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Welcome to CMBA’s Reel Conversations, our artistic luminaries who share their passions for classic movies. For this feature, we plan to alternate between interviews and peer-to-peer blogger Q&As.
In this month’s Reel Conversation, it’s Sean The Everyday Cinephile from a talking silent film. But that’s just part of the conversation: his movie recommendations, his gateway and introduction to silent film and more can be found in the September issue of CMBA Monthly Star, and another installment will be published in The Everyday Cinephile, so be sure to tune in and visit.
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Have you had an amazing live cinema/screening experience that you want to talk about?
The most influential live screening was my first silent film with live accompaniment. I saw a screening of DeMille’s first film, Squaw Man (1914), at the Harold B. Lee Library Special Collections as a college freshman. It blew my mind that they had a prop, a small red notebook with a message written on it, used in the same film, held in their archives, which I could touch and hold! It all came full circle when I volunteered in the same barn where DeMille filmed The Squaw Man – now at the Hollywood Heritage Museum near the Hollywood Bowl in Los Angeles. The film is a cliched Western yarn inspired by the direction, but everything about this screening was so magical and pivotal not only to my love of silent films, but to my visits to the archives and deep dives into the era and its films.
And of course, attending the Pordenone Silent Film Festival has been an ongoing thing that I crossed paths with a few years ago. It’s amazing to see the archives of all the work he’s done around the world, and seeing films that audiences haven’t seen together in over a century is just a unique experience.
Who do you think is criminally underrated by today’s cinephiles, and where should someone start with that person?
It’s actually a name that many people know, but Cecil B. DeMille’s remarkable silent career has been overshadowed by his later works. Although I still enjoy his tin ear dialogue (Moses, MOSES), he was one of the most important pioneering directors in early Hollywood, held in the same high regard as DW Griffith and Lois Webber in the mid-1910s.
I recommend everyone to see his 1915 The Cheat. At a time when most films tried to cast even light on the actors and the stage without seeing a single shadow, DeMille and cinematographer Alvin Wyckoff went in the opposite direction. Drawing from the theatrical lighting practices popularized by DeMille family friend David Belasco, the pair experimented with several lighting settings and revealed heavy shadows on key points throughout The Cheat. When Seisuu Hayakawa’s character was filmed, we only see him from another room through a Japanese paper door. Her silhouette slowly sliding through the doorway is one of the most edgy, effective shots in all of cinema, inspired by the film’s preconceptions.
From there I would check out his early films like The Captive and The Golden Chance (both 1915), which are deliciously entertaining hour-long pictures. His bedroom parlor comedies with Gloria Swanson, such as Why Did You Swap Your Wife? (1918) Don’t Change Your Husband (1919) is so transgressive and strikingly different from DeMille’s later epics. Finally, I love his early 1920s films like Forbidden Fruit and The Fools in Paradise (both 1921), which isn’t afraid to throw in the occasional leopard or color sequence just for fun. Watch DeMille’s 1910s for his innovative approach to directing, and watch his 1920s films for his over-the-top showmanship. You will not be disappointed.
Is there a great lost movie you’re obsessed with?
Too many to count! I tried a top 10 a few years ago and couldn’t nail it down, so I just put it in the top 20.
One that has caught my fancy recently is the 1928 French adaptation of Jack London’s How to Build a Fire. He used the widescreen method of the triptych—similar to Abel Gans’s climactic battle sequence in Napoleon (1927)—but all that survives are a few production stills. I recently visited the Utah State University Archives to look at some items related to this lost film that are housed in their Jack London Collection. The opening photos of Jack London visiting the set and some drawing boards for the film stills only made me want to see this groundbreaking film.
Even if we don’t get to watch the film, I just love the detective work of finding out a lot of information about its production and reception with the extras that have survived.
…and many more! Continue reading in The Everyday Cinephile.
