The San Francisco Silent Film Festival

There can’t be a better event for a look into the past than the San Francisco Silent Film Festival. The Castro movie theater is the perfect venue for watching these classics as they were meant to be seen and heard. On the big screen with live musical accompaniment. The Art Deco Castro theater was built in the Twenties. Stepping into it is stepping back into time.

The Opening Night film is the classic All Quiet On the Western Front. Tickets are $22, but that includes a program for the festival that was worth at least half the price of admission. It has descriptions of all the films in the festival and reprints of magazine articles printed when the films were released. Most of the film facts and anecdotes in this post are from the program, or IMDB.com, The Internet Movie Data Base. David Thompson wrote the All Quiet On The Western Front entry in the program. 

It was great to see many familiar faces from the San Francisco International Film Festival. “The gang’s all here!” Since all the films will be shown on one screen at the Castro, it’s possible to see all nineteen films over the next five days. So, the big question among the hard core is: “Are you going to see them all?” The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak.

It is a festival. The audience arrives early and lines up outside. There is no Wurlitzer organ tonight, but music of the twenties and thirties is played. Slides with film facts, ads of the time and ads for the sponsors of the festival kept us relatively entertained. In a sign of the times even the Silent Film Festival audience were on their cell phones checking e-mail while waiting for the program to start.    

The President of the Board for the Silent Film Festival, Robert Byrne, started things off. He thanked sponsors and the audience. Ron Meyer, the Vice Chairman of NBC Universal, was brought onstage to make “an important announcement.” The company has restored thirty films since 2012. Twenty-five more will be restored, fifteen of them over the next four years. 

This announcement was met with applause from an audience very supportive of film preservation. Studio executives were ruthless when it came to spending any money to preserve films. Most silent films had been left to rot. I’m glad they’re doing it now, but is it too little, too late?   

It was a lively crowd. There were whoops and yells from the crowd when some sponsors were announced. Michael Mashon gave an articulate description of the Opening Night film, All Quiet On the Western Front. It had been a huge gamble for the studio. The stock market had crashed just two months before filming started. It cost 1.5 million dollars to make. This was a huge investment at the time. 

Mashon asks the question: Why is All Quiet On the Western Front being shown at a silent movie festival? Many theaters across the country were not equipped with sound technology yet, so two versions were made. Title cards were created for each version. There was a “sync-sound” ‘silent’ version with title cards, orchestral score and its own sound effects. The sound version was distributed. The silent version “shot concurrently” didn’t premiere until it was shown on TV in 2011. 

Some critics say the silent version had “smoother editing.” Leonard Maltin is quoted in the program: “some film scholars prefer this smoothly edited edition ... to the familiar talkie because of its vigorous pacing.”

The film was based on the novel by Erich Maria Remarque. Remarque was born Erich Paul Remark in Germany. He served a month on the Western front before being injured by shrapnel. He was struggling as a writer before his realistic account of the war became a sensation. 

Carl Laemmle, Jr. was the head of production at Universal and the son of the founder. They were German and deeply shaken by the war. Father and son were strongly motivated to make the film.  

All Quiet On The Western Front was directed by Lewis Milestone. He was expected to bring World War I to life. The battle scenes are epic and realistic. It was filmed ten years after the war, but it still has an air of authenticity. Director Lewis Milestone was known for creating aerial tracking shots. There are great views of trench attacks. The producers worried that the violence of these scenes was too much for the audience. It was decided that the violence in the film was justified because of the film’s antiwar message. David Thompson points out that the Production Code wasn’t really enforced until 1934, so it really was up to the producers.  

The trenches and sets for the battle scenes were so realistic that the chief sanitary inspector for Orange County insisted on inspecting the trenches. Milestone looked for German veterans in the Los Angeles area. He wanted them to authenticate uniforms and weapons. So many of them turned up that they were used as officers in the film.

The gamble paid off. The film was a huge hit, and it won the Best Picture Academy Award in 1930. It was the first “talkie war film” to win an Oscar, and it was the first Best Picture winner for Universal. Milestone won Best Director. 

It was one of the first antiwar statements of any kind. It’s a great war film, maybe the best. Maybe any great war film has to be an antiwar film. It was filmed in California and that may have helped it keep its antiwar message. The war had been over for ten years, but there was still much bitterness over the carnage of the war. European film makers might have watered down the antiwar intensity of the film. It faced much controversy when it was released in Europe

Milestone did not use music because of the “seriousness of the subject.” He learned “to his chagrin” that theaters were adding their own music, which was the custom at the time. Most movie theaters across the country had their own live orchestra or at least a band. Tonight the film would be accompanied by music and live sound effects by the Mont Alto Motion Picture Orchestra.  

The orchestra sound effects are perfectly timed. A kettle drum simulates the thunder of artillery barrages. The sharp snaps of rifle fire are short cracks on a snare drum. The uncanny timing is taken for granted as the film goes on.  

College students are whipped into an enlisting frenzy by their very enthusiastic professor. Most of them are fearless and eager for glory. A few are hesitant, but peer group pressure gets them to join up too. It will be the adventure of a lifetime! 

They’re disenchanted with military life from the beginning of basic training. The young recruits first contact with the enemy is a nerve wracking scene where they lay wire in no man’s land. One of the German veterans had done this in the war and showed the other extras the proper techniques. It’s a surprise and a shock to see their comrades wounded or killed. They quickly learn the horrible realities of war. The war drags on. 

The film had a big problem in Germany. The film shows the weakness and foibles of enlisted men. This would not be tolerated by the Nazi elite. It didn’t reflect the iron will that they would need from their fighting men. Brown Shirts released rats and stink bombs in theaters that showed the film. They burned the novel. When the Nazis gained power the film and the novel were banned. The authorities said it was a demoralizing “discredit to German military resolve.” 

People crave the truth. Special busses and trains carried Germans to France, Switzerland and the Netherlands to see the film. In a strange twist it was banned in Poland for being “pro-German.” It shows what a powerful and emotional experience the film was. 

All Quiet On The Western Front was also banned in France. Authorities didn’t want audiences to watch enemy soldiers and realize they were human. They were young men just like in their army.  

Remarque escaped to Switzerland. His sister, Elfriede remained in Germany and wasn’t as fortunate. Apparently she was too outspoken about the war. In 1943 she was arrested. The Nazis said that she had declared that the war was lost already. She was tried, convicted and beheaded! 

Remarque had “rumored affairs” with Hedy Lamarr, Marlene Dietrich, Greta Garbo and later married Paulette Goddard. This guy was luckier than Sinatra!  

Lew Ayres (Then Lewis Ayres.) played Paul, one of the college recruits who had his doubts about going to war. During a battle he winds up in a trench with a French soldier. He mortally wounds his opponent. Then he agonizes over what he’s done. Ayres was a popular star until World War II, when he declared that he was a conscientious objector. Public outrage ended his career. His films were “banned in a hundred Chicago theaters.” He did work in the medical corps.  

The French soldier that Paul kills in the trench was played by Raymond Griffith. He had been a very popular film star in France. Griffith had lost his voice because of a childhood illness. The end of silent films meant the end of his career.

All Quiet On the Western Front was a gutsy choice for the Opening Night film. Most of this audience had seen it before, but the live music and sound effects made it worth a trip to The Castro. 

I wouldn’t be able to “see them all,” but I did make it back to see The Donovan Affair, a “dark-house comedy whodunnit.” It was day three of The San Francisco Silent Film Festival. 

Anita Monga, the popular programmer, introduced Bruce Goldstein. Goldstein is a personable and entertaining speaker. He was the programming director for The Film Forum in New York when they were putting together a “comprehensive” showing of Frank Capra’s films. They couldn’t find a copy of his first talkie, The Donovan Affair. It was one of the first films he directed and it was his first “100% all dialogue picture.” Why was it so hard to find? 

Goldstein learned why when he found a copy in the Library of Congress. There was no soundtrack. It was the early days of sound technology and the soundtrack was recorded on sixteen inch Vitaphone disks. A colleague of Goldstein’s brings one of the disks onstage and holds it aloft. It does look huge. There had been eight disks for The Donovan Affair. None of them have been found. One of the first talkies almost disappeared because no one could find the soundtrack. 

Goldstein was trying to preserve the films of the past, especially Frank Capra’s early work. He tried to find the script for The Donovan Affair, but even Columbia Pictures, the studio were it was made, didn’t have a copy. He couldn’t find a copy of the Owen Davis play it was based on.  

In an ironic twist, he found a “dialogue list” at the New York State Board of Film Censors. The “dialogue list” had originally been intended to find lines that were risque.  

One of the enforcers of the new Production Code had become a way to restore the dialogue of the film. It wasn’t totally accurate, but it was a start.

Goldstein wanted to show The Donovan Affair at The Film Forum’s Capra retrospective. He could show it as a silent, but he knew that would only confuse and frustrate the audience. He really wanted to show it using live actors “instantaneously dubbing” the dialogue with live sound effects. The actors would have to be familiar with the acting style of the time. He tried a solo test run at the Library of Congress and was excited to realize it could be done. 

He found kindred spirits in Steve Sterner, the Film Forum accompanist for silent films and Glenn Taranto. With their help, Goldstein began to piece together the script. They gathered a cast of ten and studied video versions the film. The timing had to be exact. Lip readers helped them decipher much of the dialogue. They put the script back together piece by piece.  

One problem was that Capra had experimented with the new phenomenon of sound in movies. He would have actors speak off screen or with their backs turned. Everything about sound was new then. It made it harder to recreate all the dialogue. Goldstein says it was a work in progress: “It took twenty-three years!”  

Goldstein does have a sense of humor. Why would one of the first talkies be shown at a silent film festival? It’s a “transitional” film that shows the evolution of sound in movies. Goldstein says it will be the first time the film “has really been heard” in eighty years. The Donovan Affair was the first “all talkie” for Columbia.  

The Donovan Affair was made in 1929 with Frank Capra directing. Jack Holt played hard boiled inspector John Killian. Dorothy Revier is Jean Rankin. It’s rumored that Revier was the model for Columbia’s “torch lady” who appeared with the studio’s logo before every movie.

  The film premiered at the 5,900 seat Roxy Theater in New York. There was also a live stage show: “The Roxyettes” who later became the Radio City “Rockettes.” The dubbed Donovan Affair was first performed in 1992 at the Film Forum. The first line brought nervous laughter, but then came the sound effect for ice clinking into a cocktail glass. It brought a huge laugh from the audience, and the same thing happens later tonight.

Goldstein did find another version of the Donovan talkie without sound. It was at Wesleyan University, which has most of Capra’s papers. He also found a trailer with sound. He plays the audio for us, so we do get to hear the original voices. 

  The actors are a group called The Gower Gulch Players. The Gower Gulch players are: Glenn Taranto, Rick Pasqualone, Hannah Davis, Ashley Adler, Steve Sterner (piano) Yelena Shmulenson, Allen Lewis Rickman, Bruce Goldstein and Frank Buxton. They sit behind lit up music stands near the stage. Steve Sterner is at the piano and also dubs a couple of voices. The players know the movie inside out. Their timing is precise. They’re so skilled that the audience forgets about dubbed lines and sound effects. The plot is a bit dated and corny. The program calls it “an ancient potboiler.” The audience gets caught up in the murder mystery. 

John Roche plays Jack Donovan, a man about town with a lot of enemies. He must have been quite the ladies man. We first see him cruelly dumping an apparent mistress. He’s having an affair with Captain Peter Rankin’s daughter and seems very familiar with Rankin’s wife. Agnes Ayres plays Lydia Rankin. She was better known as Valentino’s love interest in The Sheik. There are many people who want to see Donovan dead. He’s just no good.

  A bunch of gangsters are hanging out in a hotel room. One prepares some drinks and we hear the ice cube tinkling effect. It does break the ice for the sound effects. The gangsters are comparing notes on Jack Donovan and they don’t like him. He owes several of the gangsters money, and they learn he just dropped ten thousand dollars at the track! Will Donovan be able to pay any of them? One of the gangsters gets ready to leave. “What are you going to do?” “What do you think I’m going to do?” is his ominous reply.  

Captain Peter Rankin is getting ready for his birthday party. He’s begun to strongly suspect that his wife is seeing Donovan. It seems like everyone at the party wants to kill Donovan. We learn later that even the gardener has an axe to grind. The gangster who left the hotel room is at the party too. 

The Captain’s birthday party will be a formal affair. Donovan is announced by Nelson, the butler. Donovan is surprised to see the gangster at the party. Not everyone wants Donovan dead. There is a society matron and her hen pecked husband. They’ve just had twins and add some obnoxious comic relief. 

Donovan is wearing a ridiculously large ring and the society matron is fascinated by it. The gardener has been lurking at a window and jumps when he sees the ring. Donovan says it was stolen from a temple in Asia. Someone says that it glows in the dark. Donovan reluctantly admits that it does. The society matron insists on a chance to see the ring in the dark. 

Nelson the butler turns off the lights and the ring starts to glow. It’s a large dot on the big screen. There are sounds of a scuffle, and the dot disappears from the screen. The lights go back on. Donovan lies slumped on the table with a knife in his back! He’s dead! 

The first cop on the scene is Carney. He’s played by Fred Kelsey, who later played in many Three Stooges shorts. Carney is abrasive and bumbling. Everyone is now a suspect. Carney bullies them until Inspector John Killian shows up. 

Inspector Killian starts rattling off questions. For some reason they had moved the body upstairs. Killian is aghast and sternly warns Captain Rankin that if there is another murder in his home he should not move the body! 

Some of the humor is dated. Killian and Carney have an annoying schtick. Killian tells his assistant to do something: “Get those suspects into the dining room!” Every time Carney responds with, “Now boss?” Killian gets more exasperated each time. Maybe it was funnier when it was acted out onstage as a play. The play was a big hit.  

It starts raining heavily. Killian has the dinner guests herded from room to room. Maybe they’re stunned from the shocking aftermath of the murder, but the suspects are very obedient. No one objects or asks for a lawyer. There’s a mysterious note found and Killian gets a writing sample from everyone at the party. Nelson the butler is very helpful. The gardener lurks by the window in the pouring rain.

Killian decides that the only way to solve the crime is to have it reenacted. Everyone takes the same seats they were in the last time the lights went out. Carney hesitates before taking Donovan’s place. The lights go out. There is the sound of furniture flying again. The lights go back on, and there’s been another murder!  

Old films can be a bit quaint. Both victims stabbed right at the dinner table, but there’s not much blood around. At one point one of the suspects has a small blood stain on the arm of his shirt. This makes him the prime suspect for a while. If it were made today there would be computer generated blood all over the place. Theater and movies were much more discreet back then. It almost seems a bit Victorian. 

Suspicion shifts from one suspect to another. I’m not sure how many theatrical murder mysteries there were before this, but this may be a prototype.

The crime is solved and the Gower Gulch Players get a well deserved round of applause. They are introduced and brought onstage. Most of them are well known character actors. The cast again:  Alan Lewis Rickman. Steve Sterner. Yelena Shmulenson. Glenn Taranto. (The New Adams Family) Hannah Davis. Rick Pasqualone. Ashley Adder. Frank Buxton.

So much of early cinema has been lost, but it’s encouraging to see this unique  preservation of The Donovan Affair. It’s been given new life. There’s no better time capsule into the entertainment of almost a hundred years ago than silent films.