“We didn't need dialogue -- we had faces then!” - Gloria Swanson, Sunset Boulevard
The women who populated the silent screen had a very different quality than any movie stars since. Our Silent Sirens series celebrates the way they exemplified, without saying a word, that particular mixture of wit, grace and classic radiance. It’s tempting to credit their allure to some abstract mystique, but even a single frame of film from a Garbo or Normand vehicle speaks for itself. Sure, these ladies were unspeakably gorgeous and infused every amazing thing they wore with glamor, but their charm was no mystery -- they knew what to do in front of a camera, how to grow into each character, and how to win the hearts of their audiences with the subtlest gesture or expression. We are proud to bring back for a third year in a row this popular festival, one which made last summer more scorching than Gloria Swanson on a hot tin roof.
Gloria Swanson’s iconic performance as Norma Desmond in Sunset Boulevard is exponentially more affecting in light of its echoing her own life. Swanson’s formidable career as a Silent superstar waned with the advent of Talkies, but those who've seen her in one of many silent turns will marvel at a romantic lead and fashion icon whose otherworldly command of the screen and endless repertoire of costume changes elicited countless movie-house sighs. After a few decades' worth of successful stage versions of Zaza in the early 20th century, director Allen Dwan's 1923 film version finds Swanson as the glamourous lead actress in a small town French music hall. Embroiled in a backstage brouhaha between her and a rival actress, Gloria's days are brightened by the appearance of a rich man who romances her to the hilt -- and who, naturally, attracts the vengefully jealous attention of Gloria's bitter rival. Lavish and luscious, Zaza is a soapy treat, and ranks among Sadie Thompson and The Affairs of Anatol as one of the standouts of Swanson's silent career.The evening kicks off with the rare early Gloria Swanson short Teddy At The Throttle (1917) -- and Brooke Anderson, Gloria Swanson's granddaughter, will be here to make introductory remarks before the screening! Zaza Dir. Allen Dwan, 1923, 35mm, 66 min. (35mm print courtesy of The Library of Congress) Teddy At The Throttle Dir. Clarence G. Badger, 1917, 16mm, 18 min. (16mm print courtesy of David Shepard)
Tickets - $12/free for members
8/11 @ 8:00pm / Series: Silent Sirens Queen Kelly
After years of struggles within the studio system throughout the 1920s, director Erich von Stroheim found the opportunity to create his crowning achievement: Queen Kelly, a storybook romance of intoxicating beauty, counterbalanced with a frightfully grim tale of moral corruption. Gloria Swanson stars as an innocent convent girl who falls under the spell of a handsome prince (Walter Byron) on the eve of his marriage to a diabolical queen (Seena Owen). Queen Kelly might have been one of von Stroheim's greatest films -- if only Swanson, who also acted as producer of the film, had not halted it in mid-production before it could be completed! We present the critically-acclaimed restoration of von Stroheim's ambitious epic, which incorporates many of the scenes (set within an African brothel) that originally caused Swanson to get cold feet.
Dir. Erich von Stroheim, 1929, 35mm, 101 min.
Tickets - $10
8/18 @ 8:00pm / Series: Silent Sirens A Fool There Was
Widely regarded as the screen's first true sex symbol -- a leading actress whose charm was built not upon quaint innocence but carnal desire -- Theda Bara revolutionized the then-adolescent art of cinematic sensuality. One of the very few Bara films that exist today, A Fool There Was catapulted the actress to stardom in 1915 and introduced the term "vamp" (both as a noun and as a verb) to the American pop culture vocabulary. Bara plays the "Vampire," a cunning woman who uses her irresistible charms to seduce and abandon a series of influential men. When one lover commits suicide on the deck of a luxury liner, she merely turns her gaze to another passenger, John Schuyler (Edward José), and leads him down a path to moral degradation and public scorn. Schuyler's wife (Mabel Frenyear) never gives up hope for her husband's redemption but has severely underestimated the hypnotic power the Vampire has upon her victims. One of the most remarkable aspects of A Fool There Was is its uncompromising ending: rather than offering a syrupy resolution of eleventh-hour moral enlightenment, the film refreshingly allows its characters to follow their downward trajectories toward less edifying fates.
Dir. Frank Powell, 1915, digital presentation, 67 min.
Tickets - $10
7/28 @ 8:00pm / Series: Silent Sirens Metropolis (newly-restored extended version!) ENCORE SHOW
We're proud to welcome Metropolis, one of the greatest films in the history of the medium, back onto the Cinefamily screen, this time in its newly-restored 2 1/2 hour version! According to its original press release, Fritz Lang's pioneering science-fiction epic had it all: "8 stars, 25,000 men, 11,000 women, 1,100 bald people, 250 children, 25 Negroes, 3,500 pairs of special shoes, 50 cars." And that doesn't begin to describe the wonders of Lang's Expressionist Tomorrowland! Powered by the unconscious energies boiling up from the Zeitgeist as his country lurched toward fascism, Lang's titanic imagination produced indelible images that have lost none of their power to astonish -- and, under his direction, the ravishing Brigitte Helm gives the iconic dual performances of a lifetime as gentle teacher Maria and the devastating Machine Man made in her image. This new, 145-minute version of the film, which owes its existence to the chance discovery of a 16mm dupe negative found in an Argentinean archive, is the result of two years worth' of painstaking collaborative restoration on the part of several German film organizations; come and see this classic in a brand-new way, as it was originally intended, for the first time!
Dir. Fritz Lang, 1927, HDCAM, 145 min.
Watch the trailer for the newly-restored and expanded "Metropolis"!
Zaza
Queen Kelly
A Fool There Was
Metropolis
