Cinevent Musings
Glenn
to say THANK YOU to all who made it happen.
It's been a few years since my last CINEVENT. I went in 1999 with my
wife Mary and then-5-month old Michelle. . . and then came with my
brother a year later. Then time off to have another kid and raise
them through pre-schoolhood.
Enough autobiography. It was great to come back this year, to bring
the family so that they could enjoy the cartoons and the Laurel and
Hardy's when not swimming in the pool. Everybody enjoyed it.
For us, the event got off to a wonderful start when we checked in with
Steve Haynes at the registration table and he welcomed us back after
these few years. I was surprised he remembered us, and therein lies
the key to why Cinevent is such a terrific weekend; the Haynes family
(and their helpers) treat you like family. These are good folks and
they do an incredibly wonderful job. Thank you to them.
It was great to see some old acquaintances again. Of course, being
from Chicago, I see Dave Drazin and Carol Seymour somewhat regularly
(Dave plays for me when I show silents in my theatre season). It was
great to see fellow Cub fan Jessica Rosner, who has always got a smile
on her face. Finally met up with Richard Roberts to say hello and ask
"So where's the book??" Can't forget my Chicago friends Nick and
Toni, who are working on a documentary. Got to meet Tim Lussier,
too, whose "Silents Are Golden" website is one of the best out there.
Darn, I wish I knew those tee-shirts were for sale.
And scores of others, who are there year after year, and sit in the
same places in the screening room, year after year.
THE FILMS
Didn't get to see too many, though. Somehow I hurt my back on the
trip down and couldn't really sit for too long in the screening room
at any one time.
The Lupino Lane shorts were fun, GOODNIGHT NURSE probably the best of
the bunch.
PHANTOM OF THE OPERA - had never seen the whole thing, kinda fun just
for hearing the music. Otherwise, it's just plain silly.
WINNING OF BARBARA WORTH - great Western. Had never seen Ronald
Colman in a silent (I missed BEAU GESTE). It's kind of interesting
when you know their screen voices. . .Gary Cooper fits into this
too. . .and yet here they are in a silent at a time when a lot of
actors were probably fearing for their professional lives. Yet these
guys had greater film careers ahead of them.
LITTLE JOHNNY JONES - kinda fun listening to Dave improvising on this
one. . . you know, he's in the middle of his own thing, improvising
away, and then sees title card cues for OVER THERE and GIVE MY REGARDS
TO BROADWAY suddenly pop up. . . and he thinks to himself "Crap!" and
has to jump into the Cohan tunes on a dime.
LAUREL AND HARDY's - you can't lose on these. That room rocking with
laughter at The Boys is one of the sweetest sounds on earth.
THE RIVER - really interesting, considering the first and last reels
are missing. What you are stepping into is one long, sexually charged
scene with Charles Farrell and Whatshername, sorry I don't have the
program handy. And when he brings out that checkerboard. . .
LOOSE ANKLES - what I saw was cute, had to leave, backpain.
CHARLIE CHASE - a lot of fun, as usual. Richard knows how to pick
'em.
BULLDOG DRUMMOND - best of the lot for me. This film was a lot of fun
and is right up there with THE THIN MAN in the mystery/screwball
comedy genre. And Loretta Young was beautiful as always.
Other than the cartoons, that was about it. I'm sure there are folks
out there who can better critique these than me, so their reports will
be interesting to read.
Have to send kudos to Dave Drazin and Phil Carli. We all know that we
and Cinevent are lucky to have these guys. . their accompaniment is
literally music to the ears. Great job.
THE ACCOMMODATIONS
Let's not even talk about the elevators. . .once we saw half the
weekend could easily be spent looking at or waiting for four close
walls, it was the stairs for us. We were on the third floor, so for
us it wasn't so bad.
I think the Midwest (it was the Ramada last time I was there, I think)
has had a rehabbing done in the near past, and could probably use
another. Rooms weren't bad, but could use a good cleaning or
something, especially in the pool area. Just paint and new carpet is
all I'm saying. Couldn't really use the restaurant, not me with a
family of four.
And I think we all wish that ceiling in the film room was one foot
higher. . .even ten inches would clean up the minor sightline issues.
But what can you do?
DEALERS ROOMS
These are always great. I'm a little more into 16mm since my last
visit (graduated from Super 8) and it's tough because you a have a
limited budget in mind so you canvas the room over three days, and
when you decide on what you want, that particular guy has packed up
and gone. (And I shouldn't mention the irony here, that I have a
budget for film purchases, but not one for feeding my
family. . . . .in the hotel!!) But I managed to grab a Mary Pickford
laserdisc, some DVDs and a couple of 16mm shorts. A nice haul.
Me and Mary and the kids ran out to the Easton Center Mall for a
couple of hours on Sunday, though the whole time I'm thinking that all
I want is sitting back in the basement of the hotel twenty minutes
away. . .
And I never did get that SilentsAreGolden teeshirt. . .
WRAPPING IT UP
Again, folks, it was a lot of fun. I don't really go to film
festivals. . .I know that there are those out there that take place in
theatres and cushioned seats. . .but going to Cinevent is just like
going into a friend's big family room and threading up the projector.
Steve and company should be. . .and always are, I assume. . .commended
for the work they put into this year after year. It is an incredible
family tradition.
After all, the kids are already asking which Stanley and Ollie films
will be shown next year!
Glenn
mikeg...@gmail.com
about Little Johnny Jones, I had the same thought when David was
scrambling to work Give My Regards to Broadway in, then he drops it,
then Johnny Hines suddenly dreams a montage of New York and he has to
play it again...
Anyway, a really good fest, very solid choices across the board and I
enjoyed meeting many, well, ex-AMSers outnumber present ones it seems,
but good to meet and talk with (and eat spicy Indian food) with WWW
and her husband Jim (and her new Ford Sterling bio), Jessica, John
Aldrich, Arlene Witt, Joe Yranski, Eric G. and many other interesting
folks. I am working on my film-by-film recap, watch for it in the
next day or two, in one or two parts.
Daniela C
Glenn schrieb:
Ronald Colman was judging from the silents I've been able to watch-which
are The White Sister, Romola,The Sporting Venus,Stella Dallas, Lady
Windermere's Fan,Kiki, Beau Geste, The Winning of Barbara Worth- a more
than flawless and great silent movie actor also. At the moment a friend of
mine and me are trying to create a web-site
http://www.giovanni-severi.com/ dedicated to his silent and early sound
movies. Watch out.
Daniela
mikeg...@gmail.com
festivals like Cinevent, whose 39th edition was held over Memorial Day
weekend in Columbus, Ohio, is how long these fests can survive as the
core audience for old movies gets ever grayer-- a notion that was
particularly driven home by the tributes held for John Stingley, co-
founder of Cinevent, who passed away at the beginning of the year.
Yet if the average age of the audience tends to be at least Roland
Young if not Charles Winninger, there were also heartening signs for
the future in the form of young people, brought by their parents,
laughing along with the rest of us at Laurel and Hardy and Popeye and
Charlie Chase. If some of the films of the 20s, 30s and 40s shown
were getting their last gasp of attention before eternity in
obscurity, others proved as timeless and delightful as ever, and just
as likely to still have audiences in 2107. Especially on a weekend
when most of America was watching an absurdly overblown three-hour
pirate extravaganza, the craftsmanlike virtues of these short, peppy
movies-- almost any two of them together shorter than that thing--
were obvious and welcome.
I've rated the films on a relative four-point scale, from ****
highlight of the fest to * ennh, and apologize in advance for the
monotony of three-star ratings-- but that's the kind of fest it was, a
lot of very solidly enjoyable stuff. This is part 1, part 2 will
follow shortly.
FRIDAY
VARIETY GIRL (*** for the last half hour) One of those nonsensically-
plotted all-star benefit things like Stage Door Canteen, in this case
not for WWII but on behalf of the Variety Clubs; I arrived 2/3rds of
the way through and even Eric Grayson, whose print it was, admitted
that that was probably a wise move. What I saw was a really "on" Bob
Hope handily stealing the big finale, in between less fortunate
Paramount stars being subjected to embarassments like the sketch in
which Alan Ladd hijacks a plane-- so he can land in Tallahassee and
sing a song about it being the finest lil ol' town in the South. (You
could practically read the disclaimer on his face saying "The views
expressed in song in Variety Girl are not necessarily those of
Paramount, its star performers, writers or directors.")
THE GRAND DUCHESS AND THE WAITER (**) Farce about a Parisian dandy who
falls at first sight for a snooty exiled Russian aristo, and poses as
her waiter at a fancy hotel in order to get close to her. This 1926
followup to Adolphe Menjou, Florence Vidor and director Malcolm St.
Clair's Are Parents People? (and in turn to Lubitsch's The Marriage
Circle) is brightly played by its attractive cast, and it was a hit in
its day. But even by farce standards the behavior of these characters
bears little resemblance to anything real people would ever do, and
the comic situations are usually pretty obvious in their developments
(guess what happens the first time he serves her tea). This was a
Kodascope cutdown and a bit abrupt in spots, maybe the full-length
version if it exists is more substantial-- though I doubt it.
THE CRIMSON KEY (**) Impossibly convoluted, but not bad, 1947 Fox B
mystery with Kent Taylor as a sleuth chasing after a locker key and
the dames and dead bodies that keep piling up around him. The script
manages some sharp lines, too bad Eugene Forde directs it like he's
just got one more year to put in before he gets his pension from the
Department of Noir (though there's one scene involving a sinister
hypnotist where the Dreyer-like pace really works).
LUPINO LANE SHORTS FESTIVAL-- One of the first silent comedy
experiences I had was Robert Youngson's compilation Four Clowns, in
which Lupino Lane had a substantial scene (even though he wasn't one
of the Four), so he's always been familiar to me. But I accept that
the program book is probably right in calling him an "unknown"
comedian, at least in America (he is still famed as a music hall star
in England). Actually a better name for this series would have been
"Lupino Lane and Wallace Lupino," since it's the hairbreadth-timed
interplay between the two brothers that provides much of the best
comedy in these shorts and transcends the none-too-lavish Educational
production values. I missed HELLO SAILOR (1927) but ROAMING ROMEO
(1928, ***), a Ben-Hur burlesque, got big laughs out of the two
brothers posing as marble statues and striking new poses every time
someone looked away, and GOOD NIGHT, NURSE (1929, ***) had a great
visual comedy sequence involving an X-ray machine and a handy
skeleton.
BEAU GESTE (***) Eclipsed by the sound remake, this silent version of
the legendary French Foreign Legion yarn still works as a rousing
adventure, though even moreso than the sound version, it demonstrates
the basic weakness in the material-- the three brothers are all such
one-dimensionally decent what-ho-old-chap types that it's hard to even
tell them apart, and the picture inevitably gets stolen by the one
really interesting character in the piece. That's the sergeant
(played by Brian Donlevy in the talkie and Noah Beery here), who may
be sadistic but is also brave and capable under fire, and who doesn't
really seem to deserve the famous indignity he's subjected to at the
end. One of the biggest hits of the 20s, this made Ronald Colman a
big star, but it would be the least memorable of the three
performances we'd see from him this weekend; the real star of this
showing was Phil Carli, heroically holding down the fort(e) of his
piano to bring the action to a rousing finish. (I asked him later if
that was really the Legion's marching song he played as they sang, and
he said no, but he knows enough about French music to fake a
convincing one on the fly. Fooled me.)
PHANTOM OF THE OPERA (**) No, not that one. The 1943 Claude Rains
version was the focus of a tribute to John Stingley, featuring his own
prints of some of his favorite films, which also included Laurel and
Hardy's paralyzingly funny HELPMATES (1932, ****) and Tex Avery's
manic THE MAGICAL MAESTRO (1952, ****) plus a modestly clever amateur
Omega Man spoof he appeared in called MIME LEGEND (1986, **). As for
the '43 Phantom, the print had gorgeous color, but as with the two
remakes of King Kong, remakes of The Phantom always have the same
problem-- as soon as you explicitly allow sympathy for the monster
(especially from the girl), the whole story goes squishy. Only the
originals understood that you can keep the monster terrifying and
we'll identify with the poor unloved bastard anyway, even as we bay
for his blood.
SATURDAY
ANNUAL ANIMATION PROGRAM-- As the program notes said, it's getting
harder to find great cartoons not already on DVD, but this year's
program managed the seemingly impossible-- it turned up a really good
Terrytoon, a Tex Avery-influenced Little Red Riding Hood parody called
A WOLF'S TALE (1944, ***). Other notable ones included the one
memorable Ub Iwerks studio cartoon, BALLOONLAND (1935, ***), a first-
rate Popeye (FOWL PLAY, 1937, ***) and a good Chuck Jones Claude the
Cat short (MOUSE WARMING, 1952, ***), neither of which I'd seen
before, Disney's original wartime CHICKEN LITTLE (1943, *), which
couldn't possibly be more heavy-handed, and a handsome-looking,
offensive-as-all-get-out Columbia short of corny blackout Indian gags
(WACKY WIGWAMS, 1942, **).
THE BARGAIN (***) William S. Hart's first starring western for Ince--
the program notes hilariously quoted a 1914 review in which the writer
sniffs disapproval that Ince should be hopelessly reviving such a worn-
out genre; that attitude is probably why Hart and the other cast
members are first introduced in evening dress, to let you know this is
a class production and not no Broncho Billy one-reeler. (Later on,
there's an impressive 360-degree pan around a saloon set full of
extras to make the same point.) Very interesting to see Hart's Good
Bad Man characterization in its infancy, when he still seems youthful
(and thus believable as someone who could be swayed by a good woman's
love), and hasn't hardened into the Mount Rushmore carving he later
became.
LOOSE ANKLES (***) Apparently the title didn't make sense even in
1930, since the opening dialogue is devoted to explaining that it
refers to the way flappers dance and cavort. The plot is an amusing
inversion of those Brewster's Millions-Seven Chances-type stories,
with Loretta Young trying to avoid inheriting a fortune (it comes with
too many strings attached) by causing a scandal with naive young
Douglas Fairbanks Jr. The high point is a speakeasy sequence in which
Louise Fazenda and Ethel Wales as maiden aunts get tipsy-- and Fazenda
steals the picture for twenty hilarious, yet also surprisingly pathos-
tinged minutes. Giving little evidence of its 1929 production date,
this was an impressively-paced talkie debut for Harold Lloyd veteran
Ted Wilde-- who, alas, would be dead of a stroke by the time it came
out.
MOCKERY (**) From the Birth of a Nation school of historiography comes
this 1927 MGM production, in which the cause of the Russian Revolution
is revealed to be simpleminded peasant Lon Chaney's lust for lovely
princess Barbara Bedford. Chaney (whose characterization is more than
a little reminiscent of his son's in Of Mice and Men, with a bit of
the Golem thrown in) is always watchable, director Benjamin
Christensen manages some subtle touches amid the general sledgehammer
unsubtlety, but... phooey.
MR. DYNAMITE (***) Perfect example of what you want in a 1942
programmer-- a neat little spy yarn set on the Universal backlot
dressed to be Coney Island, with Lloyd Nolan as a baseball player who
gets dragged into intrigue, all told with smart, amusing dialogue for
a host of New York types (including Shemp Howard as a phony swami!)
before it gets wrapped up in 63 minutes.
MOTHER WORE TIGHTS (***) "1947 Fox musical with Dan Dailey" is not a
phrase designed to get me into a theater, but I gave this familiar
title a chance-- and it's a sweet enough piece of 1940s nostalgia for
the turn of the century in the Life With Father vein, as familiar and
smooth as Aunt Bessie's honey tea.
THE RIVER (****) In the program notes Richard Roberts says he was
responsible for urging this incomplete 1929 film on Cinevent-- and
then proceeds to provide what is basically the case for the
prosecution against director Frank Borzage: "I can appreciate his
visual style in silents like Seventh Heaven and Street Angel, even
though he's just aping Murnau like all the Fox directors were at the
time, and I like some of the character touches he can bring about
between his various star-crossed lovers, but there always comes that
moment near the final reel like in Seventh Heaven when Charlie Farrell
suddenly and magically returns from WWI when all signs were pointing
to him being cold as a refrigerated mackerel... total plot dishonesty
to build up an emotional swell."
Well, if it doesn't work for ya, it doesn't work for ya, but let me
attempt the case for the defense. Sure, Borzage got a lot from
Murnau, Hitchcock got a lot from Lang too, but in both cases they made
it their own over time-- and there's all the difference in the world
between Murnau's melancholy detachment and Borzage's intense
identification with young people dazzled by newfound sexual
attraction, at an age when history really is made at night. Yes, his
silents are often about love absurdly triumphing over things it can't
really triumph over, like death or disability, but that's the point--
as Mencken said, poetry is the art of loudly declaring things everyone
knows aren't true. And by that standard Borzage was one of the great
poets of the higher Hollywood schmaltz, offering lushly romantic wish-
fulfillment for the audience that had lived through one world war (but
ultimately being honest enough to recognize that no one could wish the
next one away-- Borzage was by far the earliest Hollywood filmmaker to
make films with an anti-Nazi slant). If Seventh Heaven is dishonest,
well, failed savings and loans aren't bailed out by their customers on
Christmas Eve, either.
Lucky Star, which turned up about 15 years ago, is usually spoken of
as the great Frank Borzage rediscovery, but I'd argue for The River--
or, that is, the middle 4 or 5 reels of The River, which is all that
survives. As Richard Roberts says in the program notes, this may
actually be an improvement, as we lose the plot mechanics of beginning
and end-- and simply get a 45 or 50-minute chunk of pure Borzagean
erotic atmosphere and sexual tension, this time putting Charles
Farrell opposite not the doll-like Janet Gaynor but a real woman, Mary
Duncan (City Girl), who brings a Stanwyckian hardness to her part that
makes Farrell's callow youth much more appealing and believable as
well. Lyrical, powerful, almost maniacal in its ceaseless invention
of visual metaphors for sexual attraction and frustration, The River
is a remarkable example of how intense and dreamlike silent cinema
could be-- when it came to what Preston Sturges called Subject A.
ZERO HOUR (***) Surely one of the most influential movies of the last
30 years, Airplane! is in a different class altogether from most of
its anything-for-a-gag followups because it was solidly built on the
structure of an existing serious thriller. An existing thriller, what
is it? This 1957 airplane in distress tale by future Airport author
Arthur Hailey, with Dana Andrews as the guy who can't fly any more
because of wartime flashbacks, and Sterling Hayden as the tough-
talking guy on the ground who picked the wrong week to quit smoking.
Half of it is already so cheesy it just took the slightest nudge to
make it into comedy, half of it still works just fine, and even a
Cinevent crowd was apparently familiar enough with a 1980 movie to
dissolve into laughter when the pilot asks little Joey if he's ever
been in a real cockpit before.
more to come...
mikeg...@gmail.com
SUNDAY
CHARLEY'S AUNT (***) Do you need another version of Charley's Aunt in
your life? I certainly didn't, let alone one with Charlie Ruggles,
and in any case I find this ironclad laugh machine of a play somewhat
inhuman in its perfection-- yet I have to say, once again it worked,
giving little sign of being a modestly budgeted 1930 Columbia talkie
and pulling off some nice fast-paced slapstick under the direction of
comedy short veteran Al Christie.
THE WINNING OF BARBARA WORTH (***) Ronald Colman is the easterner,
Gary Cooper the westerner, and Hungarian-born Vilma Banky is the all-
American gal they're contending for in this 1926 Iron Horse-ish
building-the-west epic, which throws in everything from a sinister
land agent lusting after Barbara (what is this, the Russian
Revolution?) to a flood that washes a whole town away. Harold
(Shepherd of the Hills) Bell Wright's story is basically melodramatic
claptrap, but on screen it's handsomely produced and slickly directed
by Henry King-- and it all builds to a rousingly wet conclusion.
DELICIOUS (*) Gershwinologists might find this 1931 Charles Farrell-
Janet Gaynor musical interesting for its score by George and Ira, but
normal folks-- what can you say about a movie where El Brendel doesn'
t even have the most annoying accent in the picture? (That would be
Janet O'Gaynor.) The only more than tolerable sequence was an
expressionistic montage set to Gershwin's other rhapsody, "Rhapsody in
Rivets."
LITTLE JOHNNY JONES (**) Johnny Hines stars in a 1923 version of the
George M. Cohan musical about an American jockey accused of cheating
in England, which introduced "Yankee Doodle Dandy" (and is seen
abbreviated to about 10 minutes in the Cagney movie). What goes in
when the songs come out? Lots of bush-league slapstick, is the
answer; the main fun was listening as pianist David Drazin would
suddenly get an on-screen cue for something like "Give My Regards To
Broadway" and have to work it in to whatever he was playing at that
moment.
CHARLIE CHASE FESTIVAL-- Three later sound shorts from this perennial
film buffs' favorite (surely he, unlike Lupino Lane, can be said to no
longer be "unknown"). SKIP THE MALOO! (1931, **) starts amusingly
with Chase as a duke hired to impersonate himself (don't ask why), but
too much of what follows depends on everyone acting like an idiot to
be really funny. The main point of interest is an appearance by Gale
Henry, a silent comedienne largely retired by that point. Much better
was PUBLIC GHOST NO. 1 (1935, ***), in which Charlie is lured into the
ghost-for-hire racket by a smooth-talking lunatic (Edwin Maxwell); and
equally good was THE PIP FROM PITTSBURGH (1931, ***) in which Charlie
munches garlic and dresses shabbily to scare off a blind date, only to
have her turn out to be Thelma Todd.
RUNNING WILD (****) One of the few W.C. Fields silents NOT remade as a
Paramount talkie-- though the setup is awfully close to The Man on the
Flying Trapeze, with Fields as an office drudge with a messy desk and
a wife and pampered stepson who have him beaten down. The turning
point of the plot takes it in a more visual direction, though-- his
inner lion is released by a hypnotist and he literally runs wild,
delivering comeuppance to all his tormentors in a lengthy comedy-
action sequence. It had the audience in stitches, and showed that
while his silents lack one of the talkies' great assets-- his voice--
they also had sides of his persona lacking in the films made when he
was older and less agile.
BULLDOG DRUMMOND STRIKES BACK (****) Sure, folks like us can always
think of obscure titles we'd like to see released on DVD, but there's
no disputing the fact that we live in the golden age of availability,
few genuine classics still out of our easy reach. Well, here's one:
one of the best mysteries of the 30s, a terrific 1934 followup to
Ronald Colman's Oscar-nominated 1929 talkie debut as Bulldog Drummond,
never seen on TV or released on video because the story rights were
resold by Fox a decade later.
What's most striking about it is not just that it's a fast-paced,
amusingly written and cleverly-worked out thriller, but that the
script (by Nunnally Johnson) displays a sense of absurdity and self-
referentiality which is a couple of decades ahead of its time, closer
to Beat the Devil or some of the Bond spoofs of the 60s than anything
else from the 30s. (Well, Drummond was something of the same kind of
cultural icon in the 30s that Bond was in the 60s.) Colman is dashing
and witty, Warner Oland is a three-dimensional villain, C. Aubrey
Smith as Inspector Nielsen gets a real chance to act for once and not
just do his usual shtick, and even the running gag about delayed
weddings, run into the ground in later series entries, is fresh here
as Drummond keeps luring pal Algy away from his wedding night amid
much pre-Code double entendre.
MONDAY
GO WEST, YOUNG LADY (****) The least-expected charmer of the weekend
was a 1941 comic western starring Penny Singleton as an eastern gal
gone west, and a very young Glenn Ford and Ann Miller as new sheriff
and dancehall gal respectively. Leonard Maltin only gives it **1/2,
but an audience of film buffs in tune with its breezy playfulness
toward the stock situations of the western genre found it absolutely
delightful, full of well-timed humor, its stars relaxed and charming
and familiar supporting players given a rare chance to shine-- Allen
Jenkins even gets a song and dance number with Miller called "I Wish I
Was A Singing Cowboy," and proves to be quite a capable hoofer. Maybe
watched alone on TV it wouldn't go over as well, but then, the point
is that it wasn't watched that way, in 1941 or in 2007 at Cinevent.
YOU ARE GUILTY! (**) James Kirkwood as one of two half-brothers, the
other of whom has a mustache and, by the law of silent movie brothers,
is therefore no good. Mustache brother embezzles, good brother takes
the fall to spare (step-)Mother and hits the hobo trail, and soon he's
haunted by The Whispering Chorus-- wait, that was another, not
dissimilar movie. Not-bad 1923 silent in the kind of somber,
philosophical-slash-depressed vein that pretty much vanished from
Hollywood for good later in the decade; even when films like this
aren't that great, they offer a fascinating window into the last
moment when popular culture still reflected a general view that life
was hard, sad and unlikely to end well.
After Laurel and Hardy (as themselves and their wives) in TWICE TWO
(***), the last film was a 1940 programmer called ZANZIBAR, filmed in
the darkest corners of the Universal backlot and stock footage
library. Early on in it Samuel S. Hinds urges a young man from the
London Tribune (!) to abandon the search for the lost skull of Mkwawa
and return home, and I soon took his advice. But I did so with
sincere gratitude for the many fine glimpses of our movie heritage I'd
been offered over the weekend through the generosity of film
collectors... past, present and, hopefully, future.