​MSUM’s Summer Cinema returns Monday

There is nothing quite like the experience of seeing silent films on a big screen with a live musical accompaniment and a receptive audience. The 40th Annual Summer Cinema Series at Minnesota State University Moorhead starts Monday, July 11 and will focus entirely on silent comedy this year.

Two evenings will spotlight feature films by Buster Keaton and Harold Lloyd, and two will be four-film anthologies of classic shorts by Charlie Chaplin and Laurel & Hardy.

All movies will have music scores performed live on the historic Wurlitzer pipe organ by members of the Red River Chapter of the American Theatre Organ Society.

The programs will be presented in Weld Hall’s Glasrud Auditorium every Monday night through August 1. Showtime is at 7:30pm with a pre-show concert at 7:15. Each film will be introduced by a regional film enthusiast. Admission is $4.00 per show.

Lance Johnson will play the scores for the first two weeks and Dave Knudtson will score the last two weeks. Pre-show music will be performed by Ryan Hardy. I will be down in Moorhead to introduce the opening night program. The second week will be introduced by MSUM’s Dr. Anthony Adah, the third week by Dr. Chris Meissner, and the final week by Emily Beck.

After the last showing, as has been the tradition, audience members are invited to enjoy tasty treats in the hallway outside the auditorium.

Beginning the series on July 11 is Buster Keaton’s “Go West” (1925). This often underrated film stars Buster as a friendless drifter who decides to go out west to get some sort of job. He manages to find work on a ranch, where he makes a faithful new friend in the form of Brown Eyes the cow. Later he finds himself in the middle of a herd being shipped to the stockyard when the train is attacked by a rival rancher.

On Monday, July 18, will be a good variety of selected Charlie Chaplin shorts from his highly-regarded period at the Mutual Film Corporation during 1916-17. “The Vagabond” is especially notable as it was released 100 years ago this month (on July 10, 1916), and “The Rink” also marks its centennial this year.

In his seriocomic “The Vagabond,” Chaplin plays his familiar Little Tramp character, trying to help an abused gypsy girl played by long-time co-star Edna Purviance. “The Rink” splits its time between Chaplin as an inept waiter, later showing off his formidable (and hilarious) roller-skating talents on his lunch break.

“The Cure” (1917) is one of Chaplin’s funniest shorts, with his character at a sanatorium to kick his craving for alcohol, but brings along an abundant supply of liquor. It is a sort of follow-up to “One A.M.” (1916), where he played a wealthy drunk returning home and which was shown on last year’s Summer Cinema series.

In “The Adventurer” (1917), Charlie is an escaped convict who pretends to be a guest at a swanky dinner party until the police show up, resulting in a wild chase through the house. It was Chaplin’s final film for Mutual before moving on to First National studios.

Fan favorite Harold Lloyd returns to the Weld Hall screen on Monday, July 25 in his iconic and probably most famous comedy, “Safety Last” (1923). In this film he plays a small-town boy hoping to earn his fortune in the big city so he can marry his sweetheart (Mildred Davis, Lloyd’s real-life wife). In a promotional scheme he winds up climbing a building and dangling dangerously from a giant clock.

The final program of the summer is Monday, August 1, which will feature four short comedies by the beloved team of Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy.

In “Love ’em and Weep” (1927) Stan and Ollie each appears as a supporting character before they became a team using their own names. It actually stars Jimmy Finlayson being blackmailed by Mae Busch, both of them Hal Roach Studio character comics who frequently appeared with Laurel and Hardy.

“Habeas Corpus” (1928) has the boys cavorting in a spooky cemetery as inept and easily-frightened grave-robbers hired by a mad scientist.

The next film they made was “We Faw Down” (1928), their first of several to be directed by comedy veteran Leo McCarey, with a plot that was later reworked in some of their later films, notably their famous “Sons of the Desert.”

Stan and Ollie plan to go to a poker game by telling their wives they have a business meeting, and then get side-tracked in the apartment of two young women until one of their boyfriends shows up.

In “Angora Love” (1929), their final silent film, the pair reluctantly adopt an affectionate pet goat but then have to hide it from the landlord of their apartment.