Family Day

A German silent film comedy called “Familientag im Hause Prellstein,” from 1927, features a family feud over an inheritance.  When Sami Bambus learns that his gambling debts far exceed his fortune, he decides to fake his own death.  His plan takes into account a law that says the heirs must pay off the debts of the deceased.  The resulting legal squabble pits family members against each other, first to get their hands on the inheritance, and then to reject it when they learn of the law.

A scene from “Familientag im Hause Prellstein,” released in 1927.  (Courtesy Österreichisches Theatermuseum, Vienna)

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The notes on this film, presented at the 2012 Pordenone Silent Film Festival, say that the film created lots of controversy in 1927.  Anti-semites pressured Ufa Studios to release the film without publicity, while Jewish groups objected to the film’s stereotypical characterizations.  However, the film is really just a funny comedy about family relations, and it’s great to see a German comedy film from this period.

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Hands Up!

Raymond Griffith, one of the forgotten comedy stars of the silent era, starred in a 1926 film called “Hands Up!”, a funny comedy about a Confederate spy working to steal Nevada gold before the Union gets it.  The gags come fast and constantly, as Griffith takes a stagecoach across the country, meets the pretty daughters of a gold mine operator, and tries to sabotage the efforts of a Union army captain.

Raymond Griffith (center) gets intimate on a stagecoach with Marian Nixon (left) and Virginia Lee Corbin.

Monitor Sleeping Habit This raindogscine.com cheap cialis test involves monitoring penile erection while you fast asleep. PVD can affect both the Arteries (that carry blood from heart and lungs, increases causing generic viagra a shortage in the blood flow to penis. These tablets provided freedom from that older way and give new way to enjoy the best activity raindogscine.com purchase generic levitra in bed. It sometimes causes low or poor erection. generico levitra on line http://raindogscine.com/?attachment_id=50 is not an aphrodisiac as most males may think. Griffith, as the dapper and crafty Jack, plays his role mostly in a top hat, suit and cape.  He seems more like a magician than a spy, and he uses his full satchel of tricks to get the gold.  One set piece involves his appearance before a firing squad, where he flings dishes in the air as the confused squad fires at them.  Another scene features Jack as he charms the gold mine owner’s daughters on the stagecoach while being completely oblivious of an Indian attack.

Hands Up! is on the National Registry, the United States National Film Preservation Board’s list of films for preservation at the Library of Congress.  The film reportedly made more money than the much better known Civil War Film, “The General,” starring Buster Keaton.  A DVD of the movie does not seem to be available now, but it’s well worth seeing; audiences will appreciate the sophisticated and graceful comedy style of Raymond Griffith.

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The Girl With the Hatbox

Who knew that Moscow had a room shortage in 1927?  That’s when Boris Barnet made “The Girl With the Hatbox,” a Soviet silent film that features Anna Sten as Natasha, a milliner who travels to Moscow to sell her hats.  She meets and falls in love with Ilya, a man who sleeps at the train station.  To help him find a room, she marries him and rents a room at a Madame Irene’s, a Moscow hat shop.  The screwball comedy erupts into slapstick as Irene’s crooked and lazy husband gives Natasha a lottery ticket in lieu of salary.  The ticket wins, and then he wants it back.

Anna Sten (right) plays the milliner in “The Girl With the Hatbox.” (Courtesy Austrian Film Museum).

The film, shown at the Pordenone Silent Film Festival this month, included detailed notes in the festival program that said the Soviet government encouraged promotional films for the state lottery, and that the studio that made The Girl With the Hatbox, Mezhrabpom-Rus, made more than a dozen lottery pictures in the mid-1920s.  I wonder if the others turned out to be as funny and interesting as this one.
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The comedy, so broad and understandable, with plenty of slapstick, brings a lot of comparisons to American silent comedy.  It’s interesting to see that in the context of real Moscow street scenes, with the obvious benefit of featuring the riveting Anna Sten as the title character.  The distributors released the film in America under the name, “When Moscow Laughs,” an equally apt title to The Girl With the Hatbox.  Life in that big city seems absurd, and that in itself is fun to watch.

 

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Heavenly Days

In 1944, RKO Radio Pictures made a Fibber McGee and Molly vehicle called “Heavenly Days.”  Jim (Fibber) and Marian (Molly) Jordan play a daffy couple who decide to take a trip to Washington to tell the Senate how to run the country.

Fibber is on the right, and Molly is in the middle.

But here is generic cialis online some bad news for those men who are suffering from more extreme conditions, taking an erectile dysfunction medication may not work. However not clinically viagra usa price proven, but it has provided good results in the treatment of women sexual disorders. Eating disorders include bulimia, binge eating disorder, and anorexia. canada cialis online Benzamidenafil may have some of the same pharmacological properties as sildenafil, tadalafil and vardenafil, which are the active ingredients of commander cialis respectively. Full of snappy, radio-style dialogue, the married couple cause a scandal when Fibber interups the Senate proceedings to tell Senator Bigbee (the massive and stentorian-voiced Eugene Pallette) that the government should concern itself with the problems of the “average man.”  Bigbee retorts that the average man should learn how government really works and vote!

During the movie, the McGee’s befriend some European war orphans and Fibber gets an appointment to a special government research committee.  They also meet George Gallop, who comes upon the idea of polling the masses while talking about the average man with Fibber.   Gallop could have at least played himself; an actor named Donald Douglas played the Gallop part.  The funniest line:  Fibber says (to his secretary), “I don’t wish to be disturbed…unless the phone rings, or somebody wants to see me.”

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The Viking

In the transition from silent pictures to sound, Hollywood studios released mostly silent pictures with synchronized soundtracks and various sound effects.  I recently saw an MGM film from 1929 that employed this hybrid approach, and it also added the glory of “two-strip” Technicolor.  “The Viking,” directed by Roy William Neil, stars Donald Crisp as Leif Ericsson, who provisions his ship to sail to the new world of North America.  It is the first feature-length Technicolor film with sound.

Pauline Starke, right, falls for slave LeRoy Mason in “The Viking.” (Photo courtesy of George Eastman House, Rochester)

The Viking features the lovely Pauline Starke as a princess named Helga who buys a British slave named Alwin.  The slave, played by LeRoy Mason, turns rebellious but gains the respect of the Viking crew.  Soon, the freed slave romances Helga and sets off with the Vikings to conquer anew.
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Leif first goes to Greenland, where he runs into the forces of Eric the Red, who tries to prevent him from exploring the regions at the end of the world.  Lief, having converted to Christianity, further enrages Eric the Red, who swears to kill all Christians.  Leif thwarts his father, leaves Greenland and makes it the new world.  According to the movie, he eventually lands in what is now Rhode Island.  The Viking is a fun, rousing, successful picture with good performances and plenty of action.

 

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The Weavers

Under the program title, “The Canon Revisited,” the Pordenone Silent Film Festival presented “Die Weber (The Weavers),” a 1927 German film directed by Frederik Zelnik.  The story concerns a revolt by the mistreated weavers at a factory in a small town.  With strong socialistic convictions, the film explores the various stages of the revolt and the factory owner’s attempt to stop it.  In the end, nearly the entire village joins the revolt as they face off against army troops in the village square.

The mob rules in “Die Weber.” (© Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau Stiftung, Wiesbaden)

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William Dieterle plays Jäger, a returning soldier who spouts socialist slogans while drumming up the revolt.  The film stands fully on the socialist side of the ledger, offering no sympathy for the factory owner, who is forced to flee.  Zelnic tells the story with a few elements of humor, such as when the weavers invade the factory owner’s house and rummage through the rich man’s possessions.   But as the viewers get caught up in the action, the ideology clash becomes the main focus.

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Oliver Twist

I saw three versions of “Oliver Twist” on the big screen at the Pordenone Silent Film Festival, but I liked the one with Jackie Coogan the best.  Several countries produced filmed versions of the Charles Dickens’ novel, including an English version from 1912 that featured a girl (Ivy Millais) in the title role.  If you add the numerous sound and TV adaptations Dickens’ novel, you could program a whole festival of Oliver Twists.

Lon Chaney, as Fagin, welcomes Jackie Googan, as the title character in “Oliver Twist.” (Photo courtesy of La Cineteca del Friuli).

Coogan plays a tough and uncompromising Oliver Twist, full of boyish charm as he goes from the orphanage to the clutches of Fagin (played by Lon Chaney) to the wealthy household of Mr. Brownlow.  George Siegmann, who plays Bill Sykes, delivers a menacing performance, while Gladys Brockwell ably performs as the tragic character Nancy.
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Lon Chaney’s Fagin seems surprisingly understated, especially considering the usually impressive pantomimes he displays in other roles.  With so many story elements and actors, the director (Frank Lloyd) keeps a fast pace, and this serves the story well.  My favorite scenes occur at the beginning of the picture, where Oliver toils in the workhouse.   After Oliver requests more gruel, he helps himself the ladle’s supply while his overseers erupt into a hubbub.  Coogan’s funny business makes him more likable as he transitions to more menacing and uncomfortable circumstances.

 

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My Son

A short Anna Sten film from 1928 called “Moi Syn (My Son)” surfaced recently at the Museo del Cine Pablo Ducrós Hicken, and the curators at the museum made a quick DVD copy to present at the 2012 Pordenone Silent Film Festival.  The Russian film features Sten as a new mother who tells her husband that her newborn son is not his.  This throws the husband into a tailspin as he loses interest in his work, ignores his wife and child and strikes back at the man he suspects is the father.

Anna Sten (Courtesy of the David Robinson Collection).

Paula Félix-Didier, the Director of the Museo, appeared on stage during the festival showing on October 10 to explain that the quick and dirty transfer to DVD is only the first step towards restoration.  We lost the Russian copies of Moi Syn in a fire during the siege of Leningrad in 1942, and the discovery of a 16 mm copy in Buenos Aries created wide interest.  The director of the film, Yevgeni Chervyakov, created a different kind of Soviet cinema that strayed from the familiar quick cutting and montage motifs displayed by Sergei Eisenstein and others.
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The 49 minute film presented in Pordenone moved swiftly to its concluding sequence, when a fire engulfs the couple’s home and a fireman (the real father) risks his life to save the baby.  In Soviet films, one senses the constant message of “collective responsibility,” and Chervyakov manages this with many closeups and no scenes of farms, factories and happy children.  Anna Sten, as the mother, embraces her role of motherhood; the husband recoils from her in shame and frustration.  In the end, society works to save the baby.

 

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In Pordenone

Pordenone, Italy — I am on the ground in Pordenone for the 31st Pordenone Silent Film Festival.  The wonderful program this year concentrates on Charles Dickens stories, Anna Sten, and the films of the Selig Polyscope Company.  I have already seen a gem of a film called “Girl With the Hatbox,” which Sten made in 1927 with Director Boris Barnet.  It’s a very funny Soviet-style screwball romatic comedy.  The festival also showed several versions of Dickens’ “Oliver Twist,” including one from Hungary.  The best silent Oliver Twist, from 1922, stars Jackie Coogan and Lon Chaney, who plays Fagin.

The poster for the Pordenone Silent Film Festival 2012.


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Festivals can be very exhausting, and this one goes on non-stop from 9:00 AM to midnight for an entire week.  Most of the films come from the silent era, but the festival also screened a wonderful short film made by Renée George this year called “Le Petit Nuage” — about a couple that meet and fall in love in a Paris cafe.  It’s a silent short with an impressive score.  Ms. George worked on “The Artist” in Los Angeles, and she told me she wanted to make a silent film of her own.  I enjoyed the film and I’m happy that the Pordenone festival put it in the program.

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Robinson Crusoe

Pordenone, Italy — A special event at this year’s 31st Pordenone Silent Film Festival (Le Giornate Del Cinema Muto) featured, on October 6, a wonderful restoration (by the Cinémathèque Française and Laboratoires Éclaire) of a George Méliès 1902 film called “Les Adventures de Robinson Crusoé.”  The festival screened the film with a live narration by British actor Paul McGann, who read an original script penned by Méliès that tells the story of Crusoé’s shipwreck, his meeting with cannibals and mutineers, his encounter and friendship with Friday, and his eventual rescue and return to England.

George Méliès

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The 12 minutes that survive of the approximately 20-minute original length (according to the Méliès’ 1905 catalog) retain the narrative focus and the brilliant use of color throughout.  Méliès called the film a “cinematographic play,” a new idea in 1902 for telling a complicated story.  The Pordenone performance featured a new score by Maud Nelisson, a pianist who performed it with a sax, a flute and percussion.   The music provided a rich accompaniment to the brilliant and colorful display onscreen.

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