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.

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The Saga of Gösta Berling

Not only are there countless stories of great talents destroyed by Hollywood, but you could, if you were in a gloomy frame of mind, make a case that this is an overarching theme of the place. With so many tragedies to choose from, it’s hard to stand out. But The Saga of Gösta Berling (Gösta Berlings … [Read more...] about The Saga of Gösta Berling

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Safety Last!

Harold Lloyd will forever be associated with Safety Last! because of a single image. Even people who have never seen a Lloyd film are familiar with the iconography of a bespectacled man hanging off the hands of a collapsing clock on the side of a skyscraper high above teeming city streets. It is one … [Read more...] about Safety Last!

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Sadie Thompson

Sadie Thompson had the great Raoul Walsh as director and costar, but studying the history of the film leaves little doubt that Gloria Swanson has a strong claim as its auteur. She jumped through hoops to acquire the property, fought the censors to get it produced, cowrote the script with Walsh, … [Read more...] about Sadie Thompson

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Rotaie

Italian Director Mario Camerini’s legacy has been tainted because he made films under the Mussolini regime. Film director and critic Carlo Lizzani wrote of Camerini as “sweetly slumbering through the 20 years of Fascism.” While Camerini spent much of the later Fascist era directing light, socially … [Read more...] about Rotaie

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Rosita

A consummate actress and creative producer preoccupied with her image, thirty-one-year-old Mary Pickford longed to create an important cinematic work of art. Having forged an unparalleled career as “America’s Sweetheart,” Pickford now sought mature, sophisticated roles that would acknowledge her age … [Read more...] about Rosita

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The Ring

The Ring was Hitchcock’s sixth film as a director and his first at British International Pictures, and, remarkably, his third film within a year. After directing Downhill and Easy Virtue, two stage adaptations for Gainsborough, Hitchcock was frustrated and jumped at the chance to develop an idea of … [Read more...] about The Ring

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Riding the Rails

This feature was published in conjunction with the screening of Beggars of Life at SFSFF 2016 Female Hoboes in American Cinema Hoboes were America’s first freelance workers, rambling across the country in search of employment. Industrialization in the northern United States after the Civil War … [Read more...] about Riding the Rails