Cinesation 2010

[MichiganJ]

Last weekend's Cinesation, which took place at the Lincoln Theater (opened its doors in 1915 and renovated in 1982) in Massillon, Ohio, was the first film festival I've been able to attend and the fine folks of The Great Lakes Cinephile Society set an extremely high bar for other festivals to reach. Four days of movies provided me the opportunity to see my first silent films on the big screen, with live accompaniment, as well as some unusual talkies. I suppose saying that Cinesation was Sensational is too obvious, but there isn't a better word!

Thursday (evening)

THE BLACK CAT--I was expecting the Karloff/Lugosi masterpiece (I purposely didn't read the extensive notes on each film until after viewing) but instead was mildly disappointed that this was the 1941 old dark house mystery/comedy (ala CAT AND THE CANARY) which starred Broderick Crawford and Hugh Herbert. Bela Lugosi appears--for a total of about five minutes--and it was great seeing him on the big screen, but the film, while okay, is nothing special (It's also one of two and half films in the festival that I'd already seen. This version is part of the The Bela Lugosi Collection on DVD--which, since Lugosi's role is so minuscule, is why the film feels disappointing.)

THE CRADLE OF COURAGE--Yes! A William S. Hart silent on the big screen. While I think I prefer Hart in westerns, this is a fine film with Hart playing a member of a family of criminals who wants to leave the life of crime and go straight. Actual San Francisco locations add to the drama very effectively.

ALICE IN WONDERLAND (1933)--Okay, this a dreadfully bad film and shows how difficult it is to do a screen version of the Alice books. Episodic and with no forward momentum, it's really the cameos of the all-star cast that makes this worth watching. Except most of the stars are hidden in costumes that prevent actually seeing them (my bet is most weren't even in them and just did voice-overs). W.C. Fields' Humpty steals the show (although Edward Everett Horton's Mad Hatter was pretty fun, too.)

Friday (bright and early)

MIDNIGHT AT THE OLD MILL (1916) My first Ham and Bud short. Nothing special, but certainly not as dreadful as many silent film comedy fans have reported. Maybe I need to see more of Ham & Bud to understand the animus.

ALICE IN WONDERLAND (1915) Far, far more successful adaptation, with costumes that clearly influenced the '33 version. The outdoor locations added enormously to the film (there's nothing like seeing two human-sized lobsters emerging from the ocean!) and Carroll's dialog worked much better in titles. Oddly though, there was no Tea Party (perhaps the footage is missing--either that or back in 1915 everyone felt represented.)

A FOOL AND HIS MONEY (1912) A very interesting short by Alice Guy-Blache, which featured an all African-American cast. The story is basic, and not completely without stereotypes, but it was well told and was delightfully unexpected.

THE DEVIL (1921) This is a GREAT film and is also the debut for star George Arliss. Arliss is a pretend friend who negatively manipulates relationships for fun and loves to watch the results. Arliss is pure ham in the best possible way.

FRIDAY (afternoon)

THE SOLDIER AND THE LADY (1937) Wow did I ever enjoy this film. Apparently the third of five filmed versions of Jules Verne's Michael Stragoff, a story of which I was completely unfamiliar with and enjoyed immensely. About a Russian courier (Anton Walbrook) who has some important papers to deliver to the Russian army (and as the hero, it means we are rooting for the Tsar, which in itself was interesting), this version seamlessly used footage from a previous version making the film look like it had a cast of thousands. Action packed!

WHILE THE PATIENT SLEPT (1935) A pretty good mystery/comedy which teamed detective Guy Kibbee and nurse Aline MacMahon (who was great at delivering her one-liner barbs). Harmless fun, with some pretty good laughs and the two unconventional leads had great chemistry.

BETTER DAYS (1927) Moving at a snail's pace, this melodrama about a mother who is literally willing to go to the poor house by funding her ne'er-do-well son's gambling habit has one great thing going for it: Dorothy Devore. Devore is the mother's ward, and she is full of spunk, particularly during a scene where she kicks the son's and his girlfriend's butt. That fight alone (both authentic and funny) makes the film well worth watching.

Friday (evening)

SNOOKY'S LABOR LOST (1921) Pretty amusing, especially if you are into the chimpanzee-dressed-as-a-human kinda thing. Generally I'm not, but ol' Snook really could do some amazing things.

WHEN THE CLOUDS ROLL BY (1919) The other film I'd already seen, but how GREAT was it seeing Doug Fairbanks on the big screen? THIS GREAT! This is the film where a nefarious "scientist" is trying to drive Doug to suicide, and without question, the nightmare scene Doug has--where his personified dinner is chasing him--is laugh-out-loud funny. Doug leaps and bounds all over the place and the big screen simply heightens his magnetism. The film does suffer a bit, from that tacked on (but elaborate) ending, but so what? Who can complain about a little more Doug?

SONG OF THE OPEN ROAD (1944) I missed this one because I was in the lobby talking with someone who had been friends with Louise Brooks for the last thirty years of her life. Not only that, but he'd worked with Carl Dreyer on ORDET and had plenty of stories about JOAN (we'd met when he'd asked me what I thought was the greatest film, which of course is PASSION OF JOAN Of ARC. Good thing he didn't ask me what the best film is…) Sorry to have missed Jane Powell on the big screen, but I learned an awful lot!

SATURDAY (still bright and early)

THE WEST-BOUND LIMITED (1923) A real corker of a train film that mixes melodrama with plenty of no-holds barred action. All of the expected sequences are here (someone trapped on the tracks and two trains on the same track speeding towards each other) but they are marvelously handled and incorporated well into the plot, and there is just a lot of authentic driving the train shots that make this a really fine film.

LET'S GO NATIVE (1930) A wacky pre-code that makes little sense but is nevertheless great fun. Kay Francis has a small but important role, but the film belongs to Jeanette MacDonald--how could it not? She's in lingerie much of the time (and again, this is the big screen!). Yowza! (For the ladies the opening sequences include Eugene Pallette.)

Saturday (afternoon)

JUST PALS (1920) I actually have this in the Ford at Fox set, but it's still unopened. Jack Ford tackles a fairly predictable plot, but by focusing on the characters he makes the story human and quite riveting. Buck Jones is an adult Huck Finn who learns responsibility when he teams up with a young sidekick (wonderfully payed by George Stone). Pretty great film. (Gotta open that set.)

LIBERTY BELLES (1914) One of my favorites at the festival, but I was clearly the only one who thought it was any good. A 3-reel feature starring Dorothy Gish (!!!!) and featuring Jack Pickford. The story has Gish and her girlfriend trying to sneak out of their college (or boarding school, I was a bit unclear), to meet with their boyfriends. There are some nonsensical subplots involving the girls' fathers, and, like many two-reel comedies of the day, when the plot starts to fizzle another is introduced that bears little relation to the preceding shenanigans, but so what? Dorothy is gorgeous, and she is absolutely natural in her performance! The paper print looked pretty terrific, too. For 1914, I remain impressed.

STAGESTRUCK (1917) If one has any doubts about the folks at Cinesation how about the fact that they show a film that is missing the first two reels! Again starring Dorothy Gish, the plot is easy to follow (after a brief recap of the missing two reels) and here we get to see Dorothy showing off her dramatic acting chops. The story is fairly basic, about an aspiring actress, the boy she loves and a marriage that may or may not have actually taken place, and I hope that the opening reels are found to make the film complete (I suspect that the opening showcased Gish's comedic talents, some.)

THE MISSING MILLIONAIRE (1917) This is the 1/2 film I've seen and again major kudos to the Cinesation gang for showing this, a film of little value except to show how sneaky some of the studios were (are?) It's basically two reels of Doug Fairbanks' feature THE MATRIMANIAC, but re-edited and with new titles to make it a "new" film. How 'bout them apples! Understandably it makes very little sense, but it was really insightful to see. That and the chance to see Doug again on the big screen (and, all too briefly, Constance Talmadge, too.)

The afternoon ended with a series of short films presented by Eric Greyson including a Tribute to John Barrymore (which included some color tests from his HAMLET and a terrific Puppetoon, TOOLBOX BALLET.)

SATURDAY (evening)

Throughout the series, special guest Dr. Harriet Fields, granddaughter of W. C. would talk about and answer questions about her grandfather and his films. The only Fields' features I'd seen were his surviving silents, and it was great seeing him in some of his cameo roles the previous nights. This night, though, Fields was the star.

THE GOLF SPECIALIST is a Fields short that showcases one of his famous stage bits. Funny as all get out, and I don't even play golf.

YOU'RE TELLING ME (1934) A terrific film that is not only very funny, but it is plotted well and has some terrific dramatic moments that Fields delivers almost too well. It also features the same Golf Specialist routine, and it was very interesting at how he altered some things, but kept much of the bit exactly the same. By the way , equally as funny the second time. (I'm seriously going to have to check out other Fields features.)

CRAZY HOUSE (1943) An Olsen and Johnson (Who? I'd never heard of them.) comedy that is as frantic and hysterical as it gets. At least during the opening ten minutes, where the two are in a parade heading towards Universal Studious. Everyone on the lot, when they hear Olsen and Johnson are coming, flee for their lives (lots of cameos in this one). Unfortunately this one started too late and I had a pre-arranged 11pm phone call that I had to make, so I missed most of what looked to be a pretty wacky film.

Sunday (bright and ever-so-slightly less early)

FORBIDDEN WOMAN (1920) Clara Kimball Young is a French actress who has been having an affair with an admirer until she learns that he is married. Something drastic happens and she flees to the States and begins a romance with an author, who happens to have a sister who is currently in France… This is an okay film, with a terrific opening but which depends on one of those eye-rolling coincidences that isn't even really exploited.

BROKEN CHAINS (1922) This film will remind you of lots of other films, most notably TOL'ABLE DAVID (it even sports a knock down, drag 'em out fight with DAVID's Ernest Torrence), but who cares. It's still wildly entertaining! Malcolm McGregor is a coward who goes to his father's lumber camp to become a man. There he finds a pre-flapper Colleen Moore (who looks ravishing in her long hair), who is married to brute Torrence. Nothing unexpected happens, but the ride is still fun!

Sunday (afternoon)

IN OLD MISSOURI (1940) Alas, the previous night's phone call dictated that I had to leave Ohio and head east to New Jersey, thus missing this, the last film of the festival.

What a time I had. From the very outset, the two women who worked in the lobby--the unsung heroines of the festival--took my registration and upon learning about my interest in Dorothy Gish gave me directions to the Gish house (where Lillian and Dorothy stayed when they wanted a break from the road), as well as told me every nearby restaurant and their menus, it was a welcoming and warm "family", of which I now feel a part of.

Finally, it was incredible being able to listen to the musical accompaniments by Ben Model and Dr. Philip Carli. On the rare occasion where a film wasn't holding my complete attention, I would look over and watch them as they performed. It was fascinating seeing how they would watch the film and anticipate the action and dramatics and alter their music accordingly. During Devore's fight scene in BETTER DAYS, for instance, the music first reflected the action, but quickly, when realizing it was also humorous, a comedic element was snuck into the music. Pretty great.

Can't wait 'til next year!

[moira finnie]

Thanks so much for sharing this experience here. I've only seen a few of the movies you mentioned, but to see them all in one weekend must have been exhilarating (or exhausting). Isn't Masillon near Canton, Ohio?

[Birdy]

CONGRATS on a fun filled weekend. So glad you got to go and thanks for telling us all about it. I think Doug on the big screen sounds like the highlight of the weekend.
B

[Ann Harding]

THE SOLDIER AND THE LADY (1937) Wow did I ever enjoy this film. Apparently the third of five filmed versions of Jules Verne's Michael Stragoff, a story of which I was completely unfamiliar with and enjoyed immensely. About a Russian courier (Anton Walbrook) who has some important papers to deliver to the Russian army (and as the hero, it means we are rooting for the Tsar, which in itself was interesting), this version seamlessly used footage from a previous version making the film look like it had a cast of thousands. Action packed!

Thanks for the report MichiganJ! Actually, I have seen this version of Michel Strogoff (a novel written by Jules Verne who never went to Russia). I felt like a watered down version. Anton Walbrook is his own excellent self, but the rest is very disappointing. In fact, Walbrook (then still called Wohlbrück) starred in a double version (French and German) of Strogoff before going to Hollywood for this (unique) American film. I am very biased as I have seen Michel Strogoff (1926, Victor Tourjansky) with Ivan Mosjoukine. It's vastly superior in terms of direction, narrative, locations and pacing. I really hope this one will be available one day on DVD.

[srowley75]

This sounds wonderful, and I'm sorry I was unable to go. If they have another one next year, I'll definitely try to be there, school permitting.

-S.

[MichiganJ]

Thanks so much for sharing this experience here. I've only seen a few of the movies you mentioned, but to see them all in one weekend must have been exhilarating (or exhausting).

Actually it was both exhilarating and exhausting. One of the folks from the Cinephile Society noted my enthusiasm Friday afternoon. On Sunday morning, he looked at me and said, "Yup, it's an endurance test." Who knew watching movies could be so tiring?

Isn't Masillon near Canton, Ohio?

Looking at the map, Canton looks to be just east of Massillon. Akron is about 20-miles north and the local news was from Cleveland, which is north of Akron. There was a very small-town feel about Massillon. Each store window had a photo of a High School football player, and they also all closed early for Friday night's big game. No wonder that Dorothy and Lillian would want to live there to escape the hustle and bustle of the road. (Lots of big front porches, too.)

I think Doug on the big screen sounds like the highlight of the weekend.

I've seen most of Doug's films and loved them on home video, but his energy is contagious when seen on the big screen. Surely one of the highlights. (Seeing Dorothy Gish, a personal favorite, on the big screen was way up there, too.)

I'd also forgotten that on Thursday night there was an unannounced reel shown that was utterly surreal and fantastic. It featured brief clips (nothing over 10-seconds I'd say) of various actresses, apparently cut from nitrate and then edited together by an unknown projectionist. It contained dozens of images of actresses from the silent era thru the early 60s I think. Not only was it great to be able to see so many stars on the big screen (Garbo from Flesh and the Devil, Vivien Leigh as Cleopatra), but the oddly surreal nature of the reel was pretty magical.

I have seen this version of Michel Strogoff (a novel written by Jules Verne who never went to Russia). I felt like a watered down version. Anton Walbrook is his own excellent self, but the rest is very disappointing.

I'm sure other versions may be better, but I've never seen nor heard of the story before, and this one, playing when it did (in the afternoon), was a perfect popcorn film. (By the way, the popcorn was fresh and only a dollar a bag!)

This sounds wonderful, and I'm sorry I was unable to go. If they have another one next year, I'll definitely try to be there, school permitting.

This was the 20th Anniversary of the Cinesation Film Preservation Festival and I sure hope they keep going strong. Hope to see you next year!

[MichiganJ]

This past weekend I made my way back to Massillon, Ohio to attend Cinesation 2011. I didn't think it was possible, but the great folks at the Great Lakes Cinephile Society put on an even better show than last year. Once again the brilliant Phil Carli and Ben Model provided live musical accompaniment, which simply elevated every silent shown, and there were plenty, most in terrific looking prints. Lots of early talkies, too!

This year I walked around the town a bit more, making sure to cross Lillian Gish Blvd and saw this mural. http://www.indeonline.com/news/x6265962 ... al?photo=1
And here you can see the Lincoln Theater, built in 1915 for Triangle films. (This year Cinesation featured a number of Triangle films, which is pretty cool.) http://www.welcometosilentmovies.com/fe ... /gish2.htm


Thursday evening (6:00)

The Phantom Foe (1920)
Seven episodes of a 15-Chapter serial, once thought lost but now newly restored, were played throughout the weekend. A family is stalked by a mysterious person who wears an over-sized fur coat, fur hat, and a fur-face mask. (Luckily it's winter--unluckily, lots of the action takes place indoors!) During the cliff-hangers, it's mostly Juanita Hansen who is in peril, and on hand is Warner Oland--who has little to do but be at the scenes where all the mayhem has taken place. Could he be the fur-wearing bad guy? Anyone up for herring? The red kind, naturally.

Like most serials this started off a snooze but got considerably better with each episode. The final chapters will be aired next year! A whole year with a gun pointing right at the unsuspecting Ms. Hanson!

Fighters of the Saddle (1929)
A rather sluggish low-budget western, one of Art "the Cowboy's Cowboy" Acord's last features. Standard hokum, with the the good guys being all good and the bad all bad, except for one who has an unmotivated change-of-heart and becomes good. Even the fight scenes are dull. The print looked great, though.

The Phantom Foe (1920) Episode 2

The Wizard of Oz (1925)
One of the few films I'd seen before, Larry Semon's Oz is considerably better on the big screen, but is still pretty awful. Gags run on too long and the whole time in Oz just feels like a worn out Larry Semon short, just longer. It's too bad, too, because the cast is great and I still like the opening sequences in Kansas. Gorgeous print!

Mississippi Showboats (1933)
A Fox short with silent footage (with intertitles) of Showboats as the make their way down the river then morphs into a Newsreel-like presentation of highlights from the actual shows. Very interesting.

The Bad One (1930)
Dolores Del Rio sizzles as Lita, a Spanish dancer in a Marseilles café who hands out her room key to visiting sailers--only it's a key that doesn't fit her lock. American sailor Edmund Lowe catches on quick, though, and soon there's romance and lots more, including: deception, jealousy and a prison riot! Comedy, romance, melodrama and a prison break, all in 70-minutes. Add in Del Rio's dress and this is one great precode!

Friday

The Phantom Foe (1920) Episode 3

The Gun Woman (1918)
A terrific western directed by Frank Borzage and starring Texas Guinan as a woman who runs a dance hall and winds up falling for a gambler while the nerdy guy from the East falls for her. The plot moves from romance to melodrama to revenge, with Guinan's tough character drawing more than a passing resemblance to those played by William S. Hart. Gritty, smart and unsentimental.

Found in the Archives
James Cozart of the Library of Congress presented three fascinating film fragments.
--My Baby (1912) is a Griffith short starring Mary Pickford with a brief glimpse of Dorothy and Lillian Gish. The scenes were in shooting or printing order with no intertitles, but like a puzzle, the plot is soon discernible. The print is gorgeous, as is Pickford on the big screen.

--The House Built Upon Sand (1916) All that survives is reel two of this 5-reeler and it's a real shame because it features Lillian Gish playing a spoiled rich girl who gets married, but on her honeymoon her husband takes her to a secluded home without even the basic amenities.

--Love's Prisoner (1915) Although only the first five of seven reels survive, this Olive Thomas feature was a lot of fun, with an insane plot that got more wacky with each title. Thomas plays a young girl whose ex-con father dies in prison after being arrested for a crime he didn't commit. To help support her two sisters, Thomas marries the rich Lord Cleveland, who, in a single intertitle, dies and, because he's British, his estate goes to a nephew and not his American wife. (It was one looooong intertitle.) Thomas does get to keep the house, though; but with no income, she is forced to go back into the life of crime as "The Bird." Oh, and she falls in love with a police investigator, too.

Little Ol' Bosco and the Pirates (1937)
A terrific Harman-Ising cartoon from MGM. Surprisingly not racist at all, although there are stereotypes, the short is basically a young boy who is bringing cookies to his grandmother. On his way he imagines seeing a pirate ship with animal pirates (many frogs), that are affectionate caricatures of Louis Armstrong and Fats Waller.

Hooray For Love (1935)
This is the formula back-stage musical romance that we've all seen many times before, and with good reason--they are so much fun! Ann Sothern and Gene Raymond star but the real stars are Bill Robinson, Fats Waller and the fabulous Jeni Legon who share the bring-down-the-house number. Lionel Stander brings some good laughs as a Russian director, too.

Double Trouble (1916)
A so-so Mack Swain short, which also stars the Dolly Sisters as twins. Swain is married to one sister, and unbeknownst to the couple, the other sister and her husband show up at the same hotel. Naturally each husband thinks he's seeing his wife with another man. It's a one-joke film--rinse and repeat--but it's also only one reel.

Double Trouble (1915)
More Douglas Fairbanks on the big screen! Alas, this feature, directed by Christy Cabanne and supervised by D.W. Griffith is not that good. Too bad, too, because the premise is fun. An effeminate Fairbanks is hit on the head during a robbery and becomes a womanizing successful business man with ambitions to become mayor. After five years, he's discovered by some old friends and they enlist a spiritualist to bring their old friend's personality back. From there, Doug keeps switching personalities until, of course, the best of each gradually merge. Missed opportunity for some great comedy, but still great to see Doug.

The Cop (1928)
Donald Crisp directed this terrific Warner Brothers-esque crime picture. William Boyd is the overnight drawbridge operator in NY who aides the wounded gangster Robert Armstrong. Armstrong repays Boyd's hospitality by stealing Boyd's overcoat and cash, and Boyd decides that he will become a cop. Alan Hale is the police captain and complications start piling up when Boyd learns that Armstrong is using a coat store as a front for his nefarious doings. Toss in an attraction to Armstrong's moll (Jacqueline Logan) and actual NYC location shooting and you've got one suspense and satisfying crime drama.

George White's Scandals (1934)
Another backstage musical romance, but this one is decidedly more precode than Hooray For Love; in one instance, shockingly so. Alice Faye (in her screen debut) and Rudy Vallee star with Jimmy Durante providing some of the comedy. But really, this is all about the musical numbers and how much skin and innuendo can be shown and offered in the lyrics to the musical numbers. In short: a lot. Those numbers that aren't specifically about you-know-what are often long and tedious (Durante is featured in "My Dog Loves Your Dog" and it goes on forever), but the numbers that are about "wink-wink" feature routines that would make Busby Berkley blush. But, and realizing that we live in a PC day and age (thankfully, if you ask me), it is unconscionable to feature the "Meglin Kiddies" (looks like girls between the ages of 3 and 6) dressed as showgirls and performing a risque number. Worse, though, is that the number ends with a six-year old doing a fan dance while reprising Faye's "Nasty Man." Seriously, PC or not, it's scary that this passed as entertainment at any time.

The Puzzling Billboard (1917)
An interesting but ultimately a little tedious short where a billboard advertising one business is changed by various paperhangers who paper over one single letter, MINKS becoming SINKS, for example. Hard not to play along, but still too long.

Chestnuts (1916)
A non-animated cartoon, essentially one or two panels of various strips with the set up and punch line.

Surprise Surprise (1937)
A lost Three Stooges film is actually a promo film for kids in the theater audience to remember to get their own movie viewing machine (a cardboard mutoscope) by buying some Farina.

Plenty Below Zero (1943)
After a few trailers we saw this Columbia cartoon about a crow who doesn't fly south for the winter and how he finds food. (Hint: a fox carries a smorgasbord in a backpack.)

Punch Drunks (1934)
I'd already seen this, the second Columbia Stooges comedy where Curly becomes a fighter after hearing Larry play Pop Goes the Weasel on the violin.

The Half Naked Truth (1932)
Lee Tracy is Lee Tracy, which at this time at night (after 11) was just too much Lee Tracy for me. Watched the first twenty minutes, just enough to see that top-billed Lupe Velez was really just a second or third fiddle to Tracy and then gave up. Should have stayed, because word is it got better.

Saw some truly wonderful films both Saturday and Sunday. Stay tuned...

[MichiganJ]

As promised...

Saturday

Stuff's Errand of Mercy (1934)
An english dubbed French-made stop-motion animation short about a stuffed dog's travails to obtain an orange for a little sick girl (she and her mother are live action). The dog wanders the back alley streets and encounters all sorts of evils, including chicken skeletons and the Devil himself. Interesting and a bit creepy…in a good way, of course. (Who can resist chicken skeletons?)

M'Liss (1936)
While Anne Shirely's M'Liss doesn't have nearly the same spunk as Mary Pickford's, this remake was considerably better than I was expecting. A small town rough and tumble girl with an alcoholic father falls for the new school teacher, who himself may be hiding something from his past.

The Phantom Foe (1920) Episode 4

White Oak (1921)
A pretty good late William S. Hart film that has plenty of action, including an Indian attack on a circled wagon train, and an amazing dog that helps Hart escape from prison (you just gotta see it). Hart, with his hair dyed jet-black, is in fine form and the print was amazing.

You Made Me Love You (1933)
This British film MUST be rediscovered, for when it is, it will surely be among the favorite classic romantic comedies. Monty Banks directs Stanley Lupino (Ida's father) and a ravishing Thelma Todd in this modernized retelling of The Taming of the Shrew. There's a fabulous meet-cute right at the beginning, and a smitten Lupino, a song writer, searches for Todd. He writes a hit song about his search (Miss Whatshername) and soon finds out that she's the daughter of a music publisher. It's not too long before he also finds out that his true love has a bit of a temper. Todd has never been funnier, nor sexier, and the entire cast has a great time, as I assure everyone who sees this true gem of a film will, too.

The Phantom Foe (1920) Episode 5

Mistaken Orders (1926)
This railroad film plays more like a western. It starts a bit slow, but hold on to your caboose because the final reels are non-stop action. While the bare bones plot centers around a railroader's son who needs to prove himself to his old man, it's really his sister, Helen Holmes (she who specialized in doing her own stunts), who is the star. Two trains head towards each other, fistfights on the depot rooftop, a speeding engine with a bad guy and a good guy duking it out and not paying attention to the fact that the drawbridge is up (Holmes speeds past in her car, climbs a conveniently placed rope that dangles at the edge of the bridge, and…not telling!), this is a perfect Saturday afternoon popcorn flick. Nice print, too.

The Michigan Kid (1928)
Another film I'd seen before, but what was merely a pretty good film on TV really comes to life on the big screen. Well, the final special effects filled final reels do, anyway. Conrad Nagel and Renee Adoree star in this North Woods melodrama about two guys who fall for the same girl. Saddled with a bit too many coincidences, the plot can make you roll your eyes some, but the fabulous hair-raising climax with a raging forest fire and river rapids, which is brilliant conceived and executed, is well worth some of the preceding soap suds.

The Phantom Foe (1920) Episode 6

Feel My Pulse (1928)
Another film I've seen and also benefits from the big screen, this is a marvelous comedy starring the great Bebe Daniels as a hypochondriac who inherits a sanitarium that has been taken over by rum runners. A stiff Richard Arlen co-stars as the love interest, but chief bad-guy William Powell steals the show (well, not from Daniels, but from everyone else). Real crowd pleaser.

Federated Screen Review # 5 (1922)
One of the reasons I love this festival is the opportunity to see something like this. It's a newsreel featuring "candid" shots of various stars including Alice Joyce playing her piano, Marion Davies vacuuming her New York apartment (in heels and a gown), and best of all Mary Pickford taking pictures of Dorothy and Lillian Gish. Seeing the three of them together--not acting--was a real treat. The last shot had Lillian operating a movie camera, too.

Betty Takes a Hand (1918)
I take great pains to not read anything about the films being shown (I only know the titles) until after seeing them and this one was a huge surprise for it was another Olive Thomas feature, this time complete. And what a treat. Thomas exudes charm, and her smile is as infectious as she gorgeous. She plays a young woman who goes to stay with her rich aunt and cousin. When they abandon her to go on a cruise, Olive turns their home into a boarding house, with plenty of expected, but mostly unexpected results. There's a fabulous sequence where she and the father of the guy she loves wind up having to spend the night in an abandoned barn that is so--well, charming--that there's no question as to what made Thomas a star. Awesome print, too.

Is My Face Red (1932)
I'd just read the Winchell biography so was excited to see this one, and I wasn't a bit disappointed. Ricardo Cortez plays the fast-talking almost-rat. There's lots of funny lines, plenty of drama, and even a little suspense. Loved Helen Twelvetrees as Cortez's sometime girl (he really is a rat), and especially Jill Esmond as his secretary.

Sunday

The Phantom Foe (1920) Episode 7

Lord Jim (1925)
If this film were even slight better known it would be included among the list of all-time great silent films. An adaptation of the Conrad novel, this pulls no punches and makes no wrong steps. Percy Marmont (he of the early British Hitchcock films) stars as the sailor who has to live with a bad decision made while first mate aboard a ship captained by Noah Berry. He tries to find redemption on a Far East native island and in the arms of native woman Shirley Mason, but soon pirates arrive and…
Amazing film. Awesome print. (New restoration by the Library of Congress.)

The Showdown (1928)
It's almost not fare having two masterpieces shown back-to-back, but who's complaining? I loved this film, another tropical romance, this time reuniting Underworld stars George Bancroft, Evelyn Brent and Fred Kohler. Bancroft is an oil wildcatter drilling in the heat of the Central American jungle and Kohler is his rival, a company oil man. Out to make some quick money, a weak-willed Neil Hamilton shows up with his dark-haired beautiful wife (Brent, if you haven't guessed). The film oozes heat, and is uncomfortably claustrophobic, especially when the rains come. Wonderful performances by all, but especially Brent. Helen Lynch, playing the prostitute down river, is also terrific (and adds to the Red Dust comparisons.) Wonderful film and another awesome print.

A fairly long drive awaited, so I missed the afternoon showing of Mountain Rhythm (1943), a Weaver Brothers film.

Many thanks to the great folks of Massillon, The Great Lakes Cinephile Society, and musicians Ben Model and Dr. Philip Carli. See you next year. (Oh, and Go Tigers!)