Shirley Hughes, director, Toronto Silent Film Festival
A DRINK WITH . . .
The Toronto Silent Film Festival kicks off April 4. Festival director Shirley Hughes talks about post-movie chats with her parents and Toronto’s homegirl, Mary Pickford over drinks at The Comrade, 758 Queen St. E.
The cocktails: a bourbon sour for Shirley, an Uncle Garth for Eric.
Mixologist: Brett Paulin. Q: Film has long been a part of your life. Where does that love stem from?
A: I blame my mother, who lived in Copenhagen in the 1930s. She used to clip movie star photographs from the paper and paste them in scrapbooks. Everybody back in those days was absolutely movie crazy and she went to as many as she could. Even during the war, people were still going.
Q: So she would take you to the movies?
A: I’m a Scarborough girl, but my parents would take me downtown to the University Theatre, the Uptown, and not just for Disney movies: we saw 2001: A Space Odyssey in its original release, and I fondly remember talking about its meaning in the car as we drove back home. I think when you instill a kid with that range of movie-going, you just love all films. Q: Did growing up in Toronto influence your obsession?
A: My knowledge of silent films, German and French cinema, came an awful lot from Reg Hartt’s Cineforum. At first he showed films at Innis College, then he had a place on Mercer St. for a while. Reg showed some really incredible silent films, from Phantom of the Opera to D.W. Griffith’s films. His strength was putting incredibly good soundtracks on the films. He has a really good ear for movie music and back in the good old days when it was all analog, he would splice them together himself.
Q: His black and white posters are a Toronto staple.
A: Those posters are iconic. They’re part of the streetscape, really. Even if you’ve never set foot in the Cineforum, everyone knows about his Sex and Violence Cartoon Festival. I even know people who’ve collected the early ones.
Q: You’re showing My Best Girl, with Toronto’s Mary Pickford. When the average moviegoer thinks of Charlie Chaplin, they might see an image from Modern Times. Buster Keaton, the house falling on him. With Pickford, no particular image comes to mind. Why is that?
A: Her films were astoundingly popular in the day, but she owned all of her rights and kept them under wraps for decades. The resurgence, really over the last couple of years, has been remarkable, with the Lightbox exhibit, and I think it’s richly deserved, because she was more than just a film actress.
Q: She was quite a powerhouse in early Hollywood, right?
A: Beyond her naturalistic acting ability, it’s her overall place in film history. At a time when women hadn’t yet attained the right to vote, she was probably the most powerful figure in Hollywood, man or woman. And beloved by everybody.