It’s a very special episode this week as Bernard presents Sound Conversations, a collection of interviews with directors, documentarians, actors, festival programmers and, most importantly, sound designers, about the art of sound in film. Technique, philosophy, tradition, experimentation—all angles of sound design are covered as we explore one of the most underappreciated aspects of filmmaking with some of the most talented people in the biz. Joining the show are the sound-obsessed artists behind Love & Mercy, The Diary of a Teenage Girl, 10,000 km, Gett: The Trial of Vivianne Amsalem, Foxcatcher and many more. Listen in and listen close—it’s Sound Conversations!

Topics

• Bel Powley & Marielle Heller (2:23)
• Carlos Marques-Marcet (5:17)
• Shlomi Elkabetz (11:57)
• Chris Strachwitz, Chris Simon, Maureen Gosling (35:39)
• Bill Pohlad (21:45)
• Oren Moverman (25:57)
• Anita Monga (33:06)
• Paul Hsu (38:31)

Articles Referenced

The Diary of a Teenage Girl Interview
10,000 km Interview
Gett: The Trial of Vivianne Amsalem Interview
Love & Mercy Interview
Anita Monga Interview
Time Out of Mind Interview
This Ain’t No Mouse Music Interview

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Starting tomorrow, the San Francisco Silent Film Festival once again bestows upon the Bay Area some of the most rarified film experiences you’ll find in the world. It runs from May 28th-June 1st, and as always, the program is like a gilded treasure box lifted from the past, containing precious jewels you won’t find anywhere else.

Take, for instance, the special presentation of a film called Lime Kiln Field Day by Burt Williams. It was a 1913 production with an all-black cast that never saw the light of day due to its white producers slamming the door shut on it indefinitely. Jump forward one century to 2013, when MoMA found and reconstructed the film’s unedited reels so that we may enjoy and appreciate one of the earliest artifacts of black film history. The film will be playing as a special presentation called “100 Years In Post-Production: Resurrecting a Lost Landmark of Black Film History.” MoMA Associate Curator Ron Magliozzi will be presenting a variety of materials from the production as well.

Also on the lineup is the silent version of All Quiet on the Western Front, which many consider to be superior to the award-winning talkie version. Sherlock Holmes will be making an appearance as well in Sherlock Holmes, a pivotal piece of Sherlockian history once thought long lost. Contributing to the conversation of modern feminism are Why Be Good?, The Deadlier Sex, and Sweden’s Norrtullsligan, three films that serve as fascinating reminders that feminist filmmaking has had a long history. The Last Laugh, a must-see for any true film fan, also rounds out the program.

One of my favorite parts of the festival is the live instrumentation, and the lineup of musicians on-hand is typically tremendous. The world-renowned silent film players include Stephen Horne, Frank Bockius, Guenter Buchwald, Diana Rowan, Steve Sterner, Serge Bromberg, the Matti Bye Ensemble, the Donald Sosin Ensemble, the Mont Alto Motion Picture Orchestra, and Bruce Goldstein and the Gower Gulch Players.

I sat down for my annual chat with festival’s Artistic Director, Anita Monga, to talk about this year’s program and examine the silent era’s influence on modern filmmaking.

For more info on the festival, visit silentfilm.org

Farm-to-table dining is something that’s swept the nation but has always been a big part of San Francisco. It’s about artisans putting a lot of love and work and time into presenting the best ingredients with utmost respect. I think this festival is the film version of that, where everybody involved—the preservationists, the programmers, the musicians—really get their hands dirty to present an incredibly special experience.
Yeah, it’s a one-of-a-kind experience, each and every screening. People always say, “Aw, I’m not going to see The Last Laugh. I’ve already seen it a million times.” You’re not going to come to see it with the group of students from the Berklee College of music perform it once in your lifetime? Come on!

Right. I’ve seen some silents several times live, but it’s a different experience every time.
Absolutely. But I also have to say that masterpieces are worth revisiting again and again. There are some films that I’ve seen 20, 30 times. And it’s amazing to see them in a movie theater like the Castro with that amazing screen and people who also appreciate this live cinema. It’s an extraordinary experience. We’re very lucky in San Francisco.

We are. I was sharing a nice lunch with a friend here in the city today, and I was telling him that one of the best things about the festival is the crowd. Being with those people, you feel like you’re part of something special.
It really is special.

You mentioned masterpieces, and I’ve got to mention All Quiet on the Western Front. It’s interesting to me that the silent version is considered by many superior to the award-winning sound version.
That’s not completely unheard of during that transition from silent to sound. Films were often made in two versions because many theaters didn’t have the capacity to make that transition. We’re living through a relatively similar transition from 35mm to DCP. A lot of little theaters have had a really hard time making that transition because it’s really expensive. The answer during the transition from silents to talkies was that different versions were made. At the beginning of sound, it was very rudimentary. The silent version of All Quiet on the Western Front has a different kind of rhythm. It isn’t bogged down by the script.

The editing is the biggest difference.
Right, because you can’t have paragraph-long intertitle cards, so the story has to be told through the action and through the characters’ faces.

People seem to have forgotten what cinema really is. Most critique I hear from younger people is focused on the script or narrative rather than what’s actually on-screen. It’s like they’re writing a book review of the screenplay.
David Thompson wrote a piece for our book on All Quiet on the Wester Front in which he has a very poetic waxing. At the end of the essay he’s talking about ways of watching a film, and he did an experiment by watching sound movies with the sound turned off. Film is both a visual and aural experience. There are amazing things to be heard. When you have a modern film you think is being silent, if you pay attention, you’ll hear all of the sounds the filmmakers put in to suspend the film in a bath of sound.

Have you seen Mad Max?
I haven’t seen it yet! I’m so looking forward to seeing it.

I’m excited for you to see it because I think it pays homage to old-school movie-making. There are things like people wobbling on tall poles that really reminds me of Keaton and Lloyd. Really daring stuff.
That’ll be the first thing I see. I remember seeing the original Mad Max, and what a revelation that was.

I remember when you guys did the “Hitchcock 9” program, with all the silents he made. I loved it. I remember seeing a vignette where Martin Scorsese said he’d watch Hitchcock with the sound turned off.
Hitchcock is amazing, but I wouldn’t advise turning off Bernard Hermann’s score! [laughs] You watch a film like Vertigo, and there are whole parts of that movie that seem suspended in some kind of other world. There isn’t a lot of talking. The sound design of those movies is extraordinary. That “Hitchcock 9” thing we did was a real revelation to me because Hitchcock was at one of the earliest junctures of filmmaking. He was just born, fully formed as a storyteller.

I know Hitchcock mourned the end of the silent era.
Film is a marriage of technology and art, and any filmmaker would be happy with technology as it changes and enhances. The silent era was an incredible period for honing visual expression, but I think the best filmmakers embraced sound and technology. Who doesn’t want to be able to do something extraordinary that was impossible before?

Back to the festival: I just watched Cave of the Spider Woman. That was something else! The imagination on display was wonderful.
My mind boggles at how that print got to Norway. It was a very popular genre in Shanghai in the ’20s, that kind of spirit story. Films were made, but there are no prints left. This one was sitting in a library in Norway. The film was made in 1927 and imported and distributed around Norway in 1929. They burned the Norwegian subtitles on the cards, so the translations came from the Norwegians, not the Chinese. Our contribution was that we had a translator go back to the Chinese intertitles and translate those. The Chinese translator found that the frames were slipped, so the Norwegian subtitles would be printed on cards that would be flipped and upside down. It was a really difficult job.

This movie was a big hit when it came out, but there’s only the one print!
Right! Only one that we know of.

Sherlock Holmes is as trendy as he’s ever been right now.
The restoration we’re presenting was kind of the holy grail for Sherlockians because the person behind it was William Gillette, who convinced Arthur Conan Doyle to do this Sherlock Holmes film. It was years after Conan Doyle had killed off Sherlock, but Gillette was known as the major stage interpreter of Sherlock Holmes. He wrote a script that combined several of the Sherlock stories, and Doyle was impressed. That film was completely lost. A number of people went looking for it, and it was discovered in a vault at the Cinémateque Francaise.

I also caught The Deadlier Sex and loved it.
Good! That was a restoration that just happened at the Academy Film Archive. Blanche Sweet is pretty great. It’s a really small part, but it’s a really early role for Boris Karloff.

I love how nimbly that one switches from drama to comedy. It’s really modern in that way. Why Be Good is another one I really liked.
It’s really great. Colleen Moore plays an effervescent flapper, a “good girl” who the boss’ son falls in love with.

Feminism is such a hot topic today, as it should be. I think it’s important to look back at films like this to get a sense of how feminism has evolved over the years.
If you’re interested in that, Norrtullsligan has very strong female characters. It’s definitely a feminist film.

Let’s take a look at some other things on the program.
“100 Years in Post-Production” is going to be a really great presentation. Lime Kiln Field Day started production in 1913 and was shelved before it ever came to fruition. MoMA found the unedited reels of this all-black production. We all know what happened in 1915 with The Birth of a Nation, and it’s been speculated that that kind of put the kibosh on this film coming out. MoMA reconstructed it. Don’t miss Flesh and the Devil, don’t miss Pan…

I’m really excited for that one.
I love this film so much. It has a very strong, modern psychological sensibility that will be really surprising and revelatory to a lot of people.

As a bit of a musician myself, I always try to sit close to the musicians during the show. You can feel the sound from their instruments wrap around you in a really magical way.
Do you ever watch the musicians?

I do!
It’s so interesting. We have this wonderful photographer, Pamela Gentile, and my favorite thing she does is take a picture from the audience; you see the screen, the musicians, and sometimes you’ll see the musicians looking up and the characters in the film looking down. It’s beautiful.

For people who say things like, “I don’t want to watch old movies,” I say, at the very least, you can just watch the musicians. They’re incredible.
People who say they’re going to be put off by things being old…I get where they’re coming from. Some people have a problem with seeing a black and white film. I can tell you that you’ll forget that they’re not talking. Plus, there are plenty of bad films made in the silent era; we just don’t play those films. We have 20 films we’re showing every year. We don’t have to show the bad stuff. We try to show a breadth of the silent era, but every film has some relevance for modern audiences.

A few days before the San Francisco Silent Film Festival began last Thursday night at the Castro Theatre, I spoke with festival artistic director Anita Monga. She shared a touching story that couldn’t illustrate the beauty of silent film any better.

“Two years ago, there was this janitor at the Castro [Theater.] She didn’t really speak English. She had her little son with her, and I knew he looked really interested in one of the movies we showed. [One night,] were showing a beautiful tinted restoration of A Trip to the Moon. The theater was virtually full. I like to sit in the back where the sound mixing board is. The janitor [peeked in the theater,] uncertain like she didn’t want to bother us. We said, ‘Come in! Come in with your son. This’ll be a good film.’ She said, ‘Oh, maybe a minute.'”

“They stayed the entire time.” Anita continued. “Again, she didn’t really speak English, but they were laughing belly laughs. You know, slapping your knee laughs. It was so wonderful to see this movie that transcended language and age. It was just so beautiful. People always think children are going to be bored by silent film because there’s no talking. And yet, [this woman] who didn’t speak English, couldn’t read the intertitles, and [her son,] who most people think shouldn’t care about this art form, were sitting beside us and just loving it!”

Listening to Anita speak so lovingly about silent film kicked my excitement for the festival through the roof. My experience with The Hitchcock 9 was life-changing, from the live music, to the knowledgeable, respectful crowd, to the gorgeous Castro Theatre that housed it all. It was an amazing experience, and when I arrived at the Castro for opening night, I was excited to do it all over again. Prix de Beauté, the painfully tragic opening night film (which reminded me a lot of one of my favorites, The Red Shoes) depicts jealousy in such an authentic, modern way that it had me upset all night (in a good way, somehow.) Louise Brooks has superstar written all over her face, and she’d be an even bigger star today than she was then. It was a great film to kick off the festival.

Prix de Beauté

The rest of the fest was wonderfully varied, with films from all across the world. Marion Davies is as adorable and lovable as a thousand Zooey Deschanels in Kind Vidor’s quirky family comedy, The Patsy. Though Davies got a bad rap from her characterization in Citizen Kane, she shows a wealth of charisma in her turn as a swooning ugly duckling. Though most famous for his dramatic later works like Tokyo Story and Late Spring, master filmmaker Yasujiro Ozu created a lighter, more comedic film earlier in his career in Tokyo Chorus, though it’s no less poetic than its successors. One of the last films he made in the silent era, it’s a must watch for any Ozu fan. Gribiche, a French film about a boy from a lower-middle class family who is “rescued” from his humble lifestyle by an affluent widow, was a favorite of mine. The comedy and drama work hand-in-hand here, and director Jacques Feyder hits every beat with authority.

Gribiche

The film capping off the festival was goofball daredevil Harold Lloyd’s Safety Last (you know, the one where he hangs off the clock.) The theater was packed to the brim (just like in Anita’s story) to see Lloyd’s masterpiece. The walls seemed to be shaking from the excitement of the crowd. After a quick Q&A with visual effects expert Craig Barron and Harold’s granddaughter, Suzanne Lloyd (very cool), we were off to the races. The front half of the film delivers a bounty of clever sight gags, but the show-stealer is the thrilling main event, the famous sequence in which Lloyd clumsily scales a 12-story building. As Lloyd bumbled and flailed his way up to the sky, the audience and I hung on his every step, every slip, every hilarious close call. Women screamed when he’d trip and dangle by his fingertips. The collective gasps, oohs and ahs were nearly deafening.

Safety Last

Some of the people around me couldn’t speak English, some were younger than 10, and some were deaf, but we were all gasping in awe, in unison, at the brilliant performance of Mr. Lloyd. It’s an electric connection that you can’t create anywhere but at the movies. My fellow silent film geeks were a bunch of strangers in the dark jumping, screaming, and having a damn good time together. And at times, it felt something like family.

In the spirit of the San Francisco Silent Film Festival taking place this weekend, I thought I’d compile a list of titles that I believe are great gateways for those unacquainted with the wonderful world of silent film. The silent era is a glaring blind spot for many a cinephile (me included, up until just a few years ago), which is truly a shame. A lot of the greatest films of all time were created before sound was introduced (some of which are listed here), and approaching contemporary movies with a measure of knowledge about where their ideas and techniques came from enhances the experience tenfold.

These films aren’t necessarily the greatest of the silent era and perhaps not even the most influential. There are TONS of great silents to fall in love with. These selections are simply good spots in the giant pool of silent films for newcomers to dip their toes in. For those that think silent films are boring or dated, you’ll quickly see just how fun and entertaining these films are, even by today’s standards. If you or a friend or a group of friends have been reluctant to give silent films a try or never had the desire to, I encourage you to give one or more of these films a try. You’ll be pleasantly surprised.

The absolute best way to see a silent film is to see it at a theater with live music accompaniment, but that unfortunately isn’t an opportunity available to most of us. That’s what makes festivals like SFSFF so special. If you’re in the Bay Area, don’t miss the show! Check out our interview with Anita Monga, the festival’s artistic director.

City Lights (1931)—Charlie Chaplin

Of all the great characters in silent cinema, none are more iconic, touching, likable, or inviting to newcomers than Chaplin’s Tramp. City Lights is arguably the best representation of Chaplin’s style, a masterpiece of slapstick, immaculate staging, “Aw shucks” giddy romance, and graceful physical expression. It’s one of the most enchanting romances of the silent era, with the Tramp’s amorous gaze set on someone who can’t return it—a spunky blind girl played by the wonderful Virginia Cherrill. The Tramp also makes friends with an alcoholic millionaire (Harry Myers), with their unlikely bromance providing some of the funniest scenes in any Chaplin film. Interestingly enough, City Lights was made three years in to the talkie era. The decision to keep the dialogue muted was a masterstroke. Chaplin knew the Tramp didn’t need sound to express himself. Once you bear witness to Chaplin’s grace, physical prowess, and effortless storytelling, it’s hard not to give in to the film, turn off your iPhone, get cozy, and do exactly what Chaplin wanted us all to do—smile a big smile.

For Fans of: Johnny Depp, Disneyland, pratfalls, cartoons, having a wholesome good time

Watch City Lights clip:

City Lights is available on Hulu Plus

Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans (1927)—F.W. Murnau

If you see only one film on this list, make it this one. F.W. Murnau’s salty/sweet romance masterpiece stirs every bit of me each time I watch it. It’s about a man and woman whose marriage has hit rock bottom (that’s a huge understatement) and how they climb their way out of the depths of resentment to rediscover the love they’d lost. Sunrise can be buoyant, terrifying, spiritual, tragic, haunting, and joyous, often all at once. There’s so much emotion wrapped up in every gorgeous frame that it can be overwhelming, but in the best way possible. Murnau, the greatest German expressionist of the era, seemingly defies the laws of space and gravity with his camera, which glides impossibly over seemingly obstructed terrain. The film runs on the power of the dreamlike imagery, and though the plot may seem basic, its simplicity is necessary to convey the story’s enormous emotion. Sunrise changed the way I watch movies, and I hope it will for you as well.

For Fans of: Terrence Malick, Blue Valentine, fancy camerawork, Martin Scorsese, fucked up romance

Watch Sunrise clip:

A Trip to the Moon (1902)—Georges Melies

Made virtually the minute cinema exited the womb, Georges Melies’ A Trip to the Moon captured the minds and imaginations of everyone who saw it at the time. Some will say it’s a special effects movie that looks like a 1^st grader’s slapped together diorama compared to today’s computer vomited visual wonders. To them I’d contest that A Trip to the Moon is a supremely impressive work of art considering it’s OVER 110 FREAKING YEARS OLD! What makes it required viewing for every film buff is that it acts as a beacon for us to assess just how far we’ve come in terms of technology. It’s a lot of fun to imagine how awestruck audiences must have been in 1902 to see the group of astronauts visit that distant light in the night sky, but what resonates most about the film today is the spirit of Melies’ boundless imagination. The band Air provides the (fantastic) soundtrack for the restored hand-colored version of the film above.

For Fans of: Star Wars, Lord of the Rings, mushrooms, astronomy, video games

Watch A Trip to the Moon clip:

The General (1926)—Buster Keaton

Though I personally slightly prefer the zanily whimsical Sherlock Jr., The General is inarguably the paramount accomplishment of Buster Keaton’s career. A speedy adventure brimming with spectacle, it follows “The Great Stone Face” (a name given to Keaton referring to his perpetually deadpan countenance) as he single-handedly takes on an army while aboard the titular train, all for the sake of love. The stunts concocted here are breathtaking enough to captivate any moviegoer, with Keaton tumbling and daredevil-ing all over the locomotive like an acrobatic madman. The  creativity and inventiveness of the film is only rivaled by Chaplin, but Keaton’s work is less saccharine and jibes better with today’s dry, unsentimental brand of humor. My wife usually resigns to the bedroom when I start watching my “classic movies”, but she always seems to linger when I throw old Buster on.

For Fans of: Mel Brooks, Jackie Chan, Rube Goldberg machines, dry humor

Watch The General:

The Passion of Joan of Arc (1928)—Carl Dreyer

Carl Dreyer’s The Passion of Joan of Arc is said to contain the single greatest performance by an actor ever captured on camera, by an enigmatic woman known simply as “Falconetti” (in her only acting role.) Sound like hyperbole? Watch the film. Even if you don’t agree, you’ll have at least seen a wonderful film by one of the most visually powerful directors to ever live (if you’ve never heard of him, do yourself a huge favor and study up.) There’s something unsettling and a bit otherworldly about Joan of Arc, as if it exists outside time and space. It’s like an out of body experience, transporting you somewhere cold, dark, and unfamiliar. Falconetti’s full-screen face is so riveting and tangible it’ll make you shudder, perhaps even weep. Even the greatest actors of today can’t hold a candle.

For Fans of: Amazing freaking acting

Watch The Passion of Joan of Arc clip:

The Passion of Joan of Arc is available on Hulu Plus

The Cabinet of Dr. Calgari (1920)—Robert Wiene

German expressionist Robert Wiene’s The Cabinet of Dr. Calgari may be the first horror film ever made, and if so, it sure set the bar high. Visually, the film’s angular, twisted black and white style can be felt in countless modern films, in the works of Tim Burton and Guillermo del Toro, the animated films of Henry Selick, and countless horror flicks. The film’s visual style even helped birth film noir. What’s remarkable is that despite its age, Dr. Calgari stands head and shoulders above most of its descendants. The plot—a macabre murder mystery set in a small German town—isn’t particularly innovative, but it’s the film’s striking, dreamlike imagery that makes it so enduring. Several remakes, books, and even an opera have stemmed from the original film, and with good reason–Wiene was a trailblazer who created a timeless classic.

For Fans of: Tim Burton, set design, Darren Aronofsky, horror movies, punk rock, twist endings

Watch The Cabinet of Dr. Calgari:

Honorable Mentions

Metropolis (1927)—Fritz Lang

The Birth of a Nation (1915)—D.W. Griffith

Sherlock Jr. (1924)—Buster Keaton

Battleship Potemkin (1925)—Sergei M. Eisenstein

Nosferatu (1922)—F.W. Murnau

What was the first silent film that you fell in love with? Let us know in the comments!

If you’re in the Bay Area this weekend, I highly recommend you check out the San Francisco Silent Film Festival, which will host the “Hitchcock 9”, a series of films from Hitchcock’s early days as a director in the silent era. These classics have been beautifully restored and will be projected on the big screen with live music. Silent films play a vital role in the history of cinema, and festivals like this are guaranteed to make all your future movie-going experiences richer!

In our first feature honoring the Hitchcock 9, we looked at 9 of the Best “Talkie” scenes from Hitchcock. With this feature we’re going to count down Hitchcock’s 9 Best “Silent” scenes. We chose to include only films made after the Hitchcock 9 to take a look at how he exhibited the tools and principles he learned and retained from the silent era in his later works. Though some of these scenes do have some dialog in them, it’s largely disposable and the scenes work purely because of the imagery and score. Using his vast visual vocabulary and some of cinema’s most unforgettable scores, Hitchcock plays us like Beethoven played his piano.

9 Best “Silent” Scenes from Alfred Hitchcock

#9 — Sabotage (1936) — Bus Bomb

This classic scene got a nice little “cameo” in Quentin Tarantino’s Inglorious Basterds. It’s an almost perfect example of Hitchcock doing what he does better than anybody—creating suspense. I say “almost” because, well…I’ll let the man explain for himself:

A boy is tasked with delivering a package which, unbeknownst to him, contains a bomb that will detonate within minutes. We’re aware of how much danger the boy is in (Hitchcock reminds us with cuts to various clocks), but he isn’t, which is a basic recipe for suspense. Other than the scene’s unsavory conclusion, it’s a classic example of Hitchcock pushing all the right buttons to get us to squirm in our seats.

Watch “Bus Bomb” scene:

#8 — Frenzy (1972) — Fingersnappin’

A serial killer has hidden one of his victims (a young woman) in a potato sack on a truck (Hitchcock was never big on practicality). Minutes later, he notices he’s missing his very distinctive (and incriminating) tie pin, which he realizes she must have snatched during the murder. He returns to the truck to search the mountain of sacks for the one containing the body, when the truck suddenly starts moving. Hilarity ensues! Hitchcock was a master at getting his audience to identify with his villains (see Strangers on a Train, Psycho) and this scene accomplishes this in the funniest fashion. The killer has difficulty wresting the pin from the corpse—he gets a cold dead foot in the face and even gets knocked on his ass a couple times. The body is stricken with rigor mortis, so the killer has to gruesomely break the poor girl’s fingers to pry his pin out of her cold dead hands. It’s like a morbid episode of Mr. Bean.

Watch “Fingersnappin” scene:

#7 — Rear Window (1954) — I See You, You See Me

The nightmare of a voyeur is for the person they’re snooping on to look straight back at them, and Hitchcock captures this vividly and thrillingly in Rear Window. James Stewart has been spying on his neighbors from his apartment window, and we peep along with him (an inventive use of Hitchcock’s patented “subjective” filmmaking). Grace Kelly invades the home of Raymond Burr, and we boil with helpless anxiety as Burr catches her in the act and gets violent. When Burr catches on to the plot and shoots an evil eye at Stewart (and us) it’s a terrifying shock. After countless shots of observing the neighbors from a god’s-eye-view, Burr’s stare feels like a knife in the gut. It’s a great Hitchcock moment.

Watch “I See You, You See Me” scene:

#6 — The Man Who Knew Too Much (1956) — Assassination at Royal Albert Hall

Man, this one’s a beauty. It’s also truly “silent”—there’s not a word spoken, only Bernard Herrmann’s gorgeous rendition of “Storm Clouds Cantata”, the lifeblood of the scene. Every shot—of the massive Royal Albert Hall, its grinning, opulent guests, the sea of white that is the choir, and our heroes, Doris Day and James Stewart)—is goddamn pretty. They’re masterfully composed, full of life, perfectly sequenced, and the colors are a revelation. Though it’s easy to get lost in the glorious eye candy, there’s real tension to this scene, which is sold brilliantly by Day. The shot of Reggie Nadler pointing his gun at the screen is as “3-D” as any “3-D” movie to come out in the past ten years.

Watch “Assassination at Royal Albert Hall” scene:

#5 — Dial M for Murder (1954) — Death by Scissors

No matter how many times I see it, the telephone murder scene in Dial M For Murder is always suspenseful, always nail-bitingly delicious. This is Hitchcock at his sharpest—every beat is orchestrated perfectly. The editing is immaculate—each shot adds a new layer of suspense and gives the scene momentum. When the camera semi-circles around from Grace Kelly’s front to her back, then cuts to her front again revealing Robert Cummings standing behind her in strangle mode, it’s truly terrifying (even though we know Cummings has been there all along). Dimitri Tiomkin’s score is as effective as Hitchcock’s visuals.

Watch “Death by Scissors” scene:

#4 — The Birds (1963) — A Murder of Crows

Tippi Hedren is leisurely smoking a cigarette on a bench outside an elementary school, waiting for the children inside to be dismissed. Crows begin to gather on a jungle gym behind her. At first, we see only a few of them, but then we glance away and look again to see several more have appeared without a sound, seemingly out of nothing. We look away and back again and gasp in terror as their numbers are now so great they resemble a demonic, jet-black cloud clinging to the children’s playground. There’s no telling when they’ll strike, but they surely will. The scene is so alarming because of the context the sound provides—the only sound is the faint sound of the children inside singing a youthful tune, reminding us of the stakes.

Watch “A Murder of Crows” scene:

#3 — Vertigo (1958) — The Green Ghost

By the time we reach this scene in Vertigo, James Stewart’s whirlwind of obsession is at its most turbulent. As Kim Novak floats into the room as Madeline, drenched in that uneasy green light, time stands still. We lose our breath, at once in awe and frozen with fear. Stewart’s face is full of desperation, yearning, elation, and pain, a face he only ever used once. Novak is a stirring vision, a guaranteed heart-stopper. Hitchcock was sometimes criticized for his stiff, immobile camerawork, but he circles his camera around Stewart and Novak to create a remarkable image. As we circle, the hotel room around them magically melts away and they’re transported to the stables where they’ve kissed before, then back to the room again, all in one sensuous effects shot. No other Hitchcock scene gets under the skin quite like this one.

Watch “The Green Ghost” scene:

#2 — North by Northwest (1959) — Nowhere to Hide

What I love most about Hitchcock was his defiant nature. He loved to challenge cinematic conventions. He noticed that in the early days of film (especially in German cinema, of which he was a student) chase scenes were claustrophobic, typically set at night in dark alleyways with armed mysterious men in trench coats lurking around every shadowy turn. So what did Hitch do? He set his chase scene in North by Northwest in broad daylight, in a wide-open field, with the pursuer being a dangerously low-flying crop duster. Hitchcock was breaking the rules, chuckling to himself the whole way. This is Hitchcock at his most precise and virtuosic, a symphony of masterstrokes that adds up to one of the most iconic scenes in movie history, only second to…

Watch “Nowhere to Hide” scene:

#1 — Psycho (1960) — Nothing Like a Hot Shower After a Long Hard AAAAAHHHHHHHHH!!!

It’s hard to think of a scene more watched, more beloved, more dissected, more memorable than this one. Its mark on movies and pop culture is indelible. The bracing imagery and staccato cuts are taken to another world by Bernard Herrmann’s thrashing strings. The first people who saw the scene in Psycho had their whole world flipped upside-down when their heroine (the stunning Janet Leigh) was cut to pieces only 45 minutes into the film. They screamed, jumped, ran in the aisles, and collectively thought “What the hell happens now?” They were conditioned to expect movies to play out a certain way. Hitchcock exploited this with Psycho, and because of this scene he was now free to take them to places they’d never been. He pulled an epic swerve on them, the clever devil. As I write this I have the scene playing on repeat in the background. Moments ago I was sinking my nose into my laptop, absorbed in typing this blather, and the strings hit out of nowhere and scared the shit out of me! It’s a dreadful sound. Somewhere out there, Hitch is still chuckling.

Watch “Nothing Like a Hot Shower After a Long Hard AAAAAHHHHHHHHH!!!” scene:

Be sure to come out to the “Hitchcock 9” this weekend at the Castro Theatre in San Francisco!

From June 14-16 at San Francisco’s wonderful Castro Theatre, the San Francisco Silent Film Festival will host the “Hitchcock 9”, a series of films from Hitchcock’s early days as a director in the silent era. The films have been beautifully restored and will be projected on the big screen with live music accompaniment by the acclaimed Mont Alto Motion Pcture Orchestra, Stephen Horne, and others.

Arguably the greatest director to make a movie, Alfred Hitchcock was a product of the silent film era, which he revered. Greats like Murnau, Dreyer, and Chaplin were masters at visual storytelling, and as far as Hitchcock was concerned, this was the medium at its pinnacle. When silent films were elbowed out by the “talkies”, Hitchcock was crushed, as the advent of sound compelled directors to demote visual storytelling below the novelty of the spoken word. Hitchcock referred to this new style of cinema as “filmed theater”, as these films had lost all visual technique and appeal.

Hitchcock, however, retained the sensibilities and discipline he learned from silent film, and applied them to all his work going forward. The nine films included in this festival are paramount to understanding what makes Hitch—and all movies, for that matter—tick.

In the spirit of the festival (and the reason we chose nine), we’re going to explore Hitchcock’s work with a couple of fun lists. We’re going to work backwards, starting here with our list of Hitchcock’s 9 Best “Talkie” Scenes, taking a look at scenes where he demonstrates he isn’t a snob and can shoot dialog as well! Next, we’ll take a look at Hitchcock’s 9 Best “Silent” Scenes, in which he employs and builds on the tools he developed in the silents. These two lists only include films after the silent era. Finally, we’ll hit you with our coverage of this weekend’s Hitchcock 9.

Though Hitchcock held visual storytelling above everything and often treated actors (who he believed must be treated like cattle) and their performances as simply another filmmaking component—like sound or set design—he certainly let them shine when he thought it appropriate. These are our nine favorite scenes where Hitchcock embraced his actors’ gabbiness.

9 Best “Talkie” Scenes from Alfred Hitchcock

#9 — The Lady Vanishes (1938) — Zany Train

Hitchcock was a definite sucker for silly physical comedy (see the Frenzy truck scene, Family Plot runaway car scene). This scene, though not as talky as others on the list, stands out because the dialog is funny as hell and makes the scene better. Michael Redgrave and Margaret Lockwood are engaged in a hilariously choreographed “fight scene” over a pair of spectacles with a bulbous magician. They’re in a train car surrounded by an assortment of the magician’s things, like bunnies in a hat, birds, magic chests, and (funniest part) a life-sized cutout of the magician himself. As the two men scuffle on the ground, Lockwood worriedly bounces around them. “Don’t stand hopping about like a referee! Kick him! See if he’s got a false bottom!” commands Redgrave. The magician (naturally) escapes through the false bottom of his magic chest.

Favorite Quote: “Naughty naughty! That’s a very large nose for a very large pair of spectacles!”

Watch “Zany Train” scene: (skip to 7:45)

#8 — The 39 Steps (1935) — Hannay’s Babble

The 39 Steps has many scenes that blossom into better versions in it’s spiritual successor, North by Northwest, but its public speaking scene (echoed in NXNW by the auction scene) is still very good. Hannay (Robert Donat), on the run from a pack of pursuers, ducks into a random door off the street and is mistaken for a politician who is expected to make a speech at a political rally within moments. He takes this as an opportunity to, at least momentarily, evade the bad guys. Hannay takes the podium and uses his gift for gab and quick wit to dance around his complete ignorance of the issues of the evening. He addresses the congregation: “We’re going to discuss some topic. What shall it be?” A concerned citizen answers, “The idle rich!” to which Hannay cleverly responds, “That’s a bit of an old topic these days, especially for me, because I’m not rich and I’ve never been idle!” A master bullshitter.

Favorite Quote: “MacCrocodile.”

Watch “Hannay’s Babble” scene:

#7 — Strangers on a Train (1951) — I’ll Scratch Your Back…

Hitchcock has always been known to repeat himself in his works (the airplane scenes in North by Northwest and The 39 Steps, countless staircase scenes), and one of the most revisited scenes by the master is the oddly casual and detailed outlining of a hypothetical (?) murder. Perhaps the most eminent is this one, from the brilliant Strangers on a Train. “Wanna hear my idea for a perfect murder?” Robert Walker is as brazen as a child as he submits his macabre scenarios to the apprehensively dismissive Farley Granger, the other titular “stranger”. Walker relishes in his morbid fantasy while we identify (hopefully) with the more humane Granger, who is frightened by Walker’s enthusiasm.

Favorite Quote: “Your wife, my father. Criss-cross!”

Watch “I’ll Scratch Your Back…” scene:

#6 — North by Northwest (1959) — Auction Audible

Cary Grant, as the cosmopolitan wrong-man Roger O. Thornhill, is trapped at a bustling fine art auction, with goons blocking every exit. Out of options, his clever solution is to create mayhem. Hysterically, he begins making nonsensical bids on the valuable pieces: “13 dollars! That’s more than it’s worth!” The crowd begins to vibrate with annoyance, and Grant churns the chaos further: “How do we know it’s not a fake? It looks like a fake!”To which an irritated woman snips, “You’re no fake. You’re a genuine idiot!” “Thank you” replies Grant, pleased with his ingenuity. He hilariously knocks out a security guard, earning him a police escort out of the building. Cary Grant could do anything, and this is one of his finest and most endearing comedic performances.

Favorite Quote: “What took you so long?”—Grant, to the police officers.”

Watch “Auction Audible” scene:

#5 — Rope (1948) — Cat and Mouse

Rupert (James Stewart), in a state of shock, almost pleads with Brandon (John Dall): “Did you think you were God, Brandon? Is that what you thought when you served food from his grave!?” Brandon and Phillip (Farley Granger) have just hosted a party with the centerpiece being a chest containing their dead friend David (who they’ve freshly strangled). Strangely, they did it for the thrill, and they would have gotten away with it had it not been for their final party guest, the uber-intelligent Stewart. Granger’s neurotic paranoia explodes as Stewart begins to Sherlock their little scheme. “Cat and mouse, cat and mouse! But which is the cat and which is the mouse…” growls Granger. Stewart and Dall’s tug-of-war about the morality of a “superior race” is fascinating and was hotly relevant at the time. Stewart gets to show big emotion here, which fits nicely with Rope’s theater-esque presentation.

Favorite Quote: “If nothing else, a man should stand by his words, but you’ve given my words a meaning I’ve never dreamed of!”

Watch “Cat and Mouse” scene:

#4 — Shadow of a Doubt (1943) — Did He Just Say That?

When Uncle Charlie (played by Joseph Cotton, gifted with a classically evil face) sits with his sister’s family for a quaint, suburban, All-American dinner, he shatters the cheerful mood with a spit-take-worthy misogynistic tirade. We slowly zoom in on him as he pompously describes widows as “silly…useless…faded, fat, greedy women.” His good-hearted niece (Teresa Wright) defends the widows: “They’re alive! They’re human beings!” Cotton then, in a masterstroke by Hitchcock, looks straight at the camera and replies, “Are they?” Positively rattling. Uncle Charlie is one of the baddest baddies in Hitchcock’s oeuvre, and this is his moment. You can almost hear hundreds of moviegoers in 1943 collectively screaming “BOOOOOOOO!!!”

Favorite Quote: The whole dirty, rotten thing

Watch “Did He Just Say That?” scene:

#3 — Notorious (1946) — Heartbreak at the Races

An electric scene from my favorite Hitchcock film. Alicia Huberman (Ingrid Bergman), an American daughter of a Nazi spy, has fallen for US government agent T.R. Devlin (Cary Grant), who is forced by his superiors to instruct her to seduce Alex Sebastian, one of her father’s old friends in order to obtain the [MacGuffin!]. They’re conflicted about the assignment, yet are too passive and stubborn to blow the mission and reveal their true feelings for one another, frustrating the both of them. In a (public) secret meeting at a crowded horse race, Bergman reports to Grant on her progress: “You can add Sebastian’s name to my list of playmates.” Grant viciously assures Bergman that her “loose” behavior doesn’t surprise him: “You almost had me believing…that a woman like you could…change her spots.” Bergman is heartbreaking as she hides her wet eyes behind her binoculars. Grant fights not to flinch as he suppresses his love.

Favorite Quote: “Dry your eyes, baby. It’s out of character.”

Watch “Heartbreak at the Races” scene: (skip to 8:10 for the scene)

#2 — Psycho (1960) — Dinner With Norman

Birds are a major motif in Psycho. In the most loquacious of the film’s numerous iconic scenes, our protagonist—Marion Crane from Phoenix—shares an unsettling dinner of sandwiches and milk in the Bates Motel back office with the schizoid mama’s boy Norman. The dynamic between Janet Leigh and Anthony Perkins is as nimble as the stuffed birds on the walls once were, jumping from friendly to aggressive to empathetic to frightening, all seamlessly. Like magic, these two just click, giving performances of a lifetime. Hitchcock was often (unjustly) accused of mistreating his actors, but here he gives them his uninhibited trust. The funny thing is, despite these characters’ fates, they make a fleeting connection: “You’ve never had an empty moment in your whole life, have you?” says Perkins. Somberly, Leigh replies, “Only my share.”

Favorite Quote: “People always mean well. They cluck their thick tongues and shake their heads and suggest oh so very delicately…”

Watch “Dinner With Norman” scene:

#1 — North by Northwest (1959) — Sex on a Train

Eva Marie Saint is sex and seduction in the flesh sitting across from Cary Grant on the train in North by Northwest. This is one of the most suggestive, sexually charged scenes of dialog ever, especially considering the time period it belongs to. Marie Saint is thrilling in her bluntness: “It’s going to be a long night, and I don’t particularly like the book I’ve started. You know what I mean?” “Yes, I know exactly what you mean” replies Grant, who is as in awe of her lustiness as we are. When she gently puckers her lips to blow out a lit match in Grant’s fingers, it’s time to put the kiddies to bed. These are two of the most attractive movie stars ever virtually eye-fucking each other. Hitchcock believed that sex scenes should have an element of suspense to them, and by the end of this one we’re so worked up we could explode.
Favorite Quote: “Luck had nothing to do with it.”

Watch “Sex on a Train” scene:

Check back soon for our list of Hitchcock’s 9 Best “Silent” Scenes and be sure to come out to the Hitchcock 9 this weekend in San Francisco!