A Day of Silents: CHICAGO and CHILDREN OF DIVORCE at San Francisco Silent Film Festival
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PHYLLIS HAVER IN CHICAGO (1927). SOURCE: GARTENBERG MEDIA ENTERPRISES.
On Sunday, February 2nd, the San Francisco Silent Film Festival screened Frank Urson and Cecil B. DeMille’s CHICAGO (1927) and Frank Lloyd and Josef von Sternberg’s CHILDREN OF DIVORCE (1927) at the San Francisco Jazz Center, as part of their celebration A Day of Silents. GME distributes CHICAGO on DVD and CHILDREN OF DIVORCE as a Blu-Ray/DVD combo pack to North American universities, in conjunction with Flicker Alley.
DVD COVER FOR CHICAGO (1927). SOUCE: FLICKER ALLEY.
Like the musical CHICAGO that won the Best Picture Academy Award and five other Oscars in 2002, this original 1927 version first originated as a hit Broadway play in 1926 by Maurine Watkins. The story follows Roxie Hart (Phyllis Haver), who has a doting, handsome husband in Victor Varconi, not to mention a gold-digging affair on the side with Eugene Pallette, who pays and pays… eventually with his life. Put on trial for murder, Roxie secures lawyer Billy Flynn (Robert Edeson), equal part mob “mouthpiece” and publicity agent. When Roxie hits the headlines, the courtroom theatrics begin.
CHICAGO is mastered in high definition at 25 frames-per-second directly from Cecil B. DeMille’s original nitrate print, courtesy of the DeMille Estate. A brochure by Thomas Pauly on author Maurine Watkins, notes by Robert S. Birchard (author of CECIL B. DEMILLE’S HOLLYWOOD), and a special documentary supplement, CHICAGO: THE REAL-LIFE ROXIE HART by Jeffery Masino and Silas Lesnick, are included as bonus features on this DVD publication.
BLU-RAY/DVD COVER ART FOR CHILDREN OF DIVORCE (1927). SOURCE: FLICKER ALLEY.
CHILDREN OF DIVORCE takes place in an American “divorce colony” in Paris after the First World War, where parents would leave their children for months at a time. Jean, Kitty, and Ted meet there as children and become fast friends. Years later, in America, when wealthy Ted (Gary Cooper) reconnects with Jean (Esther Ralston), the two fall deeply in love, vowing to fulfill a childhood promise to one day marry each other. But true love is no match for the scheming Kitty — played by the original Hollywood “It” girl, Clara Bow — who targets Ted for his fortune. After a night of drunken revelry, Ted wakes up to find he has unwittingly married Kitty. This unfortunate turn of events carries with it the traumatized pasts of the three players, whose views of marriage have been shaped as children of divorce.
Sourced from the original nitrate negative held by the Library of Congress, as well as their 1969 fine grain master, this new restoration of CHILDREN OF DIVORCE was scanned in 4K resolution, and represents over 200 hours of laboratory work by the Library of Congress in order to create the best version possible. Bonus features on this Blu-Ray/DVD combo pack include the documentary CLARA BOW: DISCOVERING THE “IT” GIRL and a souvenir booklet including rare photographs, an essay by film preservationist and Bow biographer David Stenn, notes on the production of the documentary by producer-director Hugh Munro Neely, and a brief essay about the music by Rodney Sauer, score compiler and director of the Mont Alto Motion Picture Orchestra.
For a full list of Flicker Alley titles distributed by GME to North American academic institutions, click here.