Clara Bow as IT at The Castro

The San Francisco Silent Film Festival finally returned to its ancestral home at the Castro Theater last Sunday with a showing of the 1927 movie IT.

The huge theater was sold out and the line started forming along the sidewalk two hours before the screening.

There were many objections to Another Planet Entertainment transforming the 1922 Spanish Baroque masterpiece by architect Timothy Pflueger from a seated movie theater to a live pop concert hall, but the multi-year, $41 million makeover has turned out well. The compromise between temporary tiered seating for film showings and a flat dance floor for concerts has become a happy surprise.

Among the many improvements, the old basement bathrooms have now become gender-free and have plenty of stalls so the women's restroom line no longer stretches forever.

The real wonder is the interior restoration, an obvious labor of love, where decades of grime and cigarette smoke were scraped away and the brown ceiling has returned to its original red color with all its baroque illustrations gleaming.

IT was an entertaining bit of fluff comedy where Clara Bow as a shopgirl sets her sights on snagging the handsome young owner of the department store where she works.

Bow plays the personification of the 1920s flapper "IT" Girl who has ineffable sex appeal that can slay anyone, including the handsome Antonio Moreno, a Spaniard who was one of the first Latin lovers of American silent films.

The film was accompanied by a beefed-up Mont Alto Motion Picture Orchestra, a music ensemble from Colorado that specializes in silent movies.

They will also be accompanying films, along with a roster of other musical artists, at the upcoming San Francisco Silent Film Festival, which will be returning to the Castro from May 6 to 10. There's no place like home.