Over two weeks, I’ve had the two most amazing cinematic experiences in my life. Neither of those are over-selling it. They were amazing evenings and I am so happy I got to go through them. Let’s start with Cinequest. It’s a film festival. One of the best in the world from folks that I talk to, and every year, they have a silent film or two. We’re lucky enough to have folks like Dennis James, perhaps the world’s finest cinema organist, around. I’ve been to all but two of the silents Cinequest has shown, and this year they chose F.W. Murnau’s Faust. I’d seen it, at least part of it, and I knew I had to get a look at it on the big screen with the Mighty Wurlitzer. Only there was somethign else. Lightning. Don Buchla is an inventor. He’s also a musical genius. His work has gone from early analog set-ups to incredible MIDI controllers. He invented a series of devices that were obviously Theremin-inspired. The Lightning sticks are very impressive, the sticks can be programmed with a series of sounds and their position in relation to a central stand. It’s amazing, and I’d never gotten a chance to watch it in action. And Mark Goldstein, a local electronic musical legend, would be playing the Lightning along with Dennis James on the console... and the THEREMIN! I love the Theremin. In fact, you should listen to the theme Song to Drink Tank 300 at http://johnny- eponymous.podbean.com/2011/12/01/theme-song-to-the-drink-tank-300/. It’s Unwoman and my friend Heather at their finest with the Theremin. So, Mark and Dennis were playing along with Faust, and as always Jason Wiener and our buddy Phil had front-row seats. The film started and, from the first notes of the Wurlitzer, I was entranced. Sitting in the front row, you can see down into the pit as well as seeing all the screen at the California Theatre. I split my time between being tied into the film and being tied into the motions of the musicians in the pit. The two of them created an amazing soundscape, and the story of Faust and in particular the cinematography was amazing. It was incredible. The film made me go through a series of emotions, but most importanly, it was incredible to see how the music and the film played with each other. The most important thing was that the guys were actually watchign the movie. That made everything so awesome. We watched the film from as close as we could, felt the wind from the pipes and could see how Mark played the Lightning sticks, but beyond the entire intellectual event, there was some magic in that old Arts-and-Craft theatre we found. After The End, we gave an immediate standing ovation. I think Jason, Phil and I literally jumped to our feet. It was amaz- ing. Perhaps the best part of the film was the over-the-top (even for the silent era) performance of Emil Jannings. The man who would win the first Oscar ever awarded but in a helluva fine per- formance in a film by one of the three biggest names of Silent Di- rection (along with Von Stroheim and Griffith). The entire presen- tation was incredible and then I headed home and got a good night’s sleep and realised that it was a film that you have to dis- sect into pieces. Murnau’s direc- tion, the performances and the music all need their own disec- tion. I’ll have to buy the DVD. and everything I can read on it. The biggest thing for Film Geeks of 2012 had to be the debut of the 5.5 hour long version of Abel Gance’s Napoleon. It was a part of the San Francisco Silent Film Festival programme in the off- season at the beautiful Art Deco Paramount The- atre in Oakland. When it was announced, dozens of tickets flew off the shelf for 40 or 50 dollars a piece. Later, when you add in the Ticketmaster fees, and an increase in prices, the tickets ended up in teh range of 90 to 130 dollars! I was lucky; Jason got the tickets for fifty bucks. Fifty bucks, front row. Now, Napoleon hasn’t been shown at all in teh US since 1981 when they toured it around the world, and this version was first shown in 2005 in the UK. The man in charge was Kevin Brownlow. Let me talk about him for a moment. If there is a man who deserves an Oscar for being the greatest film historian who has ever lived, it is Kevin Brownlow. He deserves it so much, in fact, that he DOES have an Oscar (I believe technically it’s an Academy Governor’s Award) for his work documenting and preserving the films of the silent era. His life’s work has been assembling, perserv- ing and ocassionally presenting Abel Gance’s mas- terpiece. As time has gone by, many of the classic silents have lost a lot of their material. Metropolis is the ultimate example. Less than half of the original existed in a presentable form less than 10 years ago, and now, after the discovery of a much longer print, it’s as near-complete as you’ll ever find. Many films were cut down for release in foreign countries, typically American releases of foreign films were much shorter. Here, Napoleon is as long as it is likely to ever be again: fives, thirty-two minutes. Napoleon is, without doubt, the longest of all the surviving silent films, but it’s not just its length that makes Napoleon impressive. It’s the depth of innovation. The film was made in 1927, not much more than a year before the Sound Era would begin. At that point, many films were still shooting very simply, largely locked-down cameras, sometimes not even moviing within a scene. Gance would have none of that. In fact, I would argue that Gance might have over done it a bit in the camera movements. pans, turns, a swish or two, at one point there’s a party going on and it seems to have been shot using a camera on a swing. I think there were a couple of jib shots, too! Everything that would identify the MTV Gerenation of film shooting was there. All of it. It’s amazing that films like Strike and Battleship Potempkin often get pointed to as the films that defined modern editing (they did!), but I’d argue that modern shooting was defined by Napoleon. There was extensive use of tinting, a practice that was HUGE in the pre-1930s era of film. Many classics widely used tints to give their films some color well before the two-strip Technicolor technique started to be used. Here, the tinting is subtle, but intelligently used. I knew the climax was here when the screens were tinted Blue on the right, white in teh middle, and red on the left. Oh yeah, I also meant screens. Three of ‘em. You see, Gance shot the less half-hour or so in a format called Polyvision. Here, Gance used three cam- eras to capture three images. Some of them he tried to make into one sweeping vista, not entirely successfully, but the entire effect, sitting right there in the front row, was amazing. He also used the three screens to show different images and moments. That was the most effective use of the technique as you weren’t trying to see if the edges lined up. The effect of the process is that it overwhelms you and, especially if you’re sitting where we were, it forces you to move your attention. It makes it less about a performance and more about a scene. Napoleon had out-grown a single actor. It had become something that could only be experienced across three screens. Now, with all this talk of the techniques, you may think that this was a movie without a story. It was no such thing. The movie starts out with a truly magnificent openign segment. Little Napoleon Buenoparte is at school and there’s a giant snowball fight. It’s rough going as his two rivals are together on the other side. Here, he shows early hints of his own genius and wrath. After getting hit with a snowball with a rock in it, he goes and beats the tar out of his rivals and then leads his fort to a charging victory. The kid who played Little Nap was just about perfect. He had the look of Napoleon, along with a great amount of poise. I was surprised to see that he was 17 when they shot it as he looked no more than 12 or so. It was one of the best young actor performances I’ve ever seen in a silent, an era known for its youth performances. That sequence was like the entire movie in a single point: fun, funny, sweeping, powerful, multiple layers of story going on and a powerful moving camera. The action is big, the acting is excellent and when it moves from teh ‘battlefield’ to the dorms, it shows Napoleon’s temper and strength. Very impressive. It’s also there that we are introduced to Napoleon’s pet eagle. It plays an important part throughout the film, and it REALLY made Jason want a pet eagle.