Film Rarities and Classics on the Big Screen

Screenings of a cartoon and the last three features of the 44th annual Labor Day weekend “Cinecon” were just getting underway at Grauman’s Egyptian Theatre as I began to type up this report at Gate 22 in the Los Angeles airport, and they wound up shortly after I completed it on the plane.

Despite missing the Monday afternoon session so I could make my flight back to Grand Forks, I was able to see 25 of the 28 feature-length films and 17 of the 18 shorts that ran from 7 pm last Thursday through about 6:15 this Monday. All but one feature and a few shorts were shown on 35mm film, several in newly struck prints made especially for this festival.

As usual, there was a great variety of titles ranging from the 1910s through the 1950s, plus a couple of more recent documentaries about stage and screen personalities. Also as usual, most were rare films, some only recently rediscovered or restored, while several were more common titles available on DVD or cable TV but shown in archival 35mm film prints newly made from the original negatives.

Film producer Walter Mirisch (“Man of the West,” 1958) and stars Celeste Holm (“Champagne for Caesar,” 1950), Warren Stevens (“The Case Against Brooklyn,” 1958), and Elena Verdugo (“House of Frankenstein,” 1944) all spoke after screenings of their films, and answered questions from the audience.

Mirisch addressed the group on the convention’s opening night after a brief video tribute with clips from his major pictures, like “Some Like it Hot,” “The Magnificent Seven,”  “The Hawaiians,” “Midway,” “In the Heat of the Night,” and many others.

After he spoke, the convention screened the first major production from his personal production company, Anthony Mann’s well-made Gary Cooper western, “Man of the West.”

Finishing up the first night was the recent restoration of Charlie Chaplin’s first feature-length film, “Tillie’s Punctured Romance” (1914), in which he was a co-star with Mabel Normand to bigger star Marie Dressler.
Available for decades only in beat-up, scratchy, and murky copies full of jumpy scenes due to missing footage, it now flows smoothly, is largely of very good picture quality, and is much more enjoyable.

It was assembled from numerous surviving copies to bring it to very close to its original complete length, which results in an obvious shift in image quality throughout, sometimes for just a few frames or a few seconds, a graphic demonstration of both the need and difficulty of film preservation. A previous restoration currently on DVD was able to put back much of the missing footage, but this new version fills in a few brief gaps and adds the long-lost curtain calls by the actors before and after the main story.

One of the major highlights of the convention was director King Baggot’s unjustly neglected 1925 Universal production, “The Homemaker,” starring Alice Joyce and Clive Brook. Far from being the stereotypical “woman’s picture” its title suggests, it is a daring statement on gender roles and family harmony, especially for its era.

A harried but efficient housewife has little time for her children, but when her ineffectual husband is first fired and then paralyzed from an injury, she must get a job to support the family. There she finds her true calling and quickly advances in her career, whereas her husband had been stuck in the same position for years. Meanwhile, the husband finds new joy and satisfaction in bonding with his children, who now help with the housework happily.

Complications arrive that threaten all their happiness, but unexpectedly the film takes a very modern attitude at what should be a happy resolution. “The Homemaker” is a film that strongly deserves a DVD release and wider recognition.
“The Eagle and the Hawk” (1933) is one of the best of the many World War I flyer films made in the 1920s and 30s.

Fredric March, Cary Grant, and Jack Oakie star in the powerful anti-war drama, which is shown periodically on Turner Classic Movies. Unfortunately a few scenes had been cut for a later re-release due to their “Precode” sexual suggestiveness deemed unsuitable for post-1934 or television audiences.

“Champagne for Caesar” is another film that is not difficult to see but the hilarious romantic comedy really comes to life in a 35mm theatrical screening. Ronald Coleman stars as a brilliant but unemployed scholar who suddenly gains celebrity on a TV quiz show and soon must contend with the scheming Celeste Holm hired by show sponsor Vincent Price to find his weaknesses.

Another highlight was “The Blood Ship” (1927), a slickly made silent melodrama by underrated director George B. Seitz that is very much in the tradition of “The Sea Wolf” and other seafaring adventures. It had survived only in a 16mm copy made for home and nontheatrical showings, but has now been blown back up to 35mm film.

Douglas Faribanks’ fun action comedy “The Mollycoddle” (1920) is on a new DVD box set of his work, but was good to see in a 35mm print on a big screen with live piano accompaniment.

True rarities include the newly preserved first three reels (out of five) from an early Lon Chaney feature about actors, “Triumph” (1917), and the ambitious tale of ancient Greece, “Damon and Pythias”(1914).

Although still missing the last half-hour, “Triumph” is a rare example of Chaney’s pre-starring performances, a fascinating glimpse into the world of the New York theatre, and surprisingly polished in its technical aspects, with numerous camera setups and cuts within each scene to emphasize details.

“Damon and Pythias” had been known for some time, but existed only in incomplete fragments, many of which had been spliced together in seemingly random order. A new workprint spliced together by hand from surviving material was screened as a restoration-in-progress, finally viewable for the very first time since its original release with its scenes re-arranged into the proper order. While obviously dated in its acting styles and some theatrical conventions, it now proves to be quite an impressive production for its time, with effective storytelling enhanced by skillful photography and arrangement of actors.

Other relatively obscure titles of interest included “The Poor Nut” (1927), “Modern Love” (1929), “The Ninth Guest” (1934), “Murder in Trinidad” (1934), “The Texan” (1930), “Crazy House” (1943), and many more.

Annual conventions like the Cinecon and the upcoming “Cinesation” in Massillon, Ohio, among others, are often the only way to see many rare films that are unavailable in any video format. They also present the chance to see some beloved classics with far greater impact than a home video presentation, and are well worth the effort for true film buffs to attend.

If You Go

What: Cinesation
Where: Lincoln Theatre, Massillon, Ohio
When: Thurs.-Sun., Sept.25-28
Tickets: four day pass, $55 in advance, $65 at the door; one day pass, $35.
Info: 989.652.8253
How: A round trip bus ticket from Grand Forks to Canton, Ohio costs $200 and takes 31 hours each way. Canton is 11 miles from Massillon, where hotel rooms are about $60 a night.