NINE

"If you talk about a film, you ruin it."

Ever the glutton for punishment, I saw Rob Marshall's film version of the musical NINE, itself a musical version of Fellini's 8 1/2. Full disclosure, not a surprise to anyone: I think Rob Marshall is probably the worst director alive. He has only two living rivals: Joel Schumacher and Zack Snyder, and one recently deceased: the unspeakable Anthony Minghella, who continues his vile influence from beyond the grave as the screenwriter of this film, a rare collaboration of two of the least talented film artists. The results are predictable. NINE is a disaster, plain and simple, except when the glorious Marion Cotillard appears onscreen, gracing the screen and the audience with her magical presence. If you can see this film without falling madly in love with her, you should have your head/heart examined.

The film/musical centers on Guido, a famed filmmaker who is having a creative/personal crisis, or something like that. There are all these women in his life played by assorted movie stars. The story just lurches along with none of the grace or speed of the Fellini film, or the merry energy of the original Broadway production of the musical. Marshall & Co. seem to realize that they can't just remake Fellini (even though they include big chunks of dialogue almost verbatim from Fellini's masterwork, without credit), and they seem to not be interested in just doing the musical as written, either, so they go with a grab bag of elements from 8 1/2, LA DOLCE VITA, and even borrows elements from Woody Allen's STARDUST MEMORIES (a running gag about how everyone loves Guido's earlier successful films) and the inevitable Bob Fosse, as Guido's studio-bound fantasies seem to be lifted right out of ALL THAT JAZZ.

It has come to this. Marshall doesn't just emulate Fellini. He emulates Fellini emulators. Marshall even lifts bits out of Tommy Tune's original Broadway staging of the musical, and one has to wonder exactly how much in royalties the Fosse estate is getting for the ongoing use of those bentwood chairs that Marshall just can't seem to function without. Saraghina's big number, "Be Italian," is staged with Tommy Tune's tambourines and the bentwood chairs from the "Lieber Herr" number from Fosse's film of CABARET, taking sheer plagiarism to heights undreamed of by Brian De Palma.

To be fair, part of the blame has to go to Daniel Day-Lewis, who is quite simply miscast as Guido. Not an actor known for displaying joy or even anything as base as mere fun, Day-Lewis lays on the earnest self-loathing with a trowel without any of the mitigating charm that would make his character interesting or even bearable. His opening song is hideously ill-performed and directed with typically Marshallian stupidity, the opportunity for Day-Lewis to display any warmth in the amusing "duet with myself" is missed as Guido performs the song while climbing through some piping for reasons that pass understanding. And Day-Lewis' big breakdown is skillfully performed, but it has no impact because there's been no sympathy built up for his plight. It seems to take Guido a long time to realize what has been eminently clear to even the dimmest sentient audience member: the guy's an asshole. And the interminable epilogue (2 years later, for God's sake) ends with a whimper not a bang.

There are some surprises to be had here, though. Marshall's usual Rusty Cuisinart Editing style is put on hold for a couple of songs, during which we actually get to see the performers sing. Marion Cotillard's performance of "My Husband Makes Movies" is done with a minimum of wackadoo editing; her pain comes shining through that gorgeous face and teary eyes in what is easily the film's highpoint.

What surprised me most about the film is the way that almost all fun has been leeched from the story, the characters, the songs, and the very fabric of filmmaking itself. NINE is a big fat downer of a movie, based upon one of the most joyful works of art ever created. I have to say that I detect the narcotizing influence of the late and unlamented Anthony Minghella (who shares screenplay credit with Michael Tolkin) in this particular tonal shift. Instead of Felini's joyful energy, which animates even 8 1/2's darkest moments, we get a sort of mournful malaise more in keeping with THE ENGLISH PATIENT or COLD MOUNTAIN than the glories of Fellini.

This is really unforgiveable in a film with delusions of being Fellini-esque. As painful as Marshall's monstrous CHICAGO is, it at least has energy -- the mad plot, the great score, even the outrageously caffeinated weed-wacker editing kept my interest as I watched the film through my fingers. NINE seems to be after a more serious "grown-up" vibe, but Marshall & Co., with their all-too-typical stupidity, miss one of the Maestro's most endearing traits: joy.

ANTICHRIST

"Chaos reigns"

A gorgeous prologue, in sumptuous very slow motion black and white, showing a couple making passionate love intercut with their child leaving his crib and fallling to his death from an open window. The emotional fallout is understandably severe, and is explored fairly closely in Lars von Trier's latest film, the mysteriously named ANTICHRIST. The film has a much narrower focus than von Trier's other films, amounting basically to a series of therapy sessions between the unnamed He (Willem Dafoe in what might be his best performance that I've seen) and She (Charlotte Gainsbourg, admirable in a tough role), the mother and father of the late child. She falls into a deep depression that lands her in an institution, and He, unhappy with the therapy she is getting, takes matters into his own hands (it is established that he is an experienced therapist) and brings her home. He soon decides to take her to their remote cabin in the woods, rather too symbolically named Eden, in order to confront her fears. There's a good deal of talk in what follows, and a good deal of supernatural goings on as well.

It turns out that there is Evil In The Woods. Von Trier seems to be simultaneously channeling the David Lynch of TWIN PEAKS (plenty of Lynchian rumbles and techno humming and oddly threatening trees and nature) and Andrei Tarkovsky (certain shots recall Tarkovsky's THE MIRROR and von Trier dedicates his own film to Tarkovsky's memory before the final credits roll). I can't deny the intelligence of the production, or the skill of the filmmaking and the performances. Moments of transfixing beauty and of real danger are conjured with an ease that Lynch and Tarkovsky would recognize as their own, I think. It isn't fair to dismiss ANTICHRIST as a bunch of acting therapy exercises strung together with some shock moments involving genital mutilation and some CGI talking animals, most memorably a fox that tells He that "Chaos reigns," but I have to say that the point of the film simply eludes me. There's just something missing. ANTICHRIST leaves a lot of questions unanswered, mostly about He's motivations. The biggest question of all being: why does He keep going with this mode of therapy, so completely isolated for so long, long after it should be abundantly clear that his therapy isn't coming close to working? I guess it is fair to assume some dark motive on He's part, but von Trier never gets around to making it at all clear, and such an important element of the film deserves considerably more clarification: it shouldn't be left as completely open as the issue of Rick Deckard's status as human or replicant in BLADE RUNNER.

SATANTANGO

"I live to tango. Tango, tango. I live to tango. Tango. Tango."

A 7.5 hour film by Bela Tarr. Yes, you read that right. 7.5 hours long, in a screening at MOMA, that was supposed to be introduced by the director himself in person but wasn't. This wasn’t my first exposure to the film. I had attended one of the understandably infrequent screenings at the Museum of Modern Art a few years back, and simply fell asleep. The spirit was willing, the flesh was unable. I was impressed enough with what I had seen to acquire the US DVD release, which isn’t pretty: possibly the worst single non-homemade video transfer I've yet seen. The image isn't enhanced for widescreen TVs, which is a real drag and ultimately makes the film even harder to watch. A real shame, as the film features some of the most ravishingly gorgeous black and white cinematography I've ever seen, evident even in this cruddy DVD transfer. I watched the first two thirds of the film on my laptop during my flights to/from San Francisco for the Silent Film Festival, and watched the first two thirds of it, and was very impressed with those two thirds. I don’t really understand why I was willing to watch the film on a tiny laptop screen rather than our pretty good-sized flatscreen TV, though. So this screening represented my first exposure to the whole SATANTANGO experience.

7.5 hours. God. I actually watched a 7.5 hour long movie. I think the longest single film I’d seen before this was Syberberg’s OUR HITLER many years ago, which I saw when I was far too young and of which I have only very fragmented memories: an extended sequence about Hitler's valet and a man in an SS uniform delivering Peter Lorre's "I can't help myself!" speech from Lang's M being the main ones.

OK. So how was it? I liked a good deal of it. The seven hours don't exactly fly by, but there's some of the best filmmaking I've ever seen going on here. The story centers on a group of people who belong to what looks like some kind of farming collective, in what I guess is Hungary near the end of the Communist era. They seem to be living in borderline poverty. They are expecting a large sum of money which is to be divided amongst them, apparently derived from the sale of some cattle. The film opens with a sort of plot to steal the money. Bad news though: a pair of disreputable characters, Iremias and Petrima, are also on their way to the area...

Director Bela Tarr uses lots of long takes. We're not talking just long takes, but very very long takes indeed. And not Wellesian long takes, which are crowded with activity, but long takes showing someone walking along a deserted road, or even just sitting still, staring into space. There's one remarkable section showing someone referred to as a Professor who jots notes into a notebook about the locals when he isn't pouring brandy out of a bottle into a glass and then pouring water out of a pitcher into another glass and then pouring the contents of the two glasses into a third glass and then drinking the contents. It can get rather taxing after a while, expecially during one extended sequence involving a drunken dance in a bar, where Tarr seems to be pushing this kind of filmmaking, and my patience with this kind of thing, to the very very limit. About all that kept me going was the feeling that Tarr knew what he was doing, that there was a point to all this and that it was going to all pay off at some point.

And it largely does. The film is structured in an interesting way, as a series of intersecting episodes. There will be an extended sequence involving some characters, and then another sequence with another character will start, and at some point it will become clear that the actions of the second sequence are taking place at the same time as the first sequence, and the two sequences will suddenly intersect in an interesting and occasionally amusing way. Kind of like those glasses that get mixed together. A good deal of the fun of watching the film is finding the little intersections, the moments where the plotlines touch and move on. There's just no way to get these things on a first viewing, you're too busy getting and keeping your bearings.

I'm going to have to say that I think Tarr goes too far with the long takes. There are a couple of sequences that just go on long after anything is being gotten out of them; one scene in particular just never fucking ends, the drunken dance party in a pub with most of the cast dancing around, and it goes on long after it really could have stopped. I can't imagine anyone noticing or even caring if it were cut in half. Other moments like that, of people walking and walking or sitting and sitting or breathing and breathing could be similarly trimmed. Just because something can be shown for ten minutes doesn't necessarily mean that it bloody well SHOULD be shown for ten bloody minutes.

Ordinarily I'd brush that off as being a minor complaint, and on some level it is. Any film is going to have longeurs, but the sheer bloody length of SATANTANGO ensures some long longeurs. I'm not looking to turn anyone off from seeing the film, but I can't blame anyone who finds it just more than they want to deal with. It would be a shame to miss the film's best parts, though. The beauty of the black and white cinematography and the brilliance of the performances (there isn't a weak performance in the film, I've basically forgotten to think of them as actors playing roles) and the overall impact of the film make it worth the trouble.

SHORT TAKES

Some short bits about stuff we’ve seen lately:

-- TWO FROM ANTHONY MANN --

THE FURIES, a Western from Anthony Mann with Barbara Stanwyck and the sublime Walter Huston and Judith Anderson and Beulah Bondi. Great randy fun, lurid and melodramatic and overheated, madly entertaining, kind of like Aeschylus’ ORESTEIA on the range. Gorgeous black and white location cinematography. Huston plays an Alpha Male cattle rancher involved in something of a power struggle with his daughter, played by Stanwyck in full Bitch Goddess mode -- there’s a lot of bickering and one-upmanship and barely contained incestuous passionate subtext. One glorious scene features Huston and Stanwyck bitching at each other, and you can feel the simultaneous hate and love these two feel for each other. You often feel that they’re just a couple of drinks away from consummating. The movie doesn’t entirely work, alas. It feels bound by some kind of Production Code rules keeping it from going as completely for broke as it would like to go: certain elements feel shoe-horned into the story to lighten the darkness a bit. You’ll know what I mean when you see it. But no quibbling can diminish the good tasty fun the film provides. I liked it a hell of a lot.

T-MEN

Another Anthony Mann, predating THE FURIES. T-MEN is a noirish cop thriller about the titular T-Men going undercover as part of an investigation into a counterfeiting ring. Again, some good gritty solid fun, but the real star here is the incredible black and white cinematography by the masterful John Alton. Even in the really cruddy DVD I got from Netflix, this film shines with a beauty that few contemporary movies can come near. If some of the film feels familiar, that’s because many shots have been used in assorted documentaries about film noir to illustrate the visual style associated with the genre. Worth seeing, by all means.

-- AND SOME THEATER --

MEMPHIS
A new musical, apparently 5 years in the making, set in 1950s Memphis detailing the rise of what was then called "race music." The kind of show set in the early years of rock and roll where a white guy walks into a black club and impresses everyone with how soulful he is, as a friend pointed out. That's only the first of the cliches on parade. We're soon treated to this little exchange, when Huey, the white guy in question, hits on the hot black female lead singer:

Hot Black Female Lead: You know how I know a man is lying to me?
Huey/White Male Lead: How?
Hot Black Female Lead: He opens his mouth.

No, really, she actually says that. There's even a poor black teenager who saw his father lynched by a white mob and hasn't spoken since, and you get no points whatsoever for figuring out that he's going to start speaking at a crucial plot juncture and that at some point later on someone will say something about how they wish he'd stop talking. The token efforts the show makes in the second act to do something with these exhausted plot and character tropes amount to too little too late -- the attempts fall as flat as the original cliches do.

The cast by and large does its best with this stuff, but all of their efforts are undone by Chad Kimball's appalling performance as Huey. He lays on the quirky country hickdom to such an extent that he winds up coming off like a spastic George W. Bush. It got to the point where I just couldn't look at him. A real shame, because Kimball was one of the reasons I was interested in seeing the show in the first place. I'd enjoyed his Milky White in the INTO THE WOODS revival, and his tiny role in GOOD VIBRATIONS was the sole positive memory I have of that catastrophe. Why on earth he's decided to make Huey into such an obnoxious ass completely escapes me. His relationship with the female lead never for a solitary second convinces: she could surely do better than that twitching poseur, whatever his status as a suddenly successful DJ/TV personality. She'd be better off without him, and she does wind up being better off without him, in fact. The play would be better off without him, too: it would at least not be agonizing.

SUPERIOR DONUTS

A new play by Tracy Letts, who won pretty much every award around for AUGUST: OSAGE COUNTY, a vast splendid avalanche of a play. DONUTS is much smaller, more of a chamber piece than a full out symphony. It centers on Arthur, the emotionally reserved owner/proprietor of the titular donut shop, and his relationship with Franco, a eager young African American man he hires to help out. Boy does that sound like the most cliched set up imaginable, but DONUTS breathes actual life into the potentially overfamiliar set up and characters, in ways that MEMPHIS is never able to approach. A great evening in the theatre.

INGLOURIOUS BASTERDS

“Nein! Nein! Nein! Nein! Nein! Nein! Nein!”

Wildly uneven, Tarantino’s latest film veers from brilliant to banal and back again. I can’t say the film is a total catastrophe, and I certainly can’t claim it as anything like a complete success.

The titular Basterds don’t appear onscreen for a good half hour, indeed the best half hour in the movie, featuring Christoph Waltz in a star-making performance as SS Col. Landa, known as The Jew Hunter. Landa arrives at a farm in Nazi-occupied France and has an extended discussion with the farmer about the local Jewish population. Landa is all good humor and sleekly sophisticated pleasantry but with a definite air of menace; for all the surface bonhomie he’s clearly not a person to underestimate. This opening section is followed by some stuff with the Basterds, led by Brad Pitt in full “Look Ma! I’m acting!” mode, and it gives Tarantino a chance to pander to his fans with some icky violence and smart-ass gabbing.

The film settles down a bit when it decides to be about Shoshanna (Melanie Laurent), the owner of a Paris movie theatre which has been chosen as the venue for the premiere of a new piece of Nazi propaganda. When it transpires that the entire Nazi hierarchy, Hitler included, is going to attend, Shoshanna hatches a plan to bring down the Third Reich. Col. Landa is involved in the proceedings, of course, as director of security for the event. Things progress from there, and it wouldn’t be fair to give away much more except to say that a large collection of films on nitrate stock plays a very important role.

Waltz’ and Laurent’s performances are far and away the highlight of the film, which lags pretty drastically when they’re not onscreen. And that’s a big problem. For a film by Tarantino, set during WWII about a series of plots to kill Hitler (British Intelligence has the idea to blow up the theatre, too, and there’s a lot of huffing and puffing and shooting and movie-referencing as they try to send an agent to contact the Basterds, and it just goes on and on and on, really, there’s just too much going on in this movie) to actually LAG is kind of remarkable.

But lag it does. And the fault is entirely Tarantino’s. BASTERDS is comparatively straightforward for a Tarantino film, lacking the chronological games of PULP FICTION and the KILL BILLs. The biggest problem with INGLOURIOUS BASTERDS is the Basterds themselves, and pretty much everything having to do with them. Brad Pitt’s latest attempt at a performance gets very old very quickly. He juts out his jaw, squints a lot, and talks with a bad Southern accent, and he’s just unwatchable. The other bastards don’t fare much better, being little more than excuses for nicknames and barely sketched out backstories: none of them comes alive as an actual human being. Only one of the Basterds, Til Schweiger as Sgt. Hugo Stiglitz, is given anything of consequence to do, and he doesn’t get to do it for long. And certainly none of them carries anything like the emotional weight of Col. Landa or Shoshanna, or even the basic wacko interest of Daryl Hannah’s memorably wacked out eye-patch-wearing assassin in the KILL BILLs.

This might be the point, I guess. If I gave a damn about more of the people in the film I might find the brutal violence unbearable. And there’s the big problem with the movie, I think. It doesn’t quite know what it wants to do. I’m reminded of the problem that finally sinks SAVING PRIVATE RYAN, the apparently unresolvable tension between wanting to make a serious film about the horrors of war and the temptation to make a Really Bitchin’ War Movie with lots of planes and bombs and stuff. But where Spielberg panders to his audience’s survivor guilt and ends by wagging a finger in our collective face (“Earn This!”), Tarantino gleefully goes for bloody broke and uses the power of cinema to destroy the Nazis (quite literally).

Tarantino’s results are ultimately as mixed as Spielberg’s. I wasn’t as appalled by the Holocaust that Tarantino unleashes on his massed Nazi victims as I was by the final act of smirking deliberate personal torture that a grinning Brad Pitt perpetrates on a single character. There’s something about that last gesture that really turned me off the movie and those associated with it for not being as appalled as I am by it.

HARRY POTTER AND THE HALF BLOOD PRINCE

“Shut up.”

I’ve posted on the Harry Potter Phenomenon (Here: http://roscoewrites.blogspot.com/2007/08/harry-potter-and-order-of-phoenix.html )and I’ll have to say that the latest film doesn’t do much to change my opinion of the films. The latest film continues the Weirdly Uneven quality that has characterized the series as a whole. The last film ORDER OF THE PHOENIX was made with some energy, as opposed to the film before it, GOBLET OF FIRE, which is a major snooze, as opposed to the film before it, PRISONER OF AZKABAN, which is by the far the finest film of the series so far, as opposed to the film before it, CHAMBER OF SECRETS, which is by far the weakest film of the series so far, as opposed to the film before it, SORCERER’S STONE, which was a good solid kickoff to the series.

Anyway. HALF-BLOOD PRINCE is kind of a letdown, and kind of not a letdown. The biggest problem is that there’s just not a lot of urgency to the movie, it just dawdles along at its own very very slow pace, which is a big surprise considering that the last film ended with the official recognition that the Dark Lord Voldemort has in fact come back from oblivion and is up to No Good. I’d have expected some kind of uproar about this in the magical world of the film, but no, there isn’t any onscreen. It is just business as usual for the gang at Hogwarts, the kids are having their growing pains and we get to watch some mostly amusing games of the he-loves-her-he-loves-her-not variety, along with the inevitable rumblings from the bad guys and a big climactic showdown. Somehow, though, the movie doesn’t feel like a total disappointment, as there’s enough good stuff to keep interest up. My favorite scene in the film takes place on an island in the middle of an underground lake, and is almost impossible to watch without extreme discomfort, not least because it all takes place in near total silence. So gripping was this sequence that it managed to hold a NYC multiplex audience spellbound: there was none of the usual audience noise that makes summer blockbusters such agony to sit through. The film is deliberately deliberate, in other words, despite the couple of big set pieces which almost serve to remind you that this is after all an adventure story.

This slow pacing is a marked change from the book, which I’ve just started and which is written in J.K. Rowling’s characteristically energetic prose. The book begins with a marvelously conceived chapter that didn’t make it into the film, which very cleverly manages to deliver a good deal of What Has Gone Before In Vols I-V while setting up a good deal of What Is To Come In Vol VI. Rowling is able to keep the proceedings consistently lively in a way that director David Yates and screenwriter Steve Kloves never quite manage.

The film isn’t a total bore, of course. The story is engaging, to be sure, and the acting is of a very high standard. The great Jim Broadbent makes a long overdue appearance in the Potter Universe, and the three kids (Daniel Radcliffe, Emma Watson and Rupert Grint) all get their own little moments to shine in ways that they’ve only hinted at in the past. Radcliffe in particular gets a glorious little scene where Harry’s usual solemnity gives way to a chemically-induced cheer that is a joy to behold. Side note: they’re going to have to do something to explain Watson’s Hermione being so much in love with Grint’s Ron Weasley: her devotion to the character they’ve made into such a boob is increasingly unconvincing.

It looks like I really disliked the film, when I didn’t. Bottom Line: a deliberately told adventure story isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but a bit more consistent energy in the storytelling and filmmaking is definitely in order for the next two installments. I’ll go see them of course. I do wish they’d get Alfonso Cuaron back to tighten things up.

SAN FRANCISCO SILENT FILM FESTIVAL

For the first time, I made a major cross-country pilgrimage to see a film festival. This is what comes of having a job with a firm with a liberal vacation policy. The San Francisco Silent Film Festival has been on my radar for a long time for a couple of reasons: I love silent films and I love San Francisco and I love the Castro Theatre where the festival takes place. I didn't see all of the programs, there just being limits to how much I can take in. Here are some notes on what I did see:

THE GAUCHO
The opening night attraction was THE GAUCHO, a Douglas Fairbanks vehicle of great charm and energy. The story isn't much: Fairbanks plays The Gaucho, a notorious bandit leader who finds himself in a power struggle with a fascist-type dictator over control of a small town in Mexico which just happens to have a famous Lourdes-type shrine, complete with a St. Bernadette stand-in. There's a good deal of fun to be had before the inevitable Hollywood Silent Piety takes over, as Fairbanks cheerfully does a host of impossible things effortlessly. Not just the big wall-scaling stunts, either. The Gaucho has a running habit of putting a cigarette into his mouth, striking a match with his thumbnail, propping the match in his thumbnail, lighting the cigarette with the match in his thumbnail and flicking the match away (leaving an impressive trail of smoke), all with one hand in one continuous fluid movement that just defies description and must have taken weeks to master. Fairbanks seems to be having a grand old time doing all this, and his delight is infectious. The movie is almost pure pleasure. I liked it a hell of a lot, and the crystal clear print and live accompaniment by the Mount Alto Orchestra only added to the experience.

TREASURES FROM THE ARCHIVE
A program of odds and ends from assorted archives that wouldn't really fit into any particular program, some shorts, trailers and brief clips (some lasting only a few seconds) from films that don't exist anymore, introduced by the archivists who oversaw their restoration. A couple of amusing shorts, one with the memorable intertitle "Spurned By The Heiress, The Music Teacher Listens To The Arguments Of The Anarchist." A tantalizing couple of seconds from an otherwise lost film with proto-hunk Ramon Novarro were fun to look at, too.

BARDELYS THE MAGNIFICENT
A costume adventure in the Fairbanks style, starring the great John Gilbert, directed by the great King Vidor from a novel by Rafael Sabatini. Gilbert plays Bardelys, a 17th Century Casanova type in the court of Louis XIII who finds himself obliged to woo and marry a country virgin as part of a wager. Bardelys travels to the girl's family estate and for some reason takes the identity of a man he finds dying in a barn, and finds himself assumed by everyone to be the leader of an anti-royalist plot to overthrow the king, which plot involves the family of the girl he's supposed to be wooing. Don't be looking for plausibility here. Vastly entertaining, with some genuinely funny intertitles, a rarity in silent films. The movie dares you to take it seriously, and it was interesting to see it within 12 hours of THE GAUCHO. Fairbanks and Gilbert are both fascinating performers. Gilbert is by far the finer actor, actually creating characters onscreen, as opposed to Fairbanks' near-mugging. But the big climactic action sequence is clearly meant to be in the Fairbanks mode, and, despite some wonderful gimmicks it doesn't quite come off as handsomely as it might, largely because Gilbert simply lacks Fairbanks' astonishing ability to the impossible with ease. An entertaining bit of fluff, with a lovely performance by Eleanor Boardman as the object of Gilbert's affections. She plays a virtuous virgin without making her unapproachably pure, her occasional little grins add an amusing dimension to what could have been a real piece of cardboard.

UNDERWORLD
Directed by Josef von Sternberg from a script by the great Ben Hecht, an early gangster film that seems to have set the template for a lot of what came after. Hecht even uses great chunks of the plot of this film (for which he won the first Academy Award for best original story) in his screenplay for Hawks' SCARFACE. The plot centers on a rivalry between two gang leaders (exactly what their gangs do is never really spelled out), one of whom takes a down and outer under his wing and sets him up in some style. The refurbished down and outer, of course, falls for the gangster's moll, and it kind of goes along from there. This must have been pretty alarming stuff in 1927, but it felt rather tame now, and the similarities to SCARFACE are just too apparent for the movie to seem like much more than a footnote to the later film.

AELITA, QUEEN OF MARS
An early science fiction film from Russia. This has been on my radar for years, every now and then I'd catch a glimpse of a photo of some of the remarkable Futurist cubist type sets and costumes for the scenes on Mars, and had been expecting a kind of cross between METROPOLIS and BATTLESHIP POTEMKIN, but got instead a rather tired Soviet propaganda piece, with some admittedly cool bits that weren't cool enough to alleviate the boredom. I fell asleep, and don't feel that I missed much.

OSWALD THE LUCKY RABBIT
A fascinating program of shorts featuring Oswald, Disney's cartoon star before Mickey. Well, the shorts were fascinating. The biggest drawback to the San Francisco Silent Film Festival were the people chosen to introduce the screenings, who occasionally went on too long without saying very much of substance or even interest. The Oswald program had the worst offender in Leonard Maltin, who took a lot of time to tell the audience what pretty much every one of us present almost assuredly already knew about the early history of Walt Disney, without ever once managing to be at all interesting in any way.

I did like the shorts, though. Fast and funny and above all lively. Cartoons at this period were usually pretty simple affairs, you were expected to just sit and appreciate the moving pictures of dogs and cats and mice. These shorts are not much different, but there are little moments that surprise, like an extended bit with a dog who is startled when his hot dog sceams in pain at each impending bite. The dog finally tearfully sets the bun down, and the hot dog runs happily away.

A wonderful festival, all around. I didn't make all of the screenings, but there were plenty who did. The same people seemed to be in the same seats at each screening I attended, clearly having stayed put between shows. I don't know if I have it in me to go quite that far, but the opportunity to see such great prints of these films, in such a great setting, with such an appreciative audience, is not one that I'm likely to pass up often. I think I'll be making this an annual trek.