Capra and The Crowd

Wonderful acoustics and an oversized Kimball-Wurlitzer organ made The Historic Everett Theater’s Tuesday night screening of That Certain Thing akin to driving a vintage sports car with an enormous engine, nearly sensory overload but immensely enjoyable. Dennis James is no slouch either, producing an original score including several popular tunes from the nineteen twenties. Just enough aging ambience remains to make this 825 seat theater a charming, informal and intimate venue. Most astonishing are the vintage Peerless carbon-arc projectors in the unusual main floor projection booth the friendly volunteer staff love to show off. The series continues in August with Buster Keaton’s Our Hospitality followed in September by one of the greatest films of the silent era, King Vidor’s The Crowd whose beautiful star Eleanor Boardman could be Jodie Foster’s grandmother. Don’t forget the tissues.

A video pick; I saw Lon Chaney’s He Who Gets Slapped for the first time last week. An exceptional film also starring a twenty-two year old Norma Shearer and the never more athletic or dashing John Gilbert. Chaney at his best plays a betrayed and scandalized man hiding from reality behind circus greasepaint, the original killer clown. Beautiful, sad and haunting, the video is a dreadful copy of a copy of a copy but well worth a look. It’s also the very first film to feature the famous MGM lion. Seek it out.