Category: Toronto Cinemas

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Buster Keaton’s final word

Eric Veillette

This piece was originally published by the Toronto Star on March 5, 2013. It appears here in a slightly edited form. Buster Keaton, who rose to fame in the 1920s, directed and starred in some of the most famous films of the silent era. The General (1926) is ranked 34th on Sight and Sound magazine’s list of the 50 greatest films of all time. Nearly four decades later, during a chilly October in 1965, Keaton was in Toronto, appearing in The Scribe , an industrial safety film commissioned by the Construction Safety Association of Ontario. It would be his last film. On Feb. 1, 1966, Keaton … Continue reading Buster Keaton’s final word

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Charles Dickens in the silent era

Eric Veillette

This article was originally published by the Toronto Star on December 28, 2012. The silent era saw the production of about 100 films based on Dickens’ work. Eight shorts, made between 1901 and 1912 — including the earliest filmed version of A Christmas Carol — will be shown on Monday as part of the Dickens on Screen series at TIFF Bell Lightbox. Capturing Dickens on film was an obvious leap for filmmakers, says Adrian Wootton, series curator and chief executive of the British Film Commission. “There was enormous familiarity with his work,” he says on the phone from New York … Continue reading Charles Dickens in the silent era

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The Last Laugh: Banned in Ontario

Eric Veillette

Released in 1924, Murnau’s film was not screened in Ontario until 1928. During the winter of 1925, F.W. Murnau’s masterpiece, The Last Laugh, was shown to a very exclusive group of Ontario movie-goers. The audience was the Ontario Board of Censors, and while they were no doubt impressed by the film’s dazzling cinematography and lack of subtitles, the film was banned simply because it was made in Germany. Murnau’s film was screened in other provinces and shattered box office records in the United States, but provincial treasurer W.H. Price, under whose authority the censors sanitized cinema, maintained that with the … Continue reading The Last Laugh: Banned in Ontario

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Modern-day silent films at the Toronto Silent Film Festival

Eric Veillette

The following article was originally published in the Globe & Mail on March 24, 2012. It appears here in a slightly edited form. When Shirley Hughes launched the Toronto Silent Film Festival in 2009, she never thought that a modern-day silent film like The Artist could claim the Best Picture Oscar, sparking a revival of interest in early cinema. Closing tonight, the festival has long placed importance on connecting the past to the present. The opening night film, Our Dancing Daughters (1928), starring a young Joan Crawford, draws many parallels to the Oscar-winning film. “It’s a great example of a … Continue reading Modern-day silent films at the Toronto Silent Film Festival

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Watching Napoleon with Kevin Brownlow

Eric Veillette

Last week, on assignment for France 24, I attended the U.S. premiere of film historian Kevin Brownlow’s most recent restoration of Abel Gance’s monumental 1927 silent epic Napoleon. Under the auspices of the San Francisco Silent Film Festival, over the course of four nights, roughly 12 000 people experienced cinematic history. Gance’s film hadn’t graced a North American screen since a Francis Ford Coppola-produced roadshow played several cities, including Toronto’s O’Keefe Centre, over thirty years ago. It did play Toronto earlier, when a mangled, incomprehensible cut by MGM premiered at the Loew’s Yonge St. Theatre in October, 1928. “What Gance … Continue reading Watching Napoleon with Kevin Brownlow

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Is cinema facing a digital dark age?

Eric Veillette

The following is an edited version of an article originally published in the Toronto Star on Sunday, January 29. As the conversion to digital projection is taking place in theatres all over North America, I wrote this as part of my on-going examination of the movie-goers interaction with film. In October, 2010, a digitally colourized version of George Melies iconic 1902 film, A Trip to the Moon (Un Voyage Dans la Lune), was shown at the Giornate del cinema muto in Pordenone, Italy. As flickering splotches of colour danced on the screen along to Air’s modern soundtrack, audible groans of … Continue reading Is cinema facing a digital dark age?

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The Bloor Cinema returns

Eric Veillette

This week, the former Madison, Midtown, Capri, Eden and Bloor Cinema is revived anew as the Bloor Hot Docs Cinema. I’m looking forward to checking out the renovation, as well as the flick — The Topp Twins: Untouchable Girls — which may or may not be a remake of Getting Gertie’s Garter, which played the Midtown on May 25, 1946. (It’s not.) The structure at 506 Bloor St. West , which opened in December, 1913, has  been discussed a few times at Silent Toronto: So Young So Bad, disappearing doors at the Bloor The Evolution of Cool The Bloor Cinema: … Continue reading The Bloor Cinema returns

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From Chaplin to The Artist: Music and silent film as enduring allies

Eric Veillette

This article was originally published by CBC Music on February 29, 2012. It appears here in a slightly edited form. On the screen of the Museum of the Moving Image, Charlie Chaplin’s iconic Tramp character prompts roars of laughter from the audience. The film is The Immigrant (1917), and the seats of the Brooklyn-based theatre are filled with children seeing a silent film for the first time. Their eyes are wide, beaming, and the laughter is infectious. For the last several years, New York-based musician Ben Model has paid a weekly visit to the museum to provide piano accompaniment for … Continue reading From Chaplin to The Artist: Music and silent film as enduring allies

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Silent Toronto curates exhibit on Toronto movie theatres

Eric Veillette

I was incredibly honoured when the Images Festival called on me to curate an exhibit looking back at Toronto’s 116 year-old movie-going traditions. I hope you all get a chance to check it out. Runs March 22-April 28 at Urbanspace Gallery, 401 Richmond St. W, Toronto. Toronto’s movie-going history stretches far back to 1896, with the first projection of the Lumière Cinematographe at the Exhibition and a few days later at 96 Yonge Street. With the arrival of new technologies and changes in movie-going tastes over the years, several hundred theatres consisting of converted store-fronts, smaller neighbourhood houses and outright … Continue reading Silent Toronto curates exhibit on Toronto movie theatres

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Phonofilm returns to Toronto

Eric Veillette

As we’ve previously examined, Toronto movie-goers were privy to various synchronized sound and film experiments before the medium settled permanently in the fall of 1928. On December 8, 1927, weeks before aviation epic (and recent Silent Sundays selection) Wings premiered at the Princess Theatre on King St. West, audiences were treated to the return of the Deforest Phonofilm, short sound and talking films dubbed “the revolution of the motion picture” by the Globe & Mail. The sound-on-film process, consisting of musical acts and Vaudeville routines, was made functional due to inventions by Theodore Case — who by 1927 was working … Continue reading Phonofilm returns to Toronto