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alloy orchestra films
THE GENERAL
with Accompaniment by ALLOY ORCHESTRA
Saturday, March 27, 7:30 PM, The Melba Theater
Admission: $8 / $6 Students and Adults Over 55
(Both Alloy Orchestra performances: $15 / $10 Students and
Adults Over 55)
Consistently ranked among the greatest films ever made, Buster
Keaton's THE GENERAL is so brilliantly conceived and executed that
it continues to inspire awe and laughter with every viewing.
Rejected by the Confederate army as unfit and taken for a coward
by his beloved Annabelle Lee (Marian Mack), young Johnnie Gray (Keaton)
sets out to single-handedly win the war with the help of his
cherished locomotive. What follows is, without exaggeration,
probably the most cleverly choreographed comedy ever recorded on
celluloid. Johnnie wages war against hijackers, an errant cannon,
and the unpredictable hand of fate while roaring along the iron
rails -- exploiting the comic potential of Keaton's favorite
filmic prop, the train.
Insisting on accuracy in every detail, Keaton created a remarkably
authentic historical epic, replete with hundreds of costumed
extras, full-scale sets, and the breathtaking plunge of an actual
locomotive from a burning bridge into a river. "Every shot has the
authenticity and the unassuming correct composition of a Matthew
Brady Civil War photograph," wrote film historian David Robinson,
"no one -- not even Griffith or Huston and certainly not Fleming
(GONE WITH THE WIND) -- caught the visual aspect of the Civil War
as Keaton did."
Directed by Buster Keaton and Clyde Bruckmann; screenplay by Al
Boasberg, Bruckman, Keaton and William Pittenger (inspired by his
novel THE GREAT LOCOMOTIVE CHASE); starring Keaton and Marian
Mack. (1927, 74 min.)
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"Today I look
at Keaton's works more often than any other silent films.
They have such a graceful perfection, such a meshing of
story, character and episode, that they unfold like music.
Although they're filled with gags, you can rarely catch
Keaton writing a scene around a gag; instead, the laughs
emerge from the situation; he was "the still, small,
suffering center of the hysteria of slapstick," wrote the
critic Karen Jaehne. And in an age when special effects were
in their infancy, and a 'stunt' often meant actually doing
on the screen what you appeared to be doing, Keaton was
ambitious and fearless. He had a house collapse around him.
He swung over a waterfall to rescue a woman he loved. He
fell from trains. And always he did it in character, playing
a solemn and thoughtful man who trusts in his own ingenuity.
'Charlie's tramp was a bum with a
bum's philosophy,' he once said. 'Lovable as he was, he
would steal if he got the chance. My little fellow was a
working man, and honest.' That describes his characters, and
it reflects their creator.
--Roger Ebert, CHICAGO
SUN-TIMES |
SOUTH: ERNEST SHACKLETON AND THE ENDURANCE
EXPEDITION
with Accompaniment by ALLOY ORCHESTRA
Sunday, March 28, 2:30 PM, The Melba Theater
(followed by a Q&A and demonstration by members of Alloy
Orchestra)
Admission: $8 / $6 Students and Adults Over 55
(Both Alloy Orchestra performances: $15 / $10 Students and
Adults Over 55)
Photographed by New Zealand cinematographer Frank Hurley, SOUTH:
Ernest Shackleton and the Endurance Expedition is
the film record of Sir Ernest Shackleton's heroic but ill-starred
attempt to cross Antarctica in 1914-1916. It is both a unique
historical document, and a tribute to the indomitable courage of a
small party of men who set out on a voyage of discovery that
turned into an epic struggle for survival.
"It was the opinion of Sir Ernest Shackleton, the legendary leader
of the 1914 British expedition to the South Pole that 'in terms of
the accomplishment of the human spirit, no project carried through
to its conclusion is futile.' Certainly, despite its failure, his
expedition remains one of the high points of bravery in polar
exploration. And there is something remarkable about the way,
after being marooned in pack ice for six months with his crew, and
watching their ship being slowly crushed to matchwood, Shackleton
made the truly incredible journey across 800 miles of open seas in
a 20 foot boat to the Elephant Island whaling station, thus
securing the rescue of his crew, with no loss of life. . . .
As documentary techniques were in their infancy when Hurley made
the film, the treatment is in some ways naive: while there are
endless shots of the Endurance and its crew, there is certainly no
special attention paid to the principal characters: Shackleton
himself is glimpsed only briefly at the start of
 the
film. But the fragmented shots of the journey to the Antarctic and
the subsequent marooning of the Endurance are truly compelling,
and there are some amazing images: especially the ghostly, almost
solarised, images of the doomed ship. Hurley used 18 high-powered
lamps and shot at night to get these shots, and his images have
become iconic."
www.channel4.com
Written and directed by Frank Hurley; featuring Sir Ernest Shackleton, Capt. F. Worsley, Capt. Frank Wild, Capt. L. Hussey,
Lt. J. Shenhouse (Great Britain, 1919, 88 min.)
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