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For over 25 years, the San Francisco Silent Film Festival called the Castro Theatre home. With the iconic theater now closed for a year-plus-long renovation, Sfsff has relocated to the Palace of Fine Arts Theatre, located in a beautiful park created for the 1915 Panama-Pacific International Exposition at the north edge of the Presidio. The auditorium, primarily a performance space, seats nearly a thousand and features a spacious foyer where passholders could visit and relax between shows (particularly useful on chilly weekends).

Sfsff prides itself on mixing landmark productions and audience favorites with rediscoveries, revelations, and rarities, often recently uncovered and restored. And for its 27th edition this year, the festival presented 20 features and six short films over five days, all with live musical scores by some of the finest silent film accompanists in the world.

The opening night film, Albert Parker’s 1926 swashbuckler The Black Pirate, certainly qualifies as both landmark and favorite.

The link to Old Hollywood gets smaller with the announcement today that Olivia de Havilland, two-time Oscar winner and the last living star of “Gone With the Wind,” passed away at 104. De Havilland, who just celebrated her birthday three weeks ago, died of natural causes, her reps confirmed.

De Havilland was a trailblazer, and became a beloved bridge between the entertainment of today and the world of yesteryear. The star of over 60 film and television roles, the British actress became immortal after playing the goodhearted Melanie Wilkes in 1939’s “Gone With the Wind” and became swashbuckler Errol Flynn’s primary leading lady, working with him seven times, most notably in “The Adventures of Robin Hood.”

Outside of her film work, she created a shakeup in Hollywood that ended up having long-standing repercussions. In 1943 she filed suit against her home studio of Warner Bros. for extending her contract for longer than the standard seven years.

Ronald Colman: Turner Classic Movies' Star of the Month in two major 1930s classics Updated: Turner Classic Movies' July 2017 Star of the Month is Ronald Colman, one of the finest performers of the studio era. On Thursday night, TCM presented five Colman star vehicles that should be popping up again in the not-too-distant future: A Tale of Two Cities, The Prisoner of Zenda, Kismet, Lucky Partners, and My Life with Caroline. The first two movies are among not only Colman's best, but also among Hollywood's best during its so-called Golden Age. Based on Charles Dickens' classic novel, Jack Conway's Academy Award-nominated A Tale of Two Cities (1936) is a rare Hollywood production indeed: it manages to effectively condense its sprawling source, it boasts first-rate production values, and it features a phenomenal central performance. Ah, it also shows its star without his trademark mustache – about as famous at the time as Clark Gable's. Perhaps...

The Sea Hawk

Written by Howard Koch and Seton I. Miller

Directed by Michael Curtiz

U.S.A., 1940

Under the Warner Brothers banner, Errol Flynn leaps, bounds and rouses hearts to the tune of Erich Wolfgang Korngold’s winning score and the direction of taskmaster Michael Curtiz. Following on the coattails of Captain Blood (1935) and The Adventures of Robin Hood (1938), it’s easy to dismiss The Sea Hawk (1940) as just a studio swashbuckler, another outing of a tried and true formula that Bosley Crowther called, “an overdressed ‘spectacle’ film which derives much more from the sword than the pen.” Admittedly, this loose adaptation owes more to the seafaring adventures of Sir Francis Drake than the original Rafael Sabatini novel of the same name, but it owes even more to the politics surrounding its production. On closer examination, the film stands as a testament not only to Flynn in his booming...

Today, you say Black Swan and images of a crazed Natalie Portman come to mind, but there was an earlier film by that name, a swashbuckler that has been forgotten by many. The first Black Swan is a 1942 adventure starring Tyrone Power and Maureen O’Hara based on Rafael Sabatini’s novel. Having already succeeded with adaptations of Captain Blood and The Sea Hawk, this seemed a natural followup for 20th Century Fox.

Out on Blu-ray from 20th Century Home Entertainment, The Black Swan tells the story of the infamous Captain Morgan (Laird Cregar), attempting to lead a more virtuous life. He is appointed as Governor of Jamaica, charged with ridding the waters of his former brigands. No one trusts the notorious former pirate, complicating his work although he’s successful using his personal relationships to convince Captain Jamie Waring (Power) and Tom Blue (Thomas Mitchell) to end their criminal work.

Ramon Novarro: Silent movie star proves he can talk and sing (See previous post: "Ramon Novarro: Mexican-Born Actor Was First Latin American Hollywood Superstar.") On Ramon Novarro Day, Turner Classic Movies’ first Novarro movie is Rex Ingram’s The Prisoner of Zenda (1922), a stately version of Edward Rose’s play, itself based on Anthony Hope’s 1897 novel: in the Central European kingdom of Ruritania, a traveling Englishman takes the place of the kidnapped local king-to-be-crowned. A pre-Judge Hardy Lewis Stone has the double role, while Novarro plays the scheming Rupert of Hentzau. (Photo: Ramon Novarro ca. 1922.) Despite his stage training, Stone is as interesting to watch as a beach pebble; Novarro, for his part, has a good time hamming it up in his first major break — courtesy of director Rex Ingram, then looking for a replacement for Rudolph Valentino, with whom he’d had a serious falling out...

Eleanor Parker today: Beautiful as ever in Scaramouche, Interrupted Melody Eleanor Parker, who turns 91 in ten days (June 26, 2013), can be seen at her most radiantly beautiful in several films Turner Classic Movies is showing this evening and tomorrow morning as part of their Star of the Month Eleanor Parker "tribute." Among them are the classic Scaramouche, the politically delicate Above and Beyond, and the biopic Interrupted Melody, which earned Parker her third and final Best Actress Academy Award nomination. (Photo: publicity shot of Eleanor Parker in Scaramouche.) The best of the lot is probably George Sidney’s balletic Scaramouche (1952), in which Eleanor Parker plays one of Stewart Granger’s love interests — the other one is Janet Leigh. A loose remake of Rex Ingram’s 1923 blockbuster, the George Sidney version features plenty of humor, romance, and adventure; vibrant colors (cinematography by Charles Rosher); an elaborately staged climactic swordfight; and tough dudes...

Survivor: One World Preview

Airs Wednesdays at 8pm (Et) on CBS

Premieres on February 15

After 23 seasons, it’s remarkable to see how Survivor continues to re-invent itself with each new outing. The formula was starting to grow a bit tired a few years ago but was re-invigorated by the unpredictable “Heroes vs. Villains” in the fall of 2010. That all-star season was the show’s 20th and revealed that the cast remains the most important part of this competitive reality juggernaut. It’s hard to predict which groups of players will actually make great TV. Host Jeff Probst will try to get everything he can out of the contestants at Tribal Council, but he can only do so much. The big moves and crazy outbursts that keep fans coming back have that aura of surprise that pervades the best Survivor seasons.

Will Survivor: One World reach that classic status? It has...

Alice Terry, Ramon Novarro in Rex Ingram's Scaramouche Ramon Novarro is back for the fourth and last installment of Turner Classic Movies' Sunday evening celebration of the 100 years of the Mexican Revolution. Tonight, Novarro's vehicle is Scaramouche (1923), one of his most prestigious critical and box-office hits, and one featuring another revolution, the one in France back in the late 18th century. Directed by Rex Ingram, and co-starring Alice Terry and Lewis Stone, Scaramouche was the vehicle that turned Novarro into a top box-office attraction — though official star billing would only come two years later, with the release of The Midshipman. Ingram's version of Scaramouche is also much closer to Rafael Sabatini's highly political — and at times quite subversive — novel than the fluffier but equally entertaining 1952 release directed by George Sidney and starring Stewart Granger in the title role. The information below about Scaramouche is from my [...]...

Australian film-makers Michael and Peter "Daybreakers" Spierig, have been hired by Warners to script a 'space opera' version of the 1935 high-seas pirate swashbuckler Captain Blood, updating author Rafael Sabatini's story about Dr. 'Peter Blood', who leaves his practice to becomes a pirate. Sabatini also wrote two additional novels featuring the Peter Blood character, including "Captain Blood Returns" in 1930 and "The Fortunes of Captain Blood" in 1936... Sneak Peek the first 10 minutes of Warners 1930's feature Captain Blood starring actor Errol Flynn...

Speaking as a member of Film Preservation Associates, the team that brought King Vidor's Bardelys the Magnificent (1926) "back to life" after it's having been believed lost for 70 years, David Shepard historicized that the film was based on a novel by Rafael Sabatini, a prolific author whose other work includes Scaramouche, The Sea Hawk and Captain Blood. MGM bought the story rights to Bardelys the Magnficent for 10 years and produced the successful filmic adaptation Bardelys the Magnificent.

By contract, in 1936 MGM had to either repurchase the rights for an additional charm or destroy the film. As nothing could have been deader than a silent film in 1936, MGM elected to duly destroy the negative (although MGM actually renewed the copyright for the movie in 1953). Except for a short fragment included in another Vidor film Show People (1928), nothing of Bardelys was thought to remain until 2007 when Shepard's French film partners...

John Barrymore and John Gilbert, legendary womanizers and pals who drank themselves to death, were two of the biggest stars of the silent era. Now some of their best work, unseen for decades, has surfaced on DVD.

Gilbert is at the top of his game in "Bardelys the Magnificent" (1926), a delightful, tongue-in-cheek swashbuckler that's been beautifully restored, with stills and footage from the trailer used to seamlessly replace a missing reel.

Adapted from a novel by Rafael Sabatini ("Captain Blood"), this reunion with the celebrated director...

Graphic Classics, Vol. 16: Oscar Wilde

Edited by Tom Pomplun

Eureka Productions, February 2009, $11.95

Graphic Classics has been adapting the work of famous dead authors – from H.P. Lovecraft to Rafael Sabatini – for at least five years, mostly focusing on the more popular (rather than literarily classy) writers. And that’s a good thing, since no one wants to see Graphic Classics: Henry James. (“The Face in the Carpet” is not nearly as exciting as the Lovecraft-style title might indicate.)

So this is the sixteenth volume in the series, which are all in the same vein: about 144 pages of comics adaptations of said dead writer’s work, usually with a few long adaptations and some shorter ones sprinkled in for spice. The creators involved are a mix of semi-familiar names and newer folks on their way up – this kind of project, obviously, doesn’t tend to attract top talent. (And is almost...

The 13th annual Kansas Silent Film Festival will be held on February 27th and 28th, 2009 and will play host to both the U.S.A. Premiere of a restored ‘lost’ feature film and the Kansas Premiere of a new documentary on silent film star, Mary Pickford. Sponsored by Washburn University, this event will take place at White Concert Hall on campus. Admission is free and open to the public. For more current information, check out our website at www.kssilentfilmfest.org.

The U.S.A. Premiere is Barelys the Magnificent, a previously ‘lost’ MGM feature film from 1926 starring John Gilbert in a swashbuckling romantic adventure based on a novel by Rafael Sabatini. It’s a sumptuous, exciting tale set in 17th Century France with a cavalier lover who steals women’s hearts, but cannot find the words for the woman he truly loves. There’s a rousing climax that outdoes...

Warners to The only question is what took so long.

After three installments of Pirates of the Caribbean brought in plenty of filthy lucre to Disney, Warner Bros. is finally announcing a remake of Captain Blood. The classic Rafael Sabatini novel was immortalized in 1935 when it arrived on the silver screen with Errol Flynn in the lead back by a stirring Eric Korngold score.

John Brownlow (Sylvia) has been signed to write the new version for director Philip Noyce (Clear and Present Danger) according to Variety.

The swashbuckling tale is about a “doctor wrongly sentenced to slavery in the Caribbean, where he and his comrades become avenging pirates. It was nominated for the best picture Oscar.”...

Screenwriter John Brownlow has been hired to pen Warner Bros.’ upcoming remake of the classic swashbuckler flick Captain Blood. The project's being developed by Phillip Noyce (The Bone Collector) with an eye toward directing. Errol Flynn starred in the 1935 original as a doctor wrongly sentenced to slavery in the Caribbean, where he and his comrades become avenging pirates. It was nominated for the best picture Oscar, losing to MGM’s Mutiny on the Bounty starring Clark Gable. The film was based on the Rafael Sabatini novel and was directed by Michael Curtiz, who also received an Oscar nomination. Olivia de Havilland and Lionel Atwill co-starred. Brownlow wrote 2003's Sylvia, starring Gwyneth Paltrow and Daniel Craig. He also has several projects in development , including Sabbatical at Disney, with Jennifer Garner attached to star; The Hero at Miramax, with Julian Farino attached to direct; and the adaptation of the action-thriller book The Phoenix at Universal.

John Brownlow had been tapped to write "Captain Blood," Warner Bros.' remake of the 1935 swashbuckler that Phillip Noyce is attached to direct.

The Oscar-nominated pirate movie starred Errol Flynn, Olivia de Havilland and Basil Rathbone and was based on a novel by Rafael Sabatini. Set in the 1600s, it tells the story of a doctor who is convicted for treason, sold into slavery and escapes to the high seas as a pirate.

Warners is developing the project as a possible U.K.-Australia co-production. Bill Gerber is producing. Warner Bros. Prods.' Matt Reilly and Jesse Ehrman are overseeing for the studio.

Brownlow wrote 2003's "Sylvia," starring Gwyneth Paltrow and Daniel Craig. He also has several projects set up around town, including "Sabbatical" at Disney, with Jennifer Garner attached to star; "The Hero" at Miramax, with Julian Farino attached to direct; and the adaptation of the action-thriller book "The Phoenix" at Universal.

Phillip Noyce looks to be hitting the water for the first time since his 1989 breakthrough "Dead Calm."

The director has signed to develop and direct "Captain Blood," Warner Bros.' long-gestating remake of the swashbuckling 1935 classic.

The Academy Award-nominated pirate movie starred Errol Flynn, Olivia de Havilland and Basil Rathbone and was based on a novel by Rafael Sabatini. Set in the 1600s, it tells the story of a doctor who is convicted for treason against the King of England, sold into slavery and escapes to high seas as a pirate. (The book also was adapted in 1924 by the Vitagraph Co.)

Warners made the film with First Nation Pictures and has been trying to develop a remake for decades. In the early '90s, Jonathan Hensleigh, Chuck Russell and Frank Darabont took stabs at scripts.

A search for writers is under way.

Bill Gerber is producing. Warners is developing as a possible U.K./Australia co-production. Matt Reilly and Elishia Holmes are overseeing for the studio.

Noyce, repped by Wma, last directed 2006's "Catch a Fire."

Jay A. Fernandez contributed to this report.