Silents Are Golden

Rare silents and talkies unspool tonight through Monday at Cinecon, the 37th annual convention of the Society of Cinephiles, at the Egyptian Theatre, 6712 Hollywood Blvd., and the nearby Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel. The preservation-conscious organization also honors film veterans, and this year’s honorees include director Budd Boetticher, Jane Russell, Eddie Albert and renowned filmmaker-historian Kevin Brownlow.

Russell will be represented on screen by “Son of Paleface” (1948), in which she was memorably teamed with Bob Hope; Albert by “Brother Rat” (1938); and Boetticher by his classic western “Seven Men From Now” (1956), recently restored. Brownlow will present “The Eagle” (1925), freshly restored and one of Rudolph Valentino’s finest. There will be screenings of Mary Pickford’s “Through the Back Door” (1921) and the long-thought-lost 1929 musical “The Song of Love,” starring vaudeville star Belle Baker. Throughout the convention there will be a movie memorabilia show at the Hollywood Roosevelt.

Brownlow will also present John Ford’s 1924 silent classic “The Iron Horse,” which screens at the Egyptian on Friday at 7:35 p.m. The film’s stated purpose is to present “an accurate and faithful ... pictorial history of the building of the first American transcontinental railroad.” In the telling of this monumental feat of construction, which took seven years, Ford never lets his film’s conventional foreground story--a romance with Madge Bellamy as well as a vanquishing of bad guys--overwhelm his celebration of the men of many nationalities and races who labored in the landmark task. Significantly, Ford’s hero (George O’Brien, star of the often-revived “Sunrise”) is not a boss but a workman himself who drives the last spike linking the Union and Central Pacific railroads, which thus spanned the continent.

In presenting this “pictorial history,” Ford delivers a vision of the American West and its conquest that was to echo throughout his career in many more memorable westerns.

“The Iron Horse” is filled with the limitless vistas that were to become a Ford trademark, plus such other characteristic Ford elements as his eloquently staged, spectacular battles with the Cheyenne, his streak of sentimental and boisterous Irish camaraderie, his overall concern with authenticity and his deeply personal expressiveness. It’s worth noting that the Cheyenne are not the film’s villains. Late in life Ford felt the need to make amends to all the American Indians he killed off in his movies with his elegiac “Cheyenne Autumn” (1966).

The terse, laconic “Seven Men From Now” (Saturday at 5:10 p.m.) is the first of a fabled series of westerns directed by Boetticher, written by the late Burt Kennedy and starring Randolph Scott. Scott plays a strong, silent type crossing a desert whose encounter with two men leaves them dead but whose second encounter, with a married couple (Gail Russell, Walter Reed) trying to get to California via covered wagon, finds him lending a helping hand.

We learn about Scott and his mission very gradually, as the film builds tautly and surely to a finish of resounding impact. There’s an instant charge between Scott and Russell that is all the more powerful for being suppressed; the film exemplifies the effect of information and emotion held in reserve. Lee Marvin intensifies the story with a leering, insinuating cynicism. Cinecon info: (800) 411-0455.

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Apollo Cinema, a distributor of short films, has assembled a terrific program of 10 provocative works by Oscar-nominated animators Don Hertzfeldt and Bill Plympton under the title “The Don and Bill Show: Slightly Bent,” which begins a weekend run at the Sunset 5, 8000 Sunset Blvd., with screenings at midnight on Fridays and Saturdays and at 11 a.m. Saturdays and Sundays, with a special Labor Day screening at 11 a.m. Monday. Because Hertzfeldt and Plympton are men of pitch-dark humor, subversive sensibilities and no regard whatsoever for political correctness, the matinees are not recommended for children.

Plympton’s images have the feel of casual sketches, often of ordinary middle-aged men in suits who undergo nightmarish experiences, frequently at the hands of women. His “More Sex and Violence,” which has explicit moments, at one point envisions a woman’s experience of a date entirely from the back of her throat. In his “Surprise Cinema” it’s as if “Candid Camera’s” late Allen Funt had turned evil, setting up cruel, even lethal pranks on his unsuspecting victims. With “Eat” Plympton takes us to a tres charmant French restaurant only to turn it into a veritable Dante’s Inferno, where a woman talks her head off pretty much literally, where two little boys try to start World War III and where a diner vividly regrets expressing displeasure to a waitress.

Minimalist Hertzfeldt is no less scabrous with his stick figures, with their often round circle heads and popping round eyes. “Billy’s Balloon,” his tale of revenge centering on a violence-prone little boy, has the feel of a classic, and his “Lily and Jim” sends up dating hell. “Ah L’Amour,” like Plympton’s “Your Face,” evokes the notion of woman as devourer. The program concludes with “Rejected,” a series of promotional spots and commercials by Hertzfeldt too surreal and unsettling to ever make it on the tube. (323) 848-3500.

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A standout in last year’s annual Hungarian Film Festival of Los Angeles, Ildiko Enyedi’s stylish yet poignant fable “Simon Magus” with veteran Peter Andorai in the title role, screens Saturday, Sunday and Monday at 10 a.m. at the Sunset 5.

Middle-aged, paunchy and weary, Andorai’s Simon has been summoned from Budapest to Paris to put his parapsychological gift to use in solving a murder. An old rival (Peter Halas) then lassos him into an extraordinary test of their powers. In the meantime, Simon, a tall, bearded man of commanding presence and contemplative temperament, is captivated by a beautiful student (Julie Delarme).

There is a shimmering, poetic quality to this film, which seems at once to be floating along in its own realm and also happening in the here and now. Returning as part of the Laemmle Theaters’ ongoing World Cinema 2001 series, “Simon Magus” screens Saturday and Sunday at 10 a.m. at the Sunset 5, (323) 848-3500. and on Sept. 8 and 9 at the Monica 4-Plex, 1332 2nd St., Santa Monica, (310) 394-9741.

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“The Minister of Fear: Fritz Lang in America” continues at LACMA with screenings of “The Return of Frank James” (1940) and “Western Union” (1941) Friday at 7:30 p.m. and of “Rancho Notorious” (1952) and “Moonfleet” (1955) Saturday at 7:30 p.m. (323) 857-6010.