Attend Silent Movie Mondays in February at the Paramount

Saw my first silent film last night, organ player and all. Then Melvin Van Peeble spoke about being black and being an independant film maker.

The man’s ideas and advice was perfect and on the spot.

Funner than shit!
Bring your Mom.

This is something that every moviegoer should try at least ONCE in their lives. It is the original experience of moviegoing and it allows you to understand why it has flourished all of these years. It could have faded into our collective distant memory, but with programs like this, you can see it’s an artform worth supporting and fighting for. Do yourself a FAVOR and go to a Silent Movie!! Start with comedies (Keaton, Chaplin or Lloyd) and you won’t be able to get enough!!

I just saw “Wings” in SF last weekend, with a new score composed by Nik Phelps and performed live by Nik and Frederick Hodges. A great movie, with a strong anti-war message.

The four movies we watched on Silent Movie Mondays at the Paramount included:

1. Sunrise (1913)
2. Love (1927)
3. Man and Woman (1919)
4. Picadilly (1929)

My favorite was Love, since it was a remake of one of my favorite novels, Anna Karenina. Next was Picadilly, for the interesting story and Anna May Wong, then Sunrise, and Man and Woman actually didn’t interest me much other than the fact that it was so horrible that it was almost good again (but not quite).

I’m sad that it’s over. There’s another silent film series in August (right?) that I plan on going to. In the meantime, I’ve got my old oscar winners to tide me over.

It was a great experience! Cheers for Dennis James and his Mighty Wurlitzer Organ.

Week 3 of the silent film series was a Cecil B. DeMille film called Male and Female. It was…unique. I liked it very much, but it really paled in comparison to the previous two. Gloria Swanson was good, but there was some animal cruelty in it, the ending was frustratingly stupid really, and the acting was understatably melodromatic. I loved the costumes just as I did in the last film, but in this one there was also a lot of comedy in their choice of outfits for the “stranded on an island” sequence. Haha….just thinking about it makes me laugh. Next Monday is the last show and I’m bummed. This has really been a great series.

This week’s silent movie was a fantastic adaptation/interpretation of Anna Karenina, entitled Love. There were some odd moments and parts of the story line resembled the Mary Kay Letourneau/Vili Fulau case, but overall it was well-done. Plus, Greta Garbo is a fox. Oh-and can I have her wardrobe please? I was not as partial to this film as I was to Sunrise simply because it involved a lot more (displayed) dialogue, but the story told is a good one and the best part was, they offered us two endings: one which follows the book and doesn’t constitue a crowd-pleaser and a happy ending that made everyone clap. I liked both but, though it sounds odd, I preferred the first. This series of silent films is turning out to be one of the best things about February!

I loved the first installment of this movie fest: Sunrise. It was funny, heartwarming, suspenseful, and disturbing. A winning combination! The acting was good, the storyline was interesting, and the cinematography kept me glued. What really made this event great, though, was the live organ. The organist was really fantastic and even though he was right on stage in plain view manipulating this beautiful, glowing instrument, I was not at all distracted because his playing was so impressively connected to the story. Even though this silent movie is touted as the best of all time, I want to see all of them! (Next week: Greta Garbo!)

This is the organ that was played to accompany the movie.

The first of the Silent Movie Mondays was excellent. Turns out “Sunrise” tied with “Wings” for the first movie to win an Oscar. Strangely, we had just seen “Wings” on my wall a few weeks ago, and so it was an easy comparison—”Sunrise” wins easily. I was only a little disturbed by the drunk pig scene.

The music to go with the show was the most noteworthy aspect of the evening. The organist claims to have pretty much played on every worthy organ in the world. He’s been playing for silent movies for almost 35 years, and had a pretty interesting story involving luck and right-place-right-time themes to share before the movie started. He creates the scores for these movies by splicing together historical evidence, existing bits of information about the movie’s original score, and a little improve sprinkled over the top. Only 10% of silent movies from that era have been recovered, and of those, only 1% have scores intact. What a strange little world that could emerge from the desire to bring these pieces of cinematic history back to life… and this man is their leader.