HUSBANDS AND LOVERS

Showings

Castro Theatre Fri, May 3, 2019 2:15 PM
Film Info
Director:John M. Stahl
Cast:Lewis Stone
Florence Vidor
Lew Cody
Dale Fulle
Winter Hall
Edithe Yorke
Year:1924
Country:USA
Total Run Time:93 min.
Format:35mm

Description

Musical accompaniment by Philip Carli
Known more for his singular film noir, 1945’s Leave Her to Heaven, John M. Stahl directed at least twenty-two features in the silent era and had a reputation for making successful “women’s pictures” long before the talkie was introduced. For Husbands and Lovers, Stahl pairs devoted wife Florence Vidor with ungrateful husband Lewis Stone for a splendidly nuanced marital comedy that proves his versatility as a filmmaker. When Vidor’s hausfrau transforms into an elegant lady of leisure with an expensive makeover, the quintessentially caddish Lew Cody takes lascivious notice but Stone can only grouse about the bill. A gentle rebuke of a husband’s bad manners and a salute to a wife’s sweet revenge, Husbands and Lovers was a favorite in the trade press. “Here is a comedy-drama that fairly scintillates with humor,” said Exhibitors News, “and then when the laugh is over, salty tears rush unbidden to the eyes.”

Preserved by the Library of Congress in cooperation with Warner Bros.

 

Introduction by Heather Linville

 

Copresented by the Art Deco Society of California

Additional Information



Musical accompaniment by Philip Carli

Philip Carli brings both prodigious musical talent and a committed scholarly outlook to his lifelong passion for the music and culture of the turn of the last century. He discovered silent film at the age of five and began his accompaniment career at thirteen, with a performance for Lon Chaney’s 1923 version of The Hunchback of Notre Dame. While at college he programmed and accompanied an annual series of silent films, and also organized and conducted a 50-piece student orchestra using 19th-century performance practice. Since then, he has continued his studies of the film, music and culture of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, earning a doctorate from the Eastman School of Music. He has at the same time toured extensively as a film accompanist throughout North America and Europe, performing on keyboard and with orchestra at such venues as Lincoln Center and the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the National Gallery in Washington, DC, the Cinémathèque Québécoise in Montreal, the National Film Theatre in London, and the Berlin International Film Festival. He is the staff accompanist for the George Eastman Museum in Rochester, New York, and performs annually at several film festivals in the United States as well as at Le Giornate del Cinema Muto in Italy.