Under Full Sail – Silent Cinema on the High Seas
Flicker Alley in association with the Blackhawk Film Collection has announced the release of "Under Full Sail – Silent Cinema on the High Seas," a new DVD release featuring, as per its press release, "five breathtaking films that preserve the romance, grandeur and allure of windjammers sailing open waters, exquisitely photographed in the style of the time."
The following information is from the Flicker Alley release:
The Yankee Clipper (1927), produced by Cecil B. DeMille and directed by Rupert Julian, restored to the most complete version available since the film’s release, is a feature-length melodrama recreating the real-life race from Foo Chow to Boston for the China tea trade. The gorgeous production filmed at sea for six weeks aboard the 1856 wooden square-rigger Indiana with stars William Boyd, Elinor Fair and Frank “Junior” Coghlan. Renowned organist Dennis James, in his solo DVD premiere, accompanies the film on an original-installation 1928 Wurlitzer pipe organ recorded at Seattle’s Paramount Theatre.
Around the Horn in a Square Rigger (1933) was filmed by noted sailor, author, and photographer Alan Villiers documenting the record-breaking 83-day voyage of the 1902 barque Parma from Australia to England in the 1933 Grain Race. Villiers writes, “We wanted to make a picture that would capture some of the stirring beauty of these ships…some glimmer of understanding of the attraction which they hold over those who sail in them.” Music by Eric Beheim.
The Square Rigger (1932), an early sound short filmed as part of Fox’s Magic Carpet of Movietone, shows life aboard the schoolship Dar Pomorza, “The White Frigate.” Built in 1909 as the Prinzess Eitel Friedrich, it was ceded from Germany to France as a prize of World War I, and was later donated to the Polish State Maritime School in 1930 where it served 50 years and trained more than 13,000 cadets.
Ship Ahoy (1928), is a unique record of the conditions and traditions of the North American lumber trade, featuring an unidentified schooner equipped with a fore and aft rig as it transports lumber from the Carolinas up the coast to a northern port. Music by Eric Beheim.
The collection is rounded off with a ten-minute sequence from Down to the Sea in Ships (1922), documenting an authentic whale hunt from the 1878 wooden ship Wanderer out of New Bedford, Massachusetts. The cameramen risk their lives to capture practices unchanged since Herman Melville immortalized them in Moby Dick. Music by Dennis James.
DVD bonus features include an audio reminiscence by Frank “Junior” Coghlan about the filming of The Yankee Clipper. An enclosed booklet includes detailed program notes by film scholar and U.S. Navy marine engineer John E. Stone and an essay about the scoring of The Yankee Clipper by organist Dennis James.
"Under Full Sail – Silent Cinema on the High Seas" is the seventh DVD title to be released through the partnership of Film Preservation Associates’ Blackhawk Films Collection and Flicker Alley, following Discovering Cinema, Saved From The Flames, Georges Méliès: First Wizard of Cinema (1896-1913), Abel Gance’s La Roue, Perils of the New Land: Films of the Immigrant Experience (1910-1915), and Douglas Fairbanks: A Modern Musketeer.
"Under Full Sail – Silent Cinema on the High Seas" carries a suggested retail price of $29.95.
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Tags: Around the Horn in a Square Rigger, Blackhawk Films, Cecil B. DeMille, Dennis James, Down to the Sea in Ships, DVDs, Elinor Fair, Eric Beheim, Flicker Alley, Junior Coghlan, Rupert Julian, Seafaring, Ship Ahoy, Silent Films, The Square Rigger, The Yankee Clipper, William Boyd
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