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Silent program - METROPOLIS & Buster Keaton
Written by Filmshi
Thursday, 16 March 2006
This year, CineQuest's silent program featured a screening of
METROPOLIS and a night with BUSTER KEATON. Co-Presented by Stanford
Theatre Foundation, these films featured organ music by Christian
Elliot on the California Theater's Mighty Whirlitzer.
The first showing of the silent film program was METROPOLIS, Fritz Lang and Thea von Harbou's vision of a future city, circa 1927. To call Lang's early German films visionary doesn't credit them enough, and the work he did with his, then wife; von Harbou was a major part of his most prodigious period. METROPOLIS was one of many Expressionist films that saw new life when America got into the video market. This, along with its legacy as a landmark film, makes it something of an epic title. METROPOLIS was redistributed in theatres with rock scores by Queen and Billy Squire (among others); it was transformed into a graphic novel (as was THE CABINET OF DR. CALIGARI); and was later remade many times over. A story that bears repeating, von Harbou's beginning statements in inter-title form, reiterate the film's message: "between the hands and the brain, there must be a heart".
The second silent run was two films by Buster Keaton. The first was a 2 reeler called ONE WEEK. This film, of house building hijinx (a recurrent motif in the genre) begins when two newlyweds, (Sybil Seely and Buster Keaton.) receive a "build your own house" kit as a wedding gift. The house takes One Week to build and the film goes about documenting each toilsome day. On the first day, Buster's rival for Sybil changes the numbers on the boxes, and true to Keaton's comic genius, it takes us 5 days to see the result of that gag. The film even features a moment of self-awareness (also popular among the slapstick comics in the early 20's) in which Sybil takes a bath, loses the soap, can't reach without stepping out of the bath and in a moment of direct address, the cameraman puts his hand over the lens. It's a brilliant short and available on the SAPHEAD dvd.
The feature that followed was SEVEN CHANCES. This film spawned a million remakes, the most recent of which was THE BATCHELOR with Chris O'Donnell. Shy guy Keaton loves Mary but can't come out with it, so one day, facing the demise of his brokerage, he is approached by a lawyer who tells him his wealthy grandfather's will offers him $7 million dollars if he marries by 7pm on his 27th birthday. That being his 27th birthday, he runs over to Mary's, proposes and then tells her he needed to marry some girl or else he wouldn't get the money. Offended, she denies him, and dejected, he is talked into proposing willy-nilly at his local country club. Following this failure and humiliation, his partner decides to take out some "insurance" and puts a front-page ad in the newspaper alerting every able woman to come to a chapel to marry a soon to be millionaire. The girls come dressed (ridiculously) in bridal costume and when Keaton figures out what's happened, the runs through an pre-industrial Los Angeles as thousands of poorly costumed brides race after him.
These two films were booked and chosen by the Stanford Theatre foundation in keeping with CineQuest's theme of Maverick filmmaking. Cyndi Mortensen, Manager of the Stanford Theatre and the Stanford Theatre Foundation, was responsible for managing the booking of these films. Mortensen commented, "It's important to get the best prints possible."
The Stanford Theatre Foundation, presided over by David Packard, is a Palo Alto organization that exists to run the Stanford Theatre. In addition to running the theatre, Mortensen explained, "We have a Stanford Theatre film Lab in Hollywood, CA and that's something that we operate with the help of the UCLA film archive. We do film preservation at the lab there and we have a film collection."
In addition to their collection, Mortensen and the Foundation organize and put on revival festivals. "The Ronald Coleman festival will begin April 1st or the 15th, we're not sure which, but it will include every film that Ronald Coleman has made, so it'll be very exciting for us. It's bee about a year an a half finding the best prints, having new prints struck, seeing what's available, and it's the most complete festival of his films that, I think, has ever been presented."
Festivals 
