Museum Monday 2025/51

 

detail of Saint Luke Drawing the Virgin by Rogier van der Weyden, now in the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

Orinda Theater Classic Movie Matinee: Bell, Book, & Candle

The Orinda Theater's Classic Movie Matinee this past October was 1958's Bell, Book, and Candle, one of those "I married a witch: no, really, a literal witch" stories, which is seasonal for the end of October, of course, but as the film also contains several Christmas scenes, it fits in with my posting month of December as well.

As usual, the Matinee was genially hosted by Matías Bombal, who also chooses the apt shorts, newsreels, cartoons, & coming attractions that accompany each feature (the idea is to recreate an earlier movie-going experience, when you'd get all those things as part of the show).There were a couple of cartoons, including the delirious & delightful Skeleton Dance, one of the early Disney Silly Symphonies (animated by Ub Iwerks). I've seen it many times, but this was my first time seeing it on the big screen, where it is just as marvelous as ever. We also had Bewitched Bunny, in which Bugs Bunny tries to save Hansel & Gretel from Witch Hazel. (I found the children repulsive, though comically so, & would have been happy to let the witch have her snack.) At the cartoon's end, Witch Hazel has transformed herself into a sexy & beautiful young thing, & Bugs leaves with her, but not before turning to the audience & letting us know he knows, says "Ah sure, I know, but aren't they all witches inside?" – a line that drew plenty of audible gasps from the matinee audience, & not necessarily in a disapproving way. After the feature I chatted in the lobby with a group that included several women who didn't come right out & say they identified as witches, but it was pretty clear they were, at least, sympathetic, so maybe they felt Bugs was just acknowledging their power.

I had never seen Bell, Book, & Candle before (the 1950s are not really my movie decade), though I had heard of it vaguely & was curious about it. It's quite delightful, & has quite a cast: Kim Novak as the female lead, with Elsa Lanchester, Hermione Gingold, Jack Lemmon, & Ernie Kovacs in supporting roles. The male lead is Jimmy Stewart. I am not a fan, though I found him less grating than usual (in fact, downright acceptable) in this role. And I give him credit for realizing he had aged out of romantic leads; this was the last such role he played. Still, it seemed a stretch for the gorgeous Novak to fall in love with him as he passes her shop (he's a neighbor & her feelings are rooted in his looks, not his personality, as she hasn't actually talked to him yet) & I kept wondering what the part would be like with, say, Montgomery Clift in it. Novak is, as I said, gorgeous, but I was mesmerized by her eyebrows, which were done in some kind of heavy brown paint – obviously something stylish at the time, though a touch bizarre today (though that's not unsuitable for an uncanny character).

Lanchester, as Novak's aunt, is appealingly & reliably loopy, & I found Kovacs, as a writer on witches who knows less than he thinks, & drinks more than he should, actually funny (I know he's supposed to have been a comedy genius, & maybe I just haven't seen the right shows, but when I saw his stuff years ago I didn't find it amusing at all, which might be my fault). Hermione Gingold, as a rival witch, doesn't have all that much to do; I wondered if the part was bigger in the original play, as what was in the film didn't seem to warrant hiring that big a name. But maybe the idea is that she's outsized enough so that she brings weight to a role that doesn't take up much actual screen time & so might get lost in the narrative shuffle. I shouldn't neglect the scene-stealing cat, Pyewacket. When I mention this film to people, the usual response is something about the cat.

Jack Lemmon is Novak's younger brother; he is a warlock who plays bongos, beatnik-style, at the Zodiac Club in Greenwich Village. A friend of mind said he'd heard that Lemmon's character was "gay-coded" but he didn't see it, which I found . . . surprising. This is a 1950s film, & the usual subtexts apply. There most definitely is a gay subtext (I've come to realize that the mere mention of "Greenwich Village" in this period constitutes queer subtext): there's a secret society, a bit dangerous, extremely suspect, feeling themselves a bit superior to as well as set apart from normal society, & these odd, marginal, dangerous people meet in clubs in Greenwich Village, where they listen to weird music. . . . There's also a hint of an "un-American activities" subtext; at one point Stewart asks Novak if she's a Communist (yes, I'm using the names of the actors instead of the characters, but it's easier to keep them straight & visualize them that way).

I was fascinated by the décor of the film, & the role of modern art: not just jazz, but painting. Stewart's fiancée, played by Janice Rule. must, as is the way of the person who is initially engaged to the lead only to get dumped for the headliner, straddle the line between being acceptable as a mate for the lead but abrasive enough so that we don't mind seeing her or him dumped. Rule fills the role well; she's attractive, polished, & cultured enough so that she's plausible as a girlfriend for a publisher like Stewart, but she's also a bit cold, & unpleasantly snobbish & dismissive towards anyone she perceives as different (like Lemmon &, in their college days, Novak). We're not sorry to see her go. But there is a scene in which Stewart tries (briefly & unsuccessfully) to reunite with her, & we see her painting a very Joan Miró-like picture. But the modernist isn't contrasted with a cozier, kitschier "normal" style. Is it just meant to indicate a certain type of person & class? And the walls in everyone's apartments are dark blue or a similar shade, with carefully arranged artworks. The look was mesmerizing. Initially, Novak's character sells African mask (presumably some link to magic traditions is intended). By the end, she has moved to selling fanciful "bouquets" made of seashells. But they also seem a bit strange & mysterious, though we're clearly meant to see that Novak's love has changed her: for one thing, instead of sharply cut black outfits, she's wearing all-white.

Maybe I should issue a spoiler alert, but I've already said this film is from the 1950s, & it has what is meant as a happy ending, so you can guess what happens: by falling in love, Novak has lost her powers, & become a normal woman. She is fine with the change, but given a choice between casting spells on my enemies & a life with Jimmy Stewart, I know which I would take. After the movie ended, as we stood & brushed popcorn off our laps, I turned to my friend & after asking how she liked the movie (she did, very much) I said I did too, except for the unhappy ending. She laughed & I said, "I'm not kidding." I'd be much happier married to someone with magical powers; who wouldn't be? Imagine facing yet another of life's boring, stupid, annoying inconveniences & problems & being able to turn to your extremely hot partner & say, "Honey, can't you cast a spell or something?"

San Francisco Silent Film Festival: 2025

As the Castro Theater is still closed for renovations, the San Francisco Silent Film Festival took place this year at the Orinda Theater. This is a much better choice than last year's location, the Palace of Fine Arts Theater, which is fine if a bit generic inside as a venue but too difficult to reach via public transportation & too isolated: the Festival tried to make up for that with some food trucks, but in general it was an uphill battle out there. I ended up not seeing many films (in fact, only one) because anything that was first or last on the schedule just didn't work out transit-time-wise for me. The Orinda Theater, by contrast, is easily accessible via BART (& has plenty of parking, if that's your thing) & surrounded by all kinds of restaurants (even more so than the Castro Theater, actually), as well as being large &, as an Art Deco exemplar, close to period appropriate. Even so, I only made it to a few programs this year, for a number of reasons (none having to do with the quality of the films),. This is what I saw:

The Wreck of the Hesperus

1927; directed by Elmer Clifton

This recently rediscovered & restored film is based on a poem by Longfellow about young lovers separated by her father, a ship's captain who bears a romantic grudge against the young man's uncle, but that drama is topped by the final storm at sea & the wreck of the captain's vessel. It's quite beautiful to look at & very well cast. I was particularly impressed with Ethel Wales as the captain's sister, assigned by him with looking after his stubbornly lovelorn daughter; it's a very small role, but you immediately see that she is not the sort of moony spinster who is going to sympathize with young love. Nor is she a dragon guarding the treasure, or a fussy old maid; she's just a sort of fretful & annoyed person who seems to wish everyone would just behave, or at least leave her alone, though she does of course her duty. 

The film was intended as a step towards stardom for the young romantic leads, Virginia Bradford & Frank Marion, though, according to the SFSFF's always richly detailed (& free!) program book, neither one took off with the public. I found this quite surprising, as both are very appealing. She is, not surprisingly, a beauty, with long dark curls & a demeanor earthy enough to make her convincing as the daughter of a flinty New England sea captain but with a touch enough of the fey so that she seems a bit out of the ordinary. He, too, is a curly-haired beauty, & as the movie was illustrated in both brochure & program book with a dreamy close-up of him, I'm apparently not the only one who thought so. The close-up comes from his first scene, when he is found adrift on the sea, the only survivor of a shipwreck (not the one of the title); once he recovers, we find that he has an engaging presence & a killer smile, so once again I am left befuddled by the taste or lack of it of the American public.

The storm & shipwreck scenes are quite spectacular, & though you can try to parse which shots are done with models, which with sets, & which with who knows what, it's all cut together seamlessly & with verve, so that you get caught up in the events rather than the technique, & it's all so much more convincing & more beautiful to look at than the computer-generated fakery, with its false pixel sheen, that we get these days. Our young hero, in a stylish & visually helpful ruffled white shirt (which helps him stand out against the dark lashing waves, the ruffles echoing both the waves & his curls) rushes towards the sinking ship to save his beloved, who is tied to the mast. It's an exciting & satisfying film. It was new to me (I'd never even heard of it), so I was very glad to have seen it. If it's ever released, I'd buy a copy.

KoKo!

a series of Fleischer Cartoons: Jumping Beans (1922), It's the Cats (1926), KoKo at the Circus (1926), KoKo in 1999 (1927), KoKo's Kane (1927), KoKo's Klock (1927), KoKo's Kink (1928), KoKo's Earth Control (1928)

The early Fleischer Brother cartoons are always delights of homegrown surrealism. This batch, only a few of which I'd seen before, features KoKo, the Out of the Inkwell clown maybe best remembered now as an occasional sidekick of the inimitable Betty Boop, a star of later Fleischer cartoons. It's nice to see him in his early days as a headliner. I read somewhere long ago that the Fleischer Brothers used to say, "If it could really happen, it's not animation" & that's a guiding principle here, as what's going on up on the screen stretches & shapes & contorts & changes from scene to scene, hung on the thinnest of storylines. That's a good thing. I also love the strongly blocked black-against-white designs of the cartoons. I'm going to continue my above dismissal of contemporary computer-generated films by contrasting these evergreen shorts with today's animation, most of which seems to be filmed on location in the Uncanny Valley. I'm not a big fan of the Pixar films (the only one I've really loved is Luca, about the boys who are sea serpents, though in fairness I will also admit I have not seen a lot of the more highly regarded Pixar films), & a lot of that is their look: they labor to make things look "realistic", but if it's that important to you to get hair so accurate you'd think it's real, why not just film real hair? Anyway this was a delightful set.

Song

1928; directed by Richard Eichberg

In a complete change of mood & aesthetic, the KoKo shorts were followed by Song (original title: Die Liebe eines armen Menschenkindes, which is, according to Google Translate, The Love of a Poor Child). This was Anna May Wong's first European film, when she felt her American film career was stalled & mired in stereotypical secondary roles. Earlier this year I read an excellent book on Wong (Daughter of the Dragon by Yunte Huang) so I couldn't remember if I'd actually seen this film or only read a description of it. It turns out I had not seen it. I gather it's sometimes spoken of a bit dismissively but I thought it was extremely good. Wong is, as most people know by now, just luminous, & subtle & convincing in her portrayal of a lonely young woman who falls in love with a circus performer, a knife thrower, (Heinrich George) who rescues her from an attempted rape by two men on the beach. He is not interested in her, though, as he is smitten with his former lover, a dancer (Mary Kid) who thought he had died & who has moved on anyway (she's an appealing character, not shown as bad or scheming or bitchy: just someone who's over someone who isn't over her). As is often the case, plot summaries make the film sound thinner & more melodramatic than it is; as portrayed by the actors & staged by the director, it's a moving portrait of a roundelay of misguided loves. Wong is naturally the big draw these days, & the theater was quite full for this one, but it has many good points in addition to its star.

Kohlhiesel's Daughters

1920; directed by Ernst Lubitsch

This is one of Lubitsch's early German films, though unlike many of those it's not an historical epic but a comedy, based (very loosely) on The Taming of the Shrew. It was one of his biggest hits in Germany but is little known here, apparently not even receiving a theatrical release at the time (which was too close to the end of World War I, when the boycott of German films continued in the USA). Even now, when Lubitsch is a presiding deity of Sophisticated Cinema, & many (most?) of his early films are easily available, this one isn't (Kino, where art thou?). Not surprisingly, it's a lot of fun. It's set in the Bavarian mountains & involves two sisters (both played by Henny Porten), the elder a foul-tempered frump & the younger a prettier & more conventional sweetie. As in Shrew, the father insists the elder sister must be married (& taken off his hands) before the younger one can choose among her suitors. Emil Jannings is the sort-of Petruchio, who ends up with the elder sister. It's all very good-humored; you never feel that the elder sister is being vilified or mocked, & her rampages are more comical than anything else. Porten gets laughs as the younger sister as well, which is more of a challenge than with the over-the-top older sister. As I said, lots of fun, &, again, as with all these movies, if it's released, I'd buy a copy.

The Song of the Scarlet Flower

1919; directed by Mauritz Stiller

Lars Hanson stars in this Swedish film, based on a 1905 Finnish novel (Laulu tulipunaisesta kukasta by Johannes Linnankoski), which was popular enough to be filmed several times after this initial version. It's the tale of the headstrong son of wealthy farmers, who ends up leaving his family home in anger & working in a logging camp, before eventually maturing & marrying the proud daughter of another wealthy landowner. It's maybe less tidy than this makes it sound, as she falls for him, & her father opposes him, without knowing his privileged background, which he has kept from them; before he ends up in this class-appropriate coupling, we see the tragic effect he's had on a lower-class serving girl on his parents' farm. What most viewers are going to carry away, though, is the memory of his log-rolling towards dangerous river rapids, a bit of bravado made all the more striking (to continue a leitmotif of this post) because it's not faked with computer imaging as it would be nowadays. It's an emotionally satisfying film, full of beautiful vistas, though maybe a little more conventional than I was hoping for. A friend of mine thought that Hanson occasionally overdid the stalwart manliness, but I thought that was just who the character was, & it provided an interesting contrast with some of Hanson's more tortured roles (The Saga of Gösta Berling, The Scarlet Letter, & let's not forget his anguish in Flesh & the Devil). Again, I'd buy a release!

The next festival will be back at the Castro Theater, from 6 to 10 May 2026. Before that, there will be a special Festival screening at the Castro on 22 March of Clara Bow in It, with live musical accompaniment by Mont Alto Motion Picture Orchestra. See you there!

Friday Photo 2025/51

 

a gate on Estudillo Avenue

Museum Monday 2025/50

 

detail of Virgin Adoring the Christ Child by Matteo di Giovanni Civital, now at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston

Friday Photo 2025/50

 

a shop window on B Street, Hayward

Museum Monday 2025/49

 

detail of Proscenium by Sargent Claude Johnson, currently at BAM/PFA & on view as part of the exhibit Object Oriented: Abstraction and Design in the BAMPFA Collection

Friday Photo 2025/49

 

palm frond, dying

Museum Monday 2025/48

 

detail of Saint John the Baptist by Domenikos Theotokopoulos (El Greco), now at the Legion of Honor

Ars Minerva: Ercole Amante

Annually since 2015, Ars Minerva, founded & led by Céline Ricci, has given us a revival of an opera not seen for centuries. This is obviously the Lord's work, & Ars Minerva is a jewel of the Bay Area. With the exception of 2023's Olimpia Vendicata, which I missed because COVID finally got me that weekend, I have seen & loved all of their shows. By now they have a distinct production aesthetic: stylish projections & minimal props; elaborate, often very witty, costumes; an inventive, often humorous, approach to staging these unknown works which, typically for baroque operas, usually center on mythological heroes, historical figures who might as well be mythological, & a grab-bag of Greek gods. I occasionally hear someone complain that these revived operas aren't "masterpieces". But they are, to my mind, consistently interesting & entertaining & even refreshing, & isn't being overly devoted to the narrowly defined "masterpiece" one of the problems with the current operatic scene?

This year we were given their tenth opera, & the first composed by a woman: 1707's Ercole Amante by Antonia Bembo, an Italian woman eventually resident in France, whose approach combined the two national schools of music. There was a concert performance in Europe a few years ago,  but this production was the first modern, & possibly the first ever, fully staged production (another is scheduled for next year at the Paris Opera). The staging by Ricci was clever & often humorous, & kept the complicated story clear & moving (in every sense). The plot, as the title indicates, revolves around Hercules falling in love – with Iole, a woman whose father he killed, & who is also beloved by his son Hyllo. In addition, Hercules is already married to Deianira. And various gods get involved: jealous Giunone (Juno), who has always hated Hercules, & Venere (Venus), who wants to thwart Juno. There is also a Page, who delivers messages & comic asides. With those characters the plot starts spinning like a top, & as usual with baroque opera, there is no point in typing out a summary, as it would sound like confusing convoluted nonsense, but in performance it all makes complete logical & emotional sense (I've experienced this over & over & always advise people that the first rule of attending baroque opera is not to read the plot summary.)

The gods & heroes are pretty much on a level, though the gods have more power, at least of a supernatural sort. The projections, designed as usual by Entropy, seemed particularly rich this time, combining the fine-lined precision of 18th century engravings with the modernist style of collage & contrast, aptly substituting for the visual richness & swift scene changes of baroque opera. And the costumes, designed by Marina Polakoff, seemed even more lavish & even wittier than usual, with extravagant headpieces, swirling draperies (or, in the case of the muscular bare-chested Hercules, only a partly gilded pteruges), little flashing lights embedded in tulle, deep & glowing colors. It all contributed to the sense of a rich, frivolous, & decadent upper class, swirling around their love-concerns above the rest of the indifferent world. The performance opens with a woman representing Bembo lying on a couch, starting to put her opera together. It's a clever way of emphasizing the individual creation of the work, which is a particular vision of these characters rather than some sort of standard history. They are puppets in her show.

I was reminded of one of my favorite movies, Renoir's The Rules of the Game, also about an insular, insulated privileged caste entertaining themselves with the frisson of love affairs while their world slides away; but perhaps the main theme that reminded me of the film is the interrogation of the role of the hero: like Renoir's aviator, Hercules is officially a hero, but he fits awkwardly into normal life. Heroes are perhaps easier to live with once they're safely dead.

Bembo's score, prepared for performance by Adam Cockerham & conducted from the harpsichord by Matthew Dirst, is consistently appealing & entertaining. I did feel that in a couple of scenes that required something a little more, she had not supplied it: the underworld scene involving Iole's father didn't seem differentiatingly eerie to me, & the death of Hercules was lacking in the tragic grandeur we find in Handel's version of the same scene: but perhaps the failure there is mine, conditioned to expect tragic grandeur by repeated exposure to Handel's work, when Bembo, consistent with her quizzical view of the Hero, is trying for a different effect: yes, he was larger than life, but didn't that make him a bit demanding, a bit difficult to have around? And doesn't life go on, perhaps even a bit more smoothly, after his death?

Zachary Gordin was a suitably beefy Ercole, Kindra Scharich the long-suffering & touching Deianira, Lila Khazoum & Maxwell Ary as Iole & Hyllo an appealing pair of young lovers, Aura Veruni a blazing Giunone, Melissa Sondhi a sly Venere; Nick Volkert portrayed an imposing series of gods with minor roles, as well as the ghost of Iole's father, & Sara Couden was funny & sly as the Page. Bembo's initial appearance was portrayed by Cynthia Keiko Black. I did feel that the score & story are rich enough to support a sometimes less humorous approach, particularly with Hyllo; if the Paris Opera production is made available, it would be interesting to see how they handle this opera. In the meantime, I am very happy with what we were given by Ars Minerva, & I am already eagerly awaiting their next rediscovery.