Restored ‘Potemkin’ a 1st for S.F. fest
The 1925 classic “Battleship Potemkin,” which will be part of the San Francisco Silent Film Festival for the first time, has overcome many challenges during the past century: censorship, decades of recuts, English translation issues.
Such problems are not unusual for a silent film, even for one of the most influential silent films ever made. But since “Battleship” was definitively restored in 2007, the Russian masterpiece has also faced a different kind of hurdle when it has come to securing a play date at the Castro Theatre for one of the world’s most prominent silent film festivals. It’s too famous. “Sometimes the most obvious choices get left out of the lineup because they are so well-known — everyone’s done that,” said Anita Monga, artistic director of the festival, which runs June 1-4. “For example, it took us forever to play Buster Keaton’s ‘The General.’
“But many people haven’t seen the restoration of ‘Battleship Potemkin.’ It’s a breathtaking film about working people standing up to oppression, and we chose it because we need our spirits lifted — for reasons that everyone here understands.”
“Battleship,” about a mutiny of sailors during the 1905 Russian Revolution, contains one of the most iconic sequences — the “Odessa Steps” — in cinematic history. Still awe-inspiring and terrifying after almost 100 years, the scene depicts government soldiers mercilessly opening fire on hundreds of workers gathered on steps. It was the first time a film had used such a quick succession of rhythmic images, including one of a baby carriage that shocked the world.
“It’s the grandfather of film editing — that was a very modernist approach,” Monga said. Director Sergei Eisenstein “wasn’t subtle. They were making propaganda that was deeply disturbing to some capitalists.”
“Battleship” premiered in December 1925 in Moscow. During a visit to Russia, American silent film legends Douglas Fairbanks and Mary Pickford fell in love with the film, and they would help lead the way in bringing it to the United States.
“This film had an indelible influence on filmmakers,” Monga said. “People who have never seen ‘Battleship Potemkin’ will see things that were borrowed in other films.
“But when you’re watching it for the first time, you don’t analyze why it’s brilliant. You just get swept away with it. It’s so energizing and exciting from the first frames.”
Yet it wasn’t always smooth sailing for “Battleship” after its original release. For various political reasons of the era, censors in Weimar Germany had a field day, removing scenes and re-editing the movie in an effort to scale back the revolutionary rhetoric and violence. That kind of meddling persisted for a long time.
Now that Eisenstein’s audacious vision has been restored to its original grandeur, the only thing that will be missing from the San Francisco screening June 3 will be Edmund Meisel’s original score from 1926. But that score requires a full symphony orchestra, and the Castro is equipped for only 15 players, at most.
“The Meisel score is beautiful, and if we were able to present the film with a full symphony orchestra, we’d probably use it,” Monga said. “But Eisenstein maintained that the score should be rewritten every 20 years to remain revolutionary. We’re doing our part!”
For the new music, the festival has turned to the Matti Bye Ensemble, named after the Swedish composer who heads the company.
“We didn’t want the same old ideas, and they are very inventive,” Monga said of the ensemble. “They’re very interesting with their percussions, but that’s not their whole thing. They’re also very expressive with strings and keyboards.”
Monga is also excited to be screening “The Freshman,” a comedy that stars Harold Lloyd, for opening night. Along with Keaton and Charlie Chaplin, Lloyd is considered one of the silent film comedy greats, and “The Freshman” was his biggest box-office hit.
The story concerns a college student who wants to be the stud on campus and who dreams of being on the football team. A big scene on the gridiron was filmed at Memorial Stadium in Berkeley.
Other highlights include “Body and Soul,” one of the only surviving titles from African American director Oscar Micheaux (with live musical accompaniment from DJ Spooky), 7 p.m., June 2; “The Three Musketeers,” featuring Douglas Fairbanks in all his swashbuckling glory (with live accompaniment by the Guenter Buchwald Ensemble), 8:15 p.m., June 4; and “Two Days,” a Soviet film about the 1917-21 civil war in Ukraine (with live music accompaniment by Stephen Horne), 6:30 p.m., June 4.
“It’s fun to look over the whole schedule,” Monga said, “and get excited about it.”
“Eisenstein maintained that the (‘Battleship Potemkin’) score should be rewritten every 20 years to remain revolutionary. We’re doing our part!” Anita Monga, artistic director, S.F. Silent Film Festival