Buffalo International Film Festival

Friday, April 18, 2008

8PM Opening Night

Introduction by Suzanne Lloyd, Anthony Bannon, Patrick Loughney
Reception follows screening.

SPEEDY

Live Wurlitzer Organ: Robert Israel

DIRECTOR: Ted Wilde 
WRITERS: John Grey, Lex Neal, Howard Emmett Rogers, Jay Howe, and Al Boasberg
STARS: Harold Lloyd, Babe Ruth (guest star)
SUPPORTING PLAYERS: Ann Christy, Joseph Crowell 
1928, approx. 87m

(1928) Jazz Age idols meet, as baseball-crazy soda jerk/cabbie Harold and passenger Babe Ruth (the Sultan of Swat playing himself) hurtle to old Yankee Stadium. Extensive New York location work is highlighted during a frenzied finale, as Harold races Gotham's last horse-drawn trolley right through Washington Square Arch!

Additional Dialogue contributed by Al Boasberg, Buffalo, New York native.

"No filmmaker had ever made such flamboyant use of New York." – Kevin Brownlow.

"Speedy is a very significant film for Lloyd's career. It is not only his last silent film and the climax to his "golden age," but it also evidenced a mellowing of character...He is a devil-may-care likeable chap, somewhat altruistic, still sharp and witty, but most important, he is confident -- confident in himself, in his time, in his values and ideals." – Adam Riley

"One of the enduring valentines to New York City from Hollywood." – Andrew Sarris

Followed by Reception!

Saturday, April 19, 2008

1PM

WELCOME DANGER

Live Wurlitzer Organ: Robert Israel

1929
115 minutes

(1929) Mild-mannered botanist Harold Bledsoe — recruited because dad was the former police chief — goes fingerprint happy to help quell the San Francisco gang wars and track down Chinatown dope kingpin The Dragon. Completed as a silent, but scrapped when sound loomed,Welcome Danger was largely reshot and turned into a weird part-talkie hybrid that, due to the public's fascination with hearing Lloyd's voice for the first time, became the comedian's biggest money-maker ever. While the original silent version is lost, the camera negative of a silent, intertitled version of the talkie — made for "unwired" theaters — did survive in Harold Lloyd's vaults for 75 years. This version has now been restored by the UCLA Film And Television Archive in a glowing print that looks like it was made yesterday (it may rate as the best-preserved silent film in existence). But, photographic brilliance apart, this silent version — although using much the same footage as the talkie, plus some extended sequences and a few minor cast differences — is a much brighter, much funnier, much more alive work than the rather primitive sound film. As UCLA's Jere Guldin wrote recently, "Welcome Danger works better as a silent. Snappier and better-paced than its sound double, it proves an enjoyable coda to a silent film career that was among the cinema's brightest." Suppose a lost Louis Armstrong solo were suddenly to surface, or a number cut from an Astaire-Rogers musical? For movie lovers, the discovery of an unseen silent feature by one of the screen's greatest comic geniuses is cause for equal celebration. --Filim Forum

3PM Harold Lloyd's Stereoscopic 3-D Photographs projected in startling Three-dimensions! 30 minutes.

4PM

Live Wurlitzer Organ: Robert Israel

Get Out and Get Under - 1920 - 25 minutes, Harold slugs it out with his Model T, while supervised by terminally curious kid "Sunshine Sammy" Morrison (one of the original members ofOur Gang).

I Do - 1921 - 25 minutes, Babysitter Harold invents new milk-feeding techniques.

Haunted Spooks - 1920 - 25 minutes, Harold flops at suicide, but braves a haunted house; this was the film interrupted by his hand-maiming prop bomb accident.

Eastern Westerner - (1920). Harold is a blasι tenderfoot packed off to a ranch.

Plus SPECIAL EXTRAS!

8PM - DOUBLE BILL!

THE FRESHMAN

Live Wurlizter Organ: Kevin Saky

DIRECTOR: Fred Newmeyer & Sam Taylor 
STARS: Harold Lloyd 
WRITERS: Sam Taylor, John Grey, Ted Wilde, Tim Wheelan 
SUPPORTING PLAYERS: Jobyna Ralston, Grady Sutton 
1925, approx. 77m

"Judging from what happened in the packed theater in the afternoon, when old folks down to youngsters volleyed their hearty approval of the bespectacled comedian, the only possible hindrance to the physical well-being of the throngs was an attack of aching sides. -- New York Times (1925)

"Tops Lloyd's previous best for real laughs and pathos. Sets a new standard for well-placed gags beautifully timed to collect 100% guffaws. A college comedy classic." -- The Film Daily (1925)

"A triumph of comic craftsmanship, a virtually seamless series of gags, characterization, and narrative." -- Andrew Sarris

AND on the same Exciting Program

WHY WORRY?

Live Wurlitzer Organ: Bruce Woody

1923
63 minutes
DIRECTOR: Fred Newmeyer & Sam Taylor
WRITER: Sam Taylor
STARS: Harold Lloyd
SUPPORTING PLAYERS: Jobyna Ralston, John Aasen, Leo White

Rich hypochondriac Harold Lloyd's health cruise includes a blithe saunter into a Latin American revolution. Foot for foot, Lloyd's most gag-laden work, and with his greatest foil -- an eight-and-a-half foot giant.

"In Why Worry?, Lloyd returns to the rich-young-man character for what is probably, overall, his funniest -- at any rate, his most gagged -- film...And Lloyd plays the role beautifully. As a characterization of the wealthy class, Harold Van Pelham is indifferent to most of the activity around him, exists as if the world owed him a living, and dispenses with most of the social amenities toward those beneath his station...[But] as Walter Kerr points out, "In the 1920s, Americans liked rich people...cherished them for having -- by hard work and virtuous living -- set an example for everyone else...After all, everybody was going to get rich sooner or later."
-- Adam Riley.

"A swift-moving production, just as good as any in which Harold Lloyd has ever appeared."
-- New York Times (1923)

Sunday, April 20, 2008

2PM

THE KID BROTHER

Live Wurlizter Organ: Clark Wilson

(1927) Lloyd's most unsung masterpiece, as mild-mannered but resourceful Harold assembly-lines the domestic chores for his rough-neck brothers, tenderly romances the girl from a visiting medicine show, and at last wins his sheriff father's respect, after a hair-raising battle aboard a derelict ship.

8PM

"Harold Lloyd Comic Genius"
a special live presentation by Suzanne Lloyd

Including Harold Lloyd's Home Movies.

SAFETY LAST

Live Wurlizter Organ: Clark Wilson

DIRECTOR: Fred Newmeyer 
WRITERS: Harold Lloyd, Sam Taylor, Tim Whelan 
STARS: Harold Lloyd 
SUPPORTING PLAYERS: Mildred Davis, Mickey Daniels 
1923, approx. 70m
Salesclerk Harold Lloyd's "human fly" publicity stunt goes sour when, with the real climber on the lam from a cop, he gets stuck scaling the building himself. The oft-excerpted skyscraper "clock" sequence, shot without trick photography, is a deserved legend, but only the topper to a relentless succession of priceless gags. "To see it today with an audience alternately roaring with laughter and gasping is one of the greatest experiences of cinema."
- David Shipman.

Followed by BUFFET DINNER RECEPTION (Separate Admission) with Suzanne Lloyd