Co-presented by the Art Directors Guild Film Society William Cameron Menzies was likely the most celebrated art director in silent motion pictures for his work on such extraordinary films as THE THIEF OF BAGDAD (1924). He won the first Oscar for Art Direction for THE DOVE (1927), and in 1936 directed the landmark sci-fi epic ... [Read more...]
35mm print preserved by the Library of Congress Featuring live accompaniment by Cliff Retallick! A glittering social satire staged safely abroad, So This Is Paris passes off the routine infidelities of Jazz Age blue-bloods as “the French way.” Teasing the audience with urbane good humor—and featuring a nigh-surrealist montage of an “artist’s ball” (read: nightclub) ... [Read more...]
Different From The Others (German: Anders als die Andern) is a German film produced during the Weimar Republic. It was first released in 1919 and stars Conrad Veidt and Reinhold Schünzel. The story for Anders als die Andern was co-written by Richard Oswald and Dr. Magnus Hirschfeld, who also had a small part in the film and partially funded the production through his Institute for Sexual Science, with the aim ... [Read more...]
Celebrate the career of Felix the Cat, the No. 1 cartoon star of the 1920s, with a program including Pat Sullivan and Otto Messmer’s “Felix in Hollywood” (1923) and other shorts featuring the fabulous feline. Plus such animated gems as Winsor McCay’s “The Sinking of the Lusitania” (1918) and “The Pet” (1921), Max Fleischer’s “The ... [Read more...]
A chic European countess visits her small-town American cousin and wreaks mayhem with her liberated continental habits, like smoking cigarettes and seducing men of high ranking public office. Pola Negri is very good at imbuing small gestures with explicit suggestions, and, with eyelids perpetually at half-mast, exudes an attractive combination of contempt and boredom. As ... [Read more...]
The Hollywood Foreign Press Association & Hollywood Heritage Present: Evening at the Barn - THEDA BARA - LOST CLEOPATRA Please join us on Wednesday, February 8, 2017 for a special celebration of the silent 1917 epic "CLEOPATRA" starring Theda Bara. The movie was truly a masterpiece, unfortunately this film along with virtually the entire Fox ... [Read more...]
Archival print courtesy of the Library of Congress Featuring live accompaniment by Cliff Retallick This madcap tale of hypochondria and bootlegging is the work of the then up-and-coming director Gregory La Cava, who was – naturally – a former cartoonist. When his employer tanked, he started making features replete with comic strip style stories. This one ... [Read more...]
Please join us this Friday evening at 7:30 p.m. for a special presentation of Peck's Bad Boy, starring the greatest child star of the silent era, Jackie Coogan, with live accompaniment by the one and only Cliff Retallick! See the attached poster for details. Later this year, we will be presenting Jackie Coogan and Lon ... [Read more...]
Featuring live accompaniment by Cliff Retallick Josef von Sternberg’s first film – shot for less than $4,800 on location in San Pedro, Chinatown and the San Fernando Valley – was possibly Hollywood’s first “independent” production. The gritty realism of its locations, the lack of artifice in its story and the lower depths of its characters ... [Read more...]
As part of the RETROFORMAT SERIES at the Egyptian Theatre in Hollywood I will be performing live accompaniment for this silent gem! From the good folks at RETROFORMAT: Saturday, October 14, 2017, Lon Chaney returns to Retroformat in Tod Browning's Outside the Law (1920), with live accompaniment by Cliff Retallick. In his second collaboration with ... [Read more...]