Hush, hush: Silent Movie Mondays begin June 8

Movies, movies everywhere. With Seattle International Film Festival in full swing and summer blockbuster season underway, the choices are daunting. Yet there are few opportunities to see silent films with music.

That near-vacuum will soon be filled by the latest edition of "Silent Movie Mondays," which kicks off at 7 p.m. tomorrow at the Paramount with a free showing of Greta Garbo's perverse 1926 love story, "Flesh and the Devil."

As usual, Dennis James will accompany the film at the Paramount's Mighty Wurlitzer Organ. The series, presented by Trader Joe's as well as Seattle Theatre Group, emphasizes female stars and the role that male directors played in creating some of their most effective vehicles.

The Paramount series shows them all at or near their silent-era peak.

Garbo's MGM classic, a romantic triangle with a twist ending, was the creation of one of her most sympathetic directors, Clarence Brown. They went on to work together on adaptations of "Anna Christie" and "Anna Karenina," though "Flesh and the Devil" was probably their steamiest collaboration.

Garbo was in the midst of a famous affair with her co-star, John Gilbert, which led one film historian, Paul Rotha, to declare that "the theme of the film is sheer undiluted sex." Rotha pointed out that Brown and his cinematographer, William Daniels (another Garbo veteran), used a series of close-ups to get this across with "considerable effect."

Next up (June 15) is Henry King's 1924 pirate tale, "Romola," an adaptation of a George Eliot novel starring Lillian Gish and her sister, Dorothy, and featuring Ronald Colman. The Mussolini-like villain (William Powell) impregnates a country girl (Dorothy), marries the heroine Romola (Lillian) and becomes dictator of Florence.

According to Lillian's biographer, Charles Affron, this costume drama "only fleetingly requires Lillian to express the deep emotions her public had come to expect," but King still captured "the refinement of her gestures, the candor, the rapt stillness that binds the viewer to her." The picture was praised mostly for its visual splendor.

Lina Basquette and Cecil B. DeMille teamed up for the 1929 melodrama, "The Godless Girl" (June 22), which DeMille directed shortly after making his religious epic, "King of Kings." Although he shot a few dialogue scenes with Basquette, this was officially his last silent film.

As the title suggests, Basquette (the half sister of actress-dancer Marge Champion) plays a high-school atheist who holds secret meetings with her equally skeptical peers. She ends up in a vicious reform school. Critics were puzzled by the result, though it's still regarded as the high point of Basquette's short career.

"DeMille had his tongue in his cheek when he directed this hack yarn with religious undercurrents," wrote Variety's critic at the time.

The New York Times' Mordaunt Hall complained that "the story is punctured with vapid, religious admonitions and strange, heavenly warnings in the form of crosses burnt into the palms of the heroine."

The Paramount series ends June 29 with "Seventh Heaven," a 1927 box-office smash that earned Oscars for its star, Janet Gaynor, and director, Frank Borzage. Gaynor actually won the award for three films. In addition to "Seventh Heaven," she was honored for "Sunrise" and Borzage's "Street Angel."

In "Seventh Heaven," she plays a Parisian street waif who is repeatedly beaten by her guardian, then rescued by a sewer worker (Charles Farrell). When war is declared and he's sent to the front, Benjamin Glazer's script turns on the waterworks.

It was widely noted at the time that Gaynor blossomed under Borzage's direction, achieving an intimacy, especially in her scenes with Farrell, that gave "Seventh Heaven" a legendary romantic status. Henry King remade the picture as a 1937 talkie, with Jimmy Stewart and Simone Simon.

Most of these actresses were less successful than their directors in making the transition to talkies. Basquette retired early. The Gishes played mostly supporting or character roles after sound came in. Gaynor had few significant roles after a late-1930s triumph in "A Star Is Born."

Only Garbo continued to enjoy consistent starring-role success until she quit Hollywood in the early 1940s.

If you've never seen a Garbo picture, "Flesh and the Devil" is a very good place to start. And you can't beat the price. Trader Joe's, which has sponsored the series since 2002, is paying for it, so it's free to you.