The Salvation Hunters + Oil: A Symphony in Motion

The Salvation Hunters
USA 1925. Director: Josef von Sternberg
Cast: George K. Arthur, Georgia Hale, Bruce Guerin, Otto Matiesen, Nellie Bly Baker

The Salvation Hunters was the bombshell directorial debut of Josef von Sternberg, the great stylist who later made seven celebrated movies with Marlene Dietrich (including The Blue Angel, Blonde Venus, and The Scarlet Empress). Privately financed and, in its lyrical mix of realism and expressionism, unlike anything else in American cinema of the day, the film made Sternberg a hot commodity in Hollywood. “Sternberg’s first film, shot for less than $4,800 on location in San Pedro, L.A.’s Chinatown, and the San Fernando Valley, was possibly Hollywood’s first ‘independent’ feature. The gritty realism of its locations, the utter lack of artifice in its story, and the lower depths embodied by its three principal characters shocked audiences and the Hollywood film community alike. Seen today, the film remains thoroughly modern, not because of its realism, but because Sternberg’s characters hide so much of themselves as they create an ad hoc family more out of circumstance than choice. The Salvation Hunters made a star not only of its director, but also of Georgia Hale, who would play opposite Chaplin in The Gold Rush, and George K. Arthur, who teamed up with Karl Dane at MGM in a successful series of comedies” (Jan-Christopher Horak). B&W, 35mm, silent with intertitles. 72 mins.

Oil: A Symphony in Motion
USA 1933. Director: M.G. MacPherson

Produced by Artkino, a Los Angeles collective of amateur filmmakers, Oil is a lyric documentary from the point of view of the oil itself. B&W, 35mm, silent. 8 mins.