René Clair’s last feature-length silent, Les Deux Timides begins with a courtroom scene that is a bravura example of silent film technique. A bumbling young lawyer (a wonderful Keatonesque performance by Pierre Batcheff) is defending a client who is accused of beating his wife. As he describes his version of what happened, it plays out on the screen in all its ridiculous, convoluted glory, with escalating hilarity. The lawyer and his brutish client later become rivals for the hand of a shy young lady. Clair biographer Celia McGerr calls Les Deux Timides “one of the most visually ambitious—and successful—films of the silent era.”
Restoration by the San Francisco Silent Film Festival in collaboration with the Cinémathèque Française
Live musical accompaniment by the Mont Alto Motion Picture Orchestra
Introduction by Céline Ruivo
Underwritten by Kenneth and Marjorie Sauer
Special support from the French American Cultural Society, Cultural Services of the French Embassy in the United States
Co-presented by the Alliance Française de San Francisco and Center for the Art of Translation
ASL interpretation