At the Birth of the Holiday Film

The UCLA Film and Television Archive and the Silent Society of Hollywood Heritage Inc. are celebrating the holiday season tonight with “Silent Night,” a series of rare Christmas short subjects that span the entire silent film era.

The films--some of which are almost 100 years old--are so rare that little is known about them. But that will be part of the fun for audiences; some of the films will be like a beautifully wrapped special present, others will be minor stocking stuffers.

The majority of the 14 films being screened at UCLA’s James Bridges Theatre are from the Library of Congress; two were recently preserved by UCLA: “Two Christmas-Tides,” a Vitagraph production from 1909, and the 1907 Vitagraph “A Night in Dreamland.” Among the other titles featured on the program are “Santa Claus,” a series of short films from either 1897 or 1902; “A Little Girl Who Did Not Believe in Santa Claus,” an Edison picture from 1907; and D.W. Griffith’s 1909 Biograph short “The Christmas Burglars,” starring Florence Lawrence, considered the first movie star, and Mack Sennett, best known as the producer of legendary comedy two-reelers.

Jere Guldin, a film preservationist at UCLA, began working on this program about two years ago. “We are pretty much showing everything the Library of Congress has at this point,” he says.

UCLA and the Silent Society have been collaborating on presenting rare silent films for the past several years. “We screen silent films that basically no one else will,” says Silent Society director Randy Haberkamp. “We don’t run ‘The General’ or ‘City Lights’ because they are more accessible and they are seen at other places. We run the stuff that basically hasn’t been seen since it was made.”

Adds Haberkamp: “This particular show we are doing now, it is stuff even the Library of Congress doesn’t know what it is.”

These very short films--each installment of the “Santa Claus” series, for example, runs 90 seconds--were churned out when cinema was in its infancy. “Movies in those days were so short,” says Haberkamp. “They would make it a series because they already had the sets and costumes. It will be interesting to see what we end up with. The thing about our audience, too, is that they are real die-hard buffs.”

The two films preserved by UCLA, says Guldin, are missing scenes and titles. “‘Two Christmas-Tides’ is very much meant to be a sentimental melodrama,” he says. “It is not quite complete. That is the problem with many of the films from back then. We know what took place in the missing section, and we put in a title card saying, ‘Scene missing.’ ‘A Night in Dreamland’ is also incomplete ... but you can pretty much follow the story. It is very primitive. It is sort of a fantasy where a boy goes to sleep at Christmastime and has a fantasy dream where he goes to the North Pole.”

Guldin admits that it is hard to raise money to preserve these silent shorts. “Short subjects are the last things you can get money for preservation for, really. Everybody and his brother want to give money to preserve Cary Grant movies, but ‘Sweeney’s Christmas Bird’ at the Library of Congress? Frequently archives are less interested [in the short subjects] and do the big titles as well.”

The program won’t actually be silent. Michael Mortilla will be supplying the live musical accompaniment on the organ. And as is the case with many of the UCLA /Silent Society screenings, Mortilla may not get a chance to see the films before tonight’s screening.

“A lot of times he is flying blind,” says Haberkamp. “He used to play for the Martha Graham Dance Company in their rehearsals, and he is used to basically accompanying movement. It is not an easy thing to do, but he is very good at picking up on little clues in the films and taking the audience along with it musically.”

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“Silent Night” screens tonight at 7:30 at the James Bridges Theatre, Melnitz Hall, northeast corner of the UCLA campus. Admission is $7 general; $5 for students, seniors and UCLA Alumni Assn. members (ID required). Box office opens one hour before show time. Information: (310) 206-FILM or go to www.cinema.ucla.edu.