Silent Film

The rarely seen silent film Chicago, a 1927 drama based on the same two murder cases that are at the center of the Oscar-winning musical, will be shown tomorrow at the American Film Institute's Silver Theatre, 8633 Colesville Road in Silver Spring. Adapting a 1926 play written by Chicago Tribune crime reporter Maurine Watkins, the film paints a portrait of corruption and opportunism that would be elaborated on by John Kander and Fred Ebb in their 1975 Broadway play. That play, revived on Broadway in 1996, would earn Oscar gold when brought to the big screen six years later.

Setting the stage for what could be the quietest Oscar weekend since 1929, the largely silent film"The Artist"was named Best Feature at the Spirit Awards. 'The Artist" is also favored to win the Best Picture Oscar Sunday. If that happens, it would mark the first time the Spirit and the Oscar have gone to the same film since 1986's"Platoon. " It would also be the first silent film to win the Best Picture Oscar since "Wings" in 1929. In what could be another precursor of things to come, Jean Dujardin won the Male Lead Spirit.

Tomorrow's entry in the Baltimore Movie Museum's silent film series is an oddity from 1922: Clifford S. Elfelt's little-seen Big Stakes, about a Texas man who goes on a failed romantic quest in Mexico, then returns to find the Ku Klux Klan accusing his supposedly all-American blond gal of racial impurity. The Boston group Devil Music Ensemble will perform its original country/western score live. The program begins with a vintage short at 8 p.m. at Creative Alliance at the Patterson (3134 Eastern Ave)

The most towering figure in Hollywood history wore ill-fitting clothes, including shoes several sizes too big, and never said a word. Beginning Saturday, he'll be spending a year at Baltimore's Charles Theatre . Charlie Chaplin, a British expatriate who became the first Hollywood superstar and made a series of films — as writer, director and star — still as astonishingly delightful today as they were in the 1920s, is the subject of...

FREDERICK -- The audience in Frederick's grand old theater will celebrate the auditorium's 1920s roots -- the era of Keystone cops and Charlie Chaplin -- for a few hours tonight with the premiere of an independent silent film.Vintage silent films have been a regular attraction at the art deco theater on West Patrick Street, now called the Weinberg Center for the Arts.But the old films are rarely, if ever, accompanied by the fanfare planned for this new one, "Flickers: A Silent Romantic Comedy."

Probably the best thing to ever happen to London After Midnight, the great silent film star Lon Chaney's biggest moneymaker, was its disappearance. Ever since the only known print of the 1927 movie was destroyed by fire in the 1960s, film fans and collectors have been bemoaning its fate and desperately praying for another print to show up; it's long been the holy grail among film archivists. Still photographs from the movie, showing Chaney in some truly horrific makeup - a visage just as impressive as his infamous nightmare-inducing makeup for 1925's Phantom of the Opera - only compounded the sense of loss.

The guitarist-songwriter for Sonia Dada, Dan Pritzker, son of Hyatt Hotels tycoon Jay Pritzker, put his art and his money where his heart is when he made "Louis. " This engaging hybrid — a mythological silent-movie version of Louis Armstrong's early life — premieres Saturday at 8 p.m. at the Music Center at Strathmore . Wynton Marsalis will accompany it with a 10-piece jazz ensemble (playing music mostly composed by Marsalis), and pianist Cecile Licad will play the sprightly, sensuous L.M. Gottschalk pieces central to the film's New Orleans flavor.

Rudolph Valentino was riding across an Arabian sand dune as silent movie organist James Harp concluded a frantic version of the William Tell Overture. The pews at the St. Mark Lutheran Church, built in 1898, vibrated from the dizzying peal of what sounded like 1,000 throbbing pipes. The audience erupted into spontaneous applause as the brass cascade bounced off the stained-glass windows and bejeweled Louis C. Tiffany Studios interior. "You have to use that trumpet sparingly," Harp said in a musical understatement at the conclusion of his bravura performance yesterday afternoon.

When Michael Johnson was casting about for ideas for the first fund-raiser for the building fund of the Heritage Museum of African Americans in Film, one in particular caught his attention for the sweet symmetry it represented: showing a classic African-American silent film with live musical accompaniment."

Whether you're coming to "Metropolis" fresh or for the third or fourth time, seeing the "complete" 147-minute version of Fritz Lang's 1927 silent masterpiece is like watching a fever dream reach delirious perfection. This glorious dystopia gains in both logic and gusto. Building on the 2001 124-minute restoration, it fills out Lang's vision of a futuristic city as a glittering, buzzing organism that thrusts high up into the atmosphere and digs way down into the earth. Now you can really connect to the romantic fervor behind the cool genius of Joh Fredersen, the architect of Metropolis — and the animus that simmers, then explodes between him and his mad-magician inventor, Rotwang.

Whether you're coming to "Metropolis" fresh or for the third or fourth time, seeing the "complete" 147-minute version of Fritz Lang's 1927 silent masterpiece is like watching a fever dream reach delirious perfection. This glorious dystopia gains in both logic and gusto. Building on the 2001 124-minute restoration, it fills out Lang's vision of a futuristic city as a glittering, buzzing organism that thrusts high up into the atmosphere and digs way down into the earth. Now you can really connect to the romantic fervor behind the cool genius of Joh Fredersen, the architect of Metropolis — and the animus that simmers, then explodes between him and his mad-magician inventor, Rotwang.

The guitarist-songwriter for Sonia Dada, Dan Pritzker, son of Hyatt Hotels tycoon Jay Pritzker, put his art and his money where his heart is when he made "Louis. " This engaging hybrid — a mythological silent-movie version of Louis Armstrong's early life — premieres Saturday at 8 p.m. at the Music Center at Strathmore . Wynton Marsalis will accompany it with a 10-piece jazz ensemble (playing music mostly composed by Marsalis), and pianist Cecile Licad will play the sprightly, sensuous L.M. Gottschalk pieces central to the film's New Orleans flavor.

When legendary silent-film comedian Buster Keaton portrayed a clumsy university athlete trying to impress a girl, saving the day by becoming a human rudder for his rowing team, his flair for the sight gag was undeniable. Perhaps not as evident to most modern-day viewers of the 1927 movie "College" or any of Keaton's classic motion pictures, is the major role the musical score plays. But that's not the case with Andrew Greene. Since the 2009 graduate of Broadneck High School discovered ragtime music during private piano lessons several years ago, he has immersed himself in it and never looked back.

"La Boheme," MGM's 1926 silent epic of selfless love in the pursuit of high-quality playwriting, will be shown Sunday afternoon at St. Mark's Lutheran Church, with organ accompaniment by James Harp, director of opera and education for the Lyric Opera House. The movie, directed by King Vidor and based on Puccini's opera, stars John Gilbert as the struggling (and somewhat oblivious) playwright, Rodolphe, and Lillian Gish as his self-sacrificing muse, Mimi. The cast also includes Renee Adoree, Edward Everett Horton and Karl Dane.

Anyone who thinks of a silent film as something to be endured, not enjoyed, has never seen a film by the great Charlie Chaplin. To see what I mean, check out 1936's Modern Times (8 p.m., TCM), Chaplin's last silent and one of the greatest comedies of all time. Chaplin had been perfecting his Little Tramp character for nearly a quarter-century, and though talking pictures had come in nine years earlier, he saw no reason to add dialogue to his films; his screen persona - an unkempt, ill-clothed little fella who endured every social injustice the world could throw at him, while rarely losing his perspective and never losing his heart - spoke a universal language that had no need for dialogue.

A block of North Charles Street was turned into a cinematic playpen over the weekend, as thousands of movie lovers ventured to the Charles Theatre and its environs to sample everything from a 90-second short celebrating gnats to the latest film from Oscar-winning documentary director Alex Gibney. The 10th annual Maryland Film Festival launched with a shorts program Thursday evening and wrapped last night with a new work from blaxploitation film pioneer Melvin Van Peebles.

Setting the stage for what could be the quietest Oscar weekend since 1929, the largely silent film"The Artist"was named Best Feature at the Spirit Awards. 'The Artist" is also favored to win the Best Picture Oscar Sunday. If that happens, it would mark the first time the Spirit and the Oscar have gone to the same film since 1986's"Platoon. " It would also be the first silent film to win the Best Picture Oscar since "Wings" in 1929. In what could be another precursor of things to come, Jean Dujardin won the Male Lead Spirit.

In its premier performance in the Baltimore-Washington region, "Voices of Light," directed by J. Ernest Green, will be presented Saturday by the Annapolis Chorale with the composer, Richard Einhorn, attending.The chorale will perform the oratorio as the composer intended, as an accompaniment to the screening of Carl Dreyer's 1928 silent film "The Passion of Joan of Arc."It seems appropriate that the Annapolis Chorale should introduce this work here, because it seems to be the only group of musicians dedicated to bringing new music to Annapolis.

The rarely seen silent film Chicago, a 1927 drama based on the same two murder cases that are at the center of the Oscar-winning musical, will be shown tomorrow at the American Film Institute's Silver Theatre, 8633 Colesville Road in Silver Spring. Adapting a 1926 play written by Chicago Tribune crime reporter Maurine Watkins, the film paints a portrait of corruption and opportunism that would be elaborated on by John Kander and Fred Ebb in their 1975 Broadway play. That play, revived on Broadway in 1996, would earn Oscar gold when brought to the big screen six years later.

The 2007 Johns Hopkins Film Fest opens Thursday with Matthew Barney's Drawing Restraint 9, a largely dialogue-free film that investigates the relationship between creativity and restraint. The film, set upon a Japanese fishing vessel, stars Barney and singer Bjork (who wrote the soundtrack) as Occidental guests on the ship, preparing for a Shinto wedding ritual. Meanwhile, the crew members are busy on deck, creating a sculpture using 25 tons of petroleum jelly. "Visually spellbinding," wrote New York Times film critic Stephen Holden, who praised the film for its "depiction of life as a series of passages in a relentless cycle of creation and destruction."