San Francisco Silent Film Festival

The San Francisco Silent Film Festival is a nonprofit organization dedicated to educating the public about silent film as an art form and as a culturally valuable historical record.

Memberships

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IT

Looking at Clara Bow and the era that made her famous, it seems inevitable that she led the life she did. The daughter of an estranged, unloving father and an abusive mother, she escaped into the dream life of a Hollywood film star at the age of 17. With the naiveté born of a seventh grade education … [Read more...] about IT

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The Crowd

How were movies made in the 1920s? Well, if you’re romantic about it, just imagine Irving Thalberg and King Vidor bumping into each other somewhere in the Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer building. Let’s say it was 1927. Vidor was thirty-three. His boss, Thalberg, was only twenty-eight. They had just made a … [Read more...] about The Crowd

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Love One Another

You play the cineaste game, and eventually you build an Andrew Sarris-style hierarchy, a pantheon of the great filmmakers over the long game, from 1890-whatever to the present. Limit the top tier to ten or twelve, say, and a few names from the silent era will consistently arise. Fashions come and … [Read more...] about Love One Another

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So This Is Paris

Ernst Lubitsch famously declared, “I’ve been to Paris, France, and I’ve been to Paris, Paramount. I think I prefer Paris, Paramount.” Among the many dazzling Lubitsch films taking place in his imaginary, stylized version of the French capital is So This Is Paris, a frothy sex comedy as light as the … [Read more...] about So This Is Paris

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Bookkeeper Kremke

“The machine replaces five workers.” The job-killer in question, the Mercedes Addelektra, resembles a huge and complex typewriter; it is trundled into an office where accountants in pince-nez and sleeve protectors toil at desks, filling ledgers with sums in ink. The scene is the same one that has … [Read more...] about Bookkeeper Kremke

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Blazing Days

Like John Ford, William Wyler served his apprenticeship in low-budget westerns for Universal, although a few years later. Both branched out ambitiously into other genres, but Ford kept returning to the western genre with which he became identified, while few think of Wyler as a western director. But … [Read more...] about Blazing Days