Buster Keaton's Steamboat Bill, Jr.

In 1928, Buster Keaton was wrapping up an astounding decade of independent filmmaking, seemingly with another decade or two stretched out before him. But circumstances conspired to bring his remarkable string of sterling comedies to a premature end. During production on his tenth feature film, Steamboat Bill, Jr., Keaton's marriage ended in bitter divorce and Joseph Schenk, Keaton's producer and brother-in-law, sold his contract to MGM, a move that would render silent comedy's most innovative auteur a mere shift worker in Hollywood's largest cinema assembly line. And with the talkies just around the corner, it's no wonder that Keaton's loss of personal and professional autonomy should lead to a fierce bout of alcoholism and steep career decline.

The great clown's depression is on clear display in Steamboat Bill's — and indeed the silent era's — most spectacular stunt, in which Buster stands motionless as gale-force winds bring a thousand-pound wall crashing down around him, the frame of a second-floor window passing neatly over his head and around his shoulders, leaving him stunned but unscathed. Keaton's crew tried to dissuade him from performing the stunt; the photographer cranked the camera with his eyes averted, and the co-director refused to take part at all, taking refuge in a nearby tent while praying for Keaton's soul.

Keaton's career had reached an artistic if not commercial peak a couple of years earlier with The General, his Civil War comedy masterpiece. It was an expensive production that made relatively little profit and drew mixed reviews, prompting Schenk to require Keaton to make a markedly less ambitious follow-up. Keaton kept costs down on his next few films, including Steamboat Bill, saving his money for a lavish finish in which a hurricane wreaks havoc on River Junction. It's a remarkable sequence of daring stunts and comedic destruction, providing a climactic conclusion to Keaton's independent career, one that would, unfortunately, foreshadow the stormy times that lay ahead for him.

1928. 70 minutes. $29.95. www.kino.com.

Mystery Train Explores a Mythic Memphis

Jim Jarmusch's Mystery Train is a laconic journey, in three parts, through a Memphis of the imagination. Spurred by the passion and fury of a fierce backbeat, three interlocking deadpan vignettes find rock and roll pilgrims searching for something — the ghost of Elvis, the spirit of Carl Perkins, or a vague yearning for the vaguely defined essence of pompadoured rebellion — amid the empty streets and hollowed-out hotels of a faded town still trading on a brief epochal moment in its history. A young, star-struck Japanese couple, a rebel without a cause, and a comically stoic widow traverse the remnants of a mythic city in a mythic America in search of the reflected glory of the nearly mythic but everlasting moment of its ascendence. Screamin' Jay Hawkins, one of the real-life architects of rock and roll, takes a supporting role as an eccentric hotelier working the late shift.

Criterion's new DVD and BluRay editions of the film included a Q&A with Jarmusch; excerpts from the 2001 documentary Screamin' Jay Hawkins: I Put a Spell on Me; a documentary about the film's locations and the musical history of Memphis; and essays by Dennis Lim and Peter Guralnick.

1989. 110 minutes. $39.95. www.criterion.com.

The Films of William Klein at Pacific Film Archive

American expatriate filmmaker William Klein’s work shows a wide and eclectic range. He started as a photographer before making his way into motion pictures, both fiction and nonfiction.

Pacific Film Archive is presenting a retrospective of his work, “Top Bill: The Films of William Klein,” starting Friday and running through Oct. 11.

Klein is perhaps best known in the mainstream film world for his documentary, Muhammad Ali, the Greatest (1974), which screens Friday night at 6:30 p.m., and for The Little Richard Story (1980), showing Sept. 24.

But most of Klein’s work has been in a more avant-garde vein. His first fiction film, Who Are You, Polly Magoo? (1966), shows Saturday at 8:40 p.m. and follows the seemingly meteoric rise of a young Brooklyn-born model, an average freckle-faced girl who ascends to the top of the European fashion world. Klein had done time in that world as a fashion photographer, and here he turns his camera around to reveal a blistering portrait of a vacuous, image-obsessed culture. Polly is essentially what she has always been, a simple girl, youthful, callow and naive, but through the magic of makeup, wigs and a loving lens she is transformed into a goddess, an icon, a harbinger of a youth movement that she is only dimly aware of and that may not really exist anyway.

Klein captures the phenomenon from all angles, from the media-created cultural movement that Polly is said to represent, to the political ramifications of that cultural shift, and the simpler, more primal level of love and sex and fantasy, as Polly is essentially reduced to a static, seamless sex object, a blank slate of penetrating gazes, parted lips and kinky costumes upon which men can project their seediest desires.

Klein followed with more stinging satires, including Mr. Freedom (1969), showing Sept. 19, and The Model Couple (1977), screening Oct. 10.

The Artistic Restraint of Yasujiro Ozu

Almost from the beginning of the medium, filmmakers sought to exploit cinema’s unique properties. From the moment they could, directors were eager to transcend the limits of traditional theater by putting the camera in motion, by sending it racing, swooping and soaring; by using a variety of lenses to shape the image, to magnify, distort and exaggerate; and by using the editing process to suggest, startle and surprise. 

And while some of the most exciting filmmakers over the past century have been those who found ways to employ these devices with flash and panache, one of the greatest directors the medium has ever produced was one who limited himself to the simplest and most austere techniques. 

Yasujiro Ozu, rather than employing his camera in bravura displays of pyrotechnic virtuosity, used it to simply observe his characters, to linger on their faces, on their homes, on their possessions—to look into the souls of everyday people under everyday circumstances. Not for Ozu the moody shadows and vertiginous angles of the expressionists, or the heightened reality and stylized melodrama of Hollywood fare. Ozu was both a naturalist and a rigorous formalist, a director who sought to capture life as it is lived, but within a framework of rigidly defined restrictions. He limited the camera’s range of motion and the angles from which it could gaze; he limited his editing to simple, direct cuts—no dissolves or fades; and dialogue was conveyed in simple master shots followed by alternating close-ups. This artistic code focused greater attention on content over form, allowing character to reveal itself, allowing dialogue to breathe, and allowing revelatory spaces to open up between words and gestures and characters. Thus relationships and motivations and plot points would gradually take shape before the viewer’s eyes. 

Criterion has just released a three-disc set of Ozu’s early, silent films, called "Silent Ozu." The set is the most recent in the company’s line of Eclipse boxed sets, highlighting lesser-known works, and follows the recent release of "Late Ozu," a five-disc set of films from the last few years of the director’s career. Together the two sets form the bookends of one of cinema’s monumental oeuvres. 

It is a body of work consisting of more than 50 films, nearly all of them created in the same mold, with Ozu’s patient camera calmly observing his characters. He was not interested in dense plots or edge-of-your-seat melodrama; his work was almost literary, owing more to the novel than to film. “Rather than tell a superficial story,” Ozu said, “I wanted to go deeper, to show ... the ever-changing uncertainties of life. So instead of constantly pushing dramatic action to the fore, I left empty spaces, so viewers could have a pleasant aftertaste to savor.” 

Though he is often regarded as the most Japanese of Japanese directors, whose cinema captured unique and very specific aspects of that nation’s life and culture, Ozu’s work easily transcends international boundaries, delving into character, relationships and commonplace issues to find the universal. His favored subjects included families and the relationships between generations; the aging process; city life versus rural life; and all the values that complement and conflict with one another in the ensuing drama: pragmatism and idealism, love and kindness, justice and forgiveness. “Intellectually we may be different,” said film scholar Donald Ritchie in reference to Ozu’s work, “but emotionally we’re very much the same.”

The three films on this set display Ozu’s remarkable ability to blend comedy with poignant drama.Tokyo Chorus starts with a long comedic sequence that soon seems like a wild digression as young men engage in a series of pranks and gaffes under the stern gaze of a schoolmaster. But once the sequence is over and the Chaplinesque hijinks have concluded, the film takes on a more somber tone, following the hardships of one of the young men as he grows up, struggles to support a family, and in the process learns humility, compromise and the value of friendship. But eventually, Ozu brings the film full circle, and the connections with the earlier scenes are made not only clear but dramatically satisfying. 

These early films also give us a glimpse of a side of Ozu not visible in his later, more well-known work. A clever use of the moving camera draws parallels between the toil of children at school and the toil of clerks at the office. And a sustained bit of Lubitsch-style humor plays up the methods by which the workers attempt to glean the details of each others’ end-of-year bonuses. 

I Was Born, But... examines the difficulties both of children growing up and of their parents in handling them. A man’s young sons brawl with the local kids in their new neighborhood to assert their dominance, and once they do they exercise their power without restraint. Later their father falls from his figurative pedestal as they witness him kowtowing to his boss, the father of one their schoolyard underlings. What follows is both a loss of innocence and a tough lesson in parenting, as the father tries to express the realities of adulthood and the boys learn that there are other ways to get along than by thundering in the brush and pounding one’s chest like a baboon. 

On display in these early films are some of the techniques that Ozu would employ throughout his career: the floor-height vantage points that place his camera at eye level as his characters sit on the traditional tatami; and the alternating dialogue shots in which each character looks directly at the camera, placing the viewer right in the middle of the exchange, allowing greater identification with each character, with each argument and with each perspective. 

The End of Summer, from the "Late Ozu" collection, demonstrates the tenacity with which Ozu stuck to his principles of filmmaking throughout his career. In this, his penultimate film, we see Ozu and his actors spin the same complex web of dreams and desires, motives and secrets. The family patriarch, a widower, seeks the company of his long-estranged mistress in his twilight years, much to the chagrin of his children. Meanwhile the next generation is struggling to maintain the family business he has left in their care. The film examines the issues faced by three generations of the family as they clash, argue and try to understand one another. There is no ill will involved, just the understated spectacle of people at different stages of life, trying to get on. Along the way, we see them share, deceive, sacrifice and scheme, but they are always human, always sympathetic and always compelling. 

And herein lies much of the appeal of Ozu’s films: His calm, gently unfolding dramas give us time to not only get to know his characters, but also deeply care about them—to enjoy their humor, to admire their strength and to forgive their transgressions—so that, when a film ends, there is often a feeling of regret that these characters are gone from our lives. “Every time I watch an Ozu film,” says actor Eijiro Tong, “I start to feel very sentimental as the end of the film nears. As I think back over the story, it’s like a flood of old memories washing over me, one after another.” 

This is the essential sadness and loneliness that resides at the core of Ozu’s work—the awareness of the inevitability of change and that beginnings are followed all too soon by endings. 

"Silent Ozu." 3-disc set. $44.95. 

"Late Ozu." 5-disc set. $69.95. 

www.criterion.com.

The Two of Us: A Bucolic Dream Amid the Horror of the Holocaust

As newlyweds working their way through college while living in Berkeley's Elmwood District in the late 1960s, my parents had little money to spare. The only forms of entertainment they could afford were the occasional game of Video Pong at Dream Fluff Donuts and a monthly visit to the Elmwood Theater. At the time it was an arthouse theater, and the eclectic programming opened up a whole new world of cinema to two young folks raised on Hollywood fare.

Ten years ago or more, my father recalled to me the pleasures of the Elmwood Theater in those days, and rattled off a list of great films that played there. But the most moving film he saw was one whose title he had long forgotten. All he could remember was that it was a simple and endearing story about the friendship between an old man and a young boy.

Last week, about halfway through Claude Berri’s debut film The Two of Us (1967), newly released on DVD by Criterion, I realized that this was the film I had heard about all those years before, and that it more than lives up to my father’s fond memory.

The story takes place during World War II, when a young Jewish boy in Nazi-occupied Paris is sent by his parents to the countryside to live with a family friend’s parents—a Catholic and wholly anti-Semitic elderly couple. The boy is instructed by his parents to conceal his true identity and pass himself off as Catholic, adopting a new name, learning the Lord’s Prayer, and by all means concealing any sign of tell-tale surgical procedures.

The boy’s new “Grampa” is strident in his opinions about the war that is tearing his country apart, railing against the Communists, the Freemasons, the Brits and the Jews, his ire fueled by the ranting editorials of Philippe Henriot, “the French Goebbels,” to whose Radio Paris broadcasts the old man listens with rapt attention. Against all odds, the old man and the boy, Claude, become inseparable companions, the boy patiently listening to the man’s bigoted speeches and at times playfully debunking them.

The film begins with sadness and uncertainty as the parents put their boy on a train, unsure whether they’ll ever see him again, but quickly gives way to bucolic depictions of a pastoral summer spent tending rabbits and chasing chickens amid the joy and companionship of a blossoming friendship. Berri’s direction, aided by a wonderful score by Georges Delerue, paints a lyrical portrait of childhood, both in the form of Claude and in the second wind his presence gives to the old man, whose heart has grown weary amid warfare and old age.

Berri visited Paris schools in search of a boy to play the role and found Alain Cohen, who delivers one of the great child performances. For the old man he cast Michel Simon, a beloved French actor who had fallen on hard times, his career essentially washed up. The Two of Us was a comeback of sorts for him, giving him one of his most memorable roles late in life. Simon’s sensitive portrayal of Grampa delves far deeper than the usual depictions of racists and bigots, revealing the old man as a gentle soul, a kind, generous man whose only real fault is ignorance. When Alain Cohen’s mother showed him a picture of the man he would be acting with and asked the boy if he was nervous about the meeting, Cohen couldn’t understand her meaning. How could anyone be afraid of this big “chocolate cake of a man,” an adorable teddy bear who looked like Santa Claus?

Much of the film’s power is in its subtlety, for once the action shifts to the farm, the war and all its attendant horrors are barely mentioned. Aside from the old man’s radio, the global context for the tale is merely suggested. But the subtext is nevertheless clear in every scene, providing a quiet undercurrent of solemnity.

Claude Berri based the movie on his own experience. As a young boy he spent the last six months of the war in hiding on a farm in the countryside with an elderly couple, and The Two of Us is his attempt to capture that magical period of his life. And his choice of Cohen was fortuitous, as the boy, despite his youth, was well aware of the tragedies of the war, his grandparents having perished at Auschwitz.

French New Wave director Francois Truffaut hailed The Two of Us upon its release. For 20 years, he said, he had been waiting for “the real film” about World War II France—not a story not about those who collaborated with their Nazi occupiers, nor about the Resistance, but about the vast majority who simply waited out the war, those “who did nothing, either good or bad.”

Criterion’s new disc features a beautiful transfer and plenty of extra features, including a new interview with Alain Cohen, 1967 interviews with Claude Berri and Michel Simon, a 1975 television show featuring Berri and the woman who secured his family’s safety during the war, and essays by Truffaut and critic David Sterritt.

But the best addition to the release is his Le poulet (The Chicken), Berri’s Oscar-winning 1962 short film, in which the roots of his style are evident. It’s a charming little story of a boy who seeks to save the life of his beloved pet rooster by sneaking out each night to place an egg in its nest in hopes of persuading his parents that it’s a hen. Berri’s affection for the conceits of childhood and his talent for bringing them to the screen are clearly on display here, and he would master the method in his debut feature.

The Two of Us (1967). Written and directed by Claude Berri. Starring Michel Simon and Alain Cohen. Music by Georges Delerue. $39.95. 87 minutes. In French with English subtitles. www.criterion.com.

Tough Old Broad: A Barbara Stanwyck Centennial Retrospective

You’d think a beautiful young woman with a name like Ruby Stevens would have had it made in 1930s Hollywood. And she very well might have; the name conjures images of a bright-eyed ingenue, lovely, ambitious and 100 percent red-blooded American.

But that’s exactly what Barbara Stanwyck wanted to avoid, and thus, on the advice of a Broadway director, she changed her name, adopting a moniker that better suited her unique blend of strength, beauty, class and seductive allure.

The name suited the woman as well as the actress, for Stanwyck was already the woman she would soon portray: a tough, hard-luck dame, clawing her way to the top. Orphaned at a young age, she was raised in a series of foster homes, working as a fashion model and Broadway chorus girl before landing a theatrical role that caused the movie industry to take notice.

“I’m a tough old broad from Brooklyn,” Stanwyck once said. “I intend to go on acting until I’m 90 and they won’t need to paste my face with make-up.” She didn’t quite make it to 90, but she did work well into her 70s in a career that spanned nearly 60 years and earned her four Academy Award nominations, an honorary Oscar in 1982, and the American Film Institute’s Lifetime Achievement Award in 1987.

Pacific Film Archive is presenting a retrospective of some of the actress’ best work in honor of the centennial of her birth. The series runs through July 31 and begins Friday with Night Nurse (1931), a Pre-Code classic that pairs Stanwyck with the brassy Joan Blondell, and Stella Dallas (1937), considered by many to be Stanwyck’s best.

Stanwyck’s early career is full of commanding, riveting performances as working-class femme fatales struggling to survive and conquer in a man’s world. Baby Face (1933) and Ladies They Talk About (1933) are essentially companion pieces, telling similar tales accompanied by the same musical theme—the drawling, bawdy, jazz-era strains of “St. Louis Blues.” In both films Stanwyck’s character uses her body, her grace and her wit to manipulate men in pursuit of her material desires; she knows full well what they want and how to entice them with it, cynically selling notions of romance and passion in which she has long since ceased to believe. Stanwyck was judicious with her contempt though; she not only looked on her victims with disdain, but always managed to imbue her gutsy golddiggers with an undercurrent of self-loathing, an awareness that the dirty business of life soils everyone it touches, and that the path to the top runs through more than a few fetid swamps of vice.

There was much more to Stanwyck than sex, however. Few actors could convey as much with just their eyes. “Eyes are the greatest tool in film,” Director Frank Capra told her, and she put the advice to good use. Her gaze was piercing and challenging, while simultaneously conveying the bemusement and weariness of a woman long tired of playing the fantasy object for legions of sweaty old businessmen in rumpled suits. She was also a gifted comedienne, comfortable in the delivery of droll putdowns and flirtatious witticisms. Yet she was fully capable of more overtly comedic roles, as in The Lady Eve (1941), in which she played a con-artist trying to play it straight but needing all her vice and cunning to get there. “My only problem,” Stanwyck said in response to a question about her signature roles, “is finding a way to play my fortieth fallen female in a different way from my thirty-ninth.”

As good as she was, the movie industry was not altogether kind to its young stars, and many actresses saw their careers vanish as the studios ditched them at the first signs of middle age. But Stanwyck’s startling talent, screen presence and behind-the-scenes negotiating prowess gave her an edge. By avoiding long contracts, she was never bound to any one studio, keeping her career and her paychecks healthy as a prolific freelancer.

Thus few actresses progressed as smoothly from eye-candy vixens to middle-aged dramatic roles. Double Indemnity (1944), for instance, saw her updating Baby Face’s Lily Powers by moving her to the upper class enclaves of the Hollywood Hills, now as a kept woman looking for adventure to stave off her domestic boredom—a door-to-door salesman’s wet dream, who lures insurance man Fred MacMurray into a lurid web of murder and intrigue. And still again she updated the portrait in Fritz Lang’s Clash By Night (1952). Here Stanwyck presents a stirring portrait of the opportunistic dame, but older now and tired of living a rootless life. Whereas the younger Stanwyck played women in dire or mundane circumstances looking for a way out, here she plays a woman on her way back home, returning to her humble origins on Monterey’s Cannery Row with the hope that she can finally set aside her nagging restlessness by embracing a simple domestic life. Yet her eyes belie the painful truth, revealing the jaded intelligence that knows her dissatisfaction is innate, that whatever she has is never enough, no matter how good the man and how safe the home he provides.

It’s a compelling picture of a complex woman, requiring the sort of feminine insight that director Lang was entirely incapable of throughout his long career, resulting in a fascinating case of professional role reversal, with a talented actor bringing out heretofore untapped talents in her director. And all in marked contrast to her co-star, a young Marilyn Monroe, who might have led a much different life had she adopted just a bit of Stanwyck’s steely resolve.

"Ball of Fire: A Barbara Stanwyck Centennial Retrospective." Friday, July 6 through Tuesday, July 31 at Pacific Film Archive. 2575 Bancroft Way. 642-5249. www.bampfa.berkeley.edu.

The Boss of it All: Shifting Alliances and Realities

Lars von Trier’s The Boss of It All, opening this weekend at Shattuck Cinemas, is something of a departure for the Danish director. He has returned to Denmark and the Danish language to produce, for the first time, a comedy, and a rather light-hearted comedy at that. No politics, no commentary, no overarching cinematic code of ideals to weigh down his creation—just a clever idea, a witty script and a talented cast.

An unemployed hack actor (Jens Albinus) is hired to impersonate a non-existent corporate boss in order to facilitate the sale of an information technology firm. Trouble is, the actor’s benefactor (Ravn, played by Peter Gantzler) is the true owner and has been masquerading as an employee for 10 years, manipulating his colleagues to his own ends while blaming his unpopular decisions on the never-seen CEO, a faceless entity named Kristoffer who has been running the company by e-mail from the United States.

When the hapless actor is brought in to sign away the company in a private meeting with an Icelandic buyer, a firestorm of nationalistic tensions interrupts the negotiation and spills out into a corridor where the company’s employees catch their first glimpse of the man they believe is “the boss of it all.” And thus begins a convoluted series of interactions in which “Kristoffer” is constantly forced to improvise, trying to match his performance to the various preconceptions of the employees, all of whom think they have developed some sort or relationship with the man via e-mail, though in fact all of those interactions were with puppetmaster Ravn. At times Kristoffer benefits from these situations, and at times he suffers; he finds himself sexually involved with one employee, romantically linked to another, and the source of anxiety and anger for several more.

Ravn starts off allowing Kristoffer a great deal of leeway in shaping his character, but increasingly tries to usurp more and more control. The actor of course rebels as he gains confidence in the role, pompously delving deeper and deeper into his character’s motivation until, with the help of his ex-wife, who coincidentally works as an attorney for the Icelandic buyer, he finally taps into a few crucial insights that will allow him to alter the course of the intra-office melodrama. That said, he doesn’t necessarily glean much insight into himself, and one of the closing scenes features a hilarious episode in which the actor essentially holds up the plot’s resolution for an extended meditation on his character’s motivation, the obvious point of which is merely to draw attention to himself and his self-proclaimed mastery of his craft. 

It all makes for an entertaining film, a clever comedy that uses the familiar construct of mistaken identity to stage a more complicated self-reflexive commentary on film and theater, on acting, directing and filmmaking. 

Von Trier breaks the fourth wall in the first shot by introducing himself and the principal characters, following with a vow to dispense with artsiness for the duration of this “harmless” comedy. Yet this is a particularly artsy method of poking fun at all things artsy, and the director continues to emphasize the artifice of the film at crucial junctures, at one point taking center stage to announce that he has decided to add a new character to the mix just to further complicate the plot. Thus von Trier never lets us forget who is really the boss of it all.

Von Trier uses many of the principles of the stripped-down Dogme school of film that he co-founded, but with a lighter, less didactic approach. He eschews artificial lighting, makeup and scoring, for instance, but employs a unique and decidedly un-Dogme-like technique for photographing the film called Automavision. Von Trier selected each camera setup, but then employed a computer to randomly select various parameters for the shot, tilting the camera, changing the focal length or shifiting the composition. The computer controlled a similar set of parameters for the sound recording. The result is a film that is constantly shifting, as though through a series of jump cuts, giving the impression that the scenes and dialogue were patched together in the editing process. 

But what we’re really seeing is a framing device that has removed the human element and replaced it with computerized randomness. Most viewers won’t notice the technique on a conscious level, conditioned as we’ve become over the years to hand-held cameras, jump cuts and disjointed editing. But thematically it works, as the constantly shifting perspectives mirror the shifting alliances and realities of the characters, adding to the confusion and chaos of a situation over which the principal players—and to some extent the director—have lost control.

The Boss of it All (2007). Written and directed by Lars von Trier. Cinematography by Automavision. Starring Jens Albinus, Peter Gantzler, Thor Fridriksson, Benedikt Erlingsson, Iben Hjejle, Henrik Prip, Mia Lyhne, Casper Christensen, Louise Mieritz, Jean-Marc Barr, Anders Hove. 99 minutes. Not rated. In Danish with English subtitles. 

Forbidden Hollywood: Pre-Code Classics

The Pre-Code era, running roughly between 1930 and 1934, saw American filmmaking venture into frank and sometimes scurrilous examinations of the shadier side of life. They pushed the envelope, a bit too far in fact, causing the Hays Office to finally begin enforcing the Code Hollywood had thus far managed to evade.

Turner Classic Movies sheds light on this fascinating era of film history with 'Forbidden Hollywood," a series of DVD sets collecting some of the best films of the period.

Forbidden Hollywood 1

Red-Headed Woman (1932) is a fairly wild tale, featuring Jean Harlow as a ruthless gold digger and home-wrecker who will stop at nothing to get what she wants. The film would likely go over well today in a theater with a live audience, but on video it seems to lack what many films of the early 1930s lack: a sophisticated use of sound. Without effective music and rhythmic editing, long silences between lines of dialogue appear awkward and strained.

Also included on the set is director James Whale’s version of Waterloo Bridge (1931), the story of a down-and-out showgirl in war-torn France who is forced to turn to prostitution to make ends meet. It’s a sympathetic portrayal of a prostitute, a plotline the Code would later render impossible on the screen, even if she does come to a tragic end.

The film features Mae Clark and Douglass Montgomery as star-crossed lovers who find each other amid the air raids and destruction of World War I. The performances are strong and the special effects, though rudimentary, manage to lend an element of stirring if surreal tragedy to the proceedings despite the transparency of the techniques.

But the real value of this set is the inclusion of not one but two versions of Baby Face (1933), probably the most notorious and best of the Pre-Code classics. The film was released just as the Code came into full effect, and thus it was heavily edited, and for 70 years the original, uncensored version was thought lost. However, a print was finally discovered a few years ago and toured the country in theatrical release (see review, Daily Planet, May 26, 2006).

The film is one of the most gleefully salacious of the era, following Barbara Stanwyck as Lilly Powers as she sleeps her way to the top, literally floor by floor up the ranks of a New York bank.

The Turner release allows viewers to see both versions side by side, revealing that the attempts to tone down the film were more varied, more numerous and more hilariously inept than previously thought. The print that circulated last year was accompanied by a few additional scenes after the closing credits to give a sense of some of the changes made to the film, but the DVD release reveals much more. There must be more than a dozen edits in the first 20 minutes alone: excised words and lines, trimmed shots that jump awkwardly from one to the next, clumsy inserts covering other deletions. It’s like trimming every other word from a Lenny Bruce monologue, or removing all the innuendo from a Groucho Marx routine—take out a few pieces and the whole structure falls apart.

The cover labels this as the just the first volume in a series of Pre-Code releases from Turner, though no word yet as to what lies in store. The project promises to shed much-needed light on one the most fascinating eras of American filmmaking, when an industry found that its morals and mores were greatly at odds with a puritan government.

Forbidden Hollywood 2

Volume 2 starts off with two Shearer vehicles. The first, The Divorceé (1930), tells the story of a woman who responds to her husband’s infidelity with a pledge to live as a man lives, and thus begins a string of extramarital dalliances that the enforcement of the Code would crack down on in just a few years. Not for decades would women on screen be able to live and love as freely. Also featured is Shearer’s follow-up, A Free Soul (1931).

Ruth Chatterton runs an automobile factory in Female (1933), taking and casting aside lovers from her stable of employees at will and transferring them to a Canadian subsidiary if they get too attached. Eventually she meets her match, and from there things go down hill a bit in the feminism department until finally crashlanding in the end with a severe cop-out in which she transfers control of the firm to her husband while setting out on her new goal of producing as many as nine children. 

Three on a Match (1933) shows Bette Davis, Joan Blondell and Ann Dvorak as they grow from children to adults, Dvorak along the way slipping into a life of drug addiction. Humphrey Bogart plays a small role as a gangster thug. 

Last is Night Nurse (1931), a strange story in which Barbara Stanwyck and Blondell do battle with an evil chauffeur (Clark Gable) in an effort to prevent a case of child abuse. The film is a mix of brash comedy, torrid melodrama and frolicking cheesecake as numerous pretenses are found for Stanwyck and Blondell to repeatedly strip off their clothing. 

Also included is a documentary, Thou Shalt Not: Sex, Sin and Censorship in Pre-Code Hollywood, that puts these films in historical context, sketching out the scandals that led to Hollywood’s first tepid and later strident efforts at self-censorship. 

Forbidden Hollywood 1

Red-Headed Woman (1932).

Waterloo Bridge (1931).

Baby Face (1933).

Forbidden Hollywood 2

The Divorceé (1930).

A Free Soul (1931).

Female (1933).

Three on a Match (1933).

Night Nurse (1931)

Color Me Kubrick and the Cult of Malkovich

After more than 25 years in the movie business, John Malkovich has carved out a unique niche for himself, a cinematic netherworld equal parts post-modernism and cult of personality.

His charisma has always been apparent, whether adding a dash of suave cruelty to Dangerous Liasons (1988) or mercurial menace to In the Line of Fire (1993). But it has been his more recent, more adventurous work in smaller, independent films that has firmly established his reputation as something of a maverick.

Malkovich plays the lead role in Color Me Kubrick, a small, quirky film based on true events that opens this weekend at Shattuck Cinemas in downtown Berkeley. He plays Peter Conway, a con man who passed himself off for months as legendary film director Stanley Kubrick, swindling a string of star-struck victims along the way. He took money from them, slept with them, promised them roles in his films, even offered them financial backing for their own endeavors.

Director Brian Cook and screenwriter Anthony Frewin were there as the real-life drama unfolded, the former as Kubrick’s assistant director, the latter as his personal assistant. Frewin in fact was responsible for screening the calls that started coming in from irate strangers who would have Kubrick’s head for having fleeced them in the days and weeks previous, in ramshackle bars and nightclubs and taxicabs all over London.

There are many paths that could be taken in adapting such material for the screen. The story could easily lend itself to a psychological drama about a man who seeks escape from his dreary existence by adopting the identity of a famous recluse; or a noirish melodrama of a con artist operating in seedy bars, with plenty of narrow escapes and shady intrigue; or a journalistic mystery perhaps, with reporters unraveling the sordid tale of a smooth-talking seducer taking money and favors from down-and-out would-be stars all over London.

Instead the filmmakers have opted for another approach, one that contains elements of all of the above while playing up the absurdist aspects of the story in the creation of a film that poses more questions than it answers. They have chosen to emphasize the humor and depravity of Conway’s ruse without attempting to divine the motivations behind the charade, electing to make a piece of light entertainment rather than a probing drama. They’ve taken more than a few liberties with the tale, embellishing here and there and working with Malkovich in fashioning the already eccentric Conway into a character even more flamboyant and inscrutable.

The film doesn’t present Conway as a master con artist; he’s clumsy, he gets caught now and then, and when he does escape it’s more often the result of luck rather than cunning. In fact, the character, like the real-life man, doesn’t even know much about Kubrick or his films and doesn’t bother to do much research. Instead he relies on instinct, improvising the character anew with each new situation. An interesting study could have been built upon the various incarnations of Kubrick that Conway creates: For some victims, he portrays the director as a suave sophisticate, sometimes with a British accent, sometimes with Malkovich’s own jaded purr; for others he presents Kubrick as a brash New Yorker, or an arrogant Las Vegas lounge lizard; for still others, a mild-mannered upper-crust American, weary of recognition and thus traveling under an assumed name. On a whim he decides which incarnation best suits his victim and then proceeds to soften him up, flattering him with the attention of one of the world’s best-known but least-visible film directors.

The movie is episodic and slightly discursive, never dull but often rambling. Cook and Frewin never quite manage to find the thread which could pull the whole thing together. Instead the film merely revels in Conway’s deceptions, true and otherwise, taking pleasure in the eccentricity of the man and his brazen scams and infusing them with wry comic touches. For instance, iconic musical themes from classic Kubrick films appear throughout, often providing ironic counterpoint to the action. A particularly effective example shows Conway, after a night of Kubrick-fueled deception and debauchery, stumbling downstairs from his low-rent hovel, crossing the street past the “Bleu Danube” adult shop, and tossing his dirty clothes into an open machine at the laundromat—all choreographed to the delicate strains of Johann Strauss’ On the Beautiful Blue Danube, the piece used to such great effect in 2001: A Space Odyssey.

The inspired decision to cast Malkovich is the film’s saving grace, adding a whole new dimension to the proceedings. Since Being John Malkovich (1999), the actor’s image—eccentric, bemused, arrogant, slightly bored but always enigmatic and vaguely dangerous—has in a way become the subject of many of his films. Thus Cook and Frewin are able to employ the actor’s self-relexive persona as a hook on which to hang the film’s increasingly surreal episodes, bringing layers of complexity to an already strange tale. For it isn’t merely Malkovich playing Conway, but rather it is Malkovich playing “John Malkovich” playing Peter Conway playing Stanley Kubrick. And the kaleidoscopic tone becomes even more mind boggling in a scene where Malkovich-as-Malkovich-as-Conway-as-Kubrick regales dinner companions with tales of conflicts with studio management over the casting of John Malkovich in the lead for his next film.

Color Me Kubrick could have benefited from a more direct narrative, a more conventional through-line to tie together its absurdist humor and flights of eccentric fancy. Instead it relies on the cult of Malkovich, showcasing the actor’s strange mystique. It may not be a great film, but if you count yourself among the cult, it’s quite a ride.

Color Me Kubrick (2007). Directed by Brian Cook. Written by Anthony Frewin. Starring John Malkovich. 89 minutes. Not rated. 

The Lubitsch Touch at Pacific Film Archive

Silent film star Mary Pickford famously described director Ernst Lubitsch as a “director of doors,” a man more at home working with the choreography of entrances and exits than with actors and emotions. This acerbic remark, uttered in the awake of an ill-fated collaboration with the director on Rosita, his first American production, has a grain of truth but should be taken with a grain of salt as well.

Pickford was one of the most powerful figures in Hollywood and not inclined to accept a secondary role in a film’s creation. But Lubitsch’s films were not so much vehicles for stars so much as they were vehicles for Lubitsch, for his subtle and distinctive wit, both with images and later with dialogue.

A viewing of Lady Windermere’s Fan (1925) shows the truth behind both sides of the argument. The film shows tonight at Pacific Film Archive as part of a month-long career-spanning retrospective of the director’s work entitled “The Lubitsch Touch.” The series runs through Feb. 16 and tracks the legendary director’s career from his early German silent films to his much-celebrated American comedies of the sound era.

Lady Windermere’s Fan is an adaptation of an Oscar Wilde play that brazenly tosses out the words of Wilde in favor of sly visual humor and cues, replacing Wilde’s verbal wit with Lubitsch’s visual wit. The actors do good work, but clearly the director is in control, for the performances are not inspired but are instead matched meticulously to the staging and camerawork. There’s very little dialogue; most of the information is imparted to us simply through facial expressions, mannerisms and editing.

Many stars appeared in Lubitsch’s films, but Lubitsch himself was the true star of his productions, a noted auteur who guided the performances of his actors down to the smallest detail. Like Chaplin, he acted out each role and instructed his actors to mimic him, and, as with Chaplin again, this at times led to rather stilted performances. The actors were not permitted much leeway in plying their trade. However, the fact that the technique so often found such great results was a testament to Lubitsch’s unique talents.

One scene in particular illustrates Pickford’s dissent perfectly: Lubistch, in order to quickly and comically expresses the increasing intimacy between a couple, gives us two scenes of the suitor approaching the front door of his lady’s apartment. A close-up shows just his hand as he starts to ring the doorbell, things twice, hesitates, pulls out a pocket mirror, replaces it, then rings the bell and politely offers his coat and hat to the maid while waiting to be introduced. A second scene, taking place some weeks later, shows the hand again ringing the bell, this time with no hesitation. The man then walks brusquely through the door and past the maid, hanging his hat and coat without her help before bursting into the lady’s rooms unannounced. All necessary information is conveyed through intertitles, camerawork and editing. The acting is almost superfluous; it’s Lubitsch’s performance through and through.

His technique is not exactly subtle; in fact, Lubitsch’s presence can almost always be felt in his films, and this is a mixed blessing. Just as it is difficult to read Wilde without marveling at his wit, one cannot view a Lubitsch film without being made acutely conscious of the wit and style of the director. At its best it is a seductive technique, one that draws the viewer into an alliance with the director, making one feel as if one is in on the joke, sharing in the sense of superiority toward the objects of that wit; but at times it has a tendency to drain a film of drama and impact, maintaining a cynical distance from characters who are reduced to mere pawns in the director’s cinematic game.

The result is that Lubitsch’s films, though often just as entertaining today as they were in their time, are less art than entertainment, fun for their two-hour span but with little impact beyond the moment the theater lights come up. The “Lubitsch touch,” though deft, is a light touch, one that only lingers playfully amid the more complex, underlying themes of the story, rarely delving deeply into character, motivation or import. He won’t change your life but for two hours he’ll take you for a fun and stylish ride.

Other films in the series include Ninotchka, The Shop Around the Corner, Angel, Heaven Can Wait, Trouble in Paradise, The Marriage Circle, Rosita, The Love Parade and The Smiling Lieutenant. The series runs through Feb. 16. $4-8. 2575 Bancrot Way. 642-5249. www.bampfa.berkeley.edu.

The Great Chase: Buster Keaton's The General

In 1998, amid an orgy of end-of-the-millenium top 100 lists, the American Film Institute released its list of the 100 best American films, a list that included three Charlie Chaplin movies but inexplicably no Buster Keaton films, despite the fact that several of his works, most notably The General (1926), rank among the silent era’s best and frequently hover near the top of many critics’ lists of the best films ever made.

But this has been Keaton’s lot in life, both during his career and since his death: to toil away in the shadow of the most famous comedian who ever lived. Though a late-career rediscovery of his work saw Keaton hailed as a cinematic genius, even Chaplin’s superior as a director, Keaton still retains his underdog status.

Pacific Film Archive will show The General and One Week (1921), Keaton’s first independent film, as the first installments in a new series: “Movie Matinees For All Ages.” The series debuts at 2 p.m. Saturday with Keaton and will be followed over the next couple of Saturdays with the Marx Brothers’ Horse Feathers (1932) and Victor Fleming’s The Wizard of Oz (1939).

The General is essentially one big chase sequence, brilliantly constructed and expanded to feature length. The story, based on a true incident from the Civil War, concerns a Southern train stolen by Northern soldiers, who spirit the engine back into Northern territory, burning bridges and destroying telegraph wires as they go. Buster, as Johnnie Grey, is the General’s engineer, and sets out to recapture his beloved locomotive. Along the way, Keaton stages a series of beautifully choreographed and increasingly dangerous stunts until he arrives in enemy territory, rescues his train—and, almost by accident, his girl—and then heads back to Southern territory while hounded by Northern soldiers. Thus the chase folds back on itself, like an arc that delivers Keaton back where he began—the “Keaton Curve,” as critic Walter Kerr put it—with gags and stunts from the first half now expanded upon in the second.

The General and Chaplin’s The Gold Rush (1925) are unique among screen comedies in that they combine two seemingly incongruous genres: the comedy and the epic. Such a pairing had never been attempted before, as the grand scale of the epic seemed at odds with the smaller, more personal nature of character-based comedy. But whereas Chaplin’s film only contained a few outdoor shots in the early scenes before retreating to the comfort of studio sets, Keaton preferred to shoot on location; few of his comedies take place in studio sets. And though location shooting and period costumes were nothing new in Keaton’s work, The General dwarfs his previous efforts in scale and detail. Many critics consider it the most convincing celluloid recreation of the Civil War, the imagery recalling Matthew Brady’s photographs from the period.

Keaton instructed his crew to make it “so authentic it hurts” and carefully replicated the trains, uniforms, styles and terrain of the era. There were no special effects; Keaton’s desire for authenticity extended to every shot, culminating in the dramatic scene in which a train crashes through a burning bridge as scores of Northern soldiers pour over the hillside to converge on the Southern army’s front lines.

Critical reception was mixed. Some thought it a solid picture while others considered it Keaton’s weakest effort, taking offense at the notion of making light of the Civil War. Ultimately the considerable expense of the production caused Joseph Schenk, Keaton’s producer, to intervene with the usually autonomous director-star, requiring that his next feature be decidedly less extravagant. Keaton dutifully followed up with College (1927), one of his most restrained efforts, before embarking on the more elaborate Steamboat Bill, Jr (1928). It was while making Steamboat that Keaton learned that Schenk had sold his contract to MGM, bringing an end to Keaton’s independent career.

Under MGM, Keaton struggled to keep control over his work but quickly became subsumed by the studio system after his first feature, The Cameraman (1928). Thus Keaton, like Erich von Stroheim before him and Orson Welles after him, became something of a victim of his own success as the expense of and lack of contemporary public appreciation for his greatest achievement ultimately undermined his career.

PFA’s screening of The General will be preceded by One Week, the first two-reeler Keaton released as an independent artist after his apprenticeship with Roscoe “Fatty” Arbuckle. One Week was hailed as the year’s best comedy upon its release, establishing Keaton as one of cinema’s most innovative artists. The film is an excellent introduction to Keaton’s work as it features many of the characteristics that would become his hallmarks: a fascination with machinery, a semi-surrealist perspective, trains, and of course, the Keaton Curve, as the efforts of Buster and his bride to construct a pre-fabricated house eventually leave them homeless once again.

Belle du jour: The Films of Buñuel and Carriere

The name Luis Buñuel is familiar to even those with only a passing interest in movies, largely due to the success of his satiric films of the 1960s and ’70s. But when the great director made his seamless transition from experimental Surrealist filmmaking to commercial narrative work, he did so with the help of a slightly lesser-known talent: screenwriter Jean-Claude Carriere.

Carriere was instrumental in helping Buñuel to shape his cynical satires, working closely with the director in the writing of screenplays both original and adapted. The result was a lasting partnership, one that generated six films and even extended to the writing of Buñuel’s autobiography, My Last Sigh, published just before his death in 1983.

The San Francisco International Film Festival presented Carriere with its Kanbar Award for screenwriting this year for a distinguished career in which he worked with some of the world’s greatest directors, including Buñuel, Jean-Luc Godard and Louis Malle.

Pacific Film Archive will show Belle du jour (1967), a Carriere-Buñuel collaboration, as part of a series of movies from the International Film Festival at 5 p.m. Sunday, April 30, with Carriere making an in-person appearance. PFA will then follow up with four more Carriere-Buñuel collaborations on May 5 and 6, beginning with Diary of a Chambermaid (1964). Other films in the series include The Milky Way (1968), Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie (1972), and Phantom of Liberty (1974).

Diary of a Chambermaid was the first film in which Carriere and Buñuel worked together, adapting the novel by Octave Mirbeau. The story had been brought to the screen once before, by Jean Renoir in 1946, but Buñuel refused to see it for fear that it might color his perceptions of his own work. Carriere and Buñuel took certain liberties with the novel, shifting the time period to the 1930s and altering several plot points.

The result would serve as a sort of template for future Carriere-Buñuel collaborations: The film examines and satirizes the dark underbelly of bourgeoisie society and features a wide-ranging assortment of fetishes, vices, hypocrisies and subterfuge. As with their later fims, Buñuel and Carriere do not judge these characters. They are presented from a certain distance; we watch them, we gain a certain understanding of them, but we are not made to either identify with them or be repulsed by them. Buñuel and Carriere merely present them as they are and allow the audience to come to their own conclusions.

Jeanne Moreau plays the role of the chambermaid as an inscrutable blank slate. The other characters, as well as the audience, are left to project onto her their own interpretations of her motives and emotions. When she first comes to work at the Monteil estate, she is somewhat defiant toward these decadent aristocrats, flouting her mistress’ rules and looking upon the family with condescension. Yet gradually her behavior starts to change, and it is difficult to understand why. When she eagerly goes to bed with a suspected child-murderer, we wonder whether her lust for him is genuine or just a device by which she hopes to frame him. Or perhaps it is both; perhaps she is seeking justice while conveniently satisfying her own particular fetish.

Only at the end does it become clear that somehow, for reasons unexplained, the chambermaid has decided to become one of them; that, whether due to opportunism or some darker motivation, she has managed to ensconce herself in a throne-like bed in her own castle-like mansion, safely and blithely indifferent to the rising forces of fascism in which her new husband plays a significant role. In the end she is as bored, stagnant and self-indulgent as the family she once mocked.

The Carriere-Buñuel themes take a darker and more personal tone with Belle du jour, starring Catherine Deneuve as the frigid wife of a young surgeon. They are happy together, but they keep separate beds even a year after their marriage. Gradually we learn that the young bride, Severine, is anything but frigid and in fact has an active fantasy life. It’s just that conventional lovemaking within a marriage is not sufficient to arouse her libido.

And this is where the familiar themes come in.

Belle du jour is about fetishes, appearances, fantasy and restraint. Severine is overwhelmed by fantasies of being taken by force, of being humiliated, abused and denigrated in strange rituals. Flashbacks suggest that these desires stem from incidents in her childhood, but the fetishes themselves are wisely never explained, for nothing robs a fetish of its allure than an attempt to explain it.

Severine’s fetishes, which are often subtly infused into the fantasy sequences, seem to bring her to a frenzy. Like a Pavlovian dog, she harkens to the sounds of ringing of bells and mewing cats. And in her dreams she is objectified and treated cruelly to a soundtrack of primal noises.

Her desires lead her to take a job as a prostitute, arriving at the whorehouse each day dressed in black, as though in mourning for the life she is leaving behind, and returning home each day by 5 to her unsuspecting husband.

One scene involves a man entering the bordello with a little black box. We do not see what is in it, but it is enough to cause one prostitute to refuse to do his bidding. Severine accepts, however, enticed by whatever fetish he carries in the box. And his excited ringing of a tiny bell only seals the deal, coaxing an excited smile from her.

Deneuve is often discussed as simply a great beauty, but she is far more than that. Her acting in Belle du jour is subtle and effective. She is able to consistently demonstrate the duality of Severine’s existence: the trepidation, shame and fear combined with passion and desire, as well as the bliss of masochistic fantasies fulfilled.

The film’s conclusion is ambiguous and probably has a number of valid interpretations. At first glance the final 20 minutes seem like a 1930s American film under the Production Code, with a wild woman bringing ruin to herself and to those she loves because of her lurid behavior. But another interpretation takes the film in quite another direction. Severine has her fetish: to be defiled, abused and humiliated. Hussan, a friend of Severine’s husband, has his fetish: to defile his friend’s seemingly virtuous young bride. The gangster Severine becomes entangled with has his fetish: to live the life and die the death of an outlaw, disrupting the social order and going out in a hail of gunfire. And the husband can be said to have a fetish as well: a virtuous wife by day, a sexual animal by night.

The ending, with Hussan revealing Severine’s secret to her paralyzed and unresponsive husband, provides a bit of satisfaction for everyone, for Hussan gets the chance to expose Severine’s tawdry dark side, thereby defiling her in the eyes of her husband; the gangster gets his tragic, romantic death in the streets; and Severine ends up sitting quietly under the mysterious gaze of her husband, exposed and vulnerable, just as in her fantasies—a “slut,” a “whore,” waiting for the “firm hand” to administer punishment. And the husband now has his virtuous and apologetic wife, but an all-new and improved version, for this one just might share his bed.

A final dream sequence concludes the film, with the husband forgiving his wife for her actions. Is this a vision of the future, or is it a new kind of fantasy for Severine, one in which her husband finally grants her the forgiveness and understanding her guilty conscience craves? Or perhaps it’s simply a new twist on the old fantasies, with Buñuel and Carriere taking one last swipe at the bourgeoisie as they infuse the dream once again with the ringing of bells and the mewing of cats—everything a good society girl needs to keep her happy.

The Films of Jean-Claude Carriere and Luis Buñuel

Belle du jour (1967)

5 p.m. Sunday, April 30

Diary of a Chambermaid (1964)

7 p.m. Friday, May 5

The Milky Way (1968)

9 p.m. Friday, May 5

Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie (1972)

6:30 p.m. Saturday, May 6

Phantom of Liberty (1974)

8:30 p.m. Saturday, May 6

Pacific Film Archive. 2626 Bancroft Way. www.bampfa.berkeley.edu.

Harold Lloyd: The Third Genius of Silent Comedy

Harold Lloyd, one of the greatest comedians of silent film, is poised for a comeback. In anticipation of the November release of more than two dozen of his films on DVD, Pacific Film Archive and San Francisco’s Castro Theater are screening some of the comedian’s best features.

PFA is showing a Lloyd film at 3 p.m. every Sunday through Aug. 7 and the Castro will screen a series of double features Aug. 19-25.

Lloyd’s career spanned 34 years and more than 200 films, from one- and two-reel shorts to full-length features. Though he worked with writers and co-directors, Lloyd was one of the early auteurs, controlling nearly every facet of production.

If it sometimes seems that Lloyd cannot be discussed these days without unflattering comparisons to legendary contemporaries Charlie Chaplin and Buster Keaton, it is at least partially Lloyd’s own fault. Whereas the films of Chaplin and Keaton have been readily available for some years in revivals, on television, and home video, Lloyd chose to withhold his work after he retired, not releasing it to the public other than in a few compilations of the 1960s.

But now, thanks to Suzanne Lloyd, the comedian’s granddaughter and president of Harold Lloyd Entertainment, Inc., these classic silent comedies are finally seeing release, with a dozen or so forming the core of a retrospective now touring the country.

Comedy did not come easily to the young Harold Lloyd. He worked hard to acquire the timing and grace that was second nature to his peers. He did not have the natural and instinctive talents of Chaplin and Keaton; he was not raised in the theater, as they were, nor did he have an inherently comic persona, as Chaplin did with his shabby yet fastidious tramp and Keaton with his stoic and sober fatalist. Lloyd was not only smart enough to recognize this, he was determined to overcome it, and so he went about methodically creating a viable comedic identity.

His first step was a common one among comedians of the day: He imitated Chaplin. That is, he appropriated the situations and style of Chaplin, though he did not adopt Chaplin’s costume. Instead, Lloyd inverted the outfit; rather than baggy clothes, he wore clothes that were too tight. And in place of Chaplin’s narrow brush mustache, Lloyd placed two dots of facial hair at either side of the mouth. This was Lonesome Luke, a logical if not inspired creation that Lloyd played in dozens of one-reel comedies.

But imitation was not enough for Lloyd; his ambition was far greater. He would have to find a unique character, one that suited his talents and appearance. Eventually he found his inspiration.

“I saw a dramatic picture at a downtown theater,” Lloyd wrote in his autobiography, An American Comedy. “The central character was a fighting parson, tolerant and peaceful until riled, then a tartar. Glasses emphasized his placidity. The heavy had stolen the girl, carrying her away on horseback. The parson leaped on another horse and the two were lost in a cloud of dust. When the dust cleared, the heavy lay prone and still, while the parson dusted his clothes with careless flecks of his handkerchief, replaced his glasses and resumed his ministerial calm.”

Thus the “glass character,” as Lloyd called him, was born. He would join the pantheon of the elite comedic characters: Chaplin the Tramp; Keaton the Stoic; Roscoe “Fatty” Arbuckle, the Fat Man; Harry Langdon, the Man-Child; and Harold Lloyd, the Everyman. With a simple pair of horn-rimmed glasses, purchased for 75 cents, Lloyd set off on a career that would make him the highest-grossing film comedian of the 1920s.

Though the audience could at times identify with the situations and emotions in the work of Keaton and Chaplin, their characters had a strange, almost otherworldly quality. Lloyd, on the other hand, sought a character that was common, easily identifiable, someone the audience could recognize in their own lives.

Film critic Walter Kerr, in his book The Silent Clowns, described the character as an archetype that was prevalent and easily comprehended in its day. “The good American, still devoutly believed in during the 1920s, was two things,” Kerr wrote. “He was aggressive, and he was innocent. Americans could not have tamed a continent if they had not been aggressive … But whatever had been done aggressively, or was being done aggressively, had been and was being done from the noblest motives, motives that had just recently helped make the world safe for democracy. The American’s energy was a virtuous energy, spent always in the cause of good. A vigor that extended to brashness on the one hand; a clear conscience on the other.”

With variations here and there, Lloyd played this character throughout the rest of his career. It was a comic take on the Horatio Alger story, the “American boy who rose from shoe clerk to national hero,” in Kerr’s words.

Lloyd’s craft was as studied as his character. In an effort to keep his output varied and interesting to audiences, he diligently worked at broadening the range of his abilities, mastering all the stock elements of film comedy and even adding a few innovations of his own.

First among these was the chase scene, many of which will be on display in the films featured in the retrospective, from the last-minute heroics of Girl Shy to the herding of criminals and ne’er-do-wells into a church in For Heaven’s Sake. But Lloyd took the medium beyond simple chases, bringing a new twist to film comedy.

Though he only made five of them, Lloyd is still best remembered for what he called his “thrill pictures.” One day, while walking in downtown Los Angeles, he saw a “human fly,” a man climbing a skyscraper as part of a promotional event. Though the thought of seeing the man fall to his death was horrifying, Lloyd couldn’t take his eyes off him. This led to the most famous of all Lloyd films, Safety Last, in which the Lloyd character climbs the face of a building as a promotion for the department store in which he works as a clerk. The climax of the scene finds Lloyd dangling from the face of a clock hundreds of feet above Los Angeles.

Lloyd milked the situation for all it was worth, placing his camera above and to the left of the character so that the street below was always in view, never letting the audience forget the danger. While the gags along the way are not all unique—some, like the mouse in the pant leg, were already clichés at the time—Lloyd was using them in a new context, using fear and suspense to augment the comedy.

You can see the hard work involved; Lloyd is consciously and deliberately exploiting every facet of the situation. This is not an inspired bit of comedy from an intuitive master, but it is well-crafted filmmaking of a high order.

What often distinguished the better comedians was their ability to slow the pace of their films and develop their characters with more thoughtful comedy. In fact, some of Lloyd’s most accomplished work are these quieter moments, where he demonstrates the confidence and skill to dispense with the rapid-fire editing, stunts and chase scenes and simply holds the camera motionless, using long takes that allow both he and his co-stars to display their comedic talents.

Again, For Heaven’s Sake provides an excellent example. In one scene, Lloyd, playing a dandified millionaire playboy, is sitting beside a down-and-out thug. In one continuous take, the two men slowly begin to notice the odor of perfume, each suspecting the other as the source.

Lloyd draws the scene out, holding the camera perfectly still while each man’s face tells the story, slowly registering the presence of the odor, looking quizzically about the room, and then gradually settling upon each other and setting up the payoff as the two men silently evaluate each other.

Another scene simply conveys Harold’s growing affection for the priest’s daughter. As she takes him on a tour of the mission, gesturing at various points of interest, Harold literally can’t take his eyes off her. He sees nothing of the mission; he only sees her. The camera follows them around the room, weaving between chairs and tables, capturing the mad whirl of romance.

It is in these scenes, with the Everyman in everyday situations, that Lloyd is at his best. Here the years of work, study and determination pay off beautifully with simple, genuine scenes from which Lloyd draws simple, genuine comedy.

Like the characters he portrayed, Lloyd reached the top through hard work and perseverance. A reevaluation of his work is long overdue, and hopefully the rediscovery of these films will cement his place as one of the preeminent talents in all of silent film, and one of the most accomplished comedic directors in film history. He deserves that much. He earned it.

HAROLD LLOYD AT PACIFIC FILM ARCHIVE

Safety Last, 3 p.m., Sunday July 17.

The Freshman, 3 p.m., Sunday July 24.

Welcome Danger, 3 p.m., Sunday July 31. Accompanied on piano by Jon Mirsalis.

For Heaven’s Sake, 3 p.m., Sunday Aug. 7.

San Francisco’s Castro Theater will screen 13 Lloyd features and five short films Aug. 19-25. www.thecastrotheatre.com.