IOHTE: Lucy Laird

"IOHTE" stands for "I Only Have Two Eyes"; it's my annual survey of selected San Francisco Bay Area cinephiles' favorite in-the-cinema screenings of classic films and archival oddities from the past year. An index of participants can be found here.

Contributor Lucy Laird is the new Operations Director of the San Francisco Silent Film Festival.
 
My two eyes were removed in a painful procedure three years ago, but I'm happy to report that they began regenerating in 2014. My doctors predict a full recovery in 15 years' time—i.e., when my daughter turns 18. So forgive me when I list nearly every repertory screening that I attended this past year. And with that caveat, here they are, in chronological order:

Image supplied by contributor

Sunday, July 20, 2014: Lotte Reiniger's Mary's Birthday at the Pacific Film Archive Little did I realize that this would be my last chance to savor the curatorial finesse of Steve Seid at the PFA—now retired from his position there, but, I hope, not from film programming—with the "cheat" addition of this Reiniger short within a series devoted to adaptations of children's picture books. Bonus: The whole family could attend! There is nothing more delightful than a theater full of little kids in good moods, exclaiming at the onscreen wonders of their favorite books and artists come to life. (And no, that certain Disney film with two princesses that shall not be named doesn't count!) And even more delightful is a certain two-and-a-half-year-old proclaiming over the following weeks and months: "That movie with the flies is my favorite movie!" You can see why here.

Image supplied by contributor

Saturday, September 20, 2014: Laurel and Hardy in Two Tars at the Castro Theatre, as part of the Silent Film Festival's Silent Autumn Event Full disclosure: I was working this event and therefore wasn't able to watch the full program of three L&H shorts (the other two were Should Married Men Go Home? and Big Business), but I did manage to duck in and enjoy the gumball machine and traffic jam scenes in Two Tars. (And yes, this was another screening that a toddler could attend, shushing seniors be darned!) But having grown up watching Stan and Ollie's sound films on television, I couldn't believe that I was finally able to watch them on the big screen. Could the traffic jam scene be the first cinematic treatment of road rage? I don't know, but I am pleased to report that in my daughter's wise judgment, "Mama's work movie" slapsticked its way to the #1 spot on her list, knocking out Reiniger's "fly movie."

Image supplied by contributor -- see below

Thursday, November 20, 2014: Leo Esakya's Amerikanka at the Pacific Film Archive The Georgian cinema series runs for a few more months, through Spring 2015. Go. And be sure to see all the silents you can. The one I've listed here, Amerikanka, is a mesmerizing, rhythmic, tension-filled ode to an underground printing press of the revolutionary period. "Amerikanka" or "American Lady"—as explained by Peter Bagrov of Gosfilmofond, who was there to introduce the screening—probably refers to the make of the printing press itself. And print is what dominates this film, from the montage of satirical personal ads at the start ("Light armour, resistant to any revolver, for sale. Tested...Good-looking count in his 30s wishes to meet a rich lady with a view to marriage.") to the revolutionary pamphlets streaming off the press, to the notes and maps of the soil analyst trying to uncover the rebel print factory, to the letter dictated by an unseen Lenin to the typist's clacking keys. It was exhilarating and exhausting for this American lady, as I read the translation of the fast-paced text and intertitles to the audience over a microphone. One of my friends in attendance likened my performance to that of a bid caller at an auction. Oof! Sorry about that, comrades.  (Picture for this blurb: Google Street View of the underground printing press—with a fruit wholesaling business as a front—still in existence today as a museum at 55 Lesnaya St, Moscow.)

IOHTE: Veronika Ferdman

"IOHTE" stands for "I Only Have Two Eyes"; it's my annual survey of selected San Francisco Bay Area cinephiles' favorite in-the-cinema screenings of classic films and archival oddities from the past year. An index of participants can be found here.

Contributor Veronika Ferdman wrote in 2014 for Slant Magazine, In Review Online and elsewhere.

That nine of the ten films on this list are ones that were viewed at the Stanford Theatre is a two-fold reflection of the incredible (miraculous) programming that occurs there and the fact that living in the South Bay also makes this one of my few "local" rep theatres.

A strong part of me wants to create an alternate ballot of an imaginary top 10 of the best rep films I would have seen if distances were shorter and I was better at managing time. Surely, many of the Hou Hsiao-hsien and Georgian films played by the PFA would be there, as would the Castro's screening of Chelsea Girls, and the William Lustig Maniac Cop trilogy shown by the YBCA, and, oh, so many others.

Screen capture from The Story of Film DVD, Music Box Films

But, to leave the imaginary ideal and get back to the films seen in the physical world..

The last rep film I saw in 2014 was Ernst Lubitsch's The Shop Around the Corner, which had the simultaneous and divergent effect of making me want to run out of the theater and have ecsatic conversations with people on the street while also pulling me back into the darkness ever-desirous of more images. The best pieces of cinema have that effect - pushing us into the real world with a new way of viewing or approaching it while also joyously propelling us back into the fold of images and sounds.

My Top 10:

screen capture from Warner DVD

1.) The Bachelor and the Bobby-Soxer (Stanford Theatre)

2.) The Bitter Tea of General Yen (Stanford Theatre)

3.) Clash by Night (Stanford Theatre)

4.) Night Nurse (Stanford Theatre)

5.) Underground (Castro Theatre)

6.) Jeopardy (Stanford Theatre)

7.) There's Always Tomorrow (Stanford Theatre)

8.) Remember the Night (Stanford Theatre)

9.) The Reluctant Debutante (Stanford Theatre)

10.) The Shop Around the Corner (Stanford Theatre)

Shockproof (1949)

Screen capture from Cinema Guild DVD release of Los Angeles Plays Itself.

WHO: Douglas Sirk directed this, from a screenplay written by Sam Fuller.

WHAT: I've never seen this film before, so let me pull a few sentences of synopsis from the collector-worthy glossy program booklet given to every attendee of the Noir City festival this week:

Jenny Marsh is freed from prison after serving five years for the "self-defense" killing of a man who tried to murder her larcenous lover. Her parole officer, Griff Marat, takes pity and helps her arrange a new life on the straight-and-narrow. But Jenny proves too desirable for Griff's own good, and he impulsively marries the ex-con--a parole violation that makes them fugitives! More bad news--Jenny's shifty boyfriend is still in the picture.

WHERE/WHEN: Today only at 2:00 and 7:30 at the Castro, presented as part of Noir City 13.

WHY: Friday night's presentation of a six-minute video showcasing then-and-now comparisons of exterior location shots from Woman on the Run with their modern-day counterparts. Some places like the army/navy surplus stores on the Embarcadero, had disappeared entirely and were even hissed by some audience members. Others, like Fisherman's Wharf, had changed only superficially since 1950. But the audience reaction was most vociferous for the shots that in fact had been taken not in San Francisco at all, but in Southern California; namely, the final rollercoaster and midway section shot, not in Playland at the Beach as is often assumed, but Ocean Park Pier off Santa Monica, and the opening hillside murder location, which was actually filmed in the bunker hill area of Los Angeles. I highly recommend watching Thom Anderson's Los Angeles Plays Itself for more context on this fascinatingly frequent film noir location. It's also where the above shot from Shockproof was filmed, and I'm excited to see it pop up again in the festival. Wonder how many more times it will this week...

HOW: 35mm, on a double-bill with Sirk's 1948 film Sleep My Love, produced by Mark Pickford(!)

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.

Woman on the Run (1950)

image supplied by Film Noir Foundation

WHO: Ann Sheridan (who was born 100 years ago this February 21st) stars in this, and was also an uncredited co-producer.

WHAT: As I wrote in a Keyframe Daily article previewing the Noir City film festival, published yesterday:

Ann Sheridan plays the hard-boiled spouse of a failed artist who has gone into hiding after witnessing a murder. She attempts to track him down using old sketchbooks of neighborhood inhabitants as clues to his whereabouts, while trying to evade detectives and newspapermen trying to get to him first. If her wanderings across city hills into various dives feel particularly authentic to San Francisco’s character, perhaps it’s because the cinematographer was a native son, Hal Mohr, who’d filmed extensively here. (His credits include the notorious The Last Night of the Barbary Coast for Sol Lesser in 1913.) Director Norman Foster, best known for his collaborations with Orson Welles, had also made his transition from actor to director in a 1936 San Francisco film called I Cover Chinatown. Woman on the Run is a completely unpretentious, excellent thriller and a genuine Noir City discovery making its long-awaited reappearance at the festival after the last copy was thought destroyed in the 2008 Universal Studios fire.

Here's a link to my piece on the Universal fire at the time it happened, and more importantly, a candid 2010 interview with Eddie Muller about his exchanges with the studio after that event. I also must link to Brian Hollins's terrific Reel SF page for this film, which guides us through the specific San Francisco (and Southern California) locations where it was filmed.

WHERE/WHEN: Screens 7:30 tonight only at the Castro Theatre as part of Noir City.

WHY: With yesterday's re-opening of the Pacific Film Archive for the Spring semester coinciding with a new Stanford Theatre Alfred Hitchcock retrospective, the new Frisco Bay repertory film year is now officially underway (although I've already seen some fine revival programs at the Exploratorium, the Castro, and Oddball Films, and regretfully missed some at the Niles Essanay Silent Film Museum)  I usually like to at least start my annual I Only Have Two Eyes survey of the prior year's repertory scene before the start of Noir City, but a combination of that festival starting early and my soliciting entries later than I'd hoped means that's not happening this year. But I'm hard at work compiling and you'll soon start seeing the results posted here. Just not before tonight's thrilling kick-off to ten days of 35mm noir heaven at the Castro.

As Noir City honcho Eddie Muller told G. Allen Johnson recently, tonight's festival opener Woman on the Run was the genesis of this year's "Unholy Matrimony" theme. I tried to avoid hinting at spoilers in my Keyframe article on the festival, so I didn't talk much about the marriage angle of the film in the above-quoted paragraph, but suffice to say (still eschewing revealing anything specific to those who might not have seen the film) Woman on the Run presents a really interesting portrayal of wedlock circa 1950. It's an ideal opener for so many reasons, and of the films in the festival I've seen before, it's the one I'm most excited to see again (followed closely by the Tuesday night Robert Ryan double bill and the Wednesday night Barbara Stanwyck bill, which is an exact duplicate of one I saw at the Stanford last April). Partly I'm so excited to see Woman on the Run on the big screen because in 2014 I moved into an apartment overlooking one of the locations where it was shot. To think Ann Sheridan was captured on film walking below my kitchen window sixty-five years ago! I can't wait to see that particular scene, and in fact the whole film again in what I expect will be a gorgeous 35mm print a zillion times more clear than the available DVD and youtube versions.

HOW: Woman on the Run screens from a newly-struck, never publicly projected, 35mm print on a double-bill with an archival 35mm print of what I'm pretty certain was Nicholas Ray's only film set in San Francisco: Born to be Bad.