The 12th Annual San Francisco Silent Film Festival - In Review

How will they ever top this?

The twelfth annual San Francisco Silent Film Festival concluded with a special screening of Cecil B. deMille’s, teenage exploitation tour-de-force, The Godless Girl (1929), featuring the live accompaniment of Dennis James on the Castro's 4/21 the Wurlitzer. This program offered indisputable proof, to anyone in attendance, why this type of presentation is so essential and could never be duplicated or replaced by any facsimile, recording or live broadcast.

The Godless Girl (1929)
Sunday, July 15, 8:45 p. m., The Castro, San Francisco

The human condition is a story best told in the unforgiving harshness of black and white. The global struggle of good versus evil, in its most tawdry and salacious terms, are found at the heart of an outrageous over-the-top existence, but only in the hands of Cecil B. deMille.

Enter the average day at an All-American high school in deMille’s final silent feature The Godless Girl, and discover Grace (Mary Jane Irving) covertly stuffing fliers announcing a secret meeting of The Godless Society into hallway lockers. Before long the staff and student body are whipped into an indignant frenzy of shock and disapproval as the principal declares membership in the immoral club and mere ownership of this piece of paper to be grounds for expulsion and criminal prosecution. Lines are drawn without a hint of middle ground. The bad girl Judy Craig (Lina Basquette), daughter of an atheist, sits at her classroom desk next to good boy and god-fearing Christian Bob Hathaway (George Duryea). They exchange philosophical barbs and an obvious mutual attraction. As is usually the case, the kids seem to know everyone’s business while the adults are in total darkness. When their teacher gets his hands on a the flier in question the guilty party is ordered to step forward. Bob requests that the students be allowed to handle the matter. His request is granted (only in Hollywood) and an enormous battle ensues when the Christian kids attempt to break up the secret meeting that night. As the battle rages on the five story stairwell of the abandoned building a railing gives way (on the top floor of course), and Grace plummets to her death. As the mob of kids scatter and the police descend, Judy and Bob remain behind, lamenting their efforts for causing the tragedy.

Classroom melodrama graduates into the three-ring spectacle of a co-ed teenage prison film when the kids are committed to the State Reformatory, an enormous brick and barb-wire edifice with a sub-human head guard named The Brute (Noah Beery). Replete with hard labor and excessive humiliation, life at the workhouse is shown in infinite detail, with the boys and girls separated by only a high-tension electrified chain-link fence. Bob watches Judy suffer and swears "I’ll get you out of here!" The sadistic Brute sees them clasping hands through the fence and turns on the power, leaving atheist Judy with crosses burned into her palms.

Bob is thrown in solitary confinement when he defies the Brute, while Judy works in the Women’s Meat House, prancing around with a string of sausages as though they were pearls. They escape and find their way to an abandoned farm before the bloodhounds track them down. Returned to solitary confinement, Bob and Judy are chained to their bunks when a fire ignites and spreads inside the girl’s wing in the spectacular finale of The Godless Girl. Bob is freed and goes back to save Judy, with only the Brute blocking his way.

A master of filmmaking within the studio system, deMille relied on a host of craftsmen to manufacture this and other spectacles. Much of the credit for The Godless Girl should rightly go to his long-standing scenarist Jeanie Macpherson, whose unmistakable touch is visible throughout the film.

Treasures from the Archives …

Brochures announcing the release of the latest installment in the National Film Preservation Foundation’s popular series were handed out at this screening of The Godless Girl, which will be included on disc three of the box set. Treasures III has a scheduled release date of October 16, 2007.

Never having seen this film before I can only speculate how it might translate on the small screen. The overwhelming impact of this program was due in no small part to the live accompaniment of Dennis James. The high theatrics of silent film, in a vintage movie house, with live musical accompaniment, is something that cannot be duplicated by any means. It must be experienced in the moment. This performance from the start took on an air of intensity that built to the spectacular finale, so electrified I imagined the Wurlitzer might burst into flames!

The 12th Annual San Francisco Silent Film Festival concluded in a train ride to hell with Dennis James as the conductor.

The 13th Annual SFSFF …

Year after year, this series becomes more essential to the fans of silent era film and the champions of its preservation. With the bar set so high how can eventual disappointment or loss of interest possibly be avoided? First, there are many preserved films languishing in vaults and already on video, waiting for this type of presentation (Just ask me for a list, I dare you!). Second, lovers of silent era film and presenters have yet to achieve a true synthesis of the original and authentic silent era experience. That brief mention of the mixed program made by Rob Stone is the key element to this formula. Imagine arriving at the theater to enjoy a day of trailers, cartoons, live performance, selected shorts and a double feature, all presented with live musical accompaniment. This was the movie going experience of the nineteen-twenties. Imagine seeing any Hollywood spectacular from the late twenties, with a full orchestra performing live musical accompaniment. The latter takes place on rare occasions today, but only in the very largest cities, New York, London, Paris, etc. Expanding the SFSFF to a Thursday or Monday night performance at the Opera House would be a very expensive, but deliriously wonderful experience. Short of that, more of the same makes this series the most valued opportunity to revel in silent era film found anywhere in the country.