Last Updated: 12/19/24

ALL SECRET CINEMA PRESENTATIONS ARE SHOWN IN 16mm (or larger!) FILM ON A GIANT SCREEN (NOT VIDEO...NOT EVER!)

Since 1992, the Secret Cinema has been the Philadelphia area’s premiere floating repertory cinema series, bringing hundreds of unique programs to nightclubs, bars, coffee houses, museums, open fields, colleges, art galleries, bookstores, and sometimes even theaters and film festivals. Drawing on its own large private film archive (as well as other collections), the Secret Cinema attempts to explore the uncharted territory and the genres that fall between the cracks, with programs devoted to educational and industrial films, cult and exploitation features, cartoons, rare television, local history, home movies, erotic films, politically incorrect material, and the odd Hollywood classic. As long as it exists on real celluloid, that is—Secret Cinema screenings never use video/digital projection. While mainly based in Philadelphia, the Secret Cinema has also brought programming to other cities and countries.

Silent classic Greed with live music

at historic Glen Foerd mansion

Glen Foerd on the Delaware
Grant Avenue & Milnor Street, Philadelphia
215-632-5330

Friday, January 24, 2025
7:30 pm
Admission: $25, $20 students and seniors

On Friday, January 24, the Secret Cinema will again be hosted by one of the most impressive venues in our long history -- Glen Foerd on the Delaware, a historic 1850 mansion and estate located in the Torresdale neighborhood of Northeast Philadelphia. Glen Foerd is Philadelphia’s last remaining Delaware River estate open to the public.

The screening will center on one of the most legendary films of the silent era, Erich von Stroheim’s 1924 masterpiece Greed. The brilliant but famously excessive director originally shot 85 hours of footage, and hoped his 9-hour final edit would be shown in theaters over two nights. MGM instead cut it down to a little over two hours. The missing reels were not kept, and now comprise the most sought after lost film footage in Hollywood history. However, the MGM edit remains, miraculously, a powerful dramatic epic. That is what we will show.

This silent film presentation will not be silent, as expert keyboardist Don Kinnier (veteran collaborator for several past Secret Cinema programs) will bring the movie alive with his accompaniment on the mansion’s recently restored 1902 Haskell pipe organ.

There will be one complete show at 7:30 pm. Doors will open at 7:00 pm to allow touring of the mansion and grounds.

Admission is $25, $20 students and seniors. Seating is limited.

Buy tickets here.

Glen Foerd on the Delaware is a 5-minute walk from the Torresdale station of SEPTA’s Trenton Regional Rail Line or the 19 & 84 bus routes. There is ample free parking within the estate.

The film will be shown in the gilded-age mansion’s beautiful second floor art gallery (stair access only).

Greed (1924, Dir: Erich Von Stroheim)
Erich Von Stroheim’s silent epic, Greed has sadly become more famous for footage that MGM discarded than for the masterpiece that survives. Based on Frank Norris’ naturalistic novel McTeague: A Story of San Francisco, it graphically depicts the slow descent into madness of a simple-minded miner-turned-dentist and his bride (depicted with brilliance by Gibson Gowland and Zasu Pitts), as each becomes obsessed with gold. Von Stroheim, in his past work having already battled studios over expenses and running times, decided to not only film every page (and more) of the source book, but to shoot virtually every scene in the locations Norris described. Thus, nothing was shot in a studio. Only buildings that survived the San Francisco 1906 earthquake were used, to match the period of the novel. The insistence on filming authentic locations would include bringing cast and crew to dangerously hot Death Valley -- the United States’ hottest and most inhospitable place -- in August. Fourteen crew members became sick, and one cook died of heatstroke. The director told the press, “I decided to make an absolutely literal film transposition of a novel that has been accepted as a classic of American literature.” He made Greed, “without a single important change, except the title. I made it so that it could be said, ‘As Norris wrote it, so von Stroheim produced it.’”

Reportedly some 85 hours of film were shot over seven months. The editing process took a year, with the Goldwyn studio ordering Von Stroheim to make it shorter and shorter. An initial 42 reel version was seen by only a handful of insiders, who proclaimed it the greatest film ever made. Von Stroheim decided to cut it down to 24 reels, which would still require Greed to be shown over two nights with intermissions (most silent features consisted of six or seven approximately 15-minute reels). The studio insisted on further cuts, which Von Stroheim refused to participate in. During this process, Goldwyn merged to become MGM, whose Irving Thalberg wanted Greed to be much shorter. Finally the film was cut to ten reels -- edited by, according to Von Stroheim, “a hack with nothing in his mind but a hat.” This is the version that survives today, and only still photos remain of the missing footage. Sub-plots and some characters were removed entirely, but the basic plot remains. Greed is still an original, bold masterpiece, and a high point of the silent era.

About Glen Foerd on the Delaware: The Glen Foerd mansion was built in 1850 by businessman Charles Macalester, Jr. The estate was later purchased by leather manufacturer Robert Foerderer, who enlarged and added extensive enhancements to the property, including a formal dining room, an impressive art gallery, a pipe organ, parquet floors, a grand staircase and elaborate leaded glass skylights. The Foerderers’ daughter Florence lived in the estate until her death in 1971. In 1985 the property was taken over by the Glen Foerd Conservation Corporation and the Fairmount Park Commission, and is today operated as a historic house museum and public park.

About Don Kinnier: The silent film era, from its tentative first steps to its final artistic masterpieces, lasted for about 35 years. Musician Don Kinnier has been accompanying silent film screenings for over 55 years! Pennsylvania’s foremost exponent of this very specialized art form, he has studied the techniques and repertoires of the original theater musicians of the silent era. A Philadelphia native (now based in Lititz), Don has toured internationally, and has maintained a long and fruitful relationship with Longwood Gardens, playing recently at the Fanfare Weekend rededication of the large Aeolian organ there. He also plays at The Strand Capitol Performing Arts Center and the Allen Theatre, and has provided the memorable soundtrack for many past Secret Cinema events.

FUTURE SECRET CINEMA EVENTS (more info soon):