| SILENT SATYRS / Silent Wednesdays in August at 8pm |
 Mae West said it best: "I only like two kinds of men, domestic and imported." We couldn't agree more. The four very fine specimens of masculinity we've included in our Silent Satyrs series are proof of the way the silent era's tastes shifted every time a tasty new mode of seduction was discovered. Though all of the leads were equally dashing, there aren't too many dots to connect between the sensual tango-proficient Valentino and virile buccaneer Douglas Fairbanks, or between gentle adonis Ramon Novarro and dark, rakish playboy John Gilbert. No matter; our series aims to celebrate the wide array of men whose potent presence on a strip of celluloid caused countless hearts to flutter and swoon as passionately as the actors' romantic counterparts.
8/6 @ 8pm / SERIES: SILENT SATYRS
 Ramon Novarro in
Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ
After the tragic early death of Rudolph Valentino in the mid-1920s, Ramon Novarro quickly became the king of silent Latin Lovers. His soft, boyish, yet prominent features, along with his physical agility, led to his quick ascension in popularity among both men and women, with 1925's Ben-Hur acting as an early major touchstone of his career. In an expensive production plagued with unending troubles (its first director and writer, as well as its original lead, George Walsh, had all been fired), Novarro is radiant as Judah Ben-Hur, a wealthy Jew betrayed by his best friend and sold into slavery. After saving the life of a slave boat commander, Ben-Hur is granted the freedom to become a champion charioteer, exacting his revenge on his former-friend-turned-opponent in the ring; the film's intense chariot race sequence easily rivals its counterpart in the 1959 Oscar-winning remake of the same name.
Dir. Fred Niblo, 1925, 35mm, 143 min.
Tickets - $10
8/13 @ 8pm / SERIES: SILENT SATYRS
 John Gilbert in
La Boheme
Best known today for heating up the screen with Greta Garbo in films like Flesh And The Devil and Love, John Gilbert was one of the silent screen's most fantasized-about heartthrobs, appearing in a long, successive string of popular films. La Boheme, directed by King Vidor (The Crowd), is a perfect example of Gilbert at his peak. He plays a devil-may-care bohemian painter whose philandering ways torture a devoted Lilian Gish, until he finally realizes how deeply he loves her...too late. Gilbert's specialty was to play great lovers, brooding and handsome to the hilt. Audiences went crazy for his slow-paced, sensous love scenes, and La Boheme gave them what they want, with an intense seduction of Gish that made women weak in the knees. Romantic with a capital "R", La Boheme captures the era of the "matinee idol" in all of its sexy glory.
Dir. King Vidor, 1926, 35mm 95 min.
Tickets - $10
8/20 @ 8pm / SERIES: SILENT SATYRS
Douglas Fairbanks in
The Gaucho
Throughout his career, the extroverted Douglas Fairbanks projected the image of an affable, athletic "man's man", and shot to superstardom through a series of swashbuckling roles in the late '10s and '20s. Unlike Valentino or Novarro, who wooed ladies with sleek charm and a kiss on the hand, Fairbanks caught the ladies' eyes with a combination of savoir faire, strength and his fine physique. Compared with his do-gooder heroics in The Mark of Zorro, Robin Hood and The Three Musketeers, Fairbanks' turn in the The Gaucho is richly dark: as his good/bad man outlaw character saves his village from the clutches of evil outsiders, he smokes, drinks and openly mocks the religion of the people -- that is, until a stabbing by a jealous girlfriend and a potential bout of leprosy makes him suddenly reconsider his carefree ways. Viva El Gaucho!
Dir. F. Richard Jones, 1927, 35mm, 115 min.
Tickets - $10
8/27 @ 8pm / SERIES: SILENT SATYRS
 Rudolph Valentino in
The Eagle
Having previously played romantic leads from France, Spain, India, Arabia, England, America and Italy, Valentino later portrayed Vladimir Dubrovsky, a Cossack serving in the Russian army, in The Eagle, one of his final films before his death in 1926. After spurning the advances of Catherine the Great (Louise Dresser) in the opening minutes of the film, Vlad finds that the villian responsible for stealing his family's land and killing his father is in fact the father of his secret lover, the young aristocrat Mascha (a lovely Vilma Bánky). Seeking revenge, Vlad dons a Robin Hood-like persona, and storms off to torment rich people across the land. Jettisoning the softer image he'd acquired from such films as Monsieur Beucaire and Camille, Valentino utilized for this film a mixture of machismo and self-aware comedy that would befit a James Bond movie.
Dir. Clarence Brown, 1925, 16mm, 73 min.
Tickets - $10
| FANTASTIC ADVENTURES / Silent Wednesdays in September at 8pm |
Full description coming soon...
9/3 @ 8pm / SERIES: fantastic adventures
The Thief of Baghdad
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9/10 @ 8pm / SERIES: fantastic adventures
Die Niebelungen: Siegfried
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9/17 @ 8pm / SERIES: fantastic adventures
The Lost World
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9/24 @ 8pm / SERIES: fantastic adventures
Red Heroine (with live music from Devil Music Ensemble [Boston, MA])
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| THE MAN OF 1,000 FACES / Silent Wednesdays in October at 8pm |
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10/1 @ 8pm / SERIES: the man of 1,000 faces
He Who Gets Slapped
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10/7 @ 8pm / SERIES: the man of 1,000 faces
The Unholy Three
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10/14 @ 8pm / SERIES: the man of 1,000 faces
The Unknown
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10/22 @ 8pm / SERIES: the man of 1,000 faces
The Hunchback of Notre Dame
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10/29 @ 8pm / SERIES: the man of 1,000 faces
The Phantom of the Opera
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