silent movie – The Movie Gourmet

Cinequest: THE WIND

May 13, 2018March 11, 2018 by movie gourmet

The Wind is usually named as Lillian Gish’s top silent film performance. Gish plays a young pioneer woman who is stranded in a vast sparsely populated Western desert. She marries one of her several suitors and takes up housekeeping in an isolated cabin, with only the perpetually howling wind for company. She has to “wash” her dishes in sand. Unsurprisingly, she can’t take it and is driven to desperate measures.

Fortunately, I got the chance to see The Wind at Cinequest on the big screen of a period movie palace, the California Theatre, accompanied by world-renowned Dennis James on the Mighty Wurlitzer organ.

Dennis James traveled with Lillian Gish as accompanist when she would present movies. For The Wind he added two colleagues on wind machines. Before the film, James read a florid movie mag account of a visit to the set of The Wind in the Mojave. I recommend Sal Pizarro’s excellent profile of Dennis James in the Mercury News.

James’ organ accompaniment and the large audience made all the difference. I had watched The Wind by myself on tv and started using the fast forward on the remote. But there’s lots of humor embedded in The Wind which is activated by the laughing of audience members.

It’s easy to appreciate how Gish rose to stardom. Her slight, delicate frame is offset by her spirited charisma. She’s great when three men propose to her on the same evening and she’s not feelin’ it. Gish, Dennis James’ Wurlitzer and the California Theatre made for a wonderful cinema experience.

DVD/Stream of the Week: SEVEN CHANCES – Buster Keaton’s genius on the run

July 14, 2019January 10, 2017 by movie gourmet

I thought that I knew the work of Buster Keaton, but somehow I had never seen Seven Chances. It features a phenomenal chase scene that rates with the very best in cinema history – What’s Up Doc?, The French Connection, Bullitt!, Raiders of the Lost Ark and Keaton’s own The General.

Keaton’s character publishes a public offer of marriage and gets way more takers than he can handle. There’s a very funny scene where he sits in a church to reflect on his situation and woman after woman seats herself next to and around him; he is oblivious to the fact that each of them is there to marry HIM. The church fills up with prospective wives, and, 30 minutes into the movie, he flees, with a horde of veiled would-be brides in pursuit. The chase is on.

Keaton is off and running and running and running, in a ridiculously long sprint though the city’s downtown and rail yards and into the hills. Amazingly, he did all of his own stunts, including leaping over an abyss and being swung around by a railroad crane. His race with a cascade of falling boulders is pure genius. You keep asking yourself, “How did they perform that stunt with 1925 technology?”

Keaton understood the comedic power of excess, and the sheer magnitude of the frustrated brides is hilarious I think I can see the inspiration for the hundreds of crashing cars at the end of The Blues Brothers.

When he made Seven Chances in 1925, Keaton was only 30 years old and had just directed his first feature two years before. He had just made the classics Sherlock, Jr. and The Navigator in 1924. He was about to make his masterpiece The General in 1926 and Steamboat Bill, Jr. in 1928. Talking pictures changed the industry in 1929, and Keaton signed a disastrous contract with MGM in 1930. Keaton was to direct only three more features in his career (all unaccredited). MGM took away his artistic freedom, and no studio kingpin knew what to do with him in the talking era. Keaton took to drink and went dark for decades.

I watched all 56 minutes of Seven Chances once by myself and the final 26-minute chase scene again with my wife and nephew. I viewed Seven Chances on Turner Classic Movies. It’s also available to rent on DVD from Netflix and to stream on Amazon Instant. You can also find the entire film, probably as an illegal bootleg, on YouTube.

A baseball time capsule: The Busher

August 21, 2010 by moviegourmet

On August 24, Turner Classic Movies is broadcasting the 1919 silent film The Busher. It may not be a great movie, but it is an excellent document of baseball 90 years ago. In 1919, John McGraw was managing the Giants, Ty Cobb was in his heyday, Babe Ruth pitched 17 games for the BoSox and the White Sox were fixing the World Series. If you want to see how baseball looked back then (how the fans and umpires dressed, how the catcher squatted, etc.), watch this movie.