Me And My Gal (1932)

WHO: Raoul Walsh directed this.

WHAT: I haven't seen this pre-code romance starring Spencer Tracy and Joan Bennett, but none less than Manny Farber called it Walsh's best film. Here's an excerpt on the film from his 1971 article on the director:

It is only fleetingly a gangster film, not quite outrightly comic: it is really a portrait of a neighborhood, the feeling of human bonds in a guileless community, a lyrical approximation of Lower East Side and its uneducated, spirited stevedore-clerk-shopkeeper cast. There is psychological rightness in the scale relationships of actors to locale, and this, coupled by liberated acting, make an exhilarating poetry about a brash-cocky-exuberant provincial. Walsh, in this lunatically original, festive dance, is nothing less than a poet of the American immigrant.

WHERE/WHEN: 8:40 tonight only at the Pacific Film Archive in Berkeley.

WHY: Every July I feel a significant amount of envy for friends fortunate enough to find themselves in Bologna Italy for the Il Cinema Ritrovato, probably the archival, film historian, and cinephile-critical communities' most essential screening event of the year. Right now Meredith Brody is filing dispatches for Indiewire that are turning me rather green. I'm consoled that the festival will end tomorrow, and that some portion of the restorations and retrospectives premiering there this year will turn up next year at the Pacific Film Archive.

Every edition of the Bologna festival features big retrospectives of the early works of major Hollywood auteurs whose careers began in the silent era; in 2007 it was Chaplin, for instance. Following this it was Von Sternberg, then Capra, Ford, and Hawks in 2011. Each of these directors (except, for some reason, Ford) was then given a sizeable series at the PFA within six or seven months. Last year it was Raoul Walsh's turn in Bologna, and though it's taken a bit longer for it to come around this time, it's with much rejoicing that the PFA is bringing a fourteen-film set of Walsh films starting tonight with a pair of pre-codes, Sailor's Luck and Me and My Gal.

Though the fourteen films chosen represent just a fraction of the nearly one hundred films made by the director who began as as assistant to D.W. Griffith, it's evenly divided between two phases of his career. Seven films (including tonight's two) are silents or early talkies that for the most part are not frequently shown in cinemas, on television, or in home-mediatheques. Of these seven I believe only the silent gangster saga Regeneration and the terrific early-widescreen Western starring John Wayne The Big Trail have been put out on commercial DVDs in this country. I'm most excited to see the silent war movie What Price Glory, which was a huge sensation in 1926, in part thanks to the salty dialogue mouthed by actors Victor McLaglen and Edmund Lowe. Audiences who hadn't been avid lip-readers before, started paying more attention, and so did the Hays office, which soon issued an edict against profanity in movies "by either title or lip" as a response.

The other seven films in the program come from the 1940s and early fifties, and represent most of Walsh's most famous films: Objective Burma, They Died With Their Boots On, High Sierra, They Drive By Night, White Heat... But believe it or not I haven't seen a one of these I just mentioned. There was a time when Errol Flynn, Jimmy Cagney, and especially Humphrey Bogart retrospectives were staples of repertory programming at places like the Castro, but none of these pictures have gotten much theatrical play in the 21st Century. So I'm excited to fill some crucial gaps. I have seen Pursued at the Castro as part of a James Wong Howe series, and will be pleased to get a chance for a 35mm re-viewing on August 3rd, when it screens after another Western, The Lawless Breed; the latter film will be introduced by esteemed critic Dave Kehr, who will also be on hand for the August 1st showing of Wild Girl, a pre-code remake of the 1914 Marin-shot Bret Harte adaptation Salomy Jane.

Westerns and war pictures are not the most fashionable classic genres for modern Frisco Bay moviegoers, so I hope that not only the pre-codes and contemporary crime pictures are well-attended. Both as an endorsement of Walsh, and a vote to keep these Italian-tributed auteur retros coming to the PFA. This year Bologna focuses on Allan Dwan, another, even-more-prolific director who began in the silent era (he directed eleven Douglas Fairbanks films to Walsh's one) and whose filmography I've barely scratched the surface of. We'll be able to scratch a little more in a couple weeks when the San Francisco Silent Film Festival debuts its restoration of The Half-Breed, which we get the privilege of seeing before audiences in Bologna or New York (whose MOMA is winding down an even-larger Dwan series than the one in Italy). I'm crossing my fingers that we'll soon get a chance to see more- especially after the recent publication of a tantalizing and free dossier on the director.

HOW: 35mm vault print.

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.

Rocky (1976)

WHO: John Avildsen directed this.

WHAT Won the best picture and best director Oscar in 1977. Launched a franchise and a bona fide star career for an actor previously relegated to small roles in films like Death Race 2000 (never mind that that's a better movie in some of the most interesting ways). Inspired countless imitators and parodies. It's a cultural phenomenon not without some charm 37 years later. The Talia Shire character always gets on my nerves but Burgess Meredith is almost always worth watching.

WHERE/WHEN: Today only at the Castro Theatre at 4:35 and 9:25.

WHY The Castro's July calendar kicks off with this screening, and they've already got previews of August on their website. That month will start with the last day of a eight-day stand for the San Francisco Jewish Film Festival (more on this fest in a future post). Other highlights of the month include double-bills devoted to John Milus (Apocalypse Now, which he wrote, with perhaps the best film he directed, Big Wednesday August 10), Fritz Lang (Metropolis and M August 11) and Al Pacino (The Godfather Part 11 with Heat August 25, the latter at least in 35mm), and a reprise of last Labor Day weekend's 70mm booking of Hitchcock's Vertigo (August 30-September 2). This is on top of already-known events like the booking of a sing-along version of one of the strangest pop culture artifacts of the past ten years: R. Kelly's Trapped in the Closet (August 2-4), and Peaches Christ's annual Showgirls screening (August 24)

But one of the most intriguing double-bills is surely the August 22 pairing of David Lynch's Blue Velvet and a lesser-known John Avildsen film called Neighbors, starring John Belushi, Dan Aykroyd and Cathy Moriarty. Blue Velvet is one of those films which I'd mildly appreciated but never really understood the total appeal of until seeing it on the big screen. Neighbors I've never seen at all, but its darkly comic scenario about suburb-dwellers having to contend with strange additions to their 'hood seems promising as a thematic mirror for Lynch's film. And Roger Ebert, at least, preferred it to Blue Velvet.

HOW: Rocky shows via a 35mm print, on a double-bill with a 35mm print of Jaws.

Top Hat (1935)

WHO: Stars Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers are the #1 & #2 reason (not necessarily in that order) to watch this.

WHAT: Though the most well-made of the films starring Astaire and Rogers is probably Swing Time and my personal favorite (thanks to its Frisco Bay setting, the presence of Randolph Scott, and most of all its assortment of songs) is Follow the Fleet, there's one film I think of first when I picture the famous dancing duet: Top Hat. In many ways it's the most quintessential and elegant of their pairings, an airy plot filmed in an RKO studio set made over as an elaborate Art Deco fantasyland version of Venice and featuring indelible supporting players such as Edward Everett Horton, Helen Broderick, Erik Rhodes and (as in more than half of Astaire & Rogers's RKO films) Eric Blore.

As surface-smooth and innocent as this film appears to be, it easily sustains a more adult reading, if you watch it while keeping in mind that every dance sequence is really a metaphor for sex.

WHERE/WHEN: Today only at the Stanford Theatre at 5:40 and 9:25.

WHY: The Stanford Theatre's classics-only programming, as we know it today, was initiated in 1987 when David W. Packard (son of the David Packard who founded Hewlett-Packard) rented the theatre to screen 26 Fred Astaire films after the star's death. The series was such a success that Packard and his foundation purchased the theatre the following year. As the theatre's website tells the story:

Some people said that watching Fred Astaire in a real theatre was pointless because everybody could see his films on late-night television. But our 1175-seat theatre was nearly sold out for two solid weeks. Many people came every night, and we received 700 fan letters. This is why the Stanford Theatre still exists.

In less than two weeks, there'll be another chance to see Astaire and Rogers on the Stanford screen, when the venue plays Swing Time and Roberta July 13-16- the 16th being the 102nd anniversary of Ginger Rogers's birth.

Another film featuring Rogers, Gold Diggers of 1933 screens at the Tannery in Berkeley this Sunday as a presentation of the Berkeley Underground Film Society. I haven't yet sampled the presentations by this group, but hope to this summer.


HOW: Top Hat shows on a 35mm double-bill with another Astaire/Rogers classic, The Gay Divorcee.

Free Angela and All Political Prisoners (2012)

WHO: If you watched Sesame Street in the 1970s, you may remember Shola Lynch as one of the kids who interacted with Muppets like Kermit the Frog, Bert and Ernie during segments of that show. Now Lynch is a grown woman and a director of documentaries like this one.

WHAT: I haven't seen this, but Sam Adams has a favorable review I'll quote from:

Lynch, who profiled black presidential candidate Shirley Chisholm in 2004’s Unbought And Unbossed, has slicked up her game considerably in the intervening years, deftly interweaving archival footage and new interviews. (Having Jay-Z and Will and Jada Pinkett Smith on board as executive producers doubtless bought her plenty of time in the edit room.) There’s less vintage footage of Davis addressing crowds than one might like, but in the present day, Davis remains a beguiling and charismatic speaker, even if the temperature of her rhetoric has cooled significantly.

WHERE/WHEN:  Tonight at 6:30 PM and Wednesday at 7:00 PM at the New Parkway in downtown Oakland.

WHY: There are five fewer arthouse screens in San Francisco this month than last month thanks to the current renovation of the Embarcadero Cinema. A total of ten SF screens have now gone essentially dark in the past year, after the permanent closure of the Lumiere and Bridge and the relegation of New People's screen to occasional festival rentals (like the upcoming Japan Film Festival). Under such conditions it's almost inevitable that certain documentaries and other commercially risky movies will start to get runs in Alameda County but not in San Francisco more frequently than before. Free Angela and All Political Prisoners is an example, and though its East Bay-centric subject matter makes this perhaps understandable, it's a reminder that movie lovers on this side of the Bay Bridge may need to keep closer eye on what's playing at cinemas on the other side if they want a full array of moviegoing options.

HOW: Video projection.