click to enlarge
There was a time in history that everyone knew the name of actor Rudolph Valentino, his moniker was as synonymous with the silent films of 1920s as Brad Pitt is with today's cinema. However, with the passage of time, his name (along with the movies he starred in) have disappeared from the collective conscious of many filmgoers. But this weekend, fans of the silent film era (and perhaps a few who have never seen a silent film before) will file into the Castro Theatre to watch his last film,
The Son of The Sheik (1926) with live-music accompaniment. This Valentino film, along with four others from the silent film era, will play as part of the San Francisco Silent Film Festival.
These five films are just a few of the surviving movies from the silent film era, which ran from 1894 to 1929, and launched the careers of Greta Garbo, Buster Keaton, and of course, Charlie Chaplin. But sadly, according to the Library of Congress, 75 percent of the films from this era are lost.
Variety reports that, "only 14% of the 10,919 silent films released by major studios exist in their original 35mm or other format... another 11% survive in full-length foreign versions or on film formats of lesser image quality."
If you're interested in seeing one of the films on a big screen with music accompaniment on September 20, more information about the movie plots and tickets ($15-$20) can be found on the San Francisco Silent Film
site.
