San Francisco's 2010 International and Silent Film Festivals

Luchino Visconti's Senso (1954) - 53rd San Francisco International Film Festival, May 2, Castro Theatre

While working on a Strangers on a Train blog for the Cafe earlier this year, I took a side trip into the career of one of its stars, Farley Granger. I'd been barely aware of his work, so when TCM devoted an evening to films "Starring Farley Granger" in April, I recorded and watched them all. But one film eluded me, a film that is among Granger's own favorites, along with Hitchcock's Strangers... and Nicholas Ray's They Live by Night (1949) - Luchino Visconti's lavish period spectacle, Senso. Soon fate kindly stepped in and tossed a bit of synchronicity my way. A few days after TCM's Granger showcase, I received a pair of passes to this year's San Francisco International Film Festival. Leafing through the program, I was surprised to find Senso listed among the screenings.

The well-established 53-year-old San Francisco's International Film Festival primarily focuses on contemporary films from around the world; this year 150 films from every corner of the globe were featured as well as events honoring Robert Duvall, Roger Ebert, Walter Murch and others. 57-year-old Senso (newly restored) might seem an unlikely entry, but the film is of elemental significance to the festival; its U.S. premiere took place at the inaugural San Francisco International Film Festival in 1957.

Opulent, operatic and visually rich, Senso is set in Venice during the 1860's, when Italy was occupied by Austria, and tells the tale of an Italian countess (Alida Valli) whose intense illicit affair with an Austrian military officer (Granger) ends in betrayal and mad revenge.

It is said that Italian neorealism began with Luchino Visconti 's Ossessione (1943). With Senso, Visconti made his first departure from the genre he helped pioneer. And what a departure - grand and grandiose, vivid and sensuous. This is a truly beautiful film (three-strip technicolor), an epic of passionate romance and passionate rebellion...accented with wit and humor. Though Alida Valli's performance as the excitable countess is at times near hysteria, Granger delivers one of his best performances as her good-looking and manipulative good-for-not-very-much lover.

Visconti has been credited with influencing great filmmakers of later generations and there were moments during the film when his profound influence on Francis Coppola was never more apparent.

In introducing the film, a festival VIP declared that Senso should only be seen at the Castro Theatre. I couldn't agree more; the film and theater together created an experience of unforgettable grandeur.

(Screenwriter Suso Cecchi D'Amico who worked with Visconti on all but two of his screenplays passed away last Saturday at age 96; D'Amico collaborated on Senso)

G.W. Pabst's Diary of a Lost Girl (1929) - 15th San Francisco Silent Film Festival, July 17, Castro Theatre

Louise Brooks has interested me since the early '80s when I first read her book Lulu in Hollywood. I picked up the Criterion Collection's Pandora's Box (1929) a few years ago and quickly understood the brouhaha over Brooks on film. Beautiful and charismatic, she's an eye-magnet who naturally commands the screen. Her life was legendary...but that's another blog. Her film career was erratic and relatively brief, but her starring roles in Pandora's Box and Diary of a Lost Girl (1929), two films she made under the direction of G.W. Pabst in Germany, endowed her with a timeless mystique.

Diary of a Lost Girl headlined the 15th San Francisco Silent Film Festival's Saturday night program. Set in Germany's Weimar era and replete with cruelty, betrayal and debauchery, the melodrama follows an innocence-downfall-redemption trajectory.

The film opens as Thymian Henning (Brooks) celebrates her day of confirmation - but the festivities come to an abrupt end when a just-fired servant takes her own life. Undone by events and their implications, Thymian is seduced by her father's assistant (Fritz Rasp). Sent to a reformatory run by proto-Nazi grotesques, she escapes to a brothel and goes on to become a countess by way of a dissipated (and disinherited) aristocrat. Miraculously, a transformed Thymian eventually takes charge of the reformatory where she was once locked away.

Pabst, the story goes, actually had a very different plan for the film's ending. His original intent was for Thymian to become a wildly successful madam, a woman who scoffed at the German bourgeoisie...

G. W. Pabst's cinematic mastery and intelligence along with Louise Brooks' star power envigorate a potentially trite tale. Supporting players Fritz Rasp, Andrews Engelmann and Valeska Gert enrich Pabst's dark potion. Brooks navigates Thymian's travails from naive girl to worldly woman with lithe physicality and subtlety. She and Dietrich could together have ruled the femme fatale corner of cinema for years, if only...As it was, Brooks functioned as Pabst's muse in two of his best-known works and, decades later, achieved screen immortality.

The world famous Mont Bela Motion Picture Orchestra premiered its new score for Diary of a Lost Girl at this screening. The chamber ensemble orchestra is dedicated to reviving the authentic period sound of the silent film orchestra.

A Brief History of the Castro Theatre, "an acre of seats in a palace of dreams"

The Castro was built in 1922 by San Francisco theater pioneers, the Nasser brothers. It was designed by well-known Bay Area architect Timothy Pflueger. The theater's exterior design suggests a Mexican cathedral and the interior is decorated in the Spanish Renaissance style with Moorish Tent, Oriental Zodiac and Art Deco touches.

From 1922 to 1976, the Castro showcased first and second run mainstream films. In 1976 the theater, under new management, began to present repertory cinema, foreign films, film festivals and special first run presentations. This continues today with the Castro's ongoing schedule of special programs.

In 1977 the theater was designated San Francisco's registered landmark #100 and in 1982 the Castro's Conn organ was replaced with a "mighty Wurlitzer."

In 2001 the Nasser family took over operation of the theater once again and made extensive improvements and upgrades.

Starring Farley Granger

Starting with its showcase of Strangers on a Train on this week's edition of "The Essentials" (Sat., April 17, 8pm Eastern, 5pm Pacific), Turner Classic Movies will pay tribute to the films of Farley Granger. Strangers on a Train will be followed by They Live by Night (1949), Roseanna McCoy (1949), The North Star (1943) and Edge of Doom (1950).

Granger was discovered and signed by producer Sam Goldwyn while still in high school and was quickly cycled into The North Star. Though he was groomed for a career in Hollywood, his first love was the theater and he eventually bought out his contract with Goldwyn so that he could pursue a career on Broadway.

In 1986 Granger won and Obie Award for his performance in Talley & Son.

Though he made a number of films, Granger considers only three of them top-quality: They Live by Night, Strangers on a Train and Luchino Visconti's Senso (1954) with Alida Valli - considered by many to be his finest performance.

The upcoming San Francisco International Film Festival will present a recently (and laboriously) restored version of Senso. The film's U.S. premiere was a highlight of the festival's inaugural year in 1957...and I am thrilled to report that I have tickets to the festival's screening of Senso on May 2 at the Castro Theater.

A recent photo of Farley Granger

Dial H For Hitchcock: Strangers on a Train - the better the villain, the better the picture...

It was the middle of the 20th Century and Alfred Hitchcock's last major film had been Notorious (1946). Four years and four films later, he was in a slump. Though The Paradine Case, Rope, Under Capricorn and Stage Fright were all interesting attempts, each one had its problems and each had bombed.

For his next project, Hitchcock looked to the first novel of young Patricia Highsmith. Intrigued by its clever "criss-cross" murder plot, he bought the rights to Strangers on a Train.

Raymond Chandler was tapped to tackle the screenplay, though Czenzi Ormonde, a protege of Ben Hecht, rewrote most of it. Cinematographer Robert Burks collaborated with Hitchcock for the first time and earned an Oscar nomination for his efforts. He was nominated again for Rear Window and won for To Catch a Thief. Dimiti Tiomkin, who had last worked with the director on Shadow of a Doubt, composed the film's nimble score. Hitchcock produced and directed for Warner Brothers.

A thriller of mature scope and depth, Strangers on a Train (1951) is also considered one of Hitchcock's most accessible films; its overwhelming success revived the director's reputation at a crucial point. It also signaled the beginning of his final great filmmaking period.

Strangers on a Train is pure and classic Hitchcock. It begins as two young men meet very cute in the first class club car of a commuter train. One is a tennis celebrity, the other a wealthy ne'er-do-well, and what seems like casual chit-chat has deadly consequences. A study in Alfred Hitchcock's mastery of visual storytelling and technical wizardry, the film bears all the hallmarks of his style...

There are spectacular visual set pieces, among them...1) Bruno stalks Miriam at a fairgrounds and, in a stunning shot, strangles her on a secluded island, 2) Guy makes a stealthy visit to Bruno's darkened home where a large growling dog adds even more suspense, 3) An intense tennis match is cross cut with scenes of Bruno's harrowing journey to plant evidence, 4) a carousel disaster comes to a breathtaking climax.

Prominent historical sites appear; Washington, D.C., landmarks are woven into the scenario with the Jefferson Memorial in a stark cameo.

There is an "innocent man accused" theme and a powerful doppelganger motif.

Though there are no marquee names, the cast is solid. Farley Granger fleshes out handsome, guileless and beleaguered tennis star Guy Haines; Laura Elliott (Kasey Rogers) is delicious as his estranged wife, Miriam; Marion Lorne stands out as Bruno's discombobulated mother. Leo G. Carroll is credibly senatorial as a U.S. Senator and Patricia Hitchcock gives one of her best performances as his quirky younger daughter.

Alfred Hitchcock once told Francoise Truffaut, "...the more successful the villain, the more successful the picture. That's a cardinal rule..."

The bold, unforgettable performance of Robert Walker as psychopathic Bruno Anthony is proof positive of that rule. Remarkably, Walker had mostly been cast as male ingenues up to then.

Like Joseph Cotten's Uncle Charley in Shadow of a Doubt, Walker's Bruno is a glib, self-possessed charmer - who is also a remorseless killer. Walker is riveting onscreen. His Bruno is confident, slick, erratic...and very, very creepy. His smooth veneer barely masks a simmering rage. With a voice that ranges from sensual as velvet to cold and hollow as tin, his eyes glitter, glare, caress.

From the moment Bruno is first seen in the club car insinuating himself into Guy's life, to his final seconds of life, when he mercilessly implicates Guy with his dying breath, Walker dominates and energizes the film. Pat Hitchcock once observed that for all her father's genius, it was Walker's daring performance that 'made' the picture.

Walker died tragically at age 32 less than two months after the film was released. He had appeared in more than 30 films in his career, but it was only Strangers on a Train that allowed him to unleash the devastating range of his talent.

Farley Granger later reflected, "he was great in the film; his potential was limitless, his career was just beginning to take wing."

Robert Walker's life had been short and often troubled, and his early death sent shock waves through Hollywood. In time, though, it became clear that he had a bit of good fortune after all; his greatest role, his single virtuoso performance, was preserved within one of Alfred Hitchcock's finest films.

British film critic and historian David Thomson noted in a piece on Strangers in 1999, Hitchcock's centennial year, that Walker's was "...a landmark performance. You see it now and you feel the vibrancy of the modernity...he had had that one chance..."

This Saturday, April 17, TCM features Strangers on a Train on this week's edition of The Essentials. Robert Osborne and Alec Baldwin will discuss the film before and after it airs. 8:00 pm Eastern, 5:00 pm Pacific.