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.

Home (2008)

WHO: Agnès Godard was cinematographer for this film directed by Ursula Meier.

WHAT: I haven't seen Home since 2009, when it was one of my very favorite films of the San Francisco International Film Festival that year. It would surely have appeared in the upper half of my Top Ten List that year's-end as well, except that I was restricting that list to films that found week-long commercial releases in the Bay Area; I don't believe Home has ever had another local public screening. Not until tonight.

Here's an excerpt from my own review written a little more than four years ago:

A family has fled urban living to establish a free-spirited life in a house mere feet off the shoulder of the highway. We're introduced to them first in a manic night hockey game shot (by cinematographer Agnes Godard) very tightly on the actors. It's the consistency of their character arcs that holds the film together throughout drastic changes in their setting and in tone; sometimes it feels like a comedy, other times drama, action thriller, or even horror.  

WHERE/WHEN: Screens tonight at the Pacific Film Archive at approximately 8:30 PM, after a presentation by Agnès Godard that begins at 7.

WHY: The PFA begins not only its Dancing with Light: The Cinematography of Agnès Godard series, but its entire summer schedule with tonight's screening. Godard we be on hand tonight and at four more screenings this weekend, showing and discussing four more films directed by Meier, by Erick Zonca, and by her most consistent collaborator Claire Denis. Two more Denis/Godard films round out the program after the cinematographer departs town.

Of the PFA series arriving later this summer, the one with the most relevance to this Godard selection is the extensive Jacques Demy retrospective being held in July and August. Three films made about Demy by the director's widow Agnès Varda will screen as part of this series, and for the best-known one of those, Jacquot, Godard was one of three cinematographers.

HOW: 35mm print following Agnès Godard's "behind the scenes of the art of cinematography in a talk followed by a Q&A with the audience."

My Way To Olympia (2013)

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The Source Family (2012)

WHO: Co-directed by Jodi Wille and Maria Demopoulos.

WHAT: Want to spend time in a vegetarian, psychedelic, mystical personality cult? No? How about just 98 minutes? This documentary about a Los Angeles religious community active in the early 1970s is well worth your time if you have any interest in California counterculture of that era. The Source Family, sometimes known as the Aquarians, was a commune of followers of a World War II vet named Jim Baker, who opened several popular health food restaurants, the last of which, The Source, was frequented by the likes of Goldie Hawn and Steve McQueen, and even made cinematic appearances in Hollywood films like Alex in Wonderland and Annie Hall (the doc provides relevant clips).

Inspired by the Kundalini Yoga teachings of Yogi Bhajan, Baker changed his name to "Father Yod" and selected a 19-year old named Robin to become "Mother Ah-Om" to help him set a new religion based on "the best" of all existing ones. 140 youngsters were drawn to his charismatic presence and came to live on his compound, donate their savings, work in his restaurant, and travel with him down a spiritual path involving the usual sex, drugs and rock and roll, but that ultimately took some bizarre turns. Though nothing as massively tragic as what's depicted in Oakland filmmaker Stanley Nelson's Jonestown: the Life and Death of Peoples Temple; the Source Family may have some superficial connections to Peoples Temple in that both attracted seekers trained by the 1960s political climate to distrust traditional father figures even if they still craved a kind of paternal authority, but it's clear that they were not very similar in some fundamental ways.

Made up mostly of interviews with former Source Family members, as well as the personal archive of Isis Aquarian, the now-septugenarien "family historian and temple keeper", The Source Family is no formal ground-breaker. It has a "generally favorable" rating on Metacritic, which seems fair enough. But I notice that the two most unfavorable reviews (neither outright pans) fault the film for not including more of an attempt to place The Source Family into the social and religious context of its time. It's true that directors Wille and Demopoulos largely avoid panning out to a view of the forest, preferring to examine the story at tree-level, almost as if the audience is experiencing the history of the movement from the perspective of someone who was a part of it at the time. Writer Erik Davis and a few other outsiders do provide a bit of analysis and context, mostly their commentary revolves around the musical recordings Father Yod and his followers published, which we also hear samples of throughout the soundtrack, and which now fetch pretty prices in psychedelic record collecting circles.

But though this approach meant that the film took a little bit of time to truly blossom into a compelling story, it also feels respectful of the audience, which is nonetheless given plenty of information and allowed to make up its own mind about went on in Father Yod's group (I know I'm being vague, but I don't want to give away any of the most unexpected revelations. If you want to know more than even the film tells you about Father Yod and his legacy, this article and the currently-active comment thread below might do the trick. But it may make a viewing of The Source Family less enjoyable.)

WHERE/WHEN: Tonight only at the New Parkway at 7:00.

WHY: Lots of documentaries at The New Parkway this week. This plays this as part of its weekly Doc Night held each Tuesday. The venue will also host a documentary tomorrow night: After Innocence, sponsored by the ACLU and screening for free. Friday through Sunday, it joins the Roxie in hosting SF Indie's Doc Fest. And Monday it shows Crossing The Line, about a US Army defector now living in North Korea.

HOW: Digital projection, as always at the New Parkway.