​Romance in the air – local screenings plus notable Blu-rays

Next Tuesday is Valentine’s Day, and to get movie lovers in the mood, this coming Sunday afternoon MSUM will have a free public screening of classic silent comedies with romantic themes, all accompanied live on the Mighty Wurlitzer pipe organ in Weld Hall’s Glasrud Auditorium. Showtime starts at 2:00 p.m. February 12. Admission is free.

The program entitled “My Funny Valentine” will include three short examples of how movie legends Charlie Chaplin, Harold Lloyd, and Buster Keaton deal with romance in their inimitable styles. As anyone who has attended silent films before at MSUM or the Fargo Theatre already knows, the immersive experience of having a live theatre organ score by an expert accompanist (like Dave Knudtson, who will be playing for Sunday’s movies), combined with the big-screen presentation and an audience group reaction, produces drastically greater impact and enjoyment than watching the same films on TV or a computer screen.

This showing is co-sponsored by the Red River Chapter of the American Theatre Organ Society with MSU-M’s School of Media Arts and Design. According to MSUM professor Tom Brandau, it is part of ongoing plans to expand the use of the historic pipe organ in Weld Hall and to make silent movies with live theatre organ accompaniment more accessible to the general public.

The films this time feature the three most popular comedians of the silent screen in very different approaches to the theme of romance.

Buster Keaton takes on married life in “My Wife’s Relations” (1922). Thanks to big-city neighborhood language differences his character manages to find himself accidentally married to a domineering woman and saddled with unhappy, intimidating in-laws. This was filmed shortly after his marriage to the actress-daughter of his studio boss, and perhaps indicates an uneasy comic anticipation of his troubled personal life over the next several years.

Harold Lloyd hopes to win back his girlfriend’s affections from a rival in “Number Please” (1920), set mostly in an amusement park as the two men race to be first to get her mother’s permission for a ride in a hot-air balloon. The title refers to various mix-ups with the telephone connections when Harold tries calling the mother. Major comic sequences literally revolve around amusement park rides.

In “A Jitney Elopement” (1915), made during Charlie Chaplin’s period at the Essanay Studio, Charlie poses as a count to help save girlfriend Edna Purviance from a forced marriage her father is insisting upon. Chaplin’s comedy here was in its transitional stage, developing his tramp character yet very much tied to his stage-performance traditions and relying on a manic, chaotic chase to finish the story, similar to the films of his mentor Mack Sennett. Minnesota-born character actor and one-time Grand Forks resident Carl Stockdale makes a brief appearance as a cop!

Those looking for movie depictions of romance for Valentine’s Day beyond the usual rom-coms may wish to track down one or both of the following relatively recent Blu-ray releases.

Director Robert Wise (“The Curse of the Cat People,” “West Side Story,” “The Sound of Music,” “Star Trek: The Motion Picture”) shows his versatility in “Two for the Seesaw” (1962), which made its Blu-ray debut a year ago. It’s a rather interesting bittersweet romance set in New York City, pushing the boundaries of the rapidly disintegrating Production Code guidelines of what topics could be shown or implied. A depressed and newly-divorced Nebraska lawyer connects with a free-spirited Greenwich Village dancer at a party, and they try to adjust to each other’s quirks.

Strong performances by Shirley MacLaine and Robert Mitchum carry the film, but it’s a very talky adaptation of the virtually two-character stage play. Action is stuck mainly in a couple of apartment rooms, and Mitchum doesn't always seem quite at home in his role. MacLaine is great, however.

Ted McCord’s photography, in well-composed black-and-white CinemaScope, often has a film-noir look, intensifying the frequently shifting moods. It’s worth watching at least once just for the cinematography and for MacLaine's performance, as well as a time capsule of early 1960s New York City.

Picture quality on Kino’s Blu-ray looks fantastic on a big screen (with some minor print wear visible), and audio is decent, if a bit low-level. The only bonus features are trailers to two other Wise-directed films and another film starring Mitchum.

Two for the Seesaw – Movie: B / Video: A- / Audio: A- / Extras: D

“The Little House” (2014) is a touching and beautifully understated domestic character drama from Japanese director Yoji Yamada, which came out on Blu-ray in the U.S. in August 2015.

The plot shifts between the present and the past as a beloved nephew reads his never-married great-aunt's memoirs after her death, the autobiography he had encouraged her to write.

The story is set mostly in late 1930s and early 1940s Tokyo, beginning with the aunt’s arrival as a teenager from a rural village to work as a maid for an upper middle-class family who have just built a modern, western-style house in the suburbs.

She quickly becomes very close to the family, especially the wife, helping her young son recover from polio and watching with painful concern as the young mother becomes romantically involved with an art student who works for her husband. The intimate multigenerational family saga becomes a powerful metaphor for the turbulent, disturbing national and international period the characters are living through, with the flashback format providing a reflective, nostalgic context relating past and present.

Twilight Time’s Blu-ray looks and sounds excellent. The only bonus features are a booklet, an isolated music track, and trailers.

The Little House -- Movie: A / Video: A / Audio: A / Extras: C