Year after year, the initially miniscule San Francisco Silent Film Festival has grown and outdone itself in presenting rare, nearly forgotten, and brilliantly restored films from the 1920s and 1930s.
This year's installment, the Festival's 18th, runs from July 18-21, and is another example of SFSF Director Anita Monga's imaginative and adventurous programming.
Also, as last year's festival was paired with Napoleon, this year's is preceeded, June 14-16, by a special presentation of nine restored Hitchcock silent films in the Castro Theater.
The festival proper opens on July 18 with Augusto Genina's 1930 Prix de Beauté, with Louise Brooks in her last starring role. Musical accompaniment is by Stephen Horne. It is followed by:
- Miles Mander's 1928 The First Born, an exploration of British upper-class morality and politics. Horne is providing the music.
- The great Yasujiro Ozu's 1931 Tokyo Chorus, about middle-class life in Japan before the war. (Ozu went on to produce 53 films until his death in 1963.) Music is by Silent Movie Music Company and Frieburg Filmharmonic Orchestra director Günther Buchwald.
- King Vidor's 1928 The Patsy, with Marion Davies (before William Randolph Hearst forbade her to take comedic roles, her real forte). Musical accompaniment is by Colorado's Mont Alto Motion Picture Orchestra.
- 1926 A.W. Sandberg's 1926 The Golden Clown (Klovnen), a Danish masterpiece about the life of a clown in a Paris circus. Music by the Matti Bye Ensemble from Sweden.
- John Canemaker's biography of Winsor McCay, creator of Little Nemo, Gertie the Dinosaur, and other works, including McCay's films from the 1910s. Music by Horne.
- Alan Dwan's 1916 The Half-Breed, supervised by D.W. Griffith, and featuring Douglas Fairbanks as the half-Indian outcast. Based on the Bret Harte story, the film's script is the work of Anita Loos. Musical accompaniment is by Buchwald.
- Henri de la Falaise's 1935 Legong: Dance of the Virgins, filmed in Bali. Music by the East Bay Gamelan Sekar Jaya and San Francisco's Club Foot Orchestra, conducted by Richard Marriott.
- Jacques Feyder's 1926 Gribiche, a two-hour epic about a rich American widow (Francoise Rosay) adopting a boy from a poor family in Paris. Mont Alto Motion Picture Orchestra.
- Boris Barnet's 1928 The House on Trubnaya Square, a Soviet comedy about life in a housing project. Music by Horne.
- G.W. Pabst's 1925 The Joyless Street, a spectacularly cast film from Weimar-era Germany, with Greta Garbo, Asta Nielsen, Agnes Estehazy, and others. Matti Bye Ensemble.
- Kings of (Silent) Comedy is a collection of short by Chaplin, Keaton, and others from the 1920s, including Felix the Cat films. Music by Buchwald.
- Victor Sjöström's 1918 The Outlaw and His Wife, with the great Swedish director playing the title role, with Edith Erastoff. Matti Bye Ensemble.
- Emory Johnson's 1925 The Last Edition, the only remaining nitrate print, restored for the festival. The film, about a pressman at the S.F. Chronicle was shot in and around the Chronicle building, with chases through the city. Music by Horne.
- Friedrich Zeinik's important 1927 The Weavers, with intertitles drawn by George Grosz, is based on Gerhart Hauptman's play about the historic 1844 uprising by Silesian cotten weavers. Music by Buchwald.
- Safety Last, the iconic Harold Lloyd film, directed by Sam Taylor and Fred Newmeyer. This is the film with the scene of Lloyd hanging off the hands of a clock on a skyscraper. (Long before CGI, the scene was actually shot as Lloyd was risking life and limb.) Music by the Mont Alto Motion Picture Orchestra.