Silent ‘Butler’ gets new score
Anita Monga, the discerning cineast who has programmed the San Francisco Silent Film Festival since 2009, wishes Buster Keaton were still around so she could ask the master comedian why, of all his films, he reportedly liked “Battling Butler” best.
“It’s not that well known, and it’s a little subtler than Keaton’s ‘The General,’ everybody’s favorite, where you get the big scenes and big stunts,” says Monga, who chose a restored version of “Battling Butler” to close the 23rd annual silent festival, which runs Wednesday, May 30, through June 3 at the Castro Theatre. It will be screened to live accompaniment by the Mont Alto Motion Picture Orchestra.
The 1926 comedy stars the unflappably deadpan Keaton as a rich fop who has to prove his macho mettle to the father of the mountain girl he loves (played by Sally O’Neil), with help from his valet (Snitz Edwards).
“This film is lovely and understated. It’s romantic and sweet, and has all the Keaton tropes, the athleticism, as well great character actors like Snitz Edwards, who plays his sidekick, the personal valet to this well-heeled milquetoast. It’s a little Lucy and Ethel,” says Monga, referring to the classic 1950s TV sitcom “I Love Lucy.” “They get into some predicaments.”
This year’s expanded festival, with more films and musicians from international locales, opens Wednesday, May 30, with a screening of Universal Pictures’ newly restored print of Paul Leni’s 1928 melodrama “The Man Who Laughs,” the Expressionist German director’s take on Victor Hugo’s 1869 novel about a man with a disfigured grinning face. Conrad Veidt plays him in the movie.
“This film stands the test of time,” Monga says. “It could have been made today. It is so resonant and universal and beautiful. And Conrad Veidt is amazing.”
The accompanying music will be performed and conducted by the young musicians who composed it — members of the film-scoring class and Silent Film Orchestra at Boston’s Berklee College of Music. Universal commissioned them to create the score they’ll premiere that night at the Castro, where the film company’s silent-movie honchos met the Berklee folk at a previous festival.
Bay Area bassist-composer Sascha Jacobsen wrote the music accompanying German director Phil Jutzi’s 1929 Weimar classic, “Mother Krause’s Journey to Happiness,” and performs it live with the Musical Art Quintet.
Subbing at the festival in the past, Jacobsen fell in love with making music for silent movies. He showed a flair for it when he scored “Diary of a Lost Girl,” the controversial 1929 film starring bob-haired Louise Brooks, for a 2016 festival presentation at the Alamo Drafthouse.
“He had such a feeling for the Weimar period, we asked him to do ‘Mother Krause’s Journey to Happiness,’ ” Monga says. She hasn’t heard the score yet but knows Jacobsen will flavor the live music with recordings of the period, played on a gramophone. For more information, go to www.silentfilm.org.
Bernstein at Grace
San Francisco’s Grace Cathedral, whose Gothic sanctuary was consecrated in 1965 with performances that included the premiere of Duke Ellington’s stirring Concert of Sacred Music, is following last month’s Beyoncé Mass with an interfaith evensong service Thursday, May 24, featuring the cathedral choir singing Leonard Bernstein’s 1965 “Chichester Psalms.”
It’s Grace’s contribution to the centennial salute to Bernstein, who composed the piece on commission from England’s Chichester Cathedral.
“Many of us would be very delighted if there was a hint of ‘West Side Story’ about the music,” the cathedral’s dean wrote the flamboyant Bernstein, who set the psalms to the original Hebrew.
For more information, go to www.gracecathedral.org/ events.
Reider returns
Sam Reider first drew notice as a prodigious jazz pianist at the Urban School of San Francisco, before he moved to New York, fell under the spell of Woody Guthrie’s music, took up accordion and began making rootsy music melding bluegrass, jazz, folk, swamp and Gypsy sounds.
Reider plans to play accordion and piano at the Red Poppy Art House on Folsom Street Thursday, May 24, leading a quintet playing original music from his new recording, “Too Hot to Sleep.”
For more information, go to www.redpoppyarthouse.org.
Museum turns 10
San Francisco’s Contemporary Jewish Museum celebrates 10 years in its signature Daniel Libeskind-designed building with a free community day on June 10, featuring poets, musicians and dancers riffing on the art and architecture, museum tours and art making.
For more information, go to www.thecjm.org.