Silent films at the Prince Charles Cinema, January-March 2012

January 23, 2012 PH 1 Comment

There’s nothing like a night out at a West End cinema. The bright lights, the excitement, the hustle and bustle of the Theatreland crowds … So don’t ruin your fun by watching a talkie. Check out the silent film programme at the Prince Charles Cinema, where they’re packing in the punters for a diverse range of silent movies, month ofter month. There’s always live music and a lively atmosphere – and the films aren’t bad either.

The Cameraman, Thursday 26 January 2012, 8.50pm

Hilarious, but rarely screen Buster Keaton comedy. After becoming infatuated with a pretty office worker for MGM Newsreels, Buster trades in his tintype operation for a movie camera and sets out to impress the girl (and MGM) with his work. Piano accompaniment by Costas Fotopoulos.

Tickets for each show are £10 or £7.50 for members. Book online here.

The Hunchback of Notre Dame, Wednesday 22 February 2012, 8.50pm

Don’t miss this chance to see Lon “Man of a Thousand Faces” Chaney on the big screen. In 15th-century Paris, the brother of the archdeacon plots with the gypsy king to foment a peasant revolt. Meanwhile, a freakish hunchback falls in love with the gypsy queen. Piano accompaniment by John Sweeney.

Tickets are £10 or £7.50 for members. Book online here.

Nosferatu, Thursday 29 March 2012, 8.50pm

One of the silent era’s most influential masterpieces, Nosferatu‘s eerie, gothic feel – and a chilling performance from Max Shreck as the vampire – set the template for the horror films that followed. Hutter, a real estate agent, pays a visit to the mysterious Count Orlok, who seeks to relocate from his lair in the Carpathian Mountains and buy a residence in town. The Count becomes infatuated with Hutter’s young wife, and embarks on a journey to find her, while the town becomes infected with a strange plague.

Rock band Minima are a favourite on the silent film circuit, playing atmospheric, sophisticated guitar music to a wide repertoire of silent classics – and Nosferatu is one of their most acclaimed scores. Don’t miss this.

Tickets are £12 or £8 for members. Book online here.

Festival, Screening

Silent films at the Glasgow Film Festival, February 2012

January 21, 2012 PH Leave a comment

Just a quick post to let you know about the silent film offering at the rather wonderful Glasgow Film Festival, which runs from 16-26 February 2012. If you include the Glasgow Youth Film Festival and the Glasgow Short Film Festival, which precede it, it all adds up to three weeks of movies – some of which are silent. Here goes:

The Loves of the Pharoah, Friday 17 February, 3.30pm, GFT 2

Ernst Lubitsch was a master of sophisticated romantic comedies but The Loves of Pharaoh reveals that he was also a filmmaker to rival the scale and ambition of DW Griffith or Peter Jackson. The Loves of Pharaoh is notable for its spectacular production design, gorgeous costumes, beautiful chiaroscuro cinematography and crowd scenes involving thousands of extras in an age before the convenience of computer generated effects. Future Oscar-winner Emil Jannings is the Egyptian Pharaoh who rejects the beloved daughter of the king of Ethiopia in favour of his infatuation with slave girl Theonis. It is a recipe for conflict, heartbreak and epic drama. A stunning digital restoration heralds the return of a major silent production. Buy tickets.

Berlin: Symphony of a Great City, Saturday 18 February, 3pm, CCA theatre

Walter Ruttmann’s groundbreaking documentary captures the pulse of Berlin in a single day in the late 1920s. It is a moment of calm between the nightmare of the Depression and the horrors of the Nazi era. Inspired by Dziga Vertov (The Man with a Movie Camera), he compiles an impressionistic portrait of a bustling metropolis from the first light of dawn to the last gasp of the city’s neon-lit nightlife. Cameras hidden on vehicles and in suitcases capture an authentic picture of children hurrying to school, factories billowing smoke, rush-hour traffic and even the President Paul von Hindenburg. It is a wonderful time capsule made all the more poignant by the city’s virtual destruction in the Second World War. This special screening is accompanied by a live improvised performance from Scottish Jazz Trio AAB as musicians Tom and Phil Bancroft and Kevin Mckenzie rock the house with a unique fusion of bop, folk, house and indie rock. Buy tickets. Screening in combination with the ‘live’ film Glasgow: Symphony of a Great City.

Continue reading Silent films at the Glasgow Film Festival, February 2012 →

video

Video: Air talk about scoring A Trip to the Moon by Georges Méliès

January 20, 2012 PH 3 Comments

Culturethèque met French duo Air during their trip to the Institut Français on 12 December 2011 for an exclusive screening of Georges Méliès’ A Trip to the Moon (1902), in its restored colour version. Watch this interview with the band about Air’s contribution to A Trip to the Moon and about their new album, released on 6 February.

Screening, Tour

The First Born on tour in 2012

January 17, 2012 PH Leave a comment

Miles Mander and Madeleine Carroll in The First Born (1928)

The BFI’s sparkling restoration of Miles Mander’s The First Born, with its new, elegant score by Stephen Horne, was the clear highlight of last year’s London Film Festival. The wonderful news is that it is about to hit the road this year, and you’ll be able to see the film, in most cases with Horne’s music played live, at various lcoations across the UK. It’s a gripping, sophisticated drama and a gem of British silent cinema – so don’t miss it. Here’s what the BFI have to say about it:

A philandering politician, the double standards of the upper classes, jealousy, miscegenation and a generation torn between centuries of tradition and a more modern morality… the plot of The First Born feels not unlike a lost episode of Downton Abbey. However, the film was expertly co-scripted by Alma Reville (Mrs Alfred Hitchcock) and it’s hard not to see her influence in raising it beyond old-school melodrama to be a tour de force of late silent British cinema. Sir Hugo Boycott (Miles Mander) and his young bride (a pre-blonde Madeleine Carroll) have a passionate relationship, but it founders when she fails to produce an heir. This is a surprisingly ‘adult’ film and made with both elegance and invention.

I reviewed the film at the London Film Festival here, and spoke to BFI silent film curator Bryony Dixon and composer Stephen Horne for the Guardian too. You can see an extract from the film, below:

Here are the tour dates for The First Born, hot off the press:

25 January 2012
BFI Southbank

9 March 2012
Broadway Nottingham
(NB: solo performance by Stephen Horne)

17 March 2012
Hippodrome Bo’ness

25 April 2012
Pictureville Bradford
(NB: this screening will not feature Stephen Horne’s score)

May 2012 TBC
Filmhouse Edinburgh
DCA Dundee

Screening

An Italian Straw Hat, Barbican, 19 February 2012

January 17, 2012 PH 1 Comment

The Barbican silent film and live music season continues in fine style with this sophisticated, satirical French comedy. René Clair’s film is a period piece, set in 1895, the year the Lumière brothers first unveiled their cinématographe, but was released just as the talkies were changing cinema for good – or ill. With few intertitles and plenty of visual humour, An Italian Straw Hat is classic of silent cinema, which Pauline Kael described as “so expertly timed and so elegantly directed that farce becomes ballet”. Contemporary reviews praised its:

“Delightful social irony and hilarious situations welded into divertingly sustained comedy. Amusing characterisations which are ironic criticisms. Witty situations and deft development. “

Albert Préjean stars as a hapless bridegroom whose journey to his own wedding is interrupted when his horse chews up a woman’s hat. She demands a replacement, which is easier said than done, and the groom is soon tangled up in a series of comic misunderstandings. An Italian Straw Hat is more than farce though, it uses the absurd premise as a route into a sly attack on bourgeois narrow-mindedness. The Silents Are Golden website sums it up this way:

The plea for intelligence, for rising above petty worries like lost gloves, for refusing to be constrained by petty convention, make An Italian Straw Hat a crusader in human propaganda. The sublimely naturalistic sets, the superb uniformity of the acting, and the flawless action continuity are the measure of René Clair’s technical proficiency.

If you’ve seen René Clair’s short silents, such as Entr’acte and Paris Qui Dort, or his later work including the Sous les Toits de Paris and A Nous la Liberté your appetite will already be whetted. Stop reading this blog, and book yourself a ticket.

An Italian Straw Hat screens at the Barbican on 19 February 2012 at 4pm. Piano accompaniment will be provided by Andrew Youdell. Tickets begin at £7.50 and you can buy them here.

Festival, Screening

The British Silent Film Festival comes to Cambridge, 19-22 April 2012

January 15, 2012 PH Leave a comment

Save the date: the 15th British Silent Film Festival will take place 19-22 April 2012 at a new venue, the Cambridge Arts Picturehouse. The change of location has influenced the programme too, which will feature some examples of undergraduate humour among a mix that includes adaptations of stories by WW Jacobs and PG Wodehouse as well a tribute to the BBFC. There’ll be a by-now customary performance by the Dodge Brothers too, skiffling along to Abram Room’s The Ghost That Never Returns.

The programme will include rarely seen silent films from the BFI and other archives around the world on a wide range of fascinating subjects such as: P.G. Wodehouse’s golfing tales including The Clicking of Cuthbert; rarities based on the charming coastal stories of W.W. Jacobs including The Boatswain’s Mate, A Will and a Way and brand new print of Head of the Family; a celebration of the centenary of the British Board of Film Classification with a look at ‘What the Silent Censor Saw’ and the origins of ‘university humour’ before the Footlights. This year’s ‘hot ticket’ will be the wildly popular Dodge Brothers performing their distinctive brand of Americana to The Ghost That Never Returns.

Tickets are not yet on sale, but watch this space for more updates, including the full schedule and how to book. Click here for a report from last year’s festival, on the Guardian film blog. Below, Dodge Brother and film writer Mark Kermode introduces The Ghost That Never Returns at last year’s New Forest Film Festival:

Screening

Salomé (1923) at the Purcell Room, 9 February 2012

January 10, 2012 PH 1 Comment

A rare screening of a much-gossiped-about silent film, made by one of Hollywood’s most controversial stars, presented in a unique way. Well, that tickles our fancy just fine.

Alla Nazimova was born in what is now Ukraine in 1879. She made her stage debut in Moscow as a teenager and swiftly became a big star. She then moved to New York to work on Broadway, winning plaudits with roles in plays by Chekhov and Ibsen and made her first movie, War Brides, in 1916.

Nazimova is best remembered for her colourful life in Hollywood: her several affairs with women, the rumoured wild parties at her mansion and her position of influence in the industry, helping many a young actress to get a start, including Anna May Wong, Patsy Ruth Miller, Natacha Rambova and Jean Acker. The last two were married to Rudolph Valentino, but were also romantically linked to Nazimova.

Her most famous film, Salomé, was also fodder for the rumour-mill. An adaptation of Oscar Wilde’s play, it was said that the cast comprised only gay and bisexual actors, in homage to the author. It’s impossible to say whether this was really true, but the idea has certainly stuck. Nazimova takes the title role, Charles Bryant directs and the whole thing is just over an hour of extravagant Aubrey Beardsley-inspired design, sexy costumes and decadence. Salomé slumped at the box office, bankrupting Nazimova’s production company, but continues to intrigue audiences, becoming something of an art nouveau cult sensation.

This February, Salomé will be screened at the Purcell Room in the Southbank Centre, with live music composed by Charlie Barber, which is inspired by ” the evocative sounds and intricate rhythms of traditional Arabic ensembles”. Instead of sitting in front of the screen, the musicians will perform on two towers on either side of it, which sounds like a fantastic idea.

This clip shows the famous “Dance of the seven veils” from Salomé, with a taster of Charlie Barber’s score:

Salomé screens at the Purcell Room, Southbank Centre on Thursday 9 February 2012 at 7.45pm. Tickets begin at £12 and are available here.

• We’ll see more of Nazimova when the silent Rudolph Valentino biopic Silent Life is released later this year. Nazimova is played by Galina Jovovich.

Festival, Screening

Dogged at Making Tracks, London Short Film Festival, 14 January 2012

January 7, 2012 PH 3 Comments

Modern silent films. They’re the hottest thing since 3D, but far more popular in this neck of the woods. One film we’ve had our eye on for a while is the fantasy short Dogged (2011), written and directed by Jo Shaw and starring Lucy Goldie in all nine roles. The sinister premise of the film is summarised thus on IMDB: “In a world where bogeymen roam freely, devouring people randomly and the only creatures they fear are dogs, old dog does her best to defend the family home.” I think this dog is a very different breed to Uggie.

Dogged was described as “intriguing and insightful” by the judges at the Aesthetica film festival in York, who awarded it the prize for Best Experimental Film (read more here), but now, happily, you have the chance to see it in London and make your own mind up. Dogged is playing as part of the Making Tracks night programmed by Whirlygig Cinema at the London Short Film Festival. This event is especially notable because all the soundtracks for the short films being screened will be played live, by The Cabinet of Living Cinema. It’s a treatment that should particularly suit Shaw’s spooky silent film.

Want to know more about Dogged? There’s a trailer, which you can see on the IMDB page here and a regularly updated Facebook page.

Making Tracks is at Rich Mix, Bethnal Green on 14 January at 7.30pm. Tickets are £8 on the door or book them in advance for £6 at the Rich Mix website.

Screening

Charles Dickens on silent film: part two, BFI Southbank, February 2012

January 1, 2012 PH 1 Comment

Charles Dickens’s 200th birthday party continues in formidable style with the second part of the BFI’s Dickens on Screen season. Happily, the silents were not confined to the first run of screenings and February brings much to get excited about. First off is the famous 1922 adaptation of Oliver Twist. Frank Lloyd directs, while The Kid star Jackie Coogan plays the young orphan and Lon Chaney contorts his features into a suitably grotesque Fagin. With Coogan’s winsome pluck and Chaney’s gift for playing a villain, this was always going to be a classic Twist. It’s a spirited romp through the novel and a particular treat as this is one of the famous “lost” films of the silent era, which was found and restored in the 1970s, with some input from Coogan himself. To learn more, read Silent Volume’s appreciative review here or watch this clip, featuring one of the novel’s most melodramatic flourishes. Why not do both?

Oliver Twist screens at 6pm on Friday 3 February and at 8.45pm on Wednesday 8 February 2012 at NFT2, BFI Southbank. Both screenings will feature live piano accompaniment. Tickets are available from the BFI website.

The Only Way (1925) — The Only Way (1927)

The final silent Dickens film and the next screening in the season is The Only Way, a lavish and rather free adaptation of The Tale of Two Cities. This is a British production and John Martin Harvey reprises his stage role as Sydney Carton, despite his advancing years. His wife Madge Stuart plays Mimi his maid. Don’t remember Mimi from the novel? That’s cinematic licence for you. The famous director and producer Herbert Wilcox is at the helm and The Only Way was a smash hit, taking more than twice its £24,000 budget at the box office.

The Only Way screens at 3.50pm on Saturday 11 February and 8.40pm on Monday 27 February 2012 at BFI Southbank. Tickets are available from the BFI website.

• Don’t forget that there will be an exhibition to accompany the Dickens on Screen season in the Mezzanine at BFI Southbank from 12 January to 25 March. Also, during February, BFI members can watch The Pickwick Papers, an Anglo-American co-production from 1913, free online. The 15-minute fim stars the comedian John Bunny.