10HTE: Brian Darr

If you've read the seventeen other contributions to by tenth annual I Only Have Two Eyes project attempting to chronicle a hefty portion of the San Francisco Bay Area's best repertory and revival venues and screenings then you know the scene is still robust even as it constantly shifts, opening up new venues as others shutter or pull back. Now it's time for me to (finally) unveil my own top choices from my 2016 filmgoing as experienced from my seat in the audience among friends and strangers.

As usual, I'm essentially limiting my choices to films I'd never seen before at all, as I particularly value the ability I have in the Bay Area to let my first viewings of great films come in the kinds of environments they were intended for in the first place. It was nearly a half-century ago that Jean-Luc Godard said to Gene Youngblood, "I would never see a good movie for the first time on television." I don't strictly hold to this doctrine but I find my home viewings increasingly compromised and theatrical viewings increasingly precious in this distraction-driven era. I could create a shadow list of viewings of films I'd previously seen on television or in an otherwise-unideal circumstance, which came more alive through a 2016 cinema viewing. (Here's a try: Dumbo at the Paramount, In a Lonely Place at Noir City, I Am A Fugitive From a Chain Gang at the Castro, In the Street at the Crossroads festival, When A Woman Ascends the Stairs at BAMPFA, How To Survive A Plague at YBCA, The Grand Budapest Hotel at the Roxie, Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me at BAMPFA, Early Spring at BAMPFA, and Halloween at the New Mission.) But without further ado, here are the ten I'm "officially" picking as my 2016 I Only Have Two Eyes selections. Thanks to all my other contributors, to all you readers, and of course to the venues and the filmmakers, dead or alive, whose work made 2016 another grand one for my continuing cinematic self-education and enjoyment.

Heaven's Gate screen capture from Criterion DVD

Heaven's Gate, February 28, 2016

Though I'll definitely be watching the Oscar telecast this year (with reservations) in the hopes that I get to see my old blog-buddy Barry Jenkins accept (or at the minimum, see some of his Moonlight collaborators accept) an award or two, even with the temptation of seeing a newly-more-relevant cinematic titan, and one of the films that inspired it, on the Castro screen, last year I skipped the show without the tiniest shred of compunction in order to catch an extremely epic double-feature in the aforementioned cinema. San Francisco's grandest screen was the ideal place to finally view Michael Cimino's notorious film maudit, which I'm not so surprised to report is now my favorite of his films made up to that point: his 1980 Heaven's Gate. (I haven't delved into Year of the Dragon through Sunchaser but was less-than-thrilled by his swan-song segment of To Each His Own Cinema). It's a sprawling, misshapen masterpiece full of wisdom and folly and a wagon-load of scenes I will absolutely never forget even if I never watch it again- which I certainly will, especially if a 35mm print of this 219-minute cut shows up somewhere again, as it surprisingly did for this Vilmos Zsigmond-tribute showing paired with the also exceptional America America which provided the Haskell Wexler half of the pairing in honor of two great, now-deceased cinematographers. That Cimino joined those two in the pantheon of departed masters only a few months later and that a President was elected who would certainly hate the pro-immigrant themes of these two films soon after that, makes the showing feel all the more special nearly a year later.

Foreign Correspondent, March 20, 2016

I made it back home from a weekend trip to Alfred Hitchcock's Sonoma County stomping grounds just in time to race to Palo Alto's Stanford Theatre for the final screening of his second Hollywood film, which is my second-to-last of his Hollywood films to view (I still haven't seen Topaz). Perhaps a decade or so ago I made a vow never again to watch a Hitchcock film for the first time on home video, and I've broken it only once since (for his silent Champagne, which I missed at the Castro in 2013 to catch a Stanford showing of The Ten Commandments). I'm glad I didn't and waited for this formative, pure entertainment whose 1940 thrills still feel so visceral on a big screen. I only wish I had been able to make it to the same venue in the fall when it showed the ever-rarer Waltzes From Vienna, which marks the end of the string of his British films (beginning with Juno and the Paycock) which, along with the much-later Jamaica Inn, I haven't been able to catch in a cinema yet and thus remain gaps in my Hitchcography. At least I saw several other excellent films from the Stanford's Vienna-themed series (including Spring Parade and Liebelei) and other great 2016 screenings (Hold Back the Dawn, The Ghost and Mrs. Muir, A Midsummer Night's Dream) at my hands-down favorite south-of-San Francisco screening venue.

Black Sunday screen capture from Anchor Bay DVD

Black Sunday, April 7, 2016

A 2002 Yerba Buena Center For the Arts retrospective is where I first became acquainted with the visionary, technically audacious cinema of Italian master Mario Bava, whose films like Kill Baby Kill, Five Dolls For an August Moon and Twitch of the Death Nerve make him my personal favorite international horror director from the period between Jacques Tourneur's and David Cronenberg's peaks in that genre. But I couldn't see everything in that 15-year-old retro, so I'd never before seen his very first feature film as an uncredited writer and a credited director. It's appropriate that I return to the scene of the crime (YBCA) to finally view this eerie and intense 1960 film, which not only made a star out of Barbara Steele but also allowed Bava to emerge with a fully-formed style (honed by years as a cinematographer). YBCA's all-35mm Gothic Cinema series was an overall 2016 highlight, also allowing me a chance to finally see wonderfully spooky films like James Whale's The Old Dark House and Jack Clayton's The Innocents for the first time.

Quixote, May 22, 2016

Bruce Baillie is well-known as the founder of Canyon Cinema. He's also one of my very favorite living filmmakers and I'm so glad I had a chance to finally see two of his major works on 16mm for the first time in 2016. Though it was wonderful to see him down from Washington State introducing a screening of his first film On Sundays at New Nothing Cinema in September, an Artists' Television Access showing of his 1965 Quixote was even more precious. It was introduced by a more recent (though not current) Canyon executive director, Denah Johnston, who also showed a lovely film of her own called Sunflowers as well as the great Study of a River by then-gravely-ill master Peter Hutton, as examples of work inspired by Baillie's unique way of seeing. Quixote turns out to be truly monumental work of the proto-hippie counterculture, on the order of Baillie's post-hippie Quick Billy if not ever greater. Shot all over the American West and edited with the aplomb of the most skillful of the Soviet masters, it's Baillie's grand, righteous, sorrowfully patriotic/anti-patriotic statement all in one. Other 2016 repertory highlights in an experimental vein included 16mm showings of Thad Povey's Scratch Film Junkies' Saint Louise and Gunvor Nelson's Take Off at SOMArts (the latter also introduced by Johnston, the former by Craig Baldwin) and of Scott Stark's Angel Beach, Paul Clipson's Another Void and Rosario Sotelo's Flor Serpiente among other works at A.T.A.; both of these evenings were organized in conjunction with an undersung SOMArts exhibit called Timeless Motion that I had a very small hand in assisting in the installation of. I also loved seeing Ron Rice's The Flower Thief and Pat O'Neill introducing his Water & Power at BAMPFA, Caryn Cline showing Lucy's Terrace and her other films at the Exploratorium, Toney Merritt showing EF and many of his other films and Lynn Marie Kirby showing Stephanie Beroes's Recital at New Nothing, and Ishu Patel's Perspectrum and James Whitney's Lapis among others presented by Ben Ridgeway at Oddball (whose weekly screenings have sadly been put on hiatus). It was another good year in this regard.

Gate of Flesh screen capture from Criterion DVD

Gate of Flesh, May 28, 2016

I like the latest iteration of the Pacific Film Archive, now rebranded as BAMPFA, in its newly-built structure just a block or so from the Downtown Berkeley BART station. I don't love it yet, though, because it can't compete with fifteen years of memories made at the old corrugated-metal building further up the hill. It doesn't help that my approach to cinema-going doesn't seem to mesh quite as well with some of the patterns being established at the new venue; earlier showtimes, a reintroduction of the canon, more DCPs (the latter two may be related), etc. And I'm not quite used to the fact that though there are more seats, there also seem to be more sold-out shows; more than once I've arrived at the venue only to be turned away for lack of space, something that hadn't happened to me, no matter how spontaneous my arrival had been, in about a decade before 2016. But BAMPFA still allowed me to see some wonderful 35mm prints of films I'd never watched before, including several Maurice Pialat films, John Ford's The Long Voyage Home, Nick Ray's The Lusty Men, and a decent sampling of the Anna Magnani series that played in the fall. But my year's happiest personal discovery there was certainly that of Seijun Suzuki's 1964 Gate of Flesh, first released when he was a mere 41 (he's now 93 and counting!) It's a maximalist melodrama set in the world of makeshift brothels of post-war Tokyo at it's bombedest-out, filled with tremendous color and energy and some of the most inventive double-exposures made since the silent era.

Anguish, August 9, 2016

When I first heard in April 2012 that the Alamo Drafthouse was going to be renovating the long-shuttered New Mission Theatre I was living just a few blocks away, and was excited but skeptical that I'd still be living there by the time it arrived. Sure enough, I was evicted and moved across town within two years and the venue didn't open for nearly another two. But I've still found the allure of another repertory venue filling some of the long-standing genre gaps in the Frisco Bay screening ecosystem too strong to resist. Alamo's New Mission has something of a reputation for catering to the gentrifying crowd epitomized by the condos next door whose construction were part of the deal to revive the old "Miracle Mile" movie house, and if you look at the prices of their normal tickets and food-and-drink menu items, it's hard to shake that perception. But the theatre's regular late-weeknight, usually-35mm screenings of our grindhouse cinematic heritage for only $6 a seat makes it a godsend for budget-minded cinephiles. The most successful series seems to be Terror Tuesdays, and though it tends to focus pretty strictly on films from the 1970s, 80s and 90s, I can't deny that's a pretty good time period to focus on when it comes to horror movies. Catalan filmmaker Bigas Luna's jaw-dropping 1987 Anguish fits right into that frame, and I'm SO glad I saw it for the first time in a theatre full of other movie lovers who, like me, didn't seem to know what was hitting them. I don't want to spoil a moment of this unique film experience, but I will say that Alamo programmer Mike Keegan (formerly of the Roxie) gave a pitch-perfect introduction that gave us a sense of the intensity of experience we were in for without tipping Bigas's hand in any way. If I could only pick one viewing experience to highlight on this list instead of ten, Anguish would be very much in the running. I've also enjoyed the Alamo's Weird Wednesday programming (especially Walter Hill's Southern Comfort) and, before the admission price more than doubled from $6 to $14, the Music Monday events (especially Donald Cammell's & Nicolas Roeg's Performance).

Manhunter screen capture from MGM DVD

Manhunter, September 3, 2016

I must admit that of all the active filmmakers I see many of my cinephile friends and admireds discussing with passion, Michael Mann is the one that I have traditionally had the most resistance to joining the cult of. Perhaps I've just seen the wrong films (The Keep must be for the advanced Mann-ophile). His 1986 Manhunter, on the other hand, is most definitely the right film. It revels in an eighties-era dread very different from (and to me, more appealing than) the 1990s guignol of Silence of the Lambs, which it technically precurses even if its shared characters are played by different actors, and does a better job at interrogating the wobbly line between society's desecrators and its guardians than any serial-killer movie I can think of. This was screened as part of Jesse Hawthorne Ficks's MiDNiTES FOR MANiACS series, which by the end of 2016 appeared to have departed from the Castro as its primary home for over ten years (after a healthy early-2000s stretch at the 4-Star) and taking up residency at the Roxie (where Manhunter screened) while occasionally venturing into the Exploratorium or the New Mission. The houses are more reliably packed and the films chosen more frequently diverge from my own personal perception of "dismissed, underrated and forgotten films" (this weekend is a tribute to Hayao Miyazaki, whom I love but whom I have a hard time imagining with those labels), but as Ficks has direct contact with a new generation of moving-image-obsessives in his position as a film history teacher at a local school, I'm willing to defer to his definitions. Especially when it means 35mm prints of great films get shown in nearby cinemas.

Viridana, October 14, 2016

What cinema fan doesn't love Luis Buñuel? Finally getting a chance to see his 1961 excoriating re-entry into filming in his homeland after 29 years, in a beautiful 35mm print, would be a highlight of any year. It's a tremendous, unforgettable film, perhaps Buñuel's most Buñuelian, tackling all his usual themes of hypocrisy, sexual obsession, class conflict, etc. with maximum fervor. As much as I love his Mexican and French filmmaking periods, there is something about his few Spanish films that sets them apart. The screening was held at SFMOMA on the second weekend of its first Modern Cinema series devoted to the Criterion Collection and to Thai filmmaker Apichatpong Weerasethakul (its current series is Werner Herzog and Ecstatic Truth and its next series, in June, celebrates 100 years of Jean-Pierre Melville by grouping his films with those of one of his most ardent director acolytes Johnny To). After sampling the venue with Viridiana I was able to re-watch great films by Victor Erice, Hiroshi Teshigahara, and Apichatpong, who was on hand wearing a Canyon Cinema T-Shirt for certain showings. This series marked the relaunching of SFMOMA's film programming after over three years of expansion and refurbishment; the Wattis Theatre got a mild make-over in comparison to much of the rest of the building, a missed opportunity to provide more legroom between rows compounded by a new problem of noise from stairwalking museumgoers infiltrating the theatre space during museum-hours screenings of quiet films. Luckily Viridiana screened after hours, a new capability of the space now that it has a separate public entrance from the expensive-to-insure galleries, and I found one of the better seats in the house to view it from.  Despite its minor problems, I'm glad to have a key piece of Frisco Bay repertory reinstated after such a long absence.

So This Is Paris screen capture from youtube

So This Is Paris, December 3, 2016

Since instating an annual one-day Winter Event (or sometimes Fall Event) at the Castro Theatre as a supplement to its Summer (now moved to late Spring) multi-day festival more than ten years ago, the San Francisco Silent Film Festival has gradually moved more and more to showing most of the latest restorations and rarely-seen archival gems in the summer while using the opposite end of the calendar to bring out well-known warhorses like The Thief of Bagdad or The General or The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari. It's like a little favor to the many out-of-towners who attend the multi-day festival that they tend to shy away from showing too many films at the one-day event that they'll really regret missing. In 2016, however, their December Day of Silents may have been even more enticing to certain silent film fans than the June festival; it was to me. Although the latter let me see terrific unknown films like Behind the Door and a program of (minimum) 110-year-old hand-colored European films as well as re-viewing great work by Ozu, Wellman, Clair, Flaherty, etc, the Day of Silents seemed to be programmed right to my fondest viewing desires: a rare chance to see longtime favorites like Eisenstein's Strike and Von Sternberg's The Last Command on the big screen for the first time, a chance to see Raoul Walsh's wonderful (if sadly incomplete) Sadie Thompson for the first time ever, and more, nearly all of it (excepting an early-matinee Chaplin shorts set) in 35mm prints. The highest highlight, however, was seeing the last and probably the best of Ernst Lubitsch's Warner Brothers silents, So This Is Paris from 1926, with a tremendous piano accompaniment from Donald Sosin. Everyone talks about this film's bravura Charleston dance sequence, justifiably, but the rest of the film is also a supreme delight, spoofing the then-in-vogue romantic sheik figure, engineering a perfectly-interlocking love quadrangle based on the same material as the famous Strauss operetta Die Fledermaus, and suffusing the proceedings with a biting gallows humor. It immediately shoots to the top tier of American silent films most shamefully lacking an official DVD release, alongside Lubitsch's next great film The Student Prince in Old Heidelberg (which I'm not sure how to explain the absence of on my very first I Only Have Two Eyes list from when I saw it at SFSFF in 2007).

I Gopher You, December 10, 2016

The Roxie Theater has really improved its repertory-screening game in my eyes over the past year or so, at least in my eyes. Perhaps it's a competitive response to the appearance of the Alamo Drafthouse a few blocks away. Perhaps it's a function of getting the right personnel in place on its staff and its non-profit board. Perhaps it's connected to the November 2015 passage of the Legacy Business Preservation Fund creation, which the Roxie was able to benefit from starting in August 2016. Perhaps all these factors and more contribute. But though the oldest (first opened in 1909) essentially-continuously-operating movie house in San Francisco, if not a much wider geographic area (it's contested), still has challenges to face, it's facing them not only by using creative tools like their current silent auction and upcoming off-site fundraiser, but also by reasserting itself as an essential piece of the Frisco Bay exhibition quilt through its screenings, more of which involved celluloid in 2016 than had been the case in quite a few years. I personally partook in great events like a September Sam Fuller series, a lovely Les Blank program in March, some of the previously-mentioned MiDNiTES FOR MANiACS showings like Manhunter, and more. None were more purely fun than the two all-35mm programs of Warner Brothers animation brought through the Roxie's monthly Popcorn For Breakfast Saturday morning cartoon showcase enthusiastically and knowledgeably hosted by Amanda Peterson. June's set of selections leaned heavily on the great Chuck Jones, and let me view 35mm prints of classics I'd only seen on TV before like Robin Hood Daffy and There They Go-Go-Go; that it was held twenty-four hours before a Castro Jones tribute made for a deeply-immersive weekend for fans of Termite Terrace's most celebrated director. But the Roxie's December dozen, while not ignoring Jones, gave greater attention to his 1950s studio-mates, particularly Robert McKimson. And the program began with a cartoon by my personal favorite of Jones's under-appreciated co-workers, Friz Freleng, which I'm 99% sure I never saw as a kid and 100% sure I hadn't seen as an adult, much less in a great 35mm print. Freleng's 1954 I Gopher You is the fifth cartoon featuring the hilariously over-polite Goofy Gophers voiced by Mel Blanc and Stan Freburg, and the first in which their nemesis is not an antagonistic pooch but the industrial agricultural system itself. "Mac" and "Tosh" find their farmland food supply raided by the mechanisms of post-World War II production, tracing a truck full of freshly-picked vegetables back to the Ajax processing plant. The mazes of conveyor belts and relentless canning contraptions makes for the ideal playground for Freleng's signature "anticipation gags" in which hearty humor derives from the expectation of the fulfillment of a pattern of violence and/or humiliation against a character. Much like the gophers themselves, this well-oiled machine of a film is seemingly small (at only 7 minutes), but packs a formidable wallop. It's available as a bonus on the Warner DVD of His Majesty O'Keefe, which you can rent at Lost Weekend Video.

Suspicion (1941)

WHO: Joan Fontaine is the only person ever to have won an Academy Award for performing in a picture directed by Alfred Hitchcock. She won the Best Actress award over Barbara Stanwyck, Bette Davis, Greer Garson and, most famously, her sister Olivia de Havilland.

WHAT: Hitchcock's third film made after moving to California from England was set entirely in England but used some shots of Northern California in its construction, although I wouldn't be surprised to learn that the actors never had to leave the studio, as every shot looks like it could have been completed using stand-ins, rear-projections and/or backdrops. I wrote a bit about the key scene in my Keyframe Daily write-up focusing on Noir City selections involving San Francisco and Monterey County settings:

In Suspicion, another Noir City 13 pick featuring Joan Fontaine, perilous Big Sur cliffs stood in for coastal England in the scene where Fontaine investigates a site where her deceitful husband (Cary Grant) has taken cheerful investor in a potential real-estate venture to inspect—or is it to be murdered?  No series of marriage-themed films could be complete without an example of Hitchcock, who returned to the subject repeatedly throughout his career

WHERE/WHEN: Screens 1:30 today only at the Castro Theatre, courtesy of the Noir City festival.

WHY: While all but three of the Noir City 13 selections (last night's Woman on the Run, tonight's The Suspect, and Wednesday's Crime of Passion) have never been screened before at the festival's San Francisco iterations, I believe that Suspicion is one of ten titles in the festival that go one further: they've never shown at Noir City events hosted in any city. I have a feeling that impresario Eddie Muller is just a hair more curious to see how Suspicion and the other nine films will play in front of an audience he's assembled than he is about some of the others which have screened at his events in Hollywood or elsewhere before. Those nine according to my (unverified) records: The Thin Man, After the Thin Man, The Set-Up, Clash By Night, The Sleeping Tiger, The Guilty, Les Diaboliques, Seconds and the Honeymoon Killers.

Today actually offers some tough choices for noir lovers, as there are no less than four films screening at the Castro, but also a 35mm print of Double Indemnity at Berkeley's Pacific Film Archive as part of its half-film, half-digital Billy Wilder series. (The next 35mm print in that series is The Lost Weekend January 30). And the Alfred Hitchcock series at the Stanford Theatre in Palo Alto is showing one of his most noir-ish of films (perhaps even moreso than Suspicion), Notorious. At least that one repeats tomorrow, so a true obsessive could theoretically attend the Sunday matinees of Douglas Sirk's Shockproof and Sleep, My Love and then head down the peninsula in time to see the 9:35 showing of Notorious (you might even be able to make it to To Catch a Thief at 7:30). Being carless, I'm not going to do that myself, but I am trying to figure out how to squeeze a viewing of one of the last few Hitchcock films I've never seen before, Young and Innocent, into next weekend without missing too many of the Noir City festivities. Public transportation schedules won't allow me to see that reputedly wonderful Hitchcock film without missing out on either Edward Dmytryk's The Hidden Room on Thursday, the new Film Noir Foundation restoration of The Guilty on Friday, Luchino Visconti's Ossessione AND either Cry Terror! or Les Diaboliques next Saturday, or else The Honeymoon Killers next Sunday. Of these, I've only seen Ossessione before. Right now I'm leaning towards skipping The Hidden Room but if anyone wants to speak up for it I'm all ears. Noting that there's at least one strongly marital-themed Hitchcock film playing at the Stanford almost every weekend of its eight-week series makes me wish the latter venue had waited just a couple weeks to start their series out of conflict with Noir City: 'Til Death Do Us Part.

HOW: According to the Film On Film Foundation website, every Noir City selection this year will be screened on 35mm prints except for Friday night's No Man Of Her Own. Suspicion screens on a double-bill with Ida Lupino's The Bigamist.

The Lodger (1927)

WHO: Alfred Hitchcock directed this (and was so credited), but also worked, uncredited, on the screenplay, and appeared in the first of his famous cameos.

WHAT: Of the nine surviving Hitchcock silent films which circulated as a group around the country earlier this year, The Lodger is probably the best choice to see on Halloween: its atmospheric depiction of night, of fog, and of a mysterious stranger stepping out of it while an entire section of London is terrorized by a "Jack the Ripper" style killer, makes it the earliest of Hitchcock's films generally thought of as possessing the identifiable signature of the future "Master of Suspense" in just about every scene.

WHERE/WHEN: Tonight only at Davies Symphony Hall at 7:30 PM.

WHY: Every Halloween night for the past several years the San Francisco Symphony has taken the evening off and brought in a concert organist to perform a live score to a classic film from the silent era. Past titles have included The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, The Phantom of the Opera, and Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. This year the Symphony decided to expand the tradition by building four days of Hitchcock music & film programming into its Halloween season, but tonight's annual organ performance is for many the centerpiece of the week, as unlike last night's Psycho screening, tomorrow's Vertigo showing, or Saturday's Hitchcock grab-bag, it doesn't involve the reconfiguring of a sound mix originally approved by Hitchcock.

More silent films, most of them with live musical accompaniment, screening in Frisco Bay venues in the next months:

As I mentioned recently, the Rafael Film Center is showing the 1922 Nosferatu: a Symphony of Horror tonight, and will hold another silent film program December 12th; only the latter will have live musical accompaniment.

The Niles Essanay Silent Film Museum in Fremont has just revealed its November-December schedule (as a pdf) including its traditional Saturday night screenings for November.

The Pacific Film Archive in Berkeley is showing the last purely silent film starring the so-called "Chinese Garbo" Ruan Lingyu, The Goddess, on November 8th, as well as her first (sort-of) talkie New Women November 9th and Stanley Kwan's acclaimed film about Ruan starring Maggie Cheung, Center Stage, on November 29th. 

The Castro Theatre will host the San Francisco Silent Film Festival's next event: a January 11th day-long tribute to Charlie Chaplin on the 100th anniversary of his filmmaking career. Titles were just announced earlier this week, and include The Gold Rush, The Kid and a program of Mutual two-reelers..

Finally, the SF Symphony continues the 2014 Chaplin celebration April 12th by performing live the actor/director/writer/composer's own score for a screening of City Lights.

HOW: Since 2010 the Symphony's Halloween screenings have all been digital presentations. Tonight's features Todd Wilson on the organ.

Psycho (1960)

WHO: Bernard Herrmann wrote the music for this.

WHAT: When Alfred Hitchcock first planned out his ideas for Psycho he imagined no music at all accompany the now-famous "shower scene". But at that time Herrmann's stock with Hitchcock was such that he was allowed to persuade the director to let him score that scene with what has now become one of the all-time iconic music moments in movie history. Just hearing one note (maybe two) of Herrmann's dissonant strings is all it takes to evoke the shock and dread of this scene for anyone who has seen the film- and many who haven't. The rest of Herrmann's score, written only for a string ensemble, is brilliant as well. For more on Hitchcock & Herrmann's approach to music and sound in Psycho read this article at FilmSound.org.

WHERE/WHEN: Tonight at Davies Symphony Hall at 8:00, and at the Vine Cinema & Alehouse in Livermore at 7PM on November 7th.

WHY: Last month I attended a concert at Davies Hall, home of the San Francisco Symphony Orchestra, in which the Symphony performed famous musical excerpts from Jaws, Star Wars, Schindler's List and other movies made during my lifetime, with their composer John Williams behind the conductor's podium. Steven Spielberg was on hand to discuss his career-long collaboration with Williams and give a cursory introduction to how music makes its mark on motion pictures. 

Most of the pieces were played without any visual accompaniment outside of the spectacle of seeing a celebrity conductor and a world-class orchestra in action, or whatever images from the films or other associations might dance in our minds' eyes. But for a few of the pieces a screen hung above the orchestra, allowing us to look at clips from Close Encounters of the Third Kind while a suite of music from the film played, or clips from a wide variety of swashbuckling adventure films from throughout cinema history while a rousing piece from Spielberg's animated The Adventures of Tintin was performed by the orchestra.

But the most unique surprise of the evening, for me, was a side-by-side comparison of one continuity-intact sequence from Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade screened twice in a row. If you know the film, it was a version of the "circus train" sequence that had been specially prepared so that sound effects and dialogue were audible but the originally recorded music score had been digitally "scrubbed" out somehow. For the second viewing of the scene, the orchestra performed the music live, occasionally coming close to drowning out an individual line of dialogue or sound effect, but gloriously conveying a sense of rollicking adventure and excitement. 

If the intent was to show how 'flat' a Spielberg action scene is in the absence of his composer's contribution, it didn't have that impact on me. Williams is a terrific film composer, don't get me wrong. But I found the scene no less gripping, and indeed found more gravitas to its evocation of urgency and physicality, when stripped of its underscore. Whether or not such gravitas is appropriate for an early sequence in an Indiana Jones film is certainly debatable. I've probably seen too many Jean-Pierre Melville films to have a sensible answer, but I did very much enjoy this enhanced peek into the moviemaking process.

I'd seen entire films screened at Davies Hall before, both with the San Francisco Symphony performing (as with The Gold Rush in 2010) and with an outside group using the space (Philip Glass presenting Powaqqatsi in 2006) but these are, music aside, completely silent films. I was aware of the fact that the Symphony had in recent years performed live alongside screenings of sound-era films such as Psycho, Casablanca, and The Matrix, but last month was the first I'd gotten to see the technology in action, and was curious to learn more. Knowing there were four days of Alfred Hitchcock screenings coming up starting with tonight's reprise of Psycho and continuing with Friday night's premiere presentation of the "score-scrubbed" Vertigo with live symphonic accompaniment, I decided to inquire with the symphony about the series. Here's what SF Symphony Director of Artistic Planning John Magnum had to say about the year-long series this week launches at Davies.

We’ve been doing films as part of our Summer and the Symphony concerts for a few years now, and we’ve had a terrific audience response to them. We heard from our audience that there was an appetite for more of these projects throughout the year, and so we thought we’d pilot a four-concert series in 2013-14. To launch the series, we put together a week of performances around the films of Alfred Hitchcock, and the starting point for that was actually the world premiere of Vertigo in concert, which seemed perfect for San Francisco. 

We have a list of films that we know are out there, available for performance with orchestra. We also have some ideas of other films and projects that we’d be interested in producing. We want to have a balance between full-length films, and mixed programs with highlights from various movies – it’s half and half this season, and we’ll probably have about that mix going forward. And of course the basic criteria is that the film is known for having a great score – Bernard Hermann in the case of Vertigo and Psycho, great classical pieces for Fantasia, and so on.

There are a few producers working with the studios to create the projects, which we then license from the producer for live concert performance. In a couple of cases, we have worked directly with the studios or a creator’s estate, which basically accomplishes the same thing. This is an area that other orchestras are interested in as well – Chicago, New York, Los Angeles, for example, as well as some of the European orchestras and presenters – so there are new projects in the pipeline for future seasons, too.  

The Symphony's Hitchcock week has been recently profiled by Thomas Gladysz, The Saturday "Hitchcock! Greatest Hits" program focuses especially on Dimitri Tiomkin's music for Strangers on a Train and Dial 'M' For Murder, as well as Herrmann's for North By Northwest (including the main title, the drunk driving scene, and the Mount Rushmore finale.) It's filled out by two scenes piece from Vertigo and To Catch a Thief (music by Lyn Murray), and of course Charles-Francois Gounod's Funeral March of a Marionette, which became synonymous with the Master of Suspense from its use in the Alfred Hitchcock Presents television series.

Unlike the Symphony's silent film presentations (such as that of Hitchcock's The Lodger tomorrow night), these programs are not ideal for purists or for newbies, but for fans of a film interested in experiencing it in part or in full again on a large screen in a unique way: with live musical accompaniment from a terrific ensemble, If you can't make it to the Hitchcock series, the Symphony will screen Singin' in the Rain with live music December 6th and 7th.


HOW: Tonight's digital presentation of Psycho at Davies Hall. will be a version with the original music recording "scrubbed" off the soundtrack while sound effects and dialogue remain. Herrmann's score will instead be performed by the San Francisco Symphony with Joshua Gersen conducting. The Vine Cinema screening will be the original 1960 version, sourced from a Blu-Ray.

Passion (2012)

WHO: Brian De Palma directed this.

WHAT: I have not seen Passion or the Alain Corneau film it was based on (Love Crime) but I love what De Palma had to say when Fernando F. Croce asked him what drew him to remake the latter film:

I liked the way of the plot. I liked the power struggles between the main characters. I didn't like the way Corneau revealed the murder, but that's okay, because if we're planning on remaking a film, then let's remake one that has room for improvement.

It seems to me this is exactly the right attitude for a director to take toward a remake: with confidence that he or she can improve on the original. Then again, De Palma is no stranger to other common approaches as well: the Hollywoodization of a well-known commercial property (The Untouchables and Mission: Impossible), the reconfiguring of setting and character of a respected classic (Scarface), and even the oblique homage that isn't quite a remake but resembles one (Blow Out from Blow-Up, Obsession, Dressed to Kill, etc. from the collected works of Alfred Hitchcock). As a De Palma fan I'm interested in all of these approaches, and am very excited to finally see Passion a year after its world premiere.

WHERE/WHEN: Screens multiple times daily only at the Rafael Film Center in San Rafael today through Thursday September 5, and at 2:45 and 7:00 at the Castro Theatre only on September 4 & 5.

WHY: I don't know why the Rafael is the only Frisco Bay theatre showing Passion for an entire week-long run (which began this past Friday), but it ought to be a good place to see it, with its 4K digital projection. It's also the only cinema where it's possible to see David Lowery's Ain't Them Bodies Saints now that the latter has left San Francisco and Berkeley theatres. Of course the Rafael is preparing to be one of the main venues for the Mill Valley Film Festival in October, which is slowly revealing a few of its programming selections. Since I last checked in on this subject, it's been announced that filmmaker Costa-Gavras will be present at the venue October 4 for a tribute and screening of his latest film Capital, and that on September 17th, a couple weeks prior to the festival's official start date, the U.S. Public Premiere of Metallica Through The Never will occur there. 

But since San Rafael is out of my way, I'm very glad that the Castro will also be screening Passion this week, if only for two days. I find it a little delicious that the venue has booked a De Palma film to screen so shortly after its (approximately) annual 70mm presentation of Vertigo, which ends with three showings there today. Any De Palma fan knows that Hitchcock is the director's biggest cinematic inspiration, and Vertigo in particular (along with Psycho and Rear Window) frequently alluded to in his filmmaking style and content.

HOW: Passion is (as far as I know) only being distributed on DCP. It was shot on 35mm but I've yet to hear so much as a rumor of a physical exhibition print existing. The Castro screenings pair it with 35mm screenings of prior De Palma films, however; Dressed to Kill on Wednesday, Sep. 4 and Femme Fatale on Thursday, Sep. 5.

The Manxman (1929)

WHO: Alfred Hitchcock directed this.

WHAT: The last film Hitchcock made before Blackmail, which was both his last film to be released as a silent film and his first to be released (in an altered version, of course) as a talkie, The Manxman is perhaps the closest the director ever came to making a Frank Borzage-style melodrama along the lines of Lucky Star or The River (both of which were released the same year as Hitchcock's film- was there something in the air?) In fact the director told François Truffaut that it was "not a Hitchcock film", in that he considered it a faithful adaptation of a popular novel by Hall Caine, and not reliant on his own imagination as Blackmail, for instance, had been.

But a close watcher of the director's films would never mistake The Manxman for being someone else's. Not only does it feature three of his favorite actors to work with in this period as the components of its class-conscious love triangle (Carl Brisson from The Ring, Malcolm Keen from The Lodger, and the above-pictured Anny Ondra, who'd return in Blackmail), but the triangle itself echoes the appearance of this structural formulation in many of his earlier films like The Pleasure Garden, The Lodger, Easy Virtue, The Ring, and Champagne. Triangular constructions recur in later Hitchcock films as well, from Dial 'M' For Murder to (albeit perversely) Vertigo.  For these reasons, as well as for Jack Cox's intense, expressionist-influenced photography of the Cornwall-masquerading-as-Mannin locations, this is a must-see for any fan of Hitchcock or of good silent-era storytelling.

WHERE/WHEN: Screens tonight only at the Pacific Film Archive in Berkeley at 6:15.

WHY: It's a big Hitchcock week on Frisco Bay and beyond. Tonight's The Manxman screening wrap up a 9-film addendum to the PFA's Spring series devoted to the master of suspense, making a total of 35 of his films screened there in 2013. But that's not all. The Castro is also screening a 70mm print of Vertigo all weekend, for a total of shows, and is following it Wednesday and Thursday with three films by one of Hitchcock's most famous admirers, Brian De Palma, including his particularly Hitch-inspired Dressed To Kill in 35mm.

Meanwhile in Oakland, the Grand Lake has booted The World's End from its main house in favor of a week-long double bill of Casablanca and Hitchcock's Dial 'M' For Murder in digitally-recreated 3D. I have only seen the latter in dual-projector 35mm so I feel spoiled, but I'm definitely curious to see how the digital 3D version that has replaced the film version that has seemingly become unavailable (even to a 3D festival in Hollywood) in today's DCP-loving climate.

Finally, this weekend up in Bodega Bay (normally outside of my blogging reach but too notable not to pass without mention), Tippi Hedren will be signing autographs and appearing as guest of honor at a dinner and screening of The Birds at The Inn a the Tides. Public tours of normally-inaccessible locations and other events will be held in the Sonoma County town over the weekend as well, including appearances by Hedren's child co-star Veronica Cartwright (who later starred in Invasion of the Body Snatchers and Alien among her adult roles).

HOW: The Manxman screens as a DCP. Since last writing about the recently-restored Hitchcock silent films, I've learned that all nine were available to screen on 35mm in Europe (and indeed did this summer in Bologna), but that the five made for the Gainsborough studio are being distributed in the US only digitally. As I recall from watching four of the five at the Castro in June, The Manxman was one of the somewhat less-objectionable digital transfers. It will screen accompanied by Judith Rosenberg at the piano.

Madonna of the Seven Moons (1945)

WHO: Jack Cox, who shot for Maurice Elvey before making eleven films with Alfred Hitchcock (more than any other cinematographer other than the great Robert Burks) was director of photography on this.

WHAT: Saying too much, or even anything, about the plot of this film does it a great disservice. So I'll keep mum, other than to say that although it's usually tagged with the term "melodrama" it's likely to appeal strongly to fans of Hollywood film noir, or at least to those for whom the word noir doesn't just summon up images of Bogie or Mitchum in a trenchcoat, but also of Stanwyck or Crawford fighting personal demons.

Though it doesn't feel like a heavy-handed "message picture" Made near the very end of World War II, the film contains content that may have been reassuring to men and (perhaps particularly) women awaiting reunification with their sweethearts after a long separation, which helped make it become a hit. A gypsy woman in the film has remarkable advice about the double standard, which might have been taken as permission for war wives to forgive their husbands - and forgive themselves- for any wrongs inflicted during a period away from each other.

WHERE/WHEN: Tonight through Friday, July 26th at the Stanford Theatre

WHY: As the last holdout among major Frisco Bay repertory venues in refusing to supplement its regular 35mm screenings with digital presentations, the Stanford's uniqueness becomes ever more evident. But even it has begun to prepare its loyal audiences for some kind of transformation. The introductory text on its current summer calendar (reproduced here) says it all, in the venue's typically succinct house style:

Whatever happens in the future, history will surely recognize that a major new art form was created in the twentieth century and that the traditional movie theatre was an essential part of it. At the Stanford Theatre you can still experience this in its original form. Our theatre has been here since 1925. It has nearly 1200 seats, with a balcony. We still show beautiful 35 mm prints. We still use carbon arc projectors. We even have an organ that plays before and after the 7:30 show. 

This too will pass. But in the meantime you have something in Palo Alto that is almost extinct everywhere else. Come often. Let your friends know about it. They'll probably thank you.

It's not the Stanford's way to say much more than "This too will pass." Which is why it sounds so ominous- I've never seen an acknowledgment from the theatre that its model might not be sustained forever into the future (though it's no great secret that the Silicon Valley wealth of its owner David Packard has more to do with its continued operation than ticket sales do). No hint of when (this year? next? twenty years from now?) change might come, much less how (the purchase of DCP projectors? closure?), but sometime, somehow, it's coming.

Let's enjoy the venue while it lasts.

Madonna of the Seven Moons is one of four British-made films on the current calendar, and not the only one shot by cinematographer Jack Cox. The Wicked Lady is also one of his, and it screens August 7-9 with the early Carol Reed picture Bank Holiday. Five other Jack Cox-shot films will also screen at Berkeley's Pacific Film Archive in August, albeit via DCP. Of course I speak of the five Gainsborough Pictures titles among the Hitchcock 9 silent series, including The Ring (Cox's first collaboration with Hitchcock), Blackmail, and the three made between those two in 1928 & 1929.

HOW: Madonna of the Seven Moons screens via 35mm print, on a double-bill with another film featuring the lovely Patricia Roc, called The Brothers.

Fog Over Frisco (1934)

WHO: Bette Davis stars in this, looking astonishingly young to anyone who has her performance in All About Eve, made sixteen years later (or even in Now Voyager, made eight years later) burned into their brains.

WHAT: Film historian William K. Everson called it the "fastest film ever made" and compared it favorably to Sergei Eisenstein's Battleship Potemkin as a screen textbook for film editing. But for viewers interested the history of San Francisco's depiction in Hollywood films, Fog Over Frisco takes on special significance. It's one of the very few big-studio productions of the 1930s that actually brought some of its cast (although not Davis, as far as I can tell) and crew to the City By The Bay in order to film sequences on location here.

There's a dynamic sequence in which a gaggle of reporters await Margaret Lindsay (who plays Davis's sister) outside her family's mansion in order to ambush her with their cameras. This is shot in Pacific Heights, right at the corner of Octavia and Washington, and you can clearly see Lafayette Park, Spreckels Mansion (pictured above, and currently resided in by novelist Danielle Steel) and other still-standing structures in the scene. The cable-car line on Washington Street, however, is no more.

Another scene in the film calls for a bridge- but since the Golden Gate and Bay Bridges had only just begun construction in 1933, the filmmakers utilized the Third Street Bridge (now known as the Lefty O'Doul Bridge) in China Basin- a neighborhood that has evidently changed its appearance far more than Pacific Heights has since 1934.

These sequences make Fog Over Frisco one of the most extensive on-location Hollywood film to use 1930s-era San Francisco that I've ever come across. Films like Ladies They Talk About (1933), Barbary Coast (1935), San Francisco (1936) and Alexander's Ragtime Band (1938) for instance,  use stock photography of the city or none at all, evoking San Francisco entirely through the construction of Hollywood sets. It's a very different story from that of the 1920s, when films like Moran of the Lady Letty (1922) and Greed (1924) were just a few of the productions able to shoot extensively in town (without sound crews, of course), or of the 1940s (particularly the post-World War II era) when developments in cameras and film stocks helped usher in a vogue for location photography in this city that has essentially never looked back. But any student of history wants to fill gaps in the record however possible, so a chance to see what 1930s Frisco was like, through the lens of a First National production, is all the more precious.

WHERE/WHEN: Screens tonight and tomorrow at the Stanford Theatre at 6:10 and 9:05, and the West Portal Branch of the San Francisco Public Library at 6:30 PM on July 23rd.

WHY: I'm thinking a lot about San Francisco-shot films this week because I just received an advance copy of World Film Locations: San Francisco, a book tracing the history of San Francisco moviemaking in a fun and informative way. I'm proud to have been able to contribute to this handsome volume packed with maps, images, and short write-ups on forty-six of the most notable films made in my hometown, each represented by a different scene and location. There are also six essays contextualizing certain recurring trends (the Golden Gate Bridge, car chases) and filmmakers (Hitchcock, Eastwood) involved in shooting here, and a seventh that discusses the current reigning local favorite filmmaker (at least according to a plurality of SF Bay Guardian readers), Peaches Christ.

I've mentioned here before (perhaps too frequently) that my contribution was one of these contextualizing essays, in my case on the topic of film noir in the 1940s and 50s. Though I had free reign to approach this topic how I liked, for which I graciously thank editor Scott Jordan Harris. I had no input in the rest of the book, including the selection of the 46 featured and mapped titles. Of course there are some omissions I'd have stumped for if it had I been involved in that part of the process, but that's a natural reaction any movie fan would feel. Perhaps there can be a sequel if this edition is a success- I think it will be. Overall the book does a great job in bringing together the famous films everyone around the world associates with this city, with a healthy dose of unexpected surprises.

So no, Fog Over Frisco is not featured in the book, but that doesn't mean Spreckels Mansion isn't. It gets its own two-page spread as the chosen location from George Sidney's 1957 musical Pal Joey, starring Frank Sinatra, Rita Hayworth and Kim Novak. I don't want to give away too much about the contents of an unpublished book yet, but I will note that nine of the book's forty-six featured films are planned to screen for free this month at San Francisco Public Library branch locations as part of a twenty-title SF Library Film Festival. (To further narrow a few guesses, I'll hint that two of the three of these titles screening Thursdays at the Main Library are in the book).

HOW: At the West Portal Library, Fog Over Frisco will screen via projected DVD. At the Stanford, it screens on a 35mm double-bill with the Of Human Bondage, the career-defining Davis role that was filmed just before, and released just after, the filming of Fog Over Frisco.

Downhill (1927)

WHO: Alfred Hitchcock directed this.

WHAT: Though Hitchcock disparaged its dialogue and the naïveté of one of its most memorable sequences, and though some modern critics find fault with its thematic misogyny, Downhill is a feast for admirers of the director's visual flourishes, second perhaps only to Blackmail among the silent Hitchcocks I've seen up to now in this regard. Most seem to lay the blame for the film's nearly-uniform negative portrayals of women at the feet of the film's star Ivor Novello, the semi-secretly gay movie idol who wrote the play Downhill was based on, and whose stardom had helped make The Lodger Hitchcock's first box office success. Only four films into his directing career, Hitchcock was still at the mercy of the projects he was assigned, but in the case of Downhill he certainly made the best of it, despite it really being Novello's show in the eyes of most of the public. Bill Krohn describes in his book Hitchcock At Work how at least one showing of the film exploited Novello's celebrity:

In one London theatre where the picture was playing, the lights and the screen went up half-way through the projection to reveal Ivor Novello on a stage dressed with props from the film, where he proceeded to give the public the next ten minutes of the film in sound - and 3-D!

I don't expect this kind of stunt to be tried at any modern screenings of Downhill, but if it were, I suppose the best person to hide behind the screen for such an unveiling would be Jeremy Northam, who played the long-deceased Novello in Robert Altman's 2001 film Gosford Park.

WHERE/WHEN: This afternoon at 4:00 at the Castro Theatre and August 24th at the Pacific Film Archive in Berkeley.

WHY: If you skipped the San Francisco Silent Film Festival presentation of Blackmail last night, you missed one of Hitchcock's best, but also one of his historically most frequently revived early pictures. Today's slate includes four far--lesser-known titles, although the recent BFI restorations of the so-called "Hitchcock 9" should do a lot to rescue them from obscurity. For discussion of Champagne, The Ring, and The Manxman, as well as all the other Hitchcock titles screening at the Castro this weekend, there's no better place to turn than the link round-up compiled by David Hudson.

I single out Downhill because it's the only film playing the rest of this weekend that I've seen on 35mm before (at a slower frame rate at the PFA) and because it's the sole film showing on 35mm film in today's set. The other three, along with last night's Blackmail and tomorrow's The Farmer's Wife, are being distributed only digitally, Made at British International Pictures rather than at the Gainsborough studio, these slightly-later features now are distributed world wide by Studio Canal, and are being made available in the US by Rialto Pictures only on DCP.

The four surviving Gainsborough pictures (The Pleasure Garden, The Lodger, Downhill, and Easy Virtue), on the other hand, have been made available in 35mm prints through the BFI, and will be shown this way at both the Castro this weekend and at the PFA in August. Earlier this week SFSFF Artistic Director Anita Monga told me some fascinating information about the decision to show these films on film rather than DCP:

We were going to present on DCP, and really it was the president of our board who said, "Oh, you have to show 35mm". It's a huge expense to bring 100 pounds of film over. It also requires us to show at 20 frames per second. The Castro no longer has a 3-blade shutter, so 20 frames can be flickery. In our summer festival we are going to install [a 3-blade shutter]; it's like a thousand dollars to install the 3 blade shutter and uninstall it- and we have to increase the lumens on screen. 

The reason the Castro took out their 3-blade shutter, which makes for projection of slower films, is because they had to put so many lumens on screen to get over the 3-blade shutter's leak of light. You have to get so many lumens on the screen to get a good picture, that they were burning out their reflector. So for them, economically, it didn't make sense to have the 3-blade shutter. Because we're showing several films that are screening at lower than 20 frames per, it's a necessity, or else you're seeing an extreme flicker.

Monga told me there will be some DCP at the summer festival as well (expect it for Safety Last!, the comedy shorts program and The Weavers, and don't expect to ever see that latter in a cinema any other way, as no prints exist) but assured me that The First Born, which was co-written by Hitchcock's wife and creative partner Alma Reville, will screen from a 35mm print.

HOW: As noted above, both screenings are planned to employ 35mm prints, with live piano accompaniment. Today it's Stephen Horne providing the music, and in August it will be Judith Rosenberg.

Blackmail (1929)

WHO: Alfred Hitchcock directed it.

WHAT: More frequently cited (including by Hitchcock himself) as his first talking picture than his last silent, it in fact was made in two versions during that technologically transitional period when "wired-for-sound" cinemas co-existed with those still committed to extending the silent film era for as long as movie-makers cooperated. (Hmmm... what does that remind me of?)

I haven't seen the sound version, actually, but I've seen the silent twice, and it's hard to imagine audible dialogue improving it. The story is, as Hitchcock himself allowed, somewhat simple (though diverting enough), but the moviemaking is just astonishing. Camera angles and movements still feel inventive to this day. Thanks to a new restoration (which I've been able to preview thanks to a screener DVD) there is more image clarity than ever. And it's the perfect introduction to Hitchcock's earliest period of movie-making, for anyone who hasn't experienced his pre-Man Who Knew Too Much work before.

WHERE/WHEN: Tonight at 8:00 at the Castro Theatre, and August 23rd at 7PM at the Pacific Film Archive.

WHY: Tonight's screening of Blackmail kicks off a full weekend devoted to the Hitchcock 9- new restorations of all nine of the surviving films made by the director before he turned thirty, and still had a lot to prove. Earlier this week I was able to interview Anita Monga, and I brought up the idea that silent moviemaking never left Hitchcock's bloodstream, and that the most iconic sequences in some of his most celebrated films (Vertigo, Psycho, Rear Window, Strangers On A Train, etc.) included no dialogue but only music, and perhaps sound effects (or screams).

Really, you can go home and turn off the sound to these films. Did you ever see [Emir Kusturica's] Arizona Dream with Vincent Gallo, Johnny Depp and Jerry Lewis of all people? There's a talent contest, and Vincent Gallo does, completely silent, completely devoid of any context, the Cary-Grant-running-from-the-crop-duster sequence from North By Northwest. I think that Kusturica was on to something. Hitchccock knew the power of cinema was about directing your attention, and the value of telling a story with images. He was very sparing with intertitles. There are hardly any intertitles in these movies. Just if something can't be expressed [visually]. 

If you want to hear more from Ms. Monga, I'll be posting more of her comments here in the next few days, or you can listen to Andrea Chase's podcast interview.

HOW: DCP presentations at both venues, with live musical accompaniment by the Mont Alto Motion Picture Orchestra tonight and by pianist Judith Rosenberg at the PFA in August.

Rear Window (1954)

WHO: Alfred Hitchcock

WHAT: The Wikipedia article on Rear Window claims that "analyses, including that of François Truffaut in Cahiers du cinéma in 1954, center on the relationship between Jeff and the other side of the apartment block, seeing it as a symbolic relationship between spectator and screen." Not exactly. Perhaps this is why Hitchcock fans have created their own Wiki, where it's possible to read Truffaut's review in full, and see he in fact evokes a different relationship: that between a filmmaker and the world being filmed.

Whether one defines Rear Window as about the spectator/screen or the filmmaker/world relationship may ultimately depend upon one's self-identification as a viewer or as a director (although Truffaut had not yet made his first short film in 1954, he'd surely planned and hoped to by then.) I'd argue, however, that the difference between these two frames is in fact at the crux of the film. If Rear Window is about the spectator and the screen, then Hitchcock has created a number of miniature movies about L.B. Jeffries' neighbors for him to watch during his convalescence. If it's about the filmmaker and the world, then Jeffries (James Stewart) is Hitchcock's avatar in their creation: in this case the stories he and Lisa (Grace Kelly) tell each other about "Miss Torso", "Miss Lonelyhearts" etc. are projections, patterns, and ways of interpreting the world (or making a film). It's only by involving himself with the stories on screen, by "directing" his actors Lisa and Stella (Thelma Ritter) to enter the framed world, that he can discover for sure whether the stories he's watching unfold are his own creations or not. By intervening he verifies that (at least the Thorwald story) is not a product only his own imagination, while at the same time ensuring his own role of authorship in the conclusion of the narrative.

WHERE/WHEN: Today only at the Castro Theatre at 2:00, 4:30 & 7:00.

WHY: When I last checked in on the Alfred Hitchcock screen scene over a month ago, two large retrospectives of the director's work were finishing up at different local venues. Now it's time for what I call "Phase 2" of the 2013 Frisco Bay celebration of the Master of Suspense.

The centerpiece of this phase is the "Hitchcock 9" a set of all but one of the first ten films directed by Hitchcock, each silent, recently restored thanks to the British Film Institute and its partners, and set to play two Frisco Bay venues this summer. First, the nine restorations' US premiere will be at the Castro Theatre June 14-16 thanks to the San Francisco Silent Film Festival. Musical accompaniment will be provided by the Mont Alto Motion Picture Orchestra, as well as pianists Stephen Horne and Judith Rosenberg- the latter a local making her long-awaited debut as a silent accompanist at the Castro Theatre. I'm still unsure whether these screenings will be via DCP or 35mm prints; my best guess is that there will be a mixture of formats used over the weekend.

Then in August, the Pacific Film Archive will re-screen each of these titles in their intimate screening room, each with regular accompanist Rosenberg performing at the venue's (upright, not grand, unlike at the Castro) piano. Dates and formats have just been announced for these screenings, with The Lodger, The Pleasure Garden, Downhill, and Easy Virtue screening on 35mm prints with the other five shown digitally.

But these silent screenings are not the only Hitchcock shows on the horizon. Oakland's Paramount has tapped North By Northwest to close its summer 35mm screening series August 23rd. And this month the Castro has paired two 35mm Hitchcock classics with new DCP presentations of recent films made by Hitchcock-inspired directors. Next Tuesday is Shadow of a Doubt with Park Chan-wook's latest film Stoker, while today's screenings of Rear Window prefigure a late-evening presentation of a new DCP of Brian DePalma's wonderfully sleazy 1984 Hitchcock homage Body Double.

HOW: Rear Window screens in 35mm, the final show being on a double-bill with a digital presentation of Body Double.