Camping Out at The Castro

Saturday at the 13th annual San Francisco Silent Film Festival begins at 10am with Amazing Tales From The Archives, and concludes after midnight with Lon Chaney.

The Man Who Laughs (1928)
Saturday July 12, 7:45pm, The Castro Theater, San Francisco

At the moment of his execution, a rebellious nobleman learns that his child has been mutilated by gypsies. Taken in by a travelling, self-appointed philosopher, the boy becomes a popular carnival attraction. The grotesque Man Who Laughs, Gwynplaine (Conrad Veidt) worships Dea (Mary Philbin), a beautiful blind girl he rescued as an infant, until he is used by the Queen to usurp a Duchess who is undeserving of her title.

Producer Carl Laemmle sought to exploit the gothic horror craze Universal Pictures established with The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1923) and The Phantom of The Opera (1925), once again adapting a

romantic and darkly sinister Victor Hugo novel. Sensational production values and art direction, the result of an immense budget, are quite apparent. The use of principals drawn from Weimar Cinema, on both sides of the camera, gave The Man Who Laughs an unmistakable quality that significantly influenced the genre.

Live musical accompaniment for The Man Who Laughs will be performed by Clark Wilson on the Castro Theater’s 4/21 Wurlitzer.

The Unknown (1927)
Saturday July 12, 10:45pm, The Castro Theater, San Francisco

Few actor/director teams have ever achieved the success and notoriety of Tod Browning and Lon Chaney. Beginning with The Wicked Darling (1919) and ending with Where East Is East (1929), their collaborations typically involved a character seen at first as sympathetic. In the course of the story, he would reveal his true monstrous nature, only to once again be seen with some sympathetic qualities in the end. Chaney himself said, "Tod Browning and I have worked so much together he's called the Chaney director." Released in 1927, The Unknown was the sixth of their ten collaborations and is considered by many to be their very best.

Alonzo the Armless (Chaney) is the knife thrower in a traveling Spanish circus. He hurls razor sharp blades with his feet at the beautiful Nanon (Joan Crawford) in their act. The Circus Strongman, Malabar the Mighty (Norman Kerry) makes no secret of his deep desire for Nanon, who responds with revulsion to his slightest touch. "Alonzo, all my life men have tried to put their beastly hands on me … to paw over me." Alonzo is a sympathetic friend to her and the one man Nanon knows will never hold her in his grasp. "You are the one man I can come to without fear." She is unaware of Alonzo's true feelings and his obsessive longing for her. " ... no one is going to have her! No one but me!" One fantastic secret stands in the way of Alonzo's plans. His bizarre and macabre attempts to win Nanon later on become even more grotesquely shocking and horrific. It has been said that Chaney's exquisite talent for physical expression came from growing up in a home with deaf parents. His gesture and movement remains unmistakable, even when concealed by the costumes and makeup of his many characters. Much of his performance in The Unknown is remarkably conveyed using his facial expressions alone. Chaney's biographer Michael Blake recounts an interview with Burt Lancaster, who described the climactic scene of The Unknown as "The most emotionally compelling scene he'd ever seen an actor do." It is a moment of realization, both gripping and overwrought, as Alonzo teeters on the very brink of insanity.

Live musical accompaniment for The Unknown will be performed by pianist Stephen