The San Francisco Silent Film Festival returns to the @castrotheatre.bsky.social May 6-10. We're pleased to be supporting screenings of QUEEN KELLY & BOOKKEEPER KREMEKE.
Schedule and tix: silentfilm.org Use promo code NOIRSF at checkout for a $2 discount.
#SFSFF2026 @eddiemuller.bsky.social
man sat in a train, he is playing a trumpet as the other passengers look on
Donald Byrd, New York City
William Claxton, 1959
Patti LuPone in "Sweeny Todd" (with Manoel Felciano) - BOTD
Supporting indie bookstores isn’t just about where you buy your books—it’s about keeping money in your community.
Community is more important now than ever before, and indie bookstores have proven at every turn that they will protect, defend, & care for their community members without hesitation.
Merkel, Keeler and Rogers in costume, posing a row facing the camera, skirts pulled up Slightly to the knee.
Una Merkel, Ruby Keeler and Ginger Rogers for “42nd Street” (1933)
My essay for the 4K release of TROUBLE IN PARADISE—Ernst Lubitsch's masterpiece—is up at the @criterion.bsky.social website.
www.criterion.com/current/post...
JOHN CAZALE met his future and tragically final girlfriend Meryl Streep when they worked together on the Central Park production of “Measure for Measure” in New York in 1976.
John died 2yrs later of Lung Cancer, aged just 42.
“She seemed to go to extremes in order to make the play as obscene and immoral as possible.” This week in literary history, Mae West is sentenced to ten days in jail for obscenity.
This black-and-white still from Mikio Naruse’s 1955 cinematic masterpiece, Floating Clouds (Ukigumo), captures a moment of heavy emotional stillness between the two lead actors, Hideko Takamine and Masayuki Mori. The composition is tight and intimate, focusing on the weary expressions of Yukiko and Kengo as they lean toward one another over a patterned kotatsu cover. Takamine’s character rests her head pensively, her gaze averted, while Mori looks on with a shadowed, contemplative expression that mirrors the film's broader themes of post-war disillusionment and the complexities of human attachment.
Still from 1955 Japanese movie “Floating Cloud”. Director Mikio Naruse. Actors Hideko Takamine and Masayuki Mori
Remembering DAPHNE DU MAURIER — who left us 37yrs ago today, aged 82.
One of France's most celebrated film stars, Nathalie Baye, has died aged 77. She became one of France's most decorated actresses and worked alongside pioneers of the French New Wave including François Truffaut and Jean-Luc Godard.
"She was able to create worlds in which people and even houses are mysterious and mutable; haunted rooms in which disembodied spirits sometimes dance at absolute liberty..." — Olivia Laing
Daphne du Maurier
May 13, 1907 – April 19, 1989
A cardboard standee of a nurse and a treatment station in 1935.
An Emergency First Aid Booth for "nervous patrons” of James Whale's BRIDE OF FRANKENSTEIN, which premiered #OTD in 1935.
Movies need this kind of showmanship again. #FilmSky
"The end of Marine World Africa/U.S.A. in Redwood City, like the beginning, sounded completely made up."
Where I pay tribute to the bonkers theme park of our youth, and how its move cemented a Silicon Valley takeover.
Gift link for the Peninsula kids 🎁 🐬 🐯 ⬇️
www.sfchronicle.com/totalsf/arti...
Jayne's hair is wet and slicked back, she has on long rhinestone earrings. She's wearing a halter-style suit that appears to have studs in a star pattern. Her eyes are closed and she's shaking someone's hand. The puppy held in Jayne's left arm is very chill even though it appears to be a dachshund (a breed I love but let's face it, not known for chill).
Jayne Mansfield holds a puppy as she prepares for a poolside photo shoot, 1957. I always look for photos of her with little to no makeup and less "done" hair, because she was so naturally gorgeous. She looks like a kid here. Mansfield was #BornThisDay in 1933.
Here's birthday boy Tim Curry on Broadway as Mozart in Amadeus.
You might also recognize the gentleman to his right.
This week's review covers POLLYANNA (1920), Mary Pickford's first release for her new United Artists studio. This sentimental story was the result of ice cold calculation on Pickford's part: she needed a sure hit to establish her business and she got it.
moviessilently.com/2026/04/19/p...
Lena Horne backstage at the Chez Paree, Chicago, 1947. Wayne Miller.
The March on Washington, 28 August 1963.
Photo by Bruce Davidson.
Catalina has always fascinated me. I wish I had gone before the ferry got crazy expensive (They get a pass on high food prices because almost everything is shipped in) Anyhoo, this place looks popular with the Hollywood types so let’s mangia! 1/2
Villa D’Amore
Catalina Island 1948
#VintageMenus
In honor and memory of Nathalie Baye, whom I interviewed in 2002; her generosity was supreme; she called me, while on location, to talk—with great admiration—about her work with Godard: "It's impossible to be bad in one of his films. You see yourself onscreen as yourself."
Nathalie Baye (1948-2026) 🤍
Nathalie Baye
6 July 1948 – 18 April 2026 RIP
Our permanent exhibit purposefully starts with the 1906 earthquake, which occurred exactly 120 years ago today. It's an event that still defines the city and it was because of it that the modern-day Tenderloin was born. Only one Tenderloin building survived the destruction: the Hibernia Bank.
This still from Yasujirō Ozu’s 1949 cinematic masterpiece, Late Spring (Banshun), captures a profound moment of transition as Noriko (Setsuko Hara) prepares for her wedding ceremony. She is dressed in a formal wedding furisode, featuring a classic white-on-white pattern that conveys purity and high social standing, topped with a traditional tsunokakushi (wedding hood). Beside her, her father, Shukichi (Chishū Ryū), sits in a formal black kimono, his quiet, dignified posture reflecting the bittersweet gravity of the scene.
Actress Setsuko Hara and actor Chishū Ryū in a scene from the classic 1949 Japanese film Late Spring (Banshun), directed by Yasujirō Ozu. Noriko is dressed in a traditional wedding kimono for her marriage ceremony.
Kathy Acker, USA experimental novelist, playwright, essayist & postmodernist writer, was BOTD in 1947 & died too soon of breast cancer in 1997 at 50. Her 1984 breakthrough novel "Blood and Guts in High School" was banned in Germany & South Africa for its macabre, perverse content
On April 27, 1975, Cher & Tina Turner performed a Beatles medley with legendary singer Kate Smith on The Cher Show.
m.youtube.com/watch?v=FKUG...
“Photographers Linda admired were those who got off-the-cuff moments, like Henri Cartier-Bresson and Jacques Henri Lartigue, where what they’re doing is a form of reportage that moved into art..." — Paul McCartney
Linda McCartney
September 24, 1941 – April 17, 1998
Few writers can be said to have written books that have changed the course of literature in their language. Gabriel García Márquez achieved just that, especially thanks to his novel One Hundred Years of Solitude...
Gabriel García Márquez
March 6, 1927 – April 17, 2014
An exit stanchion in a building reads “Dramatic Exit.”
This rehearsal studio understands its customers.