Silent Winter

Here’s a run-down of Seattle’s winter silent film screenings, and two out of town dates well worth the trip.

Roxie does The Castro

Silly Symphonies (1929-1935)
Saturday, December 2, 1:30pm The Castro Theater, San Francisco

Chicago (1927)
Saturday, December 2, 7:30pm The Castro Theater, San Francisco

The San Francisco Silent Film Festival presents it’s annual winter show at the Castro Theater this Saturday, December 2, with a rare screening of Walt Disney’s early sound cartoons and the 1927 DeMille Pictures feature Chicago. Starring Phyllis Haver as Roxie Hart, Chicago was the first film based on the famous 1924 "Jazz Murders".

The Expressionists
Seattle Theater Group and The Paramount Theater in their ongoing series of silent film present three nights of German masterworks from the genre described by Lotte Eisner as a "world … so ‘permeable'
that, at any one moment, Mind, Spirit, Vision and Ghosts seem to gush forth …"

Louise Brooks and G. W. Pabst

Diary of A Lost Girl (1929)
Monday, January 15, 7:00pm The Paramount Theater

The second of two films Louise Brooks made with director G. W. Pabst, Diary of a Lost Girl is a story of innocence corrupted by evil. The legendary German director lured Brooks away from an established Hollywood career into what has been alternately described as professional suicide or the greatest work the alluring actress ever produced.

The White Hell of Pitz Palu (1929)
Monday, January 22, 7:00pm The Paramount Theater

A highlight of the "Mountain Film" genre, The White Hell of Pitz Palu features Leni Reifenstahl as a beautiful climber, trapped on a mountain of rotting ice with her injured husband. Directed by G. W. Pabst, The White Hell of Pitz Palu is beautiful and terrifying.

Director Joe May, on the set of Asphalt.

Asphalt (1929)
Monday, January 29, 7:00pm The Paramount Theater

Asphalt is the story of a beautiful jewel thief and the policeman she seduces to gain her freedom, revealed in a beautifully stylized example of Expressionism.

Musical accompaniment for the series will be performed, as always, by exceptional house organist Dennis James on The Paramount's original 4/20 Publix Wurlitzer.

Cinema Muto via West Seattle

If you missed the 25th Annual Pordenone Silent Film Festival in October, January 26 is your incredibly lucky day! Donald Sosin returns to the Pacific Northwest for two appearances, Friday the 26th at West Seattle’s Kenyon Hall, and Sunday, January 28th as accompanist for the Port Townsend Film Festival's winter silent film program at the Historic Rose Theater.

Way Down East (1920)
Friday, January 26, 8:00pm, Kenyon Hall

D. W. Griffith’s great melodrama of social morality, with its sensational rescue finale was featured as the opening presentation at Le Giornate Del Cinema Muto, October 6, 2006. Donald Sosin appears for one night at Kenyon Hall to showcase his new score written for Pordenone. Along with Way Down East, Sosin will also accompany Griffith’s 1909 Biograph film A Corner In Wheat.

A Thing Of Beauty and A Boy Forever

Peter Pan (1924)
Sunday, January 28. 1:00pm & 4:00pm, The Rose Theater, Port Townsend

Seventeen-year-old Betty Bronson was hand picked by author J. M. Barrie to play the boy who won’t grow up, in Paramount’s star studded production of Peter Pan. Delightful art direction (frolicking mermaids on the beach, flying pirate ships) and perfect casting (Anna May Wong as Tiger Lily, Ernest Torrence as Captain Hook and Mary Brian as Wendy) made Peter Pan a charming, magical holiday sensation in 1924. An impishly joyful Bronson lit up the screen as Peter, while Barrie’s original text was used for the inter-titles in what remains the finest telling of this well-loved paean to eternal childhood.

This jewel of the silent era, in this lovely old theater, with Donald Sosin’s accompaniment and introductions by film scholar Stewart Stern should make for a most extraordinary evening.