A LIVE "Anything But Silent" Event!
CHICAGO
(1927)
featuring Live
Piano Accompaniment by BEN MODEL from home!
Live Streaming on Wednesday,
November 17th at 7:00 PM Eastern Time!
General Admission is Pay-What-You-Want! – Click "Buy
Tickets" above for price options
Sexy, jazz-loving and dressed to kill, Roxie Hart (Phyllis Haver) has a doting, handsome
husband in Victor Varconi; not to
mention a gold-digging affair on the side with Eugene Pallette, who pays and pays, eventually with his life. Put
on trial for murder, Roxie secures lawyer Billy Flynn (Robert Edeson), equal part mob “mouthpiece” and publicity agent.
When Roxie hits the headlines, the courtroom theatrics begin. Like the musical Chicago that won the Best Picture
Academy Award and five other Oscars in 2002, this original 1927 version
descends from a 1926 hit Broadway play by Maurine Watkins. It’s a terrifically
entertaining mix of humor and melodrama as well as a pungent critique of trash
journalism. Frank Urson signed Chicago as director, although it is substantially
the work of Cecil B. DeMille and his
A-list technical staff. (DeMille apparently judged it unseemly to take full
credit for this cynical and secular story while his religious spectacle The King of Kings was still in
theatres!) Chicago is silent
filmmaking at its peak. The 1927 Chicago
was long believed a lost film, but a perfect print survived in Cecil B.
DeMille’s private collection. Restored by the UCLA Film and Television Archive
in 2006, it has since been widely performed to rapturous audiences. (Courtesy
of Flicker Alley) (USA, 1927, 118 min.,
NR, Silent with English intertitles | Dir. Frank Urson)

Ben Model is one of America’s leading silent film accompanists, and has been playing piano and organ for silent films at the New York MoMA since 1984 and the CAC since 2006. Since March 16th, 2020, Ben has been hosting a weekly live-streamed silent film show from his living room, “The Silent Comedy Watch Party.” Click here to visit Ben's YouTube page!

Tickets are limit one (1) per order. Advance registration may be
made any time prior to the start of the event. Ticket-holders may enter the
live stream by returning to this page and signing in to their Cinema Arts
online account to bring up the “Enter Live Stream” link.
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streamed on a computer, mobile device, or a smart TV with an HDMI cable
connection.
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time. If you need assistance with any step of your ticket purchase, please
reach out to info@cinemaartscentre.org and a customer service representative
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