Classic Film Fest Dedicated to Moorhead Professor

The 28th annual Cinefest in Syracuse, New York, a convention of film historians, archivists, collectors, teachers, students, memorabilia dealers, and avid movie buffs, screened films last Thursday through Sunday, with shows starting daily at 9 am and running until nearly 1 am, except Sunday, when the last screening ended around 5:30 pm.

Unlike the Fargo Film Festival, which is devoted to new independent films, the Cinefest specializes in rare titles from the 1910s through the 1940s. There were 28 feature films this year, about 19 shorts (one of them a 20-minute abridgement of a now-lost feature), plus an hour of prevue trailers from the 1930s and 40s.
Saturday night Leonard Maltin hosted a half-hour memorial to the late Rusty Casselton, a film preservationist and collector with an international reputation and known personally to many of the convention-goers, besides his local renown in the MSUM film studies department.

Several films from Rusty’s collection screened over the weekend, including one of his favorites, a 16mm copy of “Irene” (1926) that had once belonged to its star, Colleen Moore (and which has screened in the past at MSUM’s Summer Cinema series). “Irene” is a predictable but fun vehicle for Moore, casting her as a poor Irish girl from Philadelphia who heads to New York where she winds up as a fashion model.

Some of the best films of the weekend ran the first day of the festival. William K. Howard’s “Back Door to Heaven” (1939) is an unusually downbeat story of several small-town children who graduate from eighth grade full of hope, but follow a variety of career paths that do not turn out as they had hoped. Wallace Ford stars as a poor boy who grows up in and out of prisons, returning to his home town for a fateful school reunion.

Clarence Brown’s “Smouldering Fires” (1925) is an often moving story of a middle-aged businesswoman who falls in love with her ambitious young male secretary, but then her younger sister comes home from college. Pauline Frederick gives an outstanding performance, with good support from Laura LaPlante, Malcolm McGregor, and Tully Marshall.

Anthony Asquith’s “Shooting Stars” (1927) is a slick, fast-moving romantic melodrama and murder-mystery set in a British movie studio, starring Brian Aherne. Nicely plotted and well-directed, it is marked by outstanding expressionistic photography and editing, although the copy shown was unfortunately contrasty and dark.

Another British film, the 20-minute “Daydreams” (1928), further disproved the myth that Hitchcock was the only good English director during the silent era. This delightful avant-garde-style comedy, directed by Ivor Montague, stars Elsa Lanchester and Charles Laughton in an H. G. Wells story of a young woman dreaming of a life vastly more exciting than her own.

Henry King’s version of “Stella Dallas” (1926) is more moving and has better performances than either the 1937 Barbara Stanwyck or 1990 Bette Midler versions. In this first screen adaptation, Belle Bennett gives her all in the title role with extremely strong support from Lois Moran as her daughter. Alice Joyce is also quite good, and Ronald Colman does well enough in the much weaker role of the husband.

Sort of a gritty, dramatic variation on “Irene,” Archie Mayo’s “Bought” (1931) is a superior and very adult “pre-code” soap opera. Constance Bennett stars as a poor young girl just graduating high school, whose desire for a wealthy society life is strengthened all the more when she learns her mother abandoned her loving but crude father before she was born, and that they never married. Finding work as a fashion model, she’s torn between the attentions of a struggling young writer (Ben Lyon), a wealthy but vapid heir to a prestigious fortune (Ray Milland), or a mysterious elderly Jewish clothing magnate who takes a strong personal interest in her career (Richard Bennett, Constance’s real-life father).

“The Jungle Princess” (1936) has Ray Milland as the romantic hero this time, in a highly entertaining adventure of a hunter in Malaya believed by friends and fiancée to be killed by a tiger, but whose life is saved by an orphan native girl (Dorothy Lamour in her first screen role), who naturally falls in love with him. He brings her back to the village, much to the consternation of his proper girlfriend (Molly Lamont) and the superstitious natives who believe the girl is a witch because she has a tiger as a pet.

“You’re a Sweetheart” (1937) is among the best Alice Faye musicals, co-starring George Murphy, Ken Murray, and Andy Devine in the story of a fast-talking Broadway promoter (Murray) whose stages a massive publicity stunt with Murphy posing as an eccentric millionaire to drum up boxoffice for his latest show (which stars Faye). It works in some very “pre-code” dialogue despite its post-code production date.

Yasujiro Ozu’s “Passing Fancy” (1933) is an involving comedy-drama of the Japanese working class. Although a silent film (sound filmmaking in Asia did not replace silent cinema until a decade after sound came to America and Europe) it has the look of a film shot three decades later and well over a decade before the Italian neorealistic movement burst onto the international film scene. A somewhat disreputable single father and his young son struggle to make ends meet, and discover the value of mutual neighborly support.

Edgar G. Ulmer’s “Club Havana” (1945) is a sylish multi-character drama with young lovers, middle-aged romances gone sour, gangsters, singers, and more. It’s reminiscent of films like “Wonderbar” and “Grand Hotel,” and done nearly as well on a poverty-row small studio budget.

“Wild Horse Mesa” (1925) stars Jack Holt, Hoah Beery, Billie Dove, and Douglas Fairbanks Jr. in a Zane Grey western melodrama with high production values, and which is not only sympathetic to Native American issues, but has the white hero saved in the climax by a Navajo chief out to avenge the rape and murder of his daughter.

There were numerous other films of interest screened, including several recently restored Vitaphone sound shorts from 1928-29, some early Kodacolor film tests from 1928, an abridged home version of “Pampered Youth” (1924) which is all that survives of the first screen adaptation of “The Magnificent Ambersons,” rare and fun features like “The Stolen Voice” (1914), “Let Katie Do It” (1915), “Married?” (1926), “Show Girl in Hollywood” (1930), “I’ll Tell the World” (1934), and many more.