A famous opera singer lost her voice when her son was born, and has drowned her sorrows in drink. When a murder is committed near her house, she invents a story in order to get herself back in front of the public again. However, the story she comes up with results in her son being ... [Read more...]
A rare comedy from the typically austere D.W. Griffith, Sally of the Sawdust is a delightful gem and the veritable kick off of W.C. Fields’s unmatched career. Based on the 1923 stage musical Poppy, Sally is rife with what we now know as trademark Fields — bumbling idiocy, juggling, dog-kicking — all in the midst of circus antics galore. ... [Read more...]
With Surprise Shorts! In possibly his best pre-swashbuckling comedy, Douglas Fairbanks stars as a young New Yorker who longs for the excitement of the Old West. Energetically directed by John Emerson, with a witty script and wryly ironic intertitles by husband and wife Emerson and Anita Loos, and cinematography by Victor Fleming.
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...]
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...]
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...]
Restored by UCLA Film & Television Archive with funding provided by New York Women in Film & Television's Women's Film Preservation Trust and The Film Foundation Tramp Strategy (1911) A mischievous vagabond infiltrates a bourgeois household in this newly discovered one-reel comedy by the pioneering female director Alice Guy. 35mm, tinted, silent with Dutch intertitles, ... [Read more...]
I am honored to be a participant in the first of what I am certain will be many events put on by the amazing new VOYAGER INSTITUTE here in Los Angeles. Institute founder, Bret Berg and I are going to discuss the process of scoring silent films live. I will be playing along to a ... [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...]
Live musical accompaniment by Cliff Retallick! Restored by UCLA Film & Television Archive and Cinemateca de Cuba La Virgen de la Caridad (Cuba, 1930) Yeyo, a young peasant is in love with Trina, the daughter of a local landowner, but her father, Don Pedro del Valle, objects to her marrying below her class. He has ... [Read more...]
