Silent Film

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.

Anyone who was in the capacity audience at the regional premiere of Richard Einhorn's "Voices of Light" and Carl Dreyer's silent film, "The Passion of Joan of Arc," was fortunate. We shared a moving experience at the superb performance given by J. Ernest Green and the Annapolis Chorale, with the Annapolis Chamber Orchestra and soloists.Together, the film and the music define synergism, with the music underscoring and intensifying the film. As in opera, the music and drama fit, with the words perfectly matching the music.

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."

The big blockbuster film of 1996 shows up on cable tonight to blow things up real good."Mad About You" (6: 30 p.m.-7 p.m., WBFF, Channel 45) -- Vintage greatness: Paul tries to get the great Alan Brady (Carl Reiner) to narrate a documentary about TV. Thankfully, Brady is still the ego-inflated blowhard he was on "The Dick Van Dyke Show." Whatever you do, don't stop watching until the final credits have rolled."Lois & Clark: The New Adventures of Superman" (8 p.m.-9 p.m., WMAR, Channel 2) -- Grant Shaud ("Murphy Brown")

Turner Classic Movies is offering definitive proof this summer that silents are golden.Not by showing silent movies, which have become something of an acquired taste (although a taste certainly worth acquiring) and demand far more attention than modern audiences are used to giving.Rather, TCM is re-releasing 1979's 13-part series about silent movies that's not only a wonderful primer on silents, but also one of the best documentaries ever."Hollywood: A Celebration of the American Silent Film" lovingly chronicles an art form that was once the most popular entertainment on the planet.

Bummed out I am. I haven't heard from that woman with the breathy, sexy Kathleen Turner voice in a while -- you know, the one who's always complaining about malaprops (or columns listing them). So this ought to get her dandruff up.From Allison Aldrich, who got it from a patient at Kernan Physical Therapy: "Her husband was trying to have their 24-year marriage annulled. He claimed they had never constipated their marriage."From Katie Tress, who was in labor at the time: "These transactions are killing me!"

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."

If Sacha Guitry had been named something more prosaic -- Jacques Rouvier or Alan Planes, for example -- he'd likely have a smaller reputation in the history of French cinema.It must be that name -- with its exotic hints of Russian birth and education -- that explains the reputed influence of Guitry (1885-1957) on such filmmakers as Welles, Truffaut, Godard and Resnais.Surely it's not "The Story of a Cheat" (1936) that accounts for Guitry's influence. This little film's dollop of brittle wit is stretched awfully thin.

In "Seductive Cinema," James Card reveals that whatever his professional eminence in the world of cinema as historian and archivist, he remains an amateur in the original and most appealing sense of the term: a lover.As the title implies, Mr. Card regards the subject of his book not only as a manufactured product, a technological achievement and an artistic creation, but also as a living presence that arouses a great and enduring passion. In addition to its study of the history and development of silent film, his book recounts the story of a lifelong love affair.

CHANG" leads you deeper and deeper into the jungles of Thailand like an old-fashioned storyteller with plenty of time to build suspense. No flashbacks or foreshadowing, no quick cuts or split screens mar this smoothly flowing tale of a Siamese frontiersman who sets out with his family to forge an independent and dangerous existence with the wild.Filmed in 1927, the silent film classic is as exciting as it was when New York audiences first saw its elephants stampede through its village. With a cast of 500 native hunters, 400 elephants, tigers, leopards and pythons, "Chang" was one of the first film triumphs of the legendary Merian C. Cooper and Ernest B. Schoedsack, a pair better known now for a later movie, "King Kong.

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. In between, nearly 50 features and 80 short films were shown.

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."

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.

A family drama set in Hamilton. The struggles of a young homosexual growing up in the slums of Manila. A film noir cast entirely with sock puppets. Yep, it must be time for the Maryland Film Festival, an annual weekend-long cinematic feast that offers local moviegoers the chance to meet filmmakers and see films that might otherwise escape their notice. The eighth annual festival, set to run May 11-14 at the Charles Theatre (save for the opening-night shorts program at the Senator Theatre and a few screenings at the Maryland Institute College of Art's Brown Center)

THE LUBITSCH TOUCH -- The second phase of the American Film Institute's tribute to the great German-American director Ernst Lubitsch (1892-1947), The Lubitsch Touch, kicks off tonight at the AFI's Silver Theatre in Silver Spring, 8633 Colesville Road, with Monte Carlo. Few directors of the late-silent, early-talkie era met with as much success as Lubitsch, who had an unerring ability to make even the most problematic situation seem both classy and funny; his To Be Or Not to Be, with Jack Benny as a hammy Shakespearean actor working his way through Poland, poked fun at the Nazis and was one of the great comedies of the 1940s.

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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)

Marvelous Movies and More Slayton House Theatre, Wilde Lake village. Bernice Kish, gallery director and village manager. Information: 410-730- 3987. Marvelous Movies and More is just what its name implies. The classic movie series at Slayton House in Columbia, in its 11th year, offers an array of classic moves from the 1920s through the 1950s. They include comedies, drama, westerns, musicals, foreign films and silent movies. Shows start at 7:30 p.m. Fridays. Each film is followed by a 30-minute audience discussion led by guest presenters.