This feature was published in conjunction with the screening of The Phantom of the Opera at A Day of Silents 2019 The version of The Phantom of the Opera that we see today does not share the melancholy ending of Gaston Leroux’s source novel. A villain dying of a broken heart did not satisfy … [Read more...] about How to Kill a Villain
Acting Like Lubitsch
This feature was published in conjunction with the screening of The Marriage Circle at A Day of Silents 2019 A stage actor before he was a film director Ernst Lubitsch was notorious for acting out the roles for his performers down to the smallest gesture. As exasperating as it may have been to … [Read more...] about Acting Like Lubitsch
History of a Location: Canyon de Chelly
This feature was published in conjunction with the screening of Redskin at A Day of Silents 2019 Ages before Douglas Fairbanks scrambled up its sheers to rescue a woman in 1917’s A Modern Musketeer and Richard Dix’s Wing Foot left its fertile valley to attend a white man’s college in 1929’s … [Read more...] about History of a Location: Canyon de Chelly
SFSFF Award 2012: Telluride Film Festival
From the beginning it was not an ordinary event. In its first year, the Telluride Film Festival featured two special guests: 75-year-old silent screen diva Gloria Swanson and controversial German director Leni Riefenstahl. Stage Struck, about a small-town waitress with big-time dreams, screened … [Read more...] about SFSFF Award 2012: Telluride Film Festival
SFSFF Award 2005: National Film Preservation Foundation
The San Francisco Silent Film Festival presents its 2005 Haghefilm Award, for distinguished contribution to the preservation and restoration of world film heritage, to the National Film Preservation Foundation. In 1997, Congress created the National Film Preservation Foundation as an independent, … [Read more...] about SFSFF Award 2005: National Film Preservation Foundation
1919: A Decade Ends and an Age Begins
4 JANUARY Hundreds of thousands of Berliners take to the streets in support of police chief Emil Eichhorn fired for refusing to use force to quash demonstrations in the wake of World War I. Rightwing mercenaries known as the Freikorps respond and the fray results in hundreds of deaths. On January … [Read more...] about 1919: A Decade Ends and an Age Begins
1917: The Year That Changed the Movies
Golden Ages Come and Go Among the casualties of the First World War were many of the national cinemas of Europe, taking Italy’s silent divas and nearly everything French down with them. Denmark, neutral for the duration, lost its markets to war and, by 1917, its once flourishing Nordisk … [Read more...] about 1917: The Year That Changed the Movies
1915: The Year in Motion Pictures
ESSANAY SNAGS CHAPLIN Charles Chaplin had started his career the previous year at Mack Sennett’s Keystone studio but moved to the Essanay Film Manufacturing Company in January with a significant pay hike from $125 a week to $1,250. He made fourteen films with Essanay, many of which were filmed … [Read more...] about 1915: The Year in Motion Pictures