Films + Tickets
FESTIVAL FILMS + PASSES/TICKETS
APRIL 11-13, 2025 AT THE REVUE CINEMA, 400 RONCESVALLES AVE.
FESTIVAL PASS $76.00 / SENIOR/YOUTH* PASS $69.00 (same as last year)
SATURDAY OR SUNDAY PASS $30.00 / SENIOR/YOUTH $27.00 (same as last year)
SINGLE TICKET: $18.00
DISCOUNTED SENIOR/YOUTH* TICKETS will be available for some screenings: $15.00
HST included in the base price, Universe will add their service fee to purchases
*Senior= 65 yrs & OVER Youth=25 yrs & under Children =12 yrs & under
TSFF RESERVES THE RIGHT TO REPLACE FILMS IF, DUE TO UNFORESEEN CIRCUMSTANCES, THEY CANNOT BE SCREENED
FOR MORE INFO ON TICKETS/REFUNDS PLEASE GO TO TICKET INFO
PASSES AND TICKETS ARE NOT MAILED
LIMITED NUMBER OF ADVANCE PASSES ALSO AVAILABLE FROM SQUARE SITE
(if the webpage doesn't open properly, copy/paste Film Festival Passes | Toronto Silent Film Festival (square.site)
FRIDAY APRIL 11, 2025 Start Time: 6:45pm
THE WIND 1928
Director: Victor Sjöström
Lillian Gish, Lars Hanson
Accompaniment: William O'Meara
Collectors Spotlight: Lou Sabini
The Wind is one of few films that can demonstrate the full power of what silent era films could achieve as an art form-and it came at the very close of that era. Swedish Director Victor Sjöström visually captures the stifling emotional effects of swirling wind torn landscapes encasing and driving the characters (and the audiences) with increasing dread toward inevitable madness. Lillian Gish, in her final and greatest silent film, quickly latches onto its psycho-erotic undertone in a tour de force performance. Letty is forced to travel from her safe existence in Virginia to the untamed West to start a new life. As she steps off the train, her life and her sanity quickly begins to unravel as she finds herself isolated in a desert wasteland full of leering men, hostile women and a ferocious wind that never stops howling.
Shot on location in the Mojave Desert, this masterwork is a harrowing, almost mythical dramatisation of the insidious destructive ways inherent in man and nature. The climactic sandstorm ranks among the most astonishing sequences in all of silent cinema, an expressionistic rampage that spirals into full-on horror. One of the all-time cinematic classics, this is a film of terrible beauty, leaving the viewer haunted by images long after the film fades to black.
This film will be presented on 16mm film courtesy of collector/author Lou Sabini. Please read his bio in The Film Notes
SATURDAY APRIL 12, 2025 Start Time: 1:30 pmMANTRAP 1926Director: Victor FlemingClara Bow, Ernest Torrence, Percy Marmont, Eugene PalletteAccompaniment: Tania GillMake it part of a Festival or Saturday PassThe Jazz baby goes west in the absolutely delightfully frothy Clara Bow film. As the manicurist with the most, she catches the eye of backwoodsman Joe during his trip to the "big city" and brings her back to Mantrap as his bride! Ok, some suspension of disbelief is needed for that, but trust us when we say it works--and if you've never seen big lunky Ernest Torrence stealing scenes, this is a good one to start with. Meanwhile, high-priced divorce lawyer Ralph is tired of his whining clientele and is need of a retreat away from those women! Enter Woodbury (Pallette) who whisks him off to the boonies in Mantrap Manitoba Canada for a manly respite vacation.You know what's going to happen when the biggest flirt on the planet sees him-wedding ring be damned! Bonus: the 2 women scenario writers turned the original misogynistic Sinclair Lewis story into a definite pro-feminist flick.In a bit of a reversal for Canadians who are used to having parts of our nation standing in for the USA, we have California shooting locations standing in for mythical Mantrap, Manitoba! And as with any American film with Canada in it, expect Mounties.Clara declared this as her favourite film. Beautifully photographed by James Wong Howe’s (one of his first as DOP), it's a light as a feathers romp and a breakthrough for Clara. Plus: short subjects
SATURDAY APRIL 12, 2025 Start Time: 4pm
THE LAST COMMAND 1928
Director: Josef von Sternberg
Emil Jannings, Evelyn Brent, William Powell
Accompaniment: Morgan-Paige Melbourne
The Last Command is richly woven film tapestry centered on the emotional disintegration of an exiled Tsarist General reduced to playing bit parts in the Hollywood film-making machine. German actor Emil Jannings (seen in TSFF Faust 2011, Variete 2012 & Last Command 2014 ) won the first Academy Award as Best Actor for his role in this film (and the now lost Way of All Flesh) .
Director Josef von Sternberg brilliantly and with great wit, send-ups the Hollywood machine. It features stunning virtuoso cinematography, grandly designed sets, effects and a rousing Russian Revoltution sequences.
A former Russian Imperial General flees his revolutionary ravaged country only to wind up a decade later in Hollywood as a lowly extra begging for work. His former revolutionary foe, now a film director, hires him to play a role in a film about the Russian Revolution. The General’s tenuous grasp of reality is broken and his emotional stability collapses in the face of the weight of his own personal history in that conflict. SUNDAY APRIL 13, 2025 Start Time: 1:30pm
New Restoration!
THE JOHNSTOWN FLOOD 1926
Director: Irving Cummings
George O'Brien, Janet Gaynor, Max Davidson
Accompaniment: Marilyn Lerner
THE JOHNSTOWN FLOOD re-creates one of the greatest disasters of the late 19th Century in the USA. In May of 1889 over 2,000 people in Johnstown, Pennsylvania, died as a result of the dam failure that let loose a torrent of water. In her first major role, Gaynor plays a young woman smitten with dashing engineer O'Brien (his first starring role), whose pleadings about the imminent collapse of the local dam are dismissed by the greed and corruption of company managers. Who will warn the townspeople of the imminent disaster? At close to a century after making, the disastrous flood is an edge-of-your-seat riveting-pre-CGI marvel of effects and a wonder to behold.
The film has been newly restored in 4K by The Film Preserve, Ltd. and The Maltese Film Works, from 35mm elements preserved at George Eastman Museum. Noted preservationists Robert Harris and James Mockoski (archivist for Francis Ford Coppola) worked on the restoration. "The importance of ‘The Johnstown Flood’ to film history is difficult to overstate. The special effects of the film combine miniatures and sets to depict the actual historic event of flood and its aftermath, pioneering complex techniques,” Harris explains. “It was the ‘Star Wars’ of its day.” Only one known nitrate print of the film survived, preserved by George Eastman Museum in Rochester NY. and this restoration by Robert Harris (The Godfather, My Fair Lady, Lawrence of Arabia restorations) and James Mockoski is the result of that.
TSFF is grateful to Rialto Pictures for the use of the film. All photos courtesy of Rialto Pictures/ The Film Preserve/The Maltese Film Works
Please note: there are depictions of anti-Semitic stereotyping within this film.Plus: Short Subjects
SUNDAY APRIL 13, 2025 Start Time: 4pm
LAFFS IN THE AFT (formally 1000 Laffs)
Accompaniment: Jordan Klapman
Laffs in the Aft presents Harold Lloyd in FOR HEAVEN’S SAKE
Plus the attack of the straw boatered comedians.
Nothing says snappy slapstick like a chap sporting a straw boater. This year, the TSFF is proud to present bespectacled Harold Lloyd, ever-embarrassed Charley Chase, and a pre-Oliver Hardy Stan Laurel in a trio of comic triumphs.
Nothing says snappy slapstick like a chap sporting a straw boater. This year, the TSFF is proud to present bespectacled Harold Lloyd, ever-embarrassed Charley Chase, and a pre-Oliver Hardy Stan Laurel in a trio of comic triumphs.
In our main feature, FOR HEAVEN’S SAKE, Harold Lloyd plays millionaire Harold J. Manners, whose devil-may-care ways take a turn heavenward when he goes gaga for the daughter of the minister at a grungy downtown mission. Of course, this being a Harold Lloyd comedy, it climaxes in an adrenaline-pumping chase that tears up the streets of 1920s L.A. (pedestrians beware).
But first, Stan Laurel sports a skimmer (in lieu of his trademark derby) in A MAN ABOUT TOWN, a fun ten minutes of merry mix-ups. Laurel & Hardy’s ubiquitous nemesis, James (“D’oh!”) Finlayson, joins in as a store detective who bases most of his detecting on a hunch.
ASSISTANT WIVES* sees Charley Chase, silent comedy’s ultimate everyman (if every man was unusually charming, charismatic and clever) in search of a wife — pronto! — to impress the boss. What follows is a frantic farce full of mistaken identities, slamming doors, clambering up and down fire escapes, and soup going unspilled.
Finally, we showcase a certain iconic animated mouse is his very first film (not the one you think), which was designed and produced for the silent screen. We’re proud to present it with a brand new score by our own Jordan Klapman.
*TSFF is grateful to Kit Parker Films, Richard M. Roberts and Paul Gierucki for the use of the new restoration of Assistant Wives
Programmed and presented by Chris Seguin $18/$15- Senior/Youth Special Price for children 12yrs and under $9