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Bravo: There\u2019s nothing like seeing a 1920s silent film in a historic 1922 theater with live musical accompaniment. The view from the balcony with the restored ceiling and chandelier is spectacular. The Castro and this festival were formative in my love of silent film.\u00a0<\/p>\n
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Clara Bow stars in Victor Fleming\u2019s silent film \u201cHula\u201d (1927).<\/p>\n
S.F. Film Festival<\/p>\n
Johnson: Sounds like it\u2019s now the closest to the way a movie was first experienced there since the 1920s. Thankfully, I can get my big-screen fix of Clara in \u201cHula\u201d (1927; 3 p.m. Friday, May 8), a collaboration with \u201cGone With the Wind\u201d and \u201cThe Wizard of Oz\u201d director Victor Fleming.<\/p>\n
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Now, onto the grand opening-night film, \u201cQueen Kelly\u201d (7 p.m. Wednesday, May 6), by one of the great visual stylists of silent cinema, Erich von Stroheim, and his star Gloria Swanson. This was a troubled production to say the least\u00a0\u2014 filmed in 1928-29 but not released until 1932.<\/p>\n
Swanson and von Stroheim had a real falling out, yet they starred together as actors two decades later in Billy Wilder\u2019s \u201cSunset Boulevard\u201d (1950).<\/p>\n
You\u2019re reading \u201cThe Curse of Queen Kelly,\u201d a book by Pamela Hutchinson published in March. I\u2019m holding off on reading it until after I see the movie, so can you give me some spoiler-free prep?<\/p>\n
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Gloria Swanson, left, and Walter Byron in Erich von Stroheim\u2019s \u201cQueen Kelly,\u201d a silent film made in 1928-29 that has been newly restored.<\/p>\n
S.F. Silent Film Festival<\/p>\n
Bravo: The behind-the-scenes story, which Hutchinson tells in such rich detail, is as bonkers as the film itself. That says a lot\u00a0\u2014 \u201cVon\u201d as he liked to be known, was a mad genius at the height of his artistic lunacy.<\/p>\n
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By the late 1920s, Swanson reached the zenith of her fame and creative ambitions. She was the Taylor Swift of her day, and she was looking for a new era.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Enter a charismatic Bostonian banker named Joseph Kennedy, the father of President John F. Kennedy and Sens.Robert and Ted, who was looking to prove himself as a producer. Von\u2019s script about a postulant nun who spends a night with the crown prince of a mysterious European kingdom and then ends up in Africa running a brothel was a creative gamble.<\/p>\n
They stopped filming once Swanson got fed up with Von\u2019s perfectionism and the kinky touches he added to the story, like the panty scene. She was also having an affair with her business partner Kennedy, which I\u2019m sure will be depicted in Michael Fassbender\u2019s currently filming Netflix \u201cKennedy\u201d series.<\/p>\n
But the footage that\u2019s left has had an unbelievable afterlife, first appearing in a meta scene in \u201cSunset Boulevard\u201d (1950) and now with this latest edit.<\/p>\n
Johnson: Other than \u201cQueen Kelly,\u201d which program are you most looking forward to?<\/p>\n
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Paul Richter stars in\u00a0\u201cSensation im Wintergarten\u201d (1929), a German silent film with a Weimar circus setting.<\/p>\n
S.F. Silent Film<\/p>\n
Bravo: \u201cThe Humming Bird\u201d (1924; noon Saturday, May 9), also starring Swanson. She disguises herself in drag as a boy and looks like a very pretty gay twink.<\/p>\n
The German \u201cSensation im Wintergarten\u201d (1929; 5:30 p.m. Thursday, May 7), with its Weimar circus setting, looks promising. I\u2019m also curious about the early cowboy film by legendary director William Wyler, \u201cBlazing Days\u201d (1927; 11 a.m. Sunday, May 10).\u00a0<\/p>\n
And don\u2019t forget lighter fare like comedy shorts by Laurel and Hardy (10 a.m. Saturday, May 9), which is a perfect introduction for kids.<\/p>\n
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Monte Blue, left, and Patsy Ruth Miller in “So This Is Paris” (1926), an early success by the comedy master Ernst Lubitsch.<\/p>\n
S.F. Silent Film Festival<\/p>\n
Johnson: I\u2019m especially looking forward to the three films that close the festival on Sunday, all by groundbreaking directors.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Start with an Ernst Lubitsch comedy \u201cSo This Is Paris\u201d (1926; 3 p.m.), about temptation that may undo two married couples. I love Lubitsch, he is my favorite screwball comedy director\u00a0\u2014 1942\u2019s \u201cTo Be or Not to Be\u201d is one of the greatest movies ever\u00a0\u2014 and I am looking forward to a silent example of his legendary \u201ctouch.\u201d<\/p>\n
Then there\u2019s Danish master Carl Theodor Dreyer\u2019s \u201cLove One Another\u201d (5 p.m.), a 1922 German film which rails against antisemitism. How that country would change in a decade, and how timely today.<\/p>\n
![\"A]()
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A scene from King Vidor\u2019s groundbreaking silent film \u201cThe Crowd\u201d (1928).<\/p>\n
S.F. Silent Film Festival<\/p>\n
Cap it off with \u201cThe Crowd\u201d (1928; 7:30 p.m.), a film I love but have never seen on the big screen. King Vidor does not get enough credit for his role in helping to invent the language of cinema. He was one of ultimate \u201cmake one for them, make one for me\u201d guys. Here\u2019s a guy who made one of the 1920s\u2019 biggest blockbusters, the World War I movie \u201cThe Big Parade\u201d\u00a0\u2014 basically the \u201cSaving Private Ryan\u201d of its day\u00a0\u2014 and then got MGM to fund \u201cThe Crowd,\u201d an experimental film about a struggling young couple that addressed the divide between rich and poor.<\/p>\n
It lost money, but it\u2019s now considered among the very best silent films.<\/p>\n
Bravo: The list of musical collaborators this year also deserves to be highlighted. The San Francisco Conservatory of Music is back playing for \u201cQueen Kelly,\u201d and they\u2019ve been an essential part of the experience. Same with the\u00a0Mont Alto Motion Picture Orchestra. The acoustics in the balcony are better than ever.<\/p>\n
Johnson: That\u2019s a great point. Silent movies aren\u2019t really silent, are they? There\u2019s so much to see and hear packed into a five-day schedule. I wish there was one of those Japanese-styled capsule hotels right next to the Castro Theatre to catch some power naps between programs on those marathon days.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Gloria Swanson stars in Erich von Stroheim\u2019s \u201cQueen Kelly\u201d (1929). S.F. Silent Film Festival After two years at…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":296059,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[30],"tags":[329,101827,839,838,101,103,102,104,106,105],"class_list":["post-296058","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-san-francisco","tag-arts-and-entertainment","tag-datebook-guide","tag-festivals","tag-movies-and-tv","tag-san-francisco","tag-san-francisco-headlines","tag-san-francisco-news","tag-sf","tag-sf-headlines","tag-sf-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/296058","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=296058"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/296058\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/296059"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=296058"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=296058"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=296058"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}