“3 Bad Men” (1926)

Director Irving Cummings dramatized the 1889 South Fork Dam failure in this film starring George O’Brien as Tom O’Day, a civil engineer concerned with the dam’s instability. This screening includes a guest appearance by noted silent film musician Rodney Sauer, who leads a quintet in a score created expressly for the film.

Directed by Teinosuke Kinugasa in collaboration with artists of Japan’s experimental “School of New Perceptions” (Shinkankakuha), A Page of Madness draws on German Expressionism, Noh theater, and melodrama. Set in a psychiatric hospital, the film follows a woman who has lost her mental bearings and her guilt-ridden husband who works at the hospital as a janitor. The CSFF screening features an original score by James Praznik performed by a quintet drawn from No Exit New Music Ensemble.

The story centers on the bond among three English brothers (played by Ronald Colman, Neil Hamilton, and Ralph Forbes) whose lives are disrupted by the disappearance of a precious family heirloom, leading them to the French Foreign Legion and the battlefields of North Africa. Silent film music specialist Rodney Sauer leads a quintet in a newly compiled score created for the film, combining period music with live performance to heighten its romance, suspense, and grandeur.