Our Amazing Tales program began in 2006 as a way to highlight the importance of film preservation and to provide insight into the remarkable work done by film archives around the world. This year’s presenters include Kyle Westphal, Thomas Christensen, Andreas Thein, and Carlo Chatrian.
The Case of A Musical Mixup
When Chicago Film Society received a donation of a 35mm print of 1928’s A Musical Mixup, the two-reel comedy from Poverty Row studio Weiss Bros was almost entirely unknown—and some wanted to keep it that way. Kyle Westphal discusses the controversial career of its star, Jimmy Aubrey, a British comedian once teamed with Oliver Hardy, who, by the end of the silent era, was shoplifting gags from other studios with abandon. A Musical Mixup in incontrovertibly an act of plagiarism, but the question remains: whose jokes was Jimmy stealing this time?
Gadgetry in Silent Cinema
Motion pictures came into the world at a time of dizzying technological advancement, developing alongside electricity, the telegraph, and the telephone, to name a few. It’s no wonder then that the movies incorporated them into their scenarios as plot devices or as the crux of gags. Cinema did some inventing of its own and Thomas Christensen of the Danish Film Institute has gathered samples of some of the silent era’s quirky on-screen gadgetry, which today can seem like Q’s inventory from a James Bond film.
Weimar’s Action S/Heroes
Weimar cinema is thought of as the wink of Ernst Lubitsch, the beauty of F.W. Murnau, the epic extravaganzas of Fritz Lang, and the melodramas of G.W. Pabst, but it was Sensationsfilm that ruled the box office and Harry Piel was their king. Whether dangling over Berlin’s skyline, wrestling with tigers, or blowing up trains, Piel and his fellow daredevils set the template for the modern action blockbuster. Andreas Thein of Filmmuseum Düsseldorf presents Germany’s first action heroes and heroines who often come down to us only through fragmented prints, souvenir programs, lobby cards, or newspaper ads.
Cinema Before Cinema
From cave paintings to shadow plays, the desire to replicate the illusion of movement has been around as long as humanity itself. Cameras obscura, magic lanterns, stereoscopic photos, and mondi nuovi (or “new worlds” as peep shows were called in 18th-century Vienna) have amazed the common people, aristocrats, and intellectuals alike, changing how they see themselves and the world around them. Carlo Chatrian, director of Italy’s Museo Nazionale del Cinema in Turin, explains the ways so-called pre-cinema anticipated and influenced the movies as we know them.