IOHTE: Margarita Landazuri

"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 Margarita Landazuri writes for Turner Classic Movies, International Documentary, and other outlets.

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I loved the Roxie's French Noir festival, and unfortunately was not able to see as many films as I would have liked, because most of the programs sold out quickly. I did make it to the streeetwalkers double bill of Dede d'Anvers and Love is My Profession, and enjoyed the contrast between Simone Signoret's womanly poule, and Brigitte Bardot's sex kitten. After seeing Signoret, world-weary and wounded in the foggy waterfront shadows in the former, Bardot seemed boringly pouty and petulant in the latter. However, the always-watchable Jean Gabin as the middle-aged lawyer ensnared by Bardot made that film worthwhile.

As usual, the San Francisco Silent Film Festival's four-day summer program offered an embarrassment of riches. My favorite was also the most surprising: Yasujiro Ozu's Dragnet Girl, a 1933 gangster film with deliriously kinetic camera moves from the master of static camera and quiet family dramas and comedies. Another discovery for me was French comedian/auteur Max Linder, whom I'd heard of but never seen. Seven Years of Bad Luck showed why Linder's genius for physical comedy influenced comics as diverse as Chaplin (who called himself Linder's "disciple") to possibly Lucille Ball -- Ball's "I Love Lucy" mirror routine with Harpo Marx is uncannily similar to Linder's in the film.

At the Silent Film Festival's one-day Autumn event, the standout for me was the restored Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, with Donald Sosin's superb synthesizer accompaniment. The clarity and the detail of the images, and the expressionist-style intertitles are impressive. As Michael Atkinson wrote in his program notes, it's almost like seeing a brand-new film.  

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I really enjoyed the Don Murray retrospective at the the Roxie last summer. The two double bills I saw demonstrated the range of this vastly underrated and overlooked actor. He played a drug-addicted veteran in A Hatful of Rain, a restless, married office worker in The Bachelor Party, a tortured gay senator and blackmail victim in Advise and Consent, and a boisterous cowboy opposite Marilyn Monroe in Bus Stop. Now in his 80s, Murray attended the screenings and spoke thoughtfully and insightfully about his career.

IOHTE: Jesse Hawthorne Ficks

"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 Jesse Hawthorne Ficks is the Film History Coordinator at the Academy of Art University and curates/hosts the MiDNiTES FOR MANiACS series at the Castro Movie Theatre, which showcases underrated, overlooked and dismissed films in a neo-sincere manner.

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10. The Astrologer (Craig Denney, 1975) The only 35mm print in existence @ The New People Cinema part of "Another Hole in the Head" Film Festival. If only audiences would have allowed the film to work its magic before they started making fun of it. There really is something quite daring and motivated by Denney's descent here.

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9.My Fair Lady (George Cukor, 1964) 
One of the most beautiful 171 minutes (11 reels) projected from an anamorphic 2.35:1 IB Technicolor 35mm print ever experienced @ The Castro Theatre

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8. A City of Sadness (Hou Hsiao-hsien, 1989) Perhaps the last time this 35mm will screen in the US, @ Pacific Film Archive

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7. People's Park (Libbie Dina Cohn, J.P. Sniadecki, 2012) Part of Harvard's ongoing experimental documentary film program "Sensory Ethnography Lab" @ The Black Hole (in Oakland)

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6. "Off the Screen: Let Your Light Shine with Jodie Mack" IN PERSON! Watching five beautiful 16mm prints of Mack's masterful collages was utterly inspiring including: New Fancy Foils (2013), Undertone Overture (2013), Dusty Stacks of Mom: The Poster Project (2013), Glistening Thrills (2013), Let Your Light Shine (2013) @ The Exploratorium in Pier 15.

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5. The Violent Men (Rudolph Maté, 1955) and Forty Guns (Samuel Fuller, 1957) Made on either side of John Ford's 1956 masterpiece The Searchers, these two melodrama westerns not only showcased one of my favorite actresses Barbara Stanwyck, the films themselves are now firmly two of my favorite westerns of all time. Screened @ The Stanford Theater.

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4.Two Seconds (Mervyn Le Roy, 1932) Film Noir connoisseur Elliot Lavine gave me an historical beating with this "proto-noir", "pre-code" performance by Edward G. Robinson. Truly left me gasping for air. Screened @ The Roxie Movie Theater part of "I Wake Up Dreaming 2014" series.

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3. Chan Is Missing (Wayne Wang, 1982) As soon as this deeply moving 16mm print ended, I went home and watched it again. Joe and Steve's relationship is truly priceless as are all of the San Francisco insights, which still relate to the city to this day. Screened @ The Yerba Buena Center for the Arts part of Joel Sheperd's "LEST WE FORGET: Remembering Radical San Francisco" film series

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2.Los Angeles Plays Itself (Thom Anderson, 2003) Life changing restored documentary. Sent me spiraling into all sorts of films made in Los Angeles from the "L.A. Rebellion movement" to Gregory Nava's El Norte (Guatemala/Mexico/US, 1983). Watch at any cost. Screened @ The Castro Movie Theatre

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1. Park Row (Sam Fuller, 1952), A Fuller Life (Samantha Fuller, 2013) and Pickup on South Street (Sam Fuller, 1953) Planned on only watching the rare 35mm print of Park Row but ended up staying for the whole mind blowing Triple Bill. Seek out his daughter's documentary. It is beautifully structured by stars reading huge passages from his book. Favorites included Tim Roth, Jennifer Beals, Joe Dante, Bill Duke, James Franco, William Friedkin, Mark Hamill and Buck Henry! While my mother fell in love with Richard Widmark during Pickup on South Street, I fell just as hard for Thelma Ritter as Moe which truly has to be one of the most amazing characters in film history. Screened @ The Castro Movie Theatre (Note the gust of wind that embraced my mother when taking the photo. We're pretty sure that it was Mr. Widmark himself.)

IOHTE: Michael Hawley

"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 Michael Hawley blogs at his own site film-415.

Ten Favorite 2014 Bay Area Revival Screenings

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The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (Germany, 1920, director Robert Wiene), Castro Theatre, San Francisco Silent Film Festival's Silent Autumn, U.S. premiere of a mind-blowing 4K digital restoration)

Noir City oriental-ist triple bill of Singapore (1947, director John Brahm), Macao (1952, director Josef von Sternberg) and The Shanghai Gesture (1941, director Josef von Sternberg), Castro Theatre, Noir City

Queen Margot: The Director's Cut (France, director Patrice Chéreau), Kabuki Sundance Cinema, San Francisco International Film Festival

Curt McDowell double bill of Taboo: The Single and the LP (1980) and Sparkle's Tavern (1985), Roxie Theatre, with Melinda McDowell in person)

Son of the Sheik (1926, director George Fitzmaurice), Castro Theatre, San Francisco Silent Film Festival's Silent Autumn, world premiere of new score by The Alloy Orchestra

Julien Duvivier double bill of Highway Pickup (France, 1963) and Deadlier Than the Male (France, 1963) at the Roxie Theatre, "The French Had a Name For It" French film noir series 

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:

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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.

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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."

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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.

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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:

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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)