gay duo mentioned previously, Amy Poehler is the overenthusiastic talent director of the summer camp, Christopher Meloni plays a Vietnam vet with PTSD and some kinky sexual practices, Molly Shannon is an arts & crafts instructor who is not coping well with over her divorce but gets some help from one of her students and the list goes on...

WHAS is a series of sexual encounters and thwarted sexual encounters between the counselors at Camp Firewood.  The film begins on the morning of the last full day of summer camp and culminates that evening with a camp talent show interrupted by falling space debris from Skylab.  The film is silly and at times it falls flat.  Not as manic as the Zucker, Abrahams & Zucker films of the era when WHAS is set or as raunchy as say The Hangover, the film would have benefited from a little more pasta against the wall.

Still, checking WHAS off my list was satisfying in itself.  I didn't even fall asleep.  Looking at the Clay's midnight lineup, strangely Hitchcock's Vertigo is screening on August 14 & 15.  I'm more interested in Mad Max on August 21 & 22.  The Castro is screening Mad Max: Fury Road on August 26.  Seeing the two films in such a short period of time (coming on top of Midnites for Maniacs screening of Mad Max 2: The Road Warrior in July) could prove interesting and insightful.