A moment of silence...

Fujifilm has stopped making motion-picture film.

Yes, digital is easier. Yes, it has good definition. Yes - and this is VERY important - it's better for the environment.

It's still the passing of an era. The original motion-picture film was nitrate-based. Not only was it highly flammable, it decomposed easily and rapidly (one of the reasons why so many silents are gone).

Safety film took over in the early 1950s, and it deteriorates too, just not the way nitrate stock does. And now, one major producer no longer makes it. Me? I'd like to see it stay around.

Silent Winter

Yes, this is a late announcement, but I'm doing it anyway. San Francisco's Castro Theatre is showing silent films all day tomorrow (February 16).

The schedule:

10 a.m.: Snow White (starring Marguerite Clark)

12 p.m.: Buster Keaton short features

2:30 p.m.: The Thief of Bagdad (starring Douglas Fairbanks)

7:00 p.m.: My Best Girl (starring Mary Pickford)

9:00 p.m.: Faust (starring Emil Jannings)

Ticket prices:

$15 General / $13 Members / $5 Children under 12

Timeline Films

Timeline Films is an American film production company that has made several documentaries about stars of the silent screen. Most of the documentaries concern women of that era - Theda Bara, Clara Bow, Mary Pickford, Olive Thomas - but a couple of men have found their way in; specifically, Cecil B. De Mille and Buddy Rogers.

The movies are well researched and narrated by various modern Hollywood stars, including Ted Danson, Jane Fonda, and Charlize Theron. The filmmakers have done silent film fans a great service with their documentaries, showing us rare footage of films that are now lost, such as a short bit of Theda Bara's Cleopatra (only one of her films survives in full), and clips of Olive Thomas, a name now known by only a few die-hard fans.

To purchase one of their excellent productions, click here.

February 1, 1966

The day Buster Keaton died of cancer.

It's so ironic - Buster was the youngest of the "Big Three" (the others being Chaplin and Lloyd), yet he was the first to go. They died in reverse order of age: Buster, Harold, Charlie.

Buster will always be the king, in my opinion. Far more talented than Lloyd or Chaplin, more inventive, more creative. Engineer, dancer, stuntman, acrobat, filmmaker, comedian, actor.

He was well aware (unlike Chaplin) that the camera was another participant in films, and made full use of it. For Buster, the camera was just as important as anyone and everyone in front of it. He used his innate skill to make eleven exposures of himself on one strip of film (something the cameraman said was impossible) in The Playhouse. He put the camera underwater in The Navigator. He had an understanding of the mechanics of filmmaking that remains unparalleled.

And he could be sentimental without being maudlin, unlike Chaplin, who always begged the audience to feel sorry for his Little Tramp character. Lloyd was better at sentiment (as in Girl Shy), but Buster was the Everyman, the human Timex, who rolled with the punches and got the girl in the end.

Sherlock, Jr. was, and is, a true landmark of filmmaking; every single gag works perfectly. Buster even acted as stunt double for one of his costars, because he knew how to take a fall better than anyone in the business. Riding the handlebars of a motorcycle directly across the path of an oncoming train; hanging from a water tower and falling to the train tracks as the force of the water causes him to loosen his grip (he broke his neck doing that stunt, by the way); jumping "through" a person and the fence behind that person; playing an extremely complicated game of pool. Buster could do it all.

Here's to the greatest genius Hollywood will ever know.

Cinecon 2012

From August 30 to September 3, Cinecon will delight lovers of silent and classic sound films.

Two silent titles (not all of the films to be shown have been posted on the Cinecon website) are Harold Lloyd's Hot Water, and an early John Ford film, Upstream.

More information can be found at the website.

The Master, Restored

The British Film Institute has restored nine silent and early sound films from the Master of Suspense himself, Alfred Hitchcock.

The films are:

The Pleasure Garden
Blackmail
The Ring
The Lodger: A Tale of the London Fog
Downhill
Easy Virtue
The Farmer's Wife
Champagne
The Manxman

An additional treat can be found in the restorations; an extra twenty minutes of footage from The Pleasure Garden were discovered, allowing the BFI not only to restore the film, but lengthen it, too. Blackmail is being released with a score by Neil Brand - and he's amazing; I've heard his impromptu piano accompaniment to several silent films at Le Giornate del Cinema Muto in Pordenone.  

Hats off to Martin Scorsese and his Film Foundation, which raised most of the money for the restoration! The BFI will hold a festival of all Hitchcock's films during the London Olympiad, and two actors from his films - Tippi Hedren (The Birds, Marnie) and Bruce Dern (Marnie, Family Plot) will speak at the event.

Ray Bradbury

What is a post about Ray Bradbury doing on a silent-film blog?

It's a tribute. As most, if not all, of you know, Mr. Bradbury has passed away. I began to read his stories and books at an early age, and I've been hooked ever since. He wrote of one of his early influences, Lon Chaney, especially in his most famous role, that of Eric in The Phantom of the Opera. I own The Lon Chaney Collection, in which Bradbury speaks of Chaney's characters - that he typified the things in us we felt could never be loved; the fear that nobody, ever, could love us.

Spread a little stardust upon us, Mr. Bradbury.