Originally posted to Facebook on 6/9/2019
Linda was our eighth film from 1929, and our first silent after three straight talkies or partial talkies. It stars Helen Foster, whom we saw in 1928's Road to Ruin, and is directed by Dorothy Davenport, or "Mrs. Wallace Reid" as she is billed, who -- along with Dorothy Arzner from last week -- was one of the very few prominent woman directors of the time. She was the widow of Wallace Reid, whom we saw in 1915's Carmen and 1919's Hawthorne of the U.S.A., and who had died in 1923 as a result of a drug addiction.
Foster plays Linda, a girl from a poverty-stricken family, living in the mountains. Bess Flowers plays a visiting teacher who sees promise in Foster, and tries to convince her to expand her horizons. At the same time, her father, played by Mitchell Lewis, tries to marry her off to the local mill boss, played by Noah Beery -- the older brother of Wallace Beery (whom we've seen several times) and the father of Noah Beery Jr., known for playing James Garner's father on Rockford Files. Linda, however, is more interested in a doctor played by Warner Baxter.
Various plot developments ensue -- nothing very surprising, excepting maybe the final scene. The film seems old-fashioned for 1929, and could have been made a decade earlier with only minor modifications. It is a bit condescending to its rural characters and their lack of sophistication. The title cards, for instance, attempt to capture the dialect of the area, a device which ends up being distracting and unnecessary. However the film is not cynical; if anything it is overly earnest. It also has a certain humane spirit running through it; with the exception of Linda's father (who is portrayed as a violent alcoholic), and one other minor character, everyone is portrayed as reasonably good-hearted, or at least redeemable. The film is warm-spirited without completely shying away from some harsh realities, even if in the end it was not sharp or stylish enough for my tastes.
Our next film is A Throw of Dice, our ninth and last film from 1929, and our first Indian film. The link, as always, is here: https://bit.ly/2lZtfmT
Sunday, June 23, 2019
The Wild Party (1929)
Originally posted to Facebook on 6/1/2019
The Wild Party was our seventh film from 1929, the second time we've seen Clara Bow, and our second true sound film. It is also the first time we've seen Fredric March, and the first movie we've seen directed by Dorothy Arzner -- one of the very few woman directors of this time.
Clara Bow plays a student at a women's college, and Fredric March plays one of the professors. They become romantically involved, contrary to college rules. This film has some of the content that one would guess from its title -- drinking and dancing by reckless, carefree young people, very much evoking the received image of the 1920s -- but there are also a fair amount of plot machinations revolving around the progress of March and Bow's relationship, and their efforts to keep it secret. Though I've seen performances by March elsewhere that I enjoyed, here he is rather unappealing; in addition to the inappropriate nature of his interest in Bow, he is also a misanthrope, calling other students "morons" -- and he treats Bow badly, sometimes ignoring her, other times scolding. Bow, on the other hand, displays the same high-spirited charisma that she did in Wings -- and although it turned out that at just 24 she was already on the back-end of her career, I think this movie makes a good case that this wasn't due to a lack of ability. She occasionally mugs or gestures a hair too much, but no more than one would expect from a silent veteran in her first sound film.
In the end the relationship between March and Bow is so flawed that it is hard to recommend this film -- and the ending unfortunately adds a sour little coda. The acting too is a bit off, with odd pauses and word emphases -- the result no doubt of everyone's initial foray into sound acting on film. The creaky technology doesn't help matters; the sound is muddy, and we missed snatches of dialog here and there. The bare-bones DVD we watched would definitely have benefited from an option for subtitles.
Our next film is Linda, our eighth from 1929, starring Helen Foster, whom we last saw in 1928's terrible The Road to Ruin. The link, as always, is here: https://bit.ly/2lZtfmT
The Wild Party was our seventh film from 1929, the second time we've seen Clara Bow, and our second true sound film. It is also the first time we've seen Fredric March, and the first movie we've seen directed by Dorothy Arzner -- one of the very few woman directors of this time.
Clara Bow plays a student at a women's college, and Fredric March plays one of the professors. They become romantically involved, contrary to college rules. This film has some of the content that one would guess from its title -- drinking and dancing by reckless, carefree young people, very much evoking the received image of the 1920s -- but there are also a fair amount of plot machinations revolving around the progress of March and Bow's relationship, and their efforts to keep it secret. Though I've seen performances by March elsewhere that I enjoyed, here he is rather unappealing; in addition to the inappropriate nature of his interest in Bow, he is also a misanthrope, calling other students "morons" -- and he treats Bow badly, sometimes ignoring her, other times scolding. Bow, on the other hand, displays the same high-spirited charisma that she did in Wings -- and although it turned out that at just 24 she was already on the back-end of her career, I think this movie makes a good case that this wasn't due to a lack of ability. She occasionally mugs or gestures a hair too much, but no more than one would expect from a silent veteran in her first sound film.
In the end the relationship between March and Bow is so flawed that it is hard to recommend this film -- and the ending unfortunately adds a sour little coda. The acting too is a bit off, with odd pauses and word emphases -- the result no doubt of everyone's initial foray into sound acting on film. The creaky technology doesn't help matters; the sound is muddy, and we missed snatches of dialog here and there. The bare-bones DVD we watched would definitely have benefited from an option for subtitles.
Our next film is Linda, our eighth from 1929, starring Helen Foster, whom we last saw in 1928's terrible The Road to Ruin. The link, as always, is here: https://bit.ly/2lZtfmT
Hallelujah (1929)
Originally posted to Facebook on 3/31/2019
Hallelujah was our sixth film from 1929, and our first true sound film after a couple of partial talkies. It was also the fourth film we've seen directed by King Vidor, and our second film with an African American cast, after 1926's The Flying Ace.
Interestingly the movie opens with the MGM lion silently roaring, even though we've heard it audibly roar for earlier Movietone silents. It is a musical -- our first, obviously -- and stars Daniel L. Haynes, a farm-worker who is pulled away from his presumably virtuous rural world by Nina Mae McKinney, whom he meets while in town to sell his family's harvest. It is difficult to assess a film like this, both because of its questionable approach to portraying African-American life, and because of its technical limitations. The former point is called out right away by a pre-title screen on the DVD, which assures us that the film does not reflect the current values of Warner Brothers -- in case anyone was wondering. And it is immediately clear why that insert was added; the main characters are all portrayed either two-dimensionally or with major pathologies, and almost always in stereotypical fashion. During this era in film history it was a remarkable and positive development to see black protagonists on the screen at all, particularly in a major studio film with a star director, but the particular reflection of life shown in this film turns it into a distinctly mixed blessing.
The performances are also uneven; Haynes acquits himself not too badly, but much of the other acting is either flat or stilted or over-the-top. McKinney is particularly bad, with weird and unconvincing line readings. I'm not sure if this is entirely her fault, given the lines she's reading, and the primitive state of the recording technology, and also the fact that her role is so thankless and arbitrary.
On a technical level, the audio is quite muddy -- not too surprising considering given its status as an early talkie, but certainly not the best state of affairs for a musical. The songs themselves are a mixed bag. "Waiting at the End of the Road" which Haynes sings as he arrives in town to sell crops is one of the high points, and there is also the beginning of what seems like an interesting montage of the song "Going Home" near the end, as Haynes is traveling back home to see his family -- a few shots of Haynes singing on the back of a wagon, on a train, and walking along the road -- but that ends nearly as soon as it starts. The film has a few other memorable sequences -- such as a scene of mounting intensity in which Haynes chases someone through the swamp, knee deep in water -- but there are just as many scenes that fall flat or come across as amateurish.
In short this is neither a good film, nor simply a bad one, nor a forgettable misfire; it is an interesting historical curiosity, still worth viewing, but not mainly for its entertainment value.
Next week we'll see our seventh film from 1929, The Wild Party -- our second sound film, and our second film starring Clara Bow. The link, as always, is here: https://bit.ly/2lZtfmT
Hallelujah was our sixth film from 1929, and our first true sound film after a couple of partial talkies. It was also the fourth film we've seen directed by King Vidor, and our second film with an African American cast, after 1926's The Flying Ace.
Interestingly the movie opens with the MGM lion silently roaring, even though we've heard it audibly roar for earlier Movietone silents. It is a musical -- our first, obviously -- and stars Daniel L. Haynes, a farm-worker who is pulled away from his presumably virtuous rural world by Nina Mae McKinney, whom he meets while in town to sell his family's harvest. It is difficult to assess a film like this, both because of its questionable approach to portraying African-American life, and because of its technical limitations. The former point is called out right away by a pre-title screen on the DVD, which assures us that the film does not reflect the current values of Warner Brothers -- in case anyone was wondering. And it is immediately clear why that insert was added; the main characters are all portrayed either two-dimensionally or with major pathologies, and almost always in stereotypical fashion. During this era in film history it was a remarkable and positive development to see black protagonists on the screen at all, particularly in a major studio film with a star director, but the particular reflection of life shown in this film turns it into a distinctly mixed blessing.
The performances are also uneven; Haynes acquits himself not too badly, but much of the other acting is either flat or stilted or over-the-top. McKinney is particularly bad, with weird and unconvincing line readings. I'm not sure if this is entirely her fault, given the lines she's reading, and the primitive state of the recording technology, and also the fact that her role is so thankless and arbitrary.
On a technical level, the audio is quite muddy -- not too surprising considering given its status as an early talkie, but certainly not the best state of affairs for a musical. The songs themselves are a mixed bag. "Waiting at the End of the Road" which Haynes sings as he arrives in town to sell crops is one of the high points, and there is also the beginning of what seems like an interesting montage of the song "Going Home" near the end, as Haynes is traveling back home to see his family -- a few shots of Haynes singing on the back of a wagon, on a train, and walking along the road -- but that ends nearly as soon as it starts. The film has a few other memorable sequences -- such as a scene of mounting intensity in which Haynes chases someone through the swamp, knee deep in water -- but there are just as many scenes that fall flat or come across as amateurish.
In short this is neither a good film, nor simply a bad one, nor a forgettable misfire; it is an interesting historical curiosity, still worth viewing, but not mainly for its entertainment value.
Next week we'll see our seventh film from 1929, The Wild Party -- our second sound film, and our second film starring Clara Bow. The link, as always, is here: https://bit.ly/2lZtfmT
The Man and the Moment (1929)
Originally posted to Facebook on 3/2/2019
The Man and the Moment was our fifth film from 1929, and the second partial talkie. It had perhaps a half-a-dozen scenes with audible dialog, significantly more than the three such scenes in the previous partial talkie we watched, 1928's Lonesome. Even during the talking scenes, though, there were title cards -- but that was an artifact of its restoration, rather than what audiences saw at the time.
Rod La Rocque plays an idly rich bachelor, and Billie Dove (whom we previously saw in 1926's The Black Pirate) plays an aviator. They devise a scheme to marry one another, so that La Rocque can avoid getting married to a character played by Gwen Lee, and Dove can avoid having her guardian essentially put her under house arrest. By the fact that she has a guardian, I imagine that we are supposed to infer that she is not yet an adult (though Dove herself was 26 at the time) which makes the whole film rather troubling. Another weakness is the contrived nature of major plot points. There would have been no film if La Rocque had clearly told Lee that he wasn't going to marry her, or if Dove had waited the (presumably short) amount of time until she was no longer subject to a guardianship -- both of which seem far simpler solutions to their respective problems than a sham marriage. In any case, as you would expect in a romantic comedy of this kind, they end up developing feelings for one another.
When initially hatching this plot they have a long pre-code discussion about how they wouldn't actually have sex during the marriage, the execution of which illustrates the main problem of the film. It starts out a little bit amusing, but the dialog is slow and unnatural, and the same joke is made several times over a period of several minutes. By the end the kids were literally laughing at how drawn-out the scene was. It doesn't seem fair to blame anyone in particular for this, given the infancy of sound, but Dove acquits herself much better than La Rocque, in this scene and in the movie in general. She gives a performance not too far from the typical acting style a few years later. La Rocque is not at that level; his delivery is slow and wooden, particularly when he is delivering ostensibly witty dialog. The fast-talking leading men of the thirties were clearly still a few years away.
To an even greater extent than Lonesome, this film would have been stronger as a silent, mainly because of the unevenly delivered dialog. But it also would have been stronger if it had been funnier, or cared about its characters a little more.
Our next film will be Hallelujah, our sixth from 1929, our first true sound film, our first musical, and our second film with a predominantly African-American cast. The list, as always, is here: https://bit.ly/2lZtfmT
The Man and the Moment was our fifth film from 1929, and the second partial talkie. It had perhaps a half-a-dozen scenes with audible dialog, significantly more than the three such scenes in the previous partial talkie we watched, 1928's Lonesome. Even during the talking scenes, though, there were title cards -- but that was an artifact of its restoration, rather than what audiences saw at the time.
Rod La Rocque plays an idly rich bachelor, and Billie Dove (whom we previously saw in 1926's The Black Pirate) plays an aviator. They devise a scheme to marry one another, so that La Rocque can avoid getting married to a character played by Gwen Lee, and Dove can avoid having her guardian essentially put her under house arrest. By the fact that she has a guardian, I imagine that we are supposed to infer that she is not yet an adult (though Dove herself was 26 at the time) which makes the whole film rather troubling. Another weakness is the contrived nature of major plot points. There would have been no film if La Rocque had clearly told Lee that he wasn't going to marry her, or if Dove had waited the (presumably short) amount of time until she was no longer subject to a guardianship -- both of which seem far simpler solutions to their respective problems than a sham marriage. In any case, as you would expect in a romantic comedy of this kind, they end up developing feelings for one another.
When initially hatching this plot they have a long pre-code discussion about how they wouldn't actually have sex during the marriage, the execution of which illustrates the main problem of the film. It starts out a little bit amusing, but the dialog is slow and unnatural, and the same joke is made several times over a period of several minutes. By the end the kids were literally laughing at how drawn-out the scene was. It doesn't seem fair to blame anyone in particular for this, given the infancy of sound, but Dove acquits herself much better than La Rocque, in this scene and in the movie in general. She gives a performance not too far from the typical acting style a few years later. La Rocque is not at that level; his delivery is slow and wooden, particularly when he is delivering ostensibly witty dialog. The fast-talking leading men of the thirties were clearly still a few years away.
To an even greater extent than Lonesome, this film would have been stronger as a silent, mainly because of the unevenly delivered dialog. But it also would have been stronger if it had been funnier, or cared about its characters a little more.
Our next film will be Hallelujah, our sixth from 1929, our first true sound film, our first musical, and our second film with a predominantly African-American cast. The list, as always, is here: https://bit.ly/2lZtfmT
Escape from Dartmoor (1929)
Originally posted to Facebook on 2/3/2019
Escape from Dartmoor was our fourth film from 1929 - a British thriller very much in the Hitchcock mode, but directed by Anthony Asquith.
In fact, based on the two Hitchcock silents we've seen (1927's The Lodger and 1929's Blackmail), this is a better thriller than Hitchcock himself was producing at this time; both of those films had excellent sequences, but also significant flaws, while this film is of a more consistent quality. It opens stylishly, with a man escaping from Dartmoor prison, and breaking into a house. From there the film flashes back to the events leading up to his imprisonment -- the origins of which begin with a love triangle made up of Uno Henning, Hans Schlettow, and Norah Baring. Henning and Baring work in a barber shop together, and Schlettow is a customer whom Baring seems to like -- which doesn't sit well with Henning. Tension and misunderstandings build steadily. In addition to the main plot, there is a very meta sequence in which the lead characters go to a movie theater transitioning to sound -- which the film posits is not popular with audiences. That judgment could not have been more wrong -- but the movie's strongest argument for silent film is not that scene, but the spare, efficient way in which it builds its story.
Of the three leads only Baring was English -- with Schlettow being German and Henning Swedish -- which of course mattered not at all in a silent. Schlettow is the only one we've seen before, appearing as Hagen Tronje in Fritz Lang's 1924 Die Nibelungen films, and also in a small role in the film we saw just previous, Pandora's Box.
Our next film is The Man and the Moment, our fifth film from 1929, our second partial talkie, and the second time we've seen Billie Dove. The list, as always, is here: https://bit.ly/2lZtfmT
Escape from Dartmoor was our fourth film from 1929 - a British thriller very much in the Hitchcock mode, but directed by Anthony Asquith.
In fact, based on the two Hitchcock silents we've seen (1927's The Lodger and 1929's Blackmail), this is a better thriller than Hitchcock himself was producing at this time; both of those films had excellent sequences, but also significant flaws, while this film is of a more consistent quality. It opens stylishly, with a man escaping from Dartmoor prison, and breaking into a house. From there the film flashes back to the events leading up to his imprisonment -- the origins of which begin with a love triangle made up of Uno Henning, Hans Schlettow, and Norah Baring. Henning and Baring work in a barber shop together, and Schlettow is a customer whom Baring seems to like -- which doesn't sit well with Henning. Tension and misunderstandings build steadily. In addition to the main plot, there is a very meta sequence in which the lead characters go to a movie theater transitioning to sound -- which the film posits is not popular with audiences. That judgment could not have been more wrong -- but the movie's strongest argument for silent film is not that scene, but the spare, efficient way in which it builds its story.
Of the three leads only Baring was English -- with Schlettow being German and Henning Swedish -- which of course mattered not at all in a silent. Schlettow is the only one we've seen before, appearing as Hagen Tronje in Fritz Lang's 1924 Die Nibelungen films, and also in a small role in the film we saw just previous, Pandora's Box.
Our next film is The Man and the Moment, our fifth film from 1929, our second partial talkie, and the second time we've seen Billie Dove. The list, as always, is here: https://bit.ly/2lZtfmT
Pandora's Box (1929)
Originally posted to Facebook on 1/12/2019
Pandora's Box is our third film from 1929, and the second time we've seen Louise Brooks, after 1928's Beggars of Life. It was directed by G. W. Pabst and based on two plays by Frank Wedekind.
Though we have so far seen a number of European stars and directors come to the United States to make movies (e.g. Victor Sjöström, F. W. Murnau, Conrad Veidt), Brooks is possibly the only prominent American star we've seen shift to European films. In this film she plays Lulu, who is young and vivacious, but also selfish and duplicitous -- which is quite different than the pensive and timid character she played in Beggars of Life. She is in an ongoing relationship with Dr. Schön (played by Fritz Kortner), but also ends up in a love triangle with his son Alwa (Francis Lederer). Kortner is engaged to another woman, and is aware that his relationship with Brooks is self-destructive -- even saying at one point, "It'll be the death of me." A family friend, played by Alice Roberts, is infatuated with Lulu as well -- which was not entirely clear to us until well into the film. ("Why is she glaring at Lulu?" we wondered.) Needless to say this subplot was very unusual for the time.
The film is divided into two parts, which I believe correspond to the two plays on which it is based. The first part, which concerns the trajectory of the relationship between Kortner and Brooks, has a more focused narrative (and is, I believe, more successful) than the the second, which deals with the aftermath. The first portion tells a complete story, and in fact could stand alone as a cohesive film with only minor modifications. I am not sure that is true of the second portion, which is more fragmented.
Next week we see Escape from Dartmoor, a 1929 thriller directed by Anthony Asquith. The list, as always, is here: https://bit.ly/2lZtfmT
Pandora's Box is our third film from 1929, and the second time we've seen Louise Brooks, after 1928's Beggars of Life. It was directed by G. W. Pabst and based on two plays by Frank Wedekind.
Though we have so far seen a number of European stars and directors come to the United States to make movies (e.g. Victor Sjöström, F. W. Murnau, Conrad Veidt), Brooks is possibly the only prominent American star we've seen shift to European films. In this film she plays Lulu, who is young and vivacious, but also selfish and duplicitous -- which is quite different than the pensive and timid character she played in Beggars of Life. She is in an ongoing relationship with Dr. Schön (played by Fritz Kortner), but also ends up in a love triangle with his son Alwa (Francis Lederer). Kortner is engaged to another woman, and is aware that his relationship with Brooks is self-destructive -- even saying at one point, "It'll be the death of me." A family friend, played by Alice Roberts, is infatuated with Lulu as well -- which was not entirely clear to us until well into the film. ("Why is she glaring at Lulu?" we wondered.) Needless to say this subplot was very unusual for the time.
The film is divided into two parts, which I believe correspond to the two plays on which it is based. The first part, which concerns the trajectory of the relationship between Kortner and Brooks, has a more focused narrative (and is, I believe, more successful) than the the second, which deals with the aftermath. The first portion tells a complete story, and in fact could stand alone as a cohesive film with only minor modifications. I am not sure that is true of the second portion, which is more fragmented.
Next week we see Escape from Dartmoor, a 1929 thriller directed by Anthony Asquith. The list, as always, is here: https://bit.ly/2lZtfmT
Asphalt (1929)
Originally posted to Facebook on 1/8/2019
Asphalt was our second film from 1929, and our second starring Gustav Fröhlich, after 1927's Metropolis. It is the first film we've seen directed by Joe May, and also the first time we've seen Betty Amann, the female lead.
Fröhlich plays a policeman, who helps to apprehend Amann attempting to rob a jewelry store. He is sympathetic, and ends up having to cover his tracks as he gets involved in a relationship with her. This is complicated by the fact that his father, played by Albert Steinrück (whom we saw as the chief Rabbi in 1920's The Golem), is also a policeman. The movie is efficiently paced, with relatively few title cards, and a running time of just about 90 minutes. The only sequence that seemed a bit extraneous was a five minute scene set in France, depicting a surprisingly detailed bank heist -- which seemed to have no other purpose than to establish that Amann's significant other was a criminal -- a fact which surely could have been communicated more quickly and without breaking up the flow of the main plot.
A lot has been written about the connection between noir and expressionism, and although that transition mostly occurred in Hollywood, I think this could be classified as an early proto-noir -- in the sense that the protagonist finds himself being pulled deeper into trouble, with Amann filling the femme fatale role (and incidentally looking quite similar to Louise Brooks.) It's stylishly shot, but more grounded in reality and not as flamboyantly expressionistic as the films we've seen by Lang or Murnau.
Speaking of Louise Brooks, next week we'll move on to one of her most famous roles in Pandora's Box, our third film from 1929. This will be the second time we've seen her, after 1928's Beggars of Life a few weeks ago. The list, as always, is here: https://bit.ly/2lZtfmT
Asphalt was our second film from 1929, and our second starring Gustav Fröhlich, after 1927's Metropolis. It is the first film we've seen directed by Joe May, and also the first time we've seen Betty Amann, the female lead.
Fröhlich plays a policeman, who helps to apprehend Amann attempting to rob a jewelry store. He is sympathetic, and ends up having to cover his tracks as he gets involved in a relationship with her. This is complicated by the fact that his father, played by Albert Steinrück (whom we saw as the chief Rabbi in 1920's The Golem), is also a policeman. The movie is efficiently paced, with relatively few title cards, and a running time of just about 90 minutes. The only sequence that seemed a bit extraneous was a five minute scene set in France, depicting a surprisingly detailed bank heist -- which seemed to have no other purpose than to establish that Amann's significant other was a criminal -- a fact which surely could have been communicated more quickly and without breaking up the flow of the main plot.
A lot has been written about the connection between noir and expressionism, and although that transition mostly occurred in Hollywood, I think this could be classified as an early proto-noir -- in the sense that the protagonist finds himself being pulled deeper into trouble, with Amann filling the femme fatale role (and incidentally looking quite similar to Louise Brooks.) It's stylishly shot, but more grounded in reality and not as flamboyantly expressionistic as the films we've seen by Lang or Murnau.
Speaking of Louise Brooks, next week we'll move on to one of her most famous roles in Pandora's Box, our third film from 1929. This will be the second time we've seen her, after 1928's Beggars of Life a few weeks ago. The list, as always, is here: https://bit.ly/2lZtfmT
The Toll Gate (1920)
Originally posted to Facebook on 11/27/2018
The Toll Gate is the last film of our chronological detour before we return, next week, to 1929. It's our sixth film from 1920, and the second time we've seen William S. Hart in a starring role, after 1916's Hell's Hinges. We've also previously seen Anna Q. Nilsson, the female lead, in 1915's Regeneration. Lambert Hillyer directed (and wrote) this film, as well as over a hundred more, mostly westerns, from the teens up through the late forties, and then moved on to television in the fifties.
Hart plays Black Deering, the leader of a group of bandits, who is betrayed by a member of his gang after deciding to go straight. While on the run, he comes upon Nilsson, who lives alone with her insufferably adorable son. As in Hell's Hinges, Hart is supposedly an anti-hero, but his misdeeds are mostly mentioned in passing, or presented with some kind of mitigation. His heroism on the other hand is shown on-screen, or in the form of unsolicited praise from other characters. (The most cringe-inducing example of this occurs when he is told, "They may call you Black Deering, but, by God, you're white.") The film distinguishes itself from a generic western due to an intermittent grittiness and Hart's screen presence, but the characters are mainly archetypes, and have very little life beyond what the plot demands. We haven't really seen what I would consider a solid western as yet (unless you count The Wind) though that may just be due to our particular selection of films.
Next week we return to the main chronological through-line, and see our second film from 1929 -- Asphalt, directed by Joe May, and starring Gustav Fröhlich, whom we previously saw in 1927's Metropolis. The list, as always, is here: https://bit.ly/2lZtfmT
The Toll Gate is the last film of our chronological detour before we return, next week, to 1929. It's our sixth film from 1920, and the second time we've seen William S. Hart in a starring role, after 1916's Hell's Hinges. We've also previously seen Anna Q. Nilsson, the female lead, in 1915's Regeneration. Lambert Hillyer directed (and wrote) this film, as well as over a hundred more, mostly westerns, from the teens up through the late forties, and then moved on to television in the fifties.
Hart plays Black Deering, the leader of a group of bandits, who is betrayed by a member of his gang after deciding to go straight. While on the run, he comes upon Nilsson, who lives alone with her insufferably adorable son. As in Hell's Hinges, Hart is supposedly an anti-hero, but his misdeeds are mostly mentioned in passing, or presented with some kind of mitigation. His heroism on the other hand is shown on-screen, or in the form of unsolicited praise from other characters. (The most cringe-inducing example of this occurs when he is told, "They may call you Black Deering, but, by God, you're white.") The film distinguishes itself from a generic western due to an intermittent grittiness and Hart's screen presence, but the characters are mainly archetypes, and have very little life beyond what the plot demands. We haven't really seen what I would consider a solid western as yet (unless you count The Wind) though that may just be due to our particular selection of films.
Next week we return to the main chronological through-line, and see our second film from 1929 -- Asphalt, directed by Joe May, and starring Gustav Fröhlich, whom we previously saw in 1927's Metropolis. The list, as always, is here: https://bit.ly/2lZtfmT
Maciste in Hell (1925)
Originally posted to Facebook on 11/1/2018
Maciste in Hell is the second of a three film detour that we are taking before picking up the timeline again in 1929. It was made in 1925, our eighth feature from that year, and was part of a series featuring the title character Maciste, who had been a secondary character in 1914's Cabiria. Maciste was played by Bartolomeo Pagano, both in this film and in Cabiria, as well as in 25 other Maciste films in the silent era. (The series was later rebooted in the 1960s as well.) This was one of the last of the original run, and its director, Guido Brignone, directed the final four.
Cabiria was a sprawling, innovative art film, and it seems odd that it would have launched, if this film is at all representative, a series of essentially light-hearted adventure films. It is not entirely clear to me in what time period this film is supposed to take place -- but probably some time prior to the modern era. Maciste lives in a rural village, where he is targeted by demons who appear in human form, and try, a la Faust, to tempt him -- though unsuccessfully. Maciste takes this in stride, and after tending to some not-terribly-related local issues involving his cousin, he eventually winds up trapped in hell, battling to find his way out. The special effects in hell are perhaps not quite state-of-the-art, but they are extensive -- and likely would have been more impressive had we seen it on a better print. They certainly underline that this was the Italian equivalent of a major studio film.
The internal logic of hell seems a bit incoherent though. Pluto appears to effectively be the ruler, but the demons Nimrod and Minos both wear crowns, and Maciste encounters an animalistic Lucifer as well -- who presumably fits into the org chart somewhere. The characterizations in the film are unusually thin, even for what is essentially a comic-book movie. Maciste is inhumanly strong, and good-hearted, and not overly thoughtful; everyone else is good or bad as the plot dictates.
Next week we see 1920's The Toll Gate, our second film starring William S. Hart. Then we return to 1929 and finish out the decade. The list, as always, is here: https://bit.ly/2lZtfmT
Maciste in Hell is the second of a three film detour that we are taking before picking up the timeline again in 1929. It was made in 1925, our eighth feature from that year, and was part of a series featuring the title character Maciste, who had been a secondary character in 1914's Cabiria. Maciste was played by Bartolomeo Pagano, both in this film and in Cabiria, as well as in 25 other Maciste films in the silent era. (The series was later rebooted in the 1960s as well.) This was one of the last of the original run, and its director, Guido Brignone, directed the final four.
Cabiria was a sprawling, innovative art film, and it seems odd that it would have launched, if this film is at all representative, a series of essentially light-hearted adventure films. It is not entirely clear to me in what time period this film is supposed to take place -- but probably some time prior to the modern era. Maciste lives in a rural village, where he is targeted by demons who appear in human form, and try, a la Faust, to tempt him -- though unsuccessfully. Maciste takes this in stride, and after tending to some not-terribly-related local issues involving his cousin, he eventually winds up trapped in hell, battling to find his way out. The special effects in hell are perhaps not quite state-of-the-art, but they are extensive -- and likely would have been more impressive had we seen it on a better print. They certainly underline that this was the Italian equivalent of a major studio film.
The internal logic of hell seems a bit incoherent though. Pluto appears to effectively be the ruler, but the demons Nimrod and Minos both wear crowns, and Maciste encounters an animalistic Lucifer as well -- who presumably fits into the org chart somewhere. The characterizations in the film are unusually thin, even for what is essentially a comic-book movie. Maciste is inhumanly strong, and good-hearted, and not overly thoughtful; everyone else is good or bad as the plot dictates.
Next week we see 1920's The Toll Gate, our second film starring William S. Hart. Then we return to 1929 and finish out the decade. The list, as always, is here: https://bit.ly/2lZtfmT
Michael (1924)
Originally posted to Facebook on 10/28/2018
Michael was a return to 1924 for us, our sixth film from that year. It stars Walter Slezak, Nora Gregor, and Benjamin Christensen, and is directed by Carl Theodor Dreyer, who also directed 1928's The Passion of Joan of Arc. Interestingly it was co-written by Thea von Harbou, who is most famous for co-writing numerous films with her then-husband Fritz Lang, many of which we've seen earlier in this project.
This movie's plot concerns a love triangle between the three leads -- Christensen playing a much-older famous artist, who treats Slezak as his muse -- with Slezak eventually moving on to a Countess played by Gregor. This film is notable for being a very early example of a film centered on a gay relationship, though it is ambiguous on that point until well into the film. Slezak looks quite different than he did as a character actor in Hollywood decades later, and is well cast as the handsome but callow center of the love triangle. The triangle plays out rather straight-forwardly, with Christensen fully emotionally invested in Slezak, and Slezak doing as he pleases. There is another love triangle as well -- in a subplot that is extraneous to the main plot, but thematically linked. The film is a bit slow-moving, and Dreyer is clearly trying to capture a certain kind of intensity of emotion -- though in a less extreme manner than in Joan of Arc.
The movie is most closely aligned with Christensen, with Slezak receiving a much less in-depth characterization, and Gregor's part even more cursory. Christensen's forbearance is martyr-like to an almost comical Giving-Tree-like extreme. In the end I think the movie finds Christensen's behavior admirable, casting it as some kind of high-minded true love, which is in keeping with the romanticism for which the film is so evidently aiming. Still, I think there might have been room for a slightly larger tinge of cynicism even within that approach.
Next week we continue our revisiting of a few earlier films before moving on to 1929, watching 1925's Maciste in Hell, which stars one of the secondary characters from 1914's Cabiria. The list, as always, is here: https://bit.ly/2lZtfmT
Michael was a return to 1924 for us, our sixth film from that year. It stars Walter Slezak, Nora Gregor, and Benjamin Christensen, and is directed by Carl Theodor Dreyer, who also directed 1928's The Passion of Joan of Arc. Interestingly it was co-written by Thea von Harbou, who is most famous for co-writing numerous films with her then-husband Fritz Lang, many of which we've seen earlier in this project.
This movie's plot concerns a love triangle between the three leads -- Christensen playing a much-older famous artist, who treats Slezak as his muse -- with Slezak eventually moving on to a Countess played by Gregor. This film is notable for being a very early example of a film centered on a gay relationship, though it is ambiguous on that point until well into the film. Slezak looks quite different than he did as a character actor in Hollywood decades later, and is well cast as the handsome but callow center of the love triangle. The triangle plays out rather straight-forwardly, with Christensen fully emotionally invested in Slezak, and Slezak doing as he pleases. There is another love triangle as well -- in a subplot that is extraneous to the main plot, but thematically linked. The film is a bit slow-moving, and Dreyer is clearly trying to capture a certain kind of intensity of emotion -- though in a less extreme manner than in Joan of Arc.
The movie is most closely aligned with Christensen, with Slezak receiving a much less in-depth characterization, and Gregor's part even more cursory. Christensen's forbearance is martyr-like to an almost comical Giving-Tree-like extreme. In the end I think the movie finds Christensen's behavior admirable, casting it as some kind of high-minded true love, which is in keeping with the romanticism for which the film is so evidently aiming. Still, I think there might have been room for a slightly larger tinge of cynicism even within that approach.
Next week we continue our revisiting of a few earlier films before moving on to 1929, watching 1925's Maciste in Hell, which stars one of the secondary characters from 1914's Cabiria. The list, as always, is here: https://bit.ly/2lZtfmT
The Battle of the Sexes (1928)
Originally posted to Facebook on 10/20/2018
The Battle of the Sexes was our thirteenth and final film from 1928. It is the fifth film we've seen directed by D.W. Griffith, but the first since 1920's Way Down East. It is also the second time we've seen Phyllis Haver, after seeing her in 1927's Chicago, and the first time we've seen Jean Hersholt, who was a well-known character actor in the late silent and early sound era, but is more famous as the namesake of the Academy Award for contributions to humanitarian causes.
The change in D.W. Griffith's fortunes since Way Down East is quite dramatic. This is a eighty-eight-minute low-budget film, and there is nothing that would indicate to the viewer that its director just fifteen years earlier had the clout to make films requiring thousands of extras and enormous sets recreating ancient Babylon. Its story, too, is relatively simple. Jean Hersholt is real estate magnate, with a wife (played by Belle Bennett), and two near-adult children, played by Sally O'Neil and William Bakewell. Hersholt becomes infatuated with Phyllis Haver, who is young, selfish, and carefree -- a role similar to the one she played in Chicago -- and his marriage and finances both suffer.
Overall this movie is mainly interesting for the people involved in making it. It is not particularly striking or memorable taken on its own merits, though it is also not quite terrible; this mirrors Hersholt's lead performance, which is not actively bad, but is also not dynamic nor sympathetic. Haver, on the other hand, has a echo of the charisma she showed in Chicago, but has much less material to work with here.
As mentioned above, the low budget makes this movie atypical compared to the other Griffith films we've seen, and results in a claustrophobic look, with most of the action occurring in either Hersholt's or Haver's apartment, with a brief detour to a dance hall. Perhaps the only thing that makes this recognizably a Griffith film is his focus on how poorly women are treated by men and by society. This concern is not presented in a modern way, and it is deployed selectively and usually paternalistically, but it is a connective tissue between this film and his earlier work.
So that concludes 1928. My goal of watching four films a year has admittedly gotten a little bit out of control, and unfortunately 1929 doesn't look much better. But I've added our planned films for 1930 to the spreadsheet, and for that year at least I've managed hold the line at five. On the other hand, before moving on to 1929, I've decided to go back and watch three earlier films we've missed, starting with 1924's Michael, which is the second film in this project directed by Carl Theodor Dreyer. The list, as always, is here: https://bit.ly/2lZtfmT
The Battle of the Sexes was our thirteenth and final film from 1928. It is the fifth film we've seen directed by D.W. Griffith, but the first since 1920's Way Down East. It is also the second time we've seen Phyllis Haver, after seeing her in 1927's Chicago, and the first time we've seen Jean Hersholt, who was a well-known character actor in the late silent and early sound era, but is more famous as the namesake of the Academy Award for contributions to humanitarian causes.
The change in D.W. Griffith's fortunes since Way Down East is quite dramatic. This is a eighty-eight-minute low-budget film, and there is nothing that would indicate to the viewer that its director just fifteen years earlier had the clout to make films requiring thousands of extras and enormous sets recreating ancient Babylon. Its story, too, is relatively simple. Jean Hersholt is real estate magnate, with a wife (played by Belle Bennett), and two near-adult children, played by Sally O'Neil and William Bakewell. Hersholt becomes infatuated with Phyllis Haver, who is young, selfish, and carefree -- a role similar to the one she played in Chicago -- and his marriage and finances both suffer.
Overall this movie is mainly interesting for the people involved in making it. It is not particularly striking or memorable taken on its own merits, though it is also not quite terrible; this mirrors Hersholt's lead performance, which is not actively bad, but is also not dynamic nor sympathetic. Haver, on the other hand, has a echo of the charisma she showed in Chicago, but has much less material to work with here.
As mentioned above, the low budget makes this movie atypical compared to the other Griffith films we've seen, and results in a claustrophobic look, with most of the action occurring in either Hersholt's or Haver's apartment, with a brief detour to a dance hall. Perhaps the only thing that makes this recognizably a Griffith film is his focus on how poorly women are treated by men and by society. This concern is not presented in a modern way, and it is deployed selectively and usually paternalistically, but it is a connective tissue between this film and his earlier work.
So that concludes 1928. My goal of watching four films a year has admittedly gotten a little bit out of control, and unfortunately 1929 doesn't look much better. But I've added our planned films for 1930 to the spreadsheet, and for that year at least I've managed hold the line at five. On the other hand, before moving on to 1929, I've decided to go back and watch three earlier films we've missed, starting with 1924's Michael, which is the second film in this project directed by Carl Theodor Dreyer. The list, as always, is here: https://bit.ly/2lZtfmT
The Mysterious Lady (1928)
Originally posted to Facebook on 10/15/2018
The Mysterious Lady was our twelfth film from 1928, and the second we've seen starring Greta Garbo, after 1926's Flesh and the Devil. It is also the second film we've seen directed by Fred Niblo, after the 1925 blockbuster Ben-Hur.
The film stars Conrad Nagel as an Austrian military official, who meets and falls in love with Garbo -- secretly working for Russia. She steals military plans entrusted to him, and he chases her east, posing as a piano player. This is perhaps the first real spy film we've seen, pre-dating the Cold War spy vogue by a couple of decades. Also notable, it takes a fair amount of time showing the relationship between Garbo and Nagel build; there is a long sequence before he knows the truth, in which they simply spend the day together, hiking and enjoying each other's company. This is effective and surprisingly unusual, and in strong contrast to, for instance, Flesh and the Devil, where Garbo and John Gilbert are almost immediately infatuated with one another.
Of course, the kind of intensity of feeling on display in Flesh and the Devil is one of the strengths of silent film, and choosing a more prosaic route gives this film something of the feel and pacing of a sound film -- and it probably would have been just as good or better had it been made a few years later; the scenes with Nagel playing the piano while undercover in enemy territory might have worked quite well in a sound film for instance.
This is the kind of film that I think gets lost in the shuffle a bit. It is not startlingly excellent, but is strong and sure-footed, perhaps verging on slick. It's unlikely to show up on any lists of the great silents, but nonetheless tells a good suspenseful story and presents leads with real chemistry -- a standard which more films should aspire to, and which is certainly an enormous improvement over last week's The Road to Ruin.
Next week we'll watch The Battle of the Sexes, our thirteenth and last film from 1928, and the fifth film we've seen directed by D.W. Griffith, the last being 1920's Way Down East. The list, as always, is here: https://bit.ly/2lZtfmT
The Mysterious Lady was our twelfth film from 1928, and the second we've seen starring Greta Garbo, after 1926's Flesh and the Devil. It is also the second film we've seen directed by Fred Niblo, after the 1925 blockbuster Ben-Hur.
The film stars Conrad Nagel as an Austrian military official, who meets and falls in love with Garbo -- secretly working for Russia. She steals military plans entrusted to him, and he chases her east, posing as a piano player. This is perhaps the first real spy film we've seen, pre-dating the Cold War spy vogue by a couple of decades. Also notable, it takes a fair amount of time showing the relationship between Garbo and Nagel build; there is a long sequence before he knows the truth, in which they simply spend the day together, hiking and enjoying each other's company. This is effective and surprisingly unusual, and in strong contrast to, for instance, Flesh and the Devil, where Garbo and John Gilbert are almost immediately infatuated with one another.
Of course, the kind of intensity of feeling on display in Flesh and the Devil is one of the strengths of silent film, and choosing a more prosaic route gives this film something of the feel and pacing of a sound film -- and it probably would have been just as good or better had it been made a few years later; the scenes with Nagel playing the piano while undercover in enemy territory might have worked quite well in a sound film for instance.
This is the kind of film that I think gets lost in the shuffle a bit. It is not startlingly excellent, but is strong and sure-footed, perhaps verging on slick. It's unlikely to show up on any lists of the great silents, but nonetheless tells a good suspenseful story and presents leads with real chemistry -- a standard which more films should aspire to, and which is certainly an enormous improvement over last week's The Road to Ruin.
Next week we'll watch The Battle of the Sexes, our thirteenth and last film from 1928, and the fifth film we've seen directed by D.W. Griffith, the last being 1920's Way Down East. The list, as always, is here: https://bit.ly/2lZtfmT
The Road to Ruin (1928)
Originally posted to Facebook on 10/7/2018
The Road to Ruin was our eleventh film from 1928. This film stars Helen Foster as a high-schooler who makes the mistake of smoking cigarettes and seeing boys, which, as the title suggests, inevitably leads to cataclysmic disaster -- and in rather short order too, as this film is only sixty minutes long. Despite the fact that it has a respectable rating on IMDB, and was apparently a box-office hit, this is perhaps the worst feature film that we've seen as part of this project. It reminded me of sub-par after-school specials, warning against various arguably risky behaviors, but in a risibly alarmist and hysterical tone -- and transparently taking perverse pleasure at showing the consequences. We have seen many films with misguided or wrongheaded moralistic authorial viewpoints -- most of the Griffith films we've seen, for instance -- but never with the kind of clunky writing and lack of dramatic structure on display in this film. It has rather poor production values as well, though some of that may have been the fault of the print, which was not in terribly good shape.
One of the reasons that I'd originally decided to add this film to the project was that IMDB had listed it as being directed by Dorothy Davenport, the widow of Wallace Reid (whom we'd seen in Carmen and Hawthorne of the U.S.A.) However it appears that she directed the sound remake in 1934 (also starring Helen Foster), while this film was directed by Norton S. Parker. This led to my first successful IMDB correction, so I suppose the viewing wasn't a total loss.
Next week we'll watch The Mysterious Lady, our twelfth film from from 1928, and the second starring Greta Garbo. The list, as always, is here: https://bit.ly/2lZtfmT
The Road to Ruin was our eleventh film from 1928. This film stars Helen Foster as a high-schooler who makes the mistake of smoking cigarettes and seeing boys, which, as the title suggests, inevitably leads to cataclysmic disaster -- and in rather short order too, as this film is only sixty minutes long. Despite the fact that it has a respectable rating on IMDB, and was apparently a box-office hit, this is perhaps the worst feature film that we've seen as part of this project. It reminded me of sub-par after-school specials, warning against various arguably risky behaviors, but in a risibly alarmist and hysterical tone -- and transparently taking perverse pleasure at showing the consequences. We have seen many films with misguided or wrongheaded moralistic authorial viewpoints -- most of the Griffith films we've seen, for instance -- but never with the kind of clunky writing and lack of dramatic structure on display in this film. It has rather poor production values as well, though some of that may have been the fault of the print, which was not in terribly good shape.
One of the reasons that I'd originally decided to add this film to the project was that IMDB had listed it as being directed by Dorothy Davenport, the widow of Wallace Reid (whom we'd seen in Carmen and Hawthorne of the U.S.A.) However it appears that she directed the sound remake in 1934 (also starring Helen Foster), while this film was directed by Norton S. Parker. This led to my first successful IMDB correction, so I suppose the viewing wasn't a total loss.
Next week we'll watch The Mysterious Lady, our twelfth film from from 1928, and the second starring Greta Garbo. The list, as always, is here: https://bit.ly/2lZtfmT
Saturday, June 22, 2019
Beggars of Life (1928)
Originally posted to Facebook on 9/18/2018
Beggars of Life was our tenth film from 1928, and the first film we've seen starring Louise Brooks. The screenplay was adapted by Benjamin Glazer, who also wrote the screenplays for 1927's 7th Heaven and 1926's Flesh and the Devil. It was directed by William Wellman and costarred Richard Arlen, both of whom we encountered in 1927's Wings. It also prominently features Wallace Beery, who has popped up in several films we've seen.
Arlen plays a hobo who enters a house looking for food, and finds a recently murdered man. He also finds Louise Brooks, who admits to the killing, though in self-defense. The two quickly leave, with Brooks disguised (not terribly convincingly) as a boy. They try to put some distance between themselves and the dead man while avoiding trouble, and eventually meet up with a band of other hobos, including Wallace Beery.
This depiction of homeless transients treated in a serious way feels new compared to the other American films we've seen as part of this project, certainly as embodied in a big-budget film with name stars. This film in fact felt to me like a premonition of the end of the twenties, and the beginning, in some sense, of the thirties, when poverty and hunger and hand-to-mouth existence became much more focused in the national consciousness. It has a grittiness and a danger to it -- up until the point, about halfway through, where the hobos, led by Beery, decide to hold a mock trial, which devolves into a series of limp jokes involving misuse of legal terminology. The film to that point had seemed basically naturalistic, but the artifice and theatricality of the trial broke the spell (for me at least), and though the film eventually rallied, it never quite recovered.
Beery gives the most charismatic performance in the film, dangerous but charming and mercurial. Arlen and Brooks play their parts as worried, fearful, and increasingly dependent on one another -- less vivid than Beery, but completely appropriate to their roles. There is, also, interestingly, a black character named "Black Mose", played by Blue Washington, who is given a significant amount of screen time. He is played and written stereotypically, but, as I discussed with the kids, I am genuinely unsure whether this is better or worse than the complete absence or extremely minimal roles for black actors which has been the general practice in the vast majority of the films we've seen to this point.
Next week we'll see Road to Ruin, our eleventh film from 1928. The list, as always, is here: https://bit.ly/2lZtfmT
Beggars of Life was our tenth film from 1928, and the first film we've seen starring Louise Brooks. The screenplay was adapted by Benjamin Glazer, who also wrote the screenplays for 1927's 7th Heaven and 1926's Flesh and the Devil. It was directed by William Wellman and costarred Richard Arlen, both of whom we encountered in 1927's Wings. It also prominently features Wallace Beery, who has popped up in several films we've seen.
Arlen plays a hobo who enters a house looking for food, and finds a recently murdered man. He also finds Louise Brooks, who admits to the killing, though in self-defense. The two quickly leave, with Brooks disguised (not terribly convincingly) as a boy. They try to put some distance between themselves and the dead man while avoiding trouble, and eventually meet up with a band of other hobos, including Wallace Beery.
This depiction of homeless transients treated in a serious way feels new compared to the other American films we've seen as part of this project, certainly as embodied in a big-budget film with name stars. This film in fact felt to me like a premonition of the end of the twenties, and the beginning, in some sense, of the thirties, when poverty and hunger and hand-to-mouth existence became much more focused in the national consciousness. It has a grittiness and a danger to it -- up until the point, about halfway through, where the hobos, led by Beery, decide to hold a mock trial, which devolves into a series of limp jokes involving misuse of legal terminology. The film to that point had seemed basically naturalistic, but the artifice and theatricality of the trial broke the spell (for me at least), and though the film eventually rallied, it never quite recovered.
Beery gives the most charismatic performance in the film, dangerous but charming and mercurial. Arlen and Brooks play their parts as worried, fearful, and increasingly dependent on one another -- less vivid than Beery, but completely appropriate to their roles. There is, also, interestingly, a black character named "Black Mose", played by Blue Washington, who is given a significant amount of screen time. He is played and written stereotypically, but, as I discussed with the kids, I am genuinely unsure whether this is better or worse than the complete absence or extremely minimal roles for black actors which has been the general practice in the vast majority of the films we've seen to this point.
Next week we'll see Road to Ruin, our eleventh film from 1928. The list, as always, is here: https://bit.ly/2lZtfmT
Lonesome (1928)
Originally posted to Facebook on 8/26/2018
Lonesome was our ninth film from 1928. It was directed by Pál Fejös, and starred Barbara Kent and Glenn Tryon. We'd seen Kent before in a small role as Lars Hanson's younger sister in 1926's Flesh and the Devil, but this is the first time we've seen the other two. (Kent, interestingly, died rather recently at the age of 103, in 2011.)
This film is the first we've seen with synced dialog, though only during three brief scenes. I didn't tell the kids ahead of time, and their excited reaction when Kent and Tryon began talking for the first time was gratifying.
The plot overall is about two lonely young people in the city finding each other and falling in love. It reminded me of the early sections of The Crowd -- in its urban setting, and its slice-of-life approach. Its scope was narrower though -- covering a single day -- and in that respect it could be described as a 1920s version of Before Sunrise -- though the later film was much more textured and probing. The best scenes in this movie are of Kent and Tryon getting to know each other, and starting to relax in each other's presence. It is notable how confident the movie is about having relatively little plot -- but unfortunately the few plot threads that are present result in a disappointingly stupid ending.
The synced dialog also detracts from the movie, though of course it was one of my motivations for selecting the film, and also one of the things that lends it historical significance. But it was nonetheless extraneous and distracting, particularly the latter two talking sequences. The first sequence took place on the beach, and though superfluous, and clearly present only for the novelty, it was at least in keeping with the film thematically. The second sequence looked as though it was shot on a dark empty sound stage -- the beach and surroundings where the leads are supposedly talking mysteriously vanish for a few minutes. The final scene takes place in a police station, and the writing, pacing, and acting are embarrassingly bad -- understandable given the infancy of talking pictures, but still not a welcome development. Overall, this movie would have been better as a straight silent, though I'm not sure we would have seen it had that been the approach.
Next week we'll see Beggars of Life, our tenth film from 1928, which features our first encounter with Louise Brooks. The list, as always, is here: https://bit.ly/2lZtfmT
Lonesome was our ninth film from 1928. It was directed by Pál Fejös, and starred Barbara Kent and Glenn Tryon. We'd seen Kent before in a small role as Lars Hanson's younger sister in 1926's Flesh and the Devil, but this is the first time we've seen the other two. (Kent, interestingly, died rather recently at the age of 103, in 2011.)
This film is the first we've seen with synced dialog, though only during three brief scenes. I didn't tell the kids ahead of time, and their excited reaction when Kent and Tryon began talking for the first time was gratifying.
The plot overall is about two lonely young people in the city finding each other and falling in love. It reminded me of the early sections of The Crowd -- in its urban setting, and its slice-of-life approach. Its scope was narrower though -- covering a single day -- and in that respect it could be described as a 1920s version of Before Sunrise -- though the later film was much more textured and probing. The best scenes in this movie are of Kent and Tryon getting to know each other, and starting to relax in each other's presence. It is notable how confident the movie is about having relatively little plot -- but unfortunately the few plot threads that are present result in a disappointingly stupid ending.
The synced dialog also detracts from the movie, though of course it was one of my motivations for selecting the film, and also one of the things that lends it historical significance. But it was nonetheless extraneous and distracting, particularly the latter two talking sequences. The first sequence took place on the beach, and though superfluous, and clearly present only for the novelty, it was at least in keeping with the film thematically. The second sequence looked as though it was shot on a dark empty sound stage -- the beach and surroundings where the leads are supposedly talking mysteriously vanish for a few minutes. The final scene takes place in a police station, and the writing, pacing, and acting are embarrassingly bad -- understandable given the infancy of talking pictures, but still not a welcome development. Overall, this movie would have been better as a straight silent, though I'm not sure we would have seen it had that been the approach.
Next week we'll see Beggars of Life, our tenth film from 1928, which features our first encounter with Louise Brooks. The list, as always, is here: https://bit.ly/2lZtfmT
The Man Who Laughs (1928)
Originally posted to Facebook on 8/19/2018
Our eighth film from 1928 was The Man Who Laughs, an American film with a German director and leading man in Paul Leni and Conrad Veidt, respectively. This is the first film we've seen directed by Leni, and the second time we've seen Veidt, after 1920's The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari. This is also the first time we've seen Mary Philbin, Veidt's costar.
Veidt plays Gwynplaine, the son of a nobleman who is murdered for political reasons at the beginning of the film. Gwynplaine, then a child, is mutilated so that his face is formed into a permanent grin. He ends up joining a traveling theatrical troupe, and when we see him as an adult, he is in a romantic relationship with a blind girl name Dea -- played by Philbin -- whom he had discovered as a baby.
Veidt's appearance famously inspired the look of the Joker, but the two characters are not similar at all from a dramatic perspective. Gwynplaine is actually remarkably well-adjusted, given the circumstances -- though he is anxious and ambivalent about his relationship with Philbin, feeling that she only loves him because she is unable to see his disfigured appearance. Dea is written and played as a saint, resulting in a rather static performance. Though Philbin was an established star, it's hard to imagine what she could have done to make this role more dynamic. Much more interesting is the role played by Olga Baclanova, the Duchess who has inherited Veidt's father's land, and who is in jeopardy of losing it once Gwynplaine's existence comes to light. She plays the role as hedonistic, threatened, and eventually desperate.
This was another Movietone release, meaning that we heard the actual score that was released at the time. Like Sunrise, there were actual wisps of human speech on the soundtrack -- crowd noises and such -- and in one scene, unprecedented so far in this project, Gwynplaine's name is actually heard being called, though it isn't synchronized or tied to any particular person.
Though this is often categorized under the rubric of German expressionism transplanted to America -- much like Sunrise -- it actually seems closer to the gothic over-the-top films of Lon Chaney -- because of its lurid nature, and its focus on disfigurement and the inner lives of those afflicted. So it was not surprising to me that Lon Chaney had been offered this role, but for scheduling reasons hadn't been able to accept. And it is very easy to imagine him in this film; though Veidt does a good job, you could easily see Chaney's intensity and charisma dramatically elevating the role -- but perhaps at the expense of its relatability.
Next week we watch Lonesome, our ninth film from 1928, which will be the first time in this project that we've heard synchronized sound in a commercial feature film. The list, as always is here: https://bit.ly/2lZtfmT
Our eighth film from 1928 was The Man Who Laughs, an American film with a German director and leading man in Paul Leni and Conrad Veidt, respectively. This is the first film we've seen directed by Leni, and the second time we've seen Veidt, after 1920's The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari. This is also the first time we've seen Mary Philbin, Veidt's costar.
Veidt plays Gwynplaine, the son of a nobleman who is murdered for political reasons at the beginning of the film. Gwynplaine, then a child, is mutilated so that his face is formed into a permanent grin. He ends up joining a traveling theatrical troupe, and when we see him as an adult, he is in a romantic relationship with a blind girl name Dea -- played by Philbin -- whom he had discovered as a baby.
Veidt's appearance famously inspired the look of the Joker, but the two characters are not similar at all from a dramatic perspective. Gwynplaine is actually remarkably well-adjusted, given the circumstances -- though he is anxious and ambivalent about his relationship with Philbin, feeling that she only loves him because she is unable to see his disfigured appearance. Dea is written and played as a saint, resulting in a rather static performance. Though Philbin was an established star, it's hard to imagine what she could have done to make this role more dynamic. Much more interesting is the role played by Olga Baclanova, the Duchess who has inherited Veidt's father's land, and who is in jeopardy of losing it once Gwynplaine's existence comes to light. She plays the role as hedonistic, threatened, and eventually desperate.
This was another Movietone release, meaning that we heard the actual score that was released at the time. Like Sunrise, there were actual wisps of human speech on the soundtrack -- crowd noises and such -- and in one scene, unprecedented so far in this project, Gwynplaine's name is actually heard being called, though it isn't synchronized or tied to any particular person.
Though this is often categorized under the rubric of German expressionism transplanted to America -- much like Sunrise -- it actually seems closer to the gothic over-the-top films of Lon Chaney -- because of its lurid nature, and its focus on disfigurement and the inner lives of those afflicted. So it was not surprising to me that Lon Chaney had been offered this role, but for scheduling reasons hadn't been able to accept. And it is very easy to imagine him in this film; though Veidt does a good job, you could easily see Chaney's intensity and charisma dramatically elevating the role -- but perhaps at the expense of its relatability.
Next week we watch Lonesome, our ninth film from 1928, which will be the first time in this project that we've heard synchronized sound in a commercial feature film. The list, as always is here: https://bit.ly/2lZtfmT
The Circus (1928)
Originally posted to Facebook on 8/10/2018
The Circus was our seventh film from 1928, and the fifth Chaplin feature that we've seen, the most recent being 1925's The Gold Rush.
This film began with a song playing over the opening credits, sung, as it turns out, by Chaplin himself. The kids found this quite surprising, though we'd heard some tinny isolated singing on a Movietone track during 1927's Sunrise. But Chaplin's voice in this case seemed to me a little too clear and resonant to truly be of the era -- and sure enough when I researched it, it turned out to be an addition he'd made in the late sixties, when he was nearing eighty. He added a new score along with his vocals, raising the question of how different the film we watched was from the one audiences saw at the time. Hopefully the changes were minor.
Chaplin again plays a variation on his tramp, starting the film penniless and in trouble with the law, but eventually being hired by the circus -- because he is unintentionally funny. There is a love triangle between him, the ringmaster's daughter (played by Merna Kennedy), and a tightrope walker (played by Harry Crocker), though it takes quite a while for that story to develop. The majority of the film consists of various medium length bits -- such as a chase through a hall of mirrors, or Chaplin getting locked in a cage with a lion. There aren't as many long set pieces as we've seen in his previous films, and there are a few surprisingly violent scenes showing how Kennedy's father, played by Al Ernest Garcia, mistreats her. There was one recurring bit that we kind of enjoyed -- a donkey that had somehow taken a dislike to Chaplin, and would occasionally appear from nowhere and attack him. In essence, though, with the plot being as thin as it is, the film became the sum of its parts -- and its parts ranged from tedious to mildly amusing. I think it is notable too that this film has very few of the iconic scenes that are shown in Chaplin clip reels -- in strong contrast, for instance, to The Gold Rush. I wasn't a huge fan of the earlier movie either, but it was far more ambitious than this one.
It is interesting how few films Chaplin was making by this point. By comparison, Buster Keaton starred in a film or two every year from the early twenties up through the mid-thirties (though he had lost creative control by the time sound films arrived.) Harold Lloyd appeared with similar frequency during the same time period. Chaplin, though, starred in four major films in the twenties, two in each of the thirties, forties, and fifties, and a final film in the sixties. It is probably too easy to ascribe this to his personality or his increasing exactitude about his films -- though I've read stories along those lines. But to the extent that his perfectionism played a role in his decreased appearance on the screen, it seems like a misplaced impulse, in part because his films are not notably stronger than his peers'; in fact most of them, including this one, are in the same "pleasantly amusing but hit-or-miss" category.
Next week we move on to The Man Who Laughs, our eighth film from 1928 -- featuring two German émigrés, Paul Leni as the director, and Conrad Veidt as the lead. Veidt, of course, we saw way back in 1920's The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari. It also will be our first film with Mary Philbin, who plays the female lead. The list, as always, is here: https://bit.ly/2lZtfmT
The Circus was our seventh film from 1928, and the fifth Chaplin feature that we've seen, the most recent being 1925's The Gold Rush.
This film began with a song playing over the opening credits, sung, as it turns out, by Chaplin himself. The kids found this quite surprising, though we'd heard some tinny isolated singing on a Movietone track during 1927's Sunrise. But Chaplin's voice in this case seemed to me a little too clear and resonant to truly be of the era -- and sure enough when I researched it, it turned out to be an addition he'd made in the late sixties, when he was nearing eighty. He added a new score along with his vocals, raising the question of how different the film we watched was from the one audiences saw at the time. Hopefully the changes were minor.
Chaplin again plays a variation on his tramp, starting the film penniless and in trouble with the law, but eventually being hired by the circus -- because he is unintentionally funny. There is a love triangle between him, the ringmaster's daughter (played by Merna Kennedy), and a tightrope walker (played by Harry Crocker), though it takes quite a while for that story to develop. The majority of the film consists of various medium length bits -- such as a chase through a hall of mirrors, or Chaplin getting locked in a cage with a lion. There aren't as many long set pieces as we've seen in his previous films, and there are a few surprisingly violent scenes showing how Kennedy's father, played by Al Ernest Garcia, mistreats her. There was one recurring bit that we kind of enjoyed -- a donkey that had somehow taken a dislike to Chaplin, and would occasionally appear from nowhere and attack him. In essence, though, with the plot being as thin as it is, the film became the sum of its parts -- and its parts ranged from tedious to mildly amusing. I think it is notable too that this film has very few of the iconic scenes that are shown in Chaplin clip reels -- in strong contrast, for instance, to The Gold Rush. I wasn't a huge fan of the earlier movie either, but it was far more ambitious than this one.
It is interesting how few films Chaplin was making by this point. By comparison, Buster Keaton starred in a film or two every year from the early twenties up through the mid-thirties (though he had lost creative control by the time sound films arrived.) Harold Lloyd appeared with similar frequency during the same time period. Chaplin, though, starred in four major films in the twenties, two in each of the thirties, forties, and fifties, and a final film in the sixties. It is probably too easy to ascribe this to his personality or his increasing exactitude about his films -- though I've read stories along those lines. But to the extent that his perfectionism played a role in his decreased appearance on the screen, it seems like a misplaced impulse, in part because his films are not notably stronger than his peers'; in fact most of them, including this one, are in the same "pleasantly amusing but hit-or-miss" category.
Next week we move on to The Man Who Laughs, our eighth film from 1928 -- featuring two German émigrés, Paul Leni as the director, and Conrad Veidt as the lead. Veidt, of course, we saw way back in 1920's The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari. It also will be our first film with Mary Philbin, who plays the female lead. The list, as always, is here: https://bit.ly/2lZtfmT
The Cameraman (1928)
Originally posted to Facebook on 8/5/2018
The Cameraman was our sixth film from 1928, and the third feature we've seen from Buster Keaton, after 1926's The General, and 1923's Three Ages.
Keaton in this film plays a struggling photographer, selling on sidewalks. After taking the photo of a young woman, played by Marceline Day, he becomes infatuated with her, finds that she works at a newsreel organization, and attempts to join the staff. As with many of the films we've seen from the famous silent comedians, this film uses its loose plot as a device on which to hang several not-terribly-connected sequences. For instance there is a long piece where Keaton goes on a date of sorts with Day to a communal swimming pool, and shortly after that there is a long sequence where he is filming gang warfare in Chinatown. The latter sequence is obviously fraught, although it does appear that the actors engaged in the gang warfare were mostly Asian, rather than white actors made up as Asians. Additionally, just prior to the brawl, Keaton acquires a monkey sidekick, the result of him running into an organ grinder's monkey, after which the organ grinder exclaims "Now, see! You kill-a de monk!" though of course the monkey turns out not actually to be dead. When I read that title card aloud, Ben sort of laughed, and then explained, "I just thought it was funny that your voice got kind of sad when you realized how racist it was." But whatever you think of the presence of organ grinders and Chinese gang members, it did seem a little funny to me that somebody might have left a theater for five minutes while Keaton was at the pool with Day, and come back to see Keaton's character trying to film brutal gang violence while a small monkey mans a machine gun next to him -- and perhaps wondered exactly what they'd missed in those five minutes.
The movie has a few of the iconic Keaton scenes that are regularly excerpted when people are showing clips -- for instance the scene of him atop a wooden structure that collapses as he's filming. I laughed a few times during this film, and enjoyed it probably about as much as Three Ages. It wasn't as good as The General -- in part because watching The General didn't summon up the image of an exhausted room of writers grasping for ideas, with somebody eventually pitching, "Maybe a monkey joins him?"
This was one of his last silents -- and will probably be the last feature of his that we watch. There's a completionist side of me that has a desire to sit down and watch all of his films -- but I also have a strong desire to move this project out of the twenties, where it has been lodged since early 2017. We are, however, planning to watch some of his short films between the planned features from 1929 and 1930.
Next week we move on from Keaton to Chaplin, watching The Circus, our seventh film from 1928, and our fifth by Chaplin. The link, as always, is here: https://bit.ly/2lZtfmT
The Cameraman was our sixth film from 1928, and the third feature we've seen from Buster Keaton, after 1926's The General, and 1923's Three Ages.
Keaton in this film plays a struggling photographer, selling on sidewalks. After taking the photo of a young woman, played by Marceline Day, he becomes infatuated with her, finds that she works at a newsreel organization, and attempts to join the staff. As with many of the films we've seen from the famous silent comedians, this film uses its loose plot as a device on which to hang several not-terribly-connected sequences. For instance there is a long piece where Keaton goes on a date of sorts with Day to a communal swimming pool, and shortly after that there is a long sequence where he is filming gang warfare in Chinatown. The latter sequence is obviously fraught, although it does appear that the actors engaged in the gang warfare were mostly Asian, rather than white actors made up as Asians. Additionally, just prior to the brawl, Keaton acquires a monkey sidekick, the result of him running into an organ grinder's monkey, after which the organ grinder exclaims "Now, see! You kill-a de monk!" though of course the monkey turns out not actually to be dead. When I read that title card aloud, Ben sort of laughed, and then explained, "I just thought it was funny that your voice got kind of sad when you realized how racist it was." But whatever you think of the presence of organ grinders and Chinese gang members, it did seem a little funny to me that somebody might have left a theater for five minutes while Keaton was at the pool with Day, and come back to see Keaton's character trying to film brutal gang violence while a small monkey mans a machine gun next to him -- and perhaps wondered exactly what they'd missed in those five minutes.
The movie has a few of the iconic Keaton scenes that are regularly excerpted when people are showing clips -- for instance the scene of him atop a wooden structure that collapses as he's filming. I laughed a few times during this film, and enjoyed it probably about as much as Three Ages. It wasn't as good as The General -- in part because watching The General didn't summon up the image of an exhausted room of writers grasping for ideas, with somebody eventually pitching, "Maybe a monkey joins him?"
This was one of his last silents -- and will probably be the last feature of his that we watch. There's a completionist side of me that has a desire to sit down and watch all of his films -- but I also have a strong desire to move this project out of the twenties, where it has been lodged since early 2017. We are, however, planning to watch some of his short films between the planned features from 1929 and 1930.
Next week we move on from Keaton to Chaplin, watching The Circus, our seventh film from 1928, and our fifth by Chaplin. The link, as always, is here: https://bit.ly/2lZtfmT
The Wind (1928)
Originally posted to Facebook on 8/1/2018
The Wind was our fifth film from 1928, reuniting Lillian Gish, Lars Hanson, and director Victor Sjöström from 1926's The Scarlet Letter. All three, particularly Sjöström and Gish, had been prominent figures in the movie industry since the beginning of features, and we have seen them all multiple times. Also returning from The Scarlet Letter was Frances Marion, who wrote or adapted not only these two films, but several others we've seen, including 1917's Tillie Wakes Up, 1918's Stella Maris, 1925's Lazybones, and 1927's The Red Mill. She later went on to be nominated for three writing Oscars, winning two.
Like The Crowd last week, The Wind is a rather well-known film which, however, does not appear to have an easily obtainable English language release. I again bought a Spanish language DVD ("El Viento"), but we instead ended up watching a version DVRed off TCM, where it happened to be playing. I'd hoped that the TCM version would have featured a better print, but sadly that was not the case. Often the picture was muddy or too dark, and it could clearly use a significant restoration. TCM actually prefaced the film with a 1983 introduction by Gish herself, taped when she was almost 90. In it she tells a few stories about the making of the film -- which I thought about showing to the kids until I saw an article (https://bit.ly/1SIaaTM -- spoilers included) which convincingly debunked them.
The film itself concerns Gish traveling west alone, to live with her cousin, played by Edward Earle. Once there, she finds she is not entirely welcome, especially by his jealous wife Cora, played by Dorothy Cumming, and eventually she is kicked out of their house. At that point, the most palatable options presented to her are marrying one of two suitors -- either Sourdough, a sixty-something prospector-ish character, played by William Orlamond, or Lige, played by Hanson. She unsurprisingly chooses Hanson, despite Ben's vocal disagreement ("If you have the chance to become Mrs. Sourdough, you take it.") The movie eventually heads into rather dark, pre-code, PG-13ish territory. Among other things, Gish's character, having been not only pummeled by life, but also now living in an inhospitable climate, including the constant wind, begins to show signs of mental deterioration. She gives a very good, skittish performance, probably her best that we've seen -- similar to the martyrs she's played before, but more layered and calibrated. Sjöström's direction is characteristically assured as well -- not showy, but with personality; I suspect that personality would shown through even more strongly had we been watching a better print.
Next week's movie, our sixth from 1928, is The Cameraman, a Buster Keaton movie - the third film of his we've seen. The list, as always, is here: https://bit.ly/2lZtfmT
The Wind was our fifth film from 1928, reuniting Lillian Gish, Lars Hanson, and director Victor Sjöström from 1926's The Scarlet Letter. All three, particularly Sjöström and Gish, had been prominent figures in the movie industry since the beginning of features, and we have seen them all multiple times. Also returning from The Scarlet Letter was Frances Marion, who wrote or adapted not only these two films, but several others we've seen, including 1917's Tillie Wakes Up, 1918's Stella Maris, 1925's Lazybones, and 1927's The Red Mill. She later went on to be nominated for three writing Oscars, winning two.
Like The Crowd last week, The Wind is a rather well-known film which, however, does not appear to have an easily obtainable English language release. I again bought a Spanish language DVD ("El Viento"), but we instead ended up watching a version DVRed off TCM, where it happened to be playing. I'd hoped that the TCM version would have featured a better print, but sadly that was not the case. Often the picture was muddy or too dark, and it could clearly use a significant restoration. TCM actually prefaced the film with a 1983 introduction by Gish herself, taped when she was almost 90. In it she tells a few stories about the making of the film -- which I thought about showing to the kids until I saw an article (https://bit.ly/1SIaaTM -- spoilers included) which convincingly debunked them.
The film itself concerns Gish traveling west alone, to live with her cousin, played by Edward Earle. Once there, she finds she is not entirely welcome, especially by his jealous wife Cora, played by Dorothy Cumming, and eventually she is kicked out of their house. At that point, the most palatable options presented to her are marrying one of two suitors -- either Sourdough, a sixty-something prospector-ish character, played by William Orlamond, or Lige, played by Hanson. She unsurprisingly chooses Hanson, despite Ben's vocal disagreement ("If you have the chance to become Mrs. Sourdough, you take it.") The movie eventually heads into rather dark, pre-code, PG-13ish territory. Among other things, Gish's character, having been not only pummeled by life, but also now living in an inhospitable climate, including the constant wind, begins to show signs of mental deterioration. She gives a very good, skittish performance, probably her best that we've seen -- similar to the martyrs she's played before, but more layered and calibrated. Sjöström's direction is characteristically assured as well -- not showy, but with personality; I suspect that personality would shown through even more strongly had we been watching a better print.
Next week's movie, our sixth from 1928, is The Cameraman, a Buster Keaton movie - the third film of his we've seen. The list, as always, is here: https://bit.ly/2lZtfmT
Sunday, June 9, 2019
The Crowd (1928)
Originally posted to Facebook on 7/29/2018
Our fourth film from 1928 was The Crowd. It was the second film in a row (after last week's Show People), and the third overall, that we've seen directed by King Vidor. Rather frustratingly, there doesn't appear to be an English-language DVD of this film available by a commercial publisher. I ended up buying a Spanish version ("Y El Munda Marcha"), which was fine; the title cards are still in English, so there is no difference when the Spanish subtitles are turned off. However the print was still not all that great -- an occupational hazard when you are watching silent films, but The Crowd is not some obscure rarity that has survived only through chance; it's a well-known movie, was nominated for a couple Academy Awards at the time, and was one of the first 25 features added to the National Film Registry in 1989, along with only five other silents. It's very strange that there isn't a decently well restored version of this film available for the American market.
In any case, the film stars James Murray and Eleanor Boardman. Neither are well remembered today, though Boardman had a brief but significant career, and was in some interesting films, including 1926's Tell It to the Marines which we saw earlier in this project. She also happened to be married to King Vidor at the time of this film. Murray's career was much more checkered, and he died in 1936, after many years of alcoholism and erratic behavior. The film covers the courtship and marriage of John and Mary Sims, and tracks their early lives through various ups and downs. It actually starts with John Sims as a boy, growing up in a small town, before he moves to New York City, but those scenes are almost completely superfluous and could have been covered by a line or two of dialog later in the film. Ideally the film could have started with the movie's iconic shot of a camera climbing up the side of an office building, dissolving through a window, and showing Murray in a dehumanizing sea of desks -- and that is in fact the way 1960's The Apartment started, explicitly paying tribute to that scene. And that shot also shows some of the influence of German Expressionism in American films -- sort of a white collar equivalent to Metropolis. That influence pops up intermittently through the film, another example being the maternity ward when Murray first sees his son.
I was a little disappointed by the film, probably in part because of the expectations set by its "classic" status, but also by Murray's performance. The film hits a lot of the notes you would expect in a mature film about ordinary people -- showing their ambitions and hopes meshing unevenly with day-to-day realities -- and it is indeed refreshing to see a couple on-screen arguing about something as prosaic as getting the toilet fixed. They face more serious challenges together as well, but Murray can barely keep it together under even regular circumstances. His emoting is almost a caricature of what people envision silent film acting to be. It doesn't completely distract from the film's virtues, but it does make one feel a little more sympathy for Boardman's family's disapproval of him. Another flaw is that Boardman plays a distinctly second fiddle in the film. Almost all of her frustrations are in reaction to Murray's choices or circumstances. A more modulated approach -- more emphasis on her inner life, and saving Murray's hysterics for a few key scenes -- would have strengthened the film significantly. I think the overall theme, though, of how people's relationships to one another provide meaning regardless of how mundane their lives seem, or how frustrated or despairing they may be, has almost universal appeal -- and is also what drives It's a Wonderful Life, for instance, which may well have been influenced by this film.
Next week, we'll see The Wind, our fifth film from 1928, and a re-teaming of the stars and director from 1926's The Scarlet Letter, all three of whom (Victor Sjöström, Lillian Gish, and Lars Hanson) we have seen multiple times before, together and apart. The overall list, as always, is here: https://bit.ly/2lZtfmT
Our fourth film from 1928 was The Crowd. It was the second film in a row (after last week's Show People), and the third overall, that we've seen directed by King Vidor. Rather frustratingly, there doesn't appear to be an English-language DVD of this film available by a commercial publisher. I ended up buying a Spanish version ("Y El Munda Marcha"), which was fine; the title cards are still in English, so there is no difference when the Spanish subtitles are turned off. However the print was still not all that great -- an occupational hazard when you are watching silent films, but The Crowd is not some obscure rarity that has survived only through chance; it's a well-known movie, was nominated for a couple Academy Awards at the time, and was one of the first 25 features added to the National Film Registry in 1989, along with only five other silents. It's very strange that there isn't a decently well restored version of this film available for the American market.
In any case, the film stars James Murray and Eleanor Boardman. Neither are well remembered today, though Boardman had a brief but significant career, and was in some interesting films, including 1926's Tell It to the Marines which we saw earlier in this project. She also happened to be married to King Vidor at the time of this film. Murray's career was much more checkered, and he died in 1936, after many years of alcoholism and erratic behavior. The film covers the courtship and marriage of John and Mary Sims, and tracks their early lives through various ups and downs. It actually starts with John Sims as a boy, growing up in a small town, before he moves to New York City, but those scenes are almost completely superfluous and could have been covered by a line or two of dialog later in the film. Ideally the film could have started with the movie's iconic shot of a camera climbing up the side of an office building, dissolving through a window, and showing Murray in a dehumanizing sea of desks -- and that is in fact the way 1960's The Apartment started, explicitly paying tribute to that scene. And that shot also shows some of the influence of German Expressionism in American films -- sort of a white collar equivalent to Metropolis. That influence pops up intermittently through the film, another example being the maternity ward when Murray first sees his son.
I was a little disappointed by the film, probably in part because of the expectations set by its "classic" status, but also by Murray's performance. The film hits a lot of the notes you would expect in a mature film about ordinary people -- showing their ambitions and hopes meshing unevenly with day-to-day realities -- and it is indeed refreshing to see a couple on-screen arguing about something as prosaic as getting the toilet fixed. They face more serious challenges together as well, but Murray can barely keep it together under even regular circumstances. His emoting is almost a caricature of what people envision silent film acting to be. It doesn't completely distract from the film's virtues, but it does make one feel a little more sympathy for Boardman's family's disapproval of him. Another flaw is that Boardman plays a distinctly second fiddle in the film. Almost all of her frustrations are in reaction to Murray's choices or circumstances. A more modulated approach -- more emphasis on her inner life, and saving Murray's hysterics for a few key scenes -- would have strengthened the film significantly. I think the overall theme, though, of how people's relationships to one another provide meaning regardless of how mundane their lives seem, or how frustrated or despairing they may be, has almost universal appeal -- and is also what drives It's a Wonderful Life, for instance, which may well have been influenced by this film.
Next week, we'll see The Wind, our fifth film from 1928, and a re-teaming of the stars and director from 1926's The Scarlet Letter, all three of whom (Victor Sjöström, Lillian Gish, and Lars Hanson) we have seen multiple times before, together and apart. The overall list, as always, is here: https://bit.ly/2lZtfmT
Show People (1928)
Originally posted to Facebook on 7/27/2018
Show People was our third film from 1928. It was directed by King Vidor, and starred Marion Davies and William Haines, all of whom we've seen before during this project -- Marion Davies in 1922's When Knighthood was in Flower and 1927's The Red Mill, William Haines in 1926's Tell It to the Marines, and King Vidor as the director of 1925's The Big Parade.
This was another film with a Movietone soundtrack, signaling the incipient end of the silent era, and the kids were impressed that, for the first time, we heard the MGM lion roar. ("Whoa!" they said.) Until recently I had actually believed that the point of the MGM lion -- and its roar -- was to signal to audiences that they were watching a sound film -- but we've seen the lion roaring silently on films dating back a few years, so obviously that was incorrect.
Show People is a Hollywood movie about Hollywood, similar in some ways to 1923's The Extra Girl, but its humor is broader than that film, which is especially notable when you remember that a long sequence in the earlier film involved Mabel Normand not being able to tell the difference between a dog dressed up as a lion and a real lion. Marion Davies in this case plays the newcomer to Hollywood, and is eventually helped out by William Haines, who is a slapstick comedian at a minor studio. Haines, as we saw a few months ago, held his own against Lon Chaney in Tell It to the Marines, perhaps surprisingly. But he does less well up against Marion Davies in this picture. She is clearly the star of the film, and gives her normal charismatic performance, though she is a bit less charming and more self-centered than in previous films. In fact, the major arc of the film follows her rise up the Hollywood ladder, forgetting her friends along the way. But she is obnoxious not only on the way up, but also when she rights things at the end. Haines also is fairly obnoxious in his role, and never quite shows his character's core of seriousness as he did in Tell It to the Marines.
Neither The Extra Girl nor this film was intended as a brutal satire of Hollywood exactly, but this film has a little more of an insider feel than the earlier one, which gives it that much less bite. It reminded me of the phenomenon of celebrities who have been mocked on Saturday Night Live showing up in person, to signal that the mockery is all in good fun -- whether or not that is (or should be) the case. And there are a number of celebrity cameos throughout the movie, playing themselves, including William S. Hart, Douglas Fairbanks, and John Gilbert. Some show up only briefly in a single shot, but some, like Charlie Chaplin, are mentioned by name, and actually have a short scene with the lead characters. The Extra Girl had a few celebrity cameos as well, but nothing close to the star power of this film.
I think I would have preferred if this film had taken a stronger approach in one direction or another -- either to have been funnier, or to have had less two-dimensional characters, or to have been more scathing about Hollywood. But it was entertaining, and it was certainly interesting to see the impression Hollywood had or wanted to create for itself at this point in its history.
Next week we move on to The Crowd, our fourth film from 1928, which was also directed by King Vidor. The list, as always, is here: https://bit.ly/2lZtfmT.
Show People was our third film from 1928. It was directed by King Vidor, and starred Marion Davies and William Haines, all of whom we've seen before during this project -- Marion Davies in 1922's When Knighthood was in Flower and 1927's The Red Mill, William Haines in 1926's Tell It to the Marines, and King Vidor as the director of 1925's The Big Parade.
This was another film with a Movietone soundtrack, signaling the incipient end of the silent era, and the kids were impressed that, for the first time, we heard the MGM lion roar. ("Whoa!" they said.) Until recently I had actually believed that the point of the MGM lion -- and its roar -- was to signal to audiences that they were watching a sound film -- but we've seen the lion roaring silently on films dating back a few years, so obviously that was incorrect.
Show People is a Hollywood movie about Hollywood, similar in some ways to 1923's The Extra Girl, but its humor is broader than that film, which is especially notable when you remember that a long sequence in the earlier film involved Mabel Normand not being able to tell the difference between a dog dressed up as a lion and a real lion. Marion Davies in this case plays the newcomer to Hollywood, and is eventually helped out by William Haines, who is a slapstick comedian at a minor studio. Haines, as we saw a few months ago, held his own against Lon Chaney in Tell It to the Marines, perhaps surprisingly. But he does less well up against Marion Davies in this picture. She is clearly the star of the film, and gives her normal charismatic performance, though she is a bit less charming and more self-centered than in previous films. In fact, the major arc of the film follows her rise up the Hollywood ladder, forgetting her friends along the way. But she is obnoxious not only on the way up, but also when she rights things at the end. Haines also is fairly obnoxious in his role, and never quite shows his character's core of seriousness as he did in Tell It to the Marines.
Neither The Extra Girl nor this film was intended as a brutal satire of Hollywood exactly, but this film has a little more of an insider feel than the earlier one, which gives it that much less bite. It reminded me of the phenomenon of celebrities who have been mocked on Saturday Night Live showing up in person, to signal that the mockery is all in good fun -- whether or not that is (or should be) the case. And there are a number of celebrity cameos throughout the movie, playing themselves, including William S. Hart, Douglas Fairbanks, and John Gilbert. Some show up only briefly in a single shot, but some, like Charlie Chaplin, are mentioned by name, and actually have a short scene with the lead characters. The Extra Girl had a few celebrity cameos as well, but nothing close to the star power of this film.
I think I would have preferred if this film had taken a stronger approach in one direction or another -- either to have been funnier, or to have had less two-dimensional characters, or to have been more scathing about Hollywood. But it was entertaining, and it was certainly interesting to see the impression Hollywood had or wanted to create for itself at this point in its history.
Next week we move on to The Crowd, our fourth film from 1928, which was also directed by King Vidor. The list, as always, is here: https://bit.ly/2lZtfmT.
Hell's Hinges (1916)
Originally posted to Facebook on 7/22/2018
This week we jumped a decade back from 1927 to 1916's Hell's Hinges, which I wanted to see before we got too far removed from the silent era. This was our sixth film from 1916 -- having watched the fifth a year and a half earlier. It was the first film we've seen starring William S. Hart, who was a prolific actor during this period, making eight other features in 1916 alone, and continuing that pace throughout the teens. The majority are lost, but enough survive to get a decent idea of his work.
The film concerns a young Reverend named Robert Henley, played by Jack Standing, and his sister, played by Clara Williams, who journey west to set up a ministry. It is immediately established that Henley is a womanizer, and not up to the task of being a community's moral leader. They arrive at Hell's Hinges, a semi-lawless western town, which nevertheless has a contingent of church-goers who welcome their arrival. "Blaze" Tracy, played by Hart, is not one of them, nor is "Silk" Miller, played by Alfred Hollingsworth, who is charmingly described as "Mingling the oily craftiness of a Mexican with the deadly treachery of a rattler." It was at this point that our hopes for the film began to dim. The film's arc is that Hart becomes attracted to and/or inspired by Clara Williams' character, and begins to mend his ways -- though her role is a bit underdeveloped as the catalyst for his change, and his attraction to her seems to be more about what she represents, rather than her specifically. Her attraction to him, if it truly exists, is even less well motivated.
I had expected skipping back to 1916 to be more of a regression than it actually was. The acting was a little broader, and the film was definitely shot and framed a lot more statically than some of the films we've been seeing recently, but the story was still competently and economically told -- notwithstanding the flaws discussed above. The screenplay was written by C. Gardner Sullivan, who had previously, with Thomas Ince, written 1915's The Italian, which also featured Clara Williams. It was interesting to see Hart for the first time, and to see how he fit perfectly into the tradition of the taciturn western hero -- a clear antecedent to, for instance, John Wayne and Clint Eastwood -- though in some ways he is more extreme than either of them. His character was also surprisingly morally ambiguous for a western hero, though his previous sins are referred to non-specifically rather than detailed.
Next week, we move on to 1928, with Show People, our third film from that year. It stars Marion Davies and William Haines, and is directed by King Vidor, all of whom we've seen previously during this project. The list, as always, is here: https://bit.ly/2lZtfmT.
This week we jumped a decade back from 1927 to 1916's Hell's Hinges, which I wanted to see before we got too far removed from the silent era. This was our sixth film from 1916 -- having watched the fifth a year and a half earlier. It was the first film we've seen starring William S. Hart, who was a prolific actor during this period, making eight other features in 1916 alone, and continuing that pace throughout the teens. The majority are lost, but enough survive to get a decent idea of his work.
The film concerns a young Reverend named Robert Henley, played by Jack Standing, and his sister, played by Clara Williams, who journey west to set up a ministry. It is immediately established that Henley is a womanizer, and not up to the task of being a community's moral leader. They arrive at Hell's Hinges, a semi-lawless western town, which nevertheless has a contingent of church-goers who welcome their arrival. "Blaze" Tracy, played by Hart, is not one of them, nor is "Silk" Miller, played by Alfred Hollingsworth, who is charmingly described as "Mingling the oily craftiness of a Mexican with the deadly treachery of a rattler." It was at this point that our hopes for the film began to dim. The film's arc is that Hart becomes attracted to and/or inspired by Clara Williams' character, and begins to mend his ways -- though her role is a bit underdeveloped as the catalyst for his change, and his attraction to her seems to be more about what she represents, rather than her specifically. Her attraction to him, if it truly exists, is even less well motivated.
I had expected skipping back to 1916 to be more of a regression than it actually was. The acting was a little broader, and the film was definitely shot and framed a lot more statically than some of the films we've been seeing recently, but the story was still competently and economically told -- notwithstanding the flaws discussed above. The screenplay was written by C. Gardner Sullivan, who had previously, with Thomas Ince, written 1915's The Italian, which also featured Clara Williams. It was interesting to see Hart for the first time, and to see how he fit perfectly into the tradition of the taciturn western hero -- a clear antecedent to, for instance, John Wayne and Clint Eastwood -- though in some ways he is more extreme than either of them. His character was also surprisingly morally ambiguous for a western hero, though his previous sins are referred to non-specifically rather than detailed.
Next week, we move on to 1928, with Show People, our third film from that year. It stars Marion Davies and William Haines, and is directed by King Vidor, all of whom we've seen previously during this project. The list, as always, is here: https://bit.ly/2lZtfmT.
7th Heaven (1927)
Originally posted to Facebook on 7/16/2018
Our tenth and final film from 1927 was 7th Heaven. This is the second time we've encountered both Frank Borzage, who directed 1925's Lazybones, and also Janet Gaynor, whom we'd seen just the previous month in Sunrise, another 1927 film. Sunrise, along with this film and Street Angel (another movie starring Gaynor that we will probably not have the chance to see) won Gaynor the first Best Actress Oscar -- as the acting awards that year were tied to individuals and not particular performances.
Gaynor plays a young woman who, as a result of an altercation with her physically abusive sister, is homeless and suicidal. She is temporarily taken in by a municipal worker named Chico, played by Charles Farrell, who feels sorry for her, and the film is the story of their ensuing relationship. Farrell and Gaynor have a solid chemistry in this movie, and its success led to them appearing in eleven more films over eight years, both silents and talkies. A few were directed by Borzage, and a few others by David Butler, who appears in this film as Farrell's next door neighbor.
In addition to that chemistry, Farrell gives a distinctive performance; his character is slightly comical, prone to over-dramatic pronouncements about this or that -- and a strong contrast to Gaynor, who begins the film very meekly, and gradually absorbs some of Farrell's confidence -- though she remains completely devoted to him throughout. This approach was one of the slightly jarring things about her performance in Sunrise. It makes a little more sense in this picture, but it does fall into a certain kind of unhealthy female archetype that, based on these two films, Gaynor seems comfortable embodying. (Along those lines I found the following quote from Ida Lupino, who was about ten years younger than Gaynor, "My agent had told me that he was going to make me the Janet Gaynor of England - I was going to play all the sweet roles. Whereupon, at the tender age of thirteen, I set upon the path of playing nothing but hookers.")
But, healthy or not, her role works for this film, and the film itself falls short of greatness, for me, only near the end. But by then it has built up such a reservoir of good will that it is hard to be disappointed.
Next week, before moving on to 1928, we're planning to see 1916's Hell's Hinges, a movie I wanted to circle back and catch as part of this project. It will be the first film we'll see starring William S. Hart, one of the earliest western movie stars. Then we'll return to the normal chronological order, and so I've updated the list with our planned films for 1929, as well as some shorts from the 1920s that we plan to watch before finally moving on to the 1930s. That list as always is here: https://bit.ly/2lZtfmT
Our tenth and final film from 1927 was 7th Heaven. This is the second time we've encountered both Frank Borzage, who directed 1925's Lazybones, and also Janet Gaynor, whom we'd seen just the previous month in Sunrise, another 1927 film. Sunrise, along with this film and Street Angel (another movie starring Gaynor that we will probably not have the chance to see) won Gaynor the first Best Actress Oscar -- as the acting awards that year were tied to individuals and not particular performances.
Gaynor plays a young woman who, as a result of an altercation with her physically abusive sister, is homeless and suicidal. She is temporarily taken in by a municipal worker named Chico, played by Charles Farrell, who feels sorry for her, and the film is the story of their ensuing relationship. Farrell and Gaynor have a solid chemistry in this movie, and its success led to them appearing in eleven more films over eight years, both silents and talkies. A few were directed by Borzage, and a few others by David Butler, who appears in this film as Farrell's next door neighbor.
In addition to that chemistry, Farrell gives a distinctive performance; his character is slightly comical, prone to over-dramatic pronouncements about this or that -- and a strong contrast to Gaynor, who begins the film very meekly, and gradually absorbs some of Farrell's confidence -- though she remains completely devoted to him throughout. This approach was one of the slightly jarring things about her performance in Sunrise. It makes a little more sense in this picture, but it does fall into a certain kind of unhealthy female archetype that, based on these two films, Gaynor seems comfortable embodying. (Along those lines I found the following quote from Ida Lupino, who was about ten years younger than Gaynor, "My agent had told me that he was going to make me the Janet Gaynor of England - I was going to play all the sweet roles. Whereupon, at the tender age of thirteen, I set upon the path of playing nothing but hookers.")
But, healthy or not, her role works for this film, and the film itself falls short of greatness, for me, only near the end. But by then it has built up such a reservoir of good will that it is hard to be disappointed.
Next week, before moving on to 1928, we're planning to see 1916's Hell's Hinges, a movie I wanted to circle back and catch as part of this project. It will be the first film we'll see starring William S. Hart, one of the earliest western movie stars. Then we'll return to the normal chronological order, and so I've updated the list with our planned films for 1929, as well as some shorts from the 1920s that we plan to watch before finally moving on to the 1930s. That list as always is here: https://bit.ly/2lZtfmT
The Passion of Joan of Arc (1928)
Originally posted to Facebook on 7/14/2018
Before seeing our final film from 1927, we instead saw The Passion of Joan of Arc. It was our second film from 1928, since I have now retconned Harold Lloyd's Speedy into this project (which we saw back in August of 2016 when we were still working our way through 1916.) Like the earlier film, the reason we saw Joan of Arc out of order was that it was playing at the Alamo -- where, in addition to seeing it on the big screen, I actually won a raffle for the Blu-Ray just prior to the showing -- though to be fair my chances were quadrupled since Bianca and the kids were there as well.
The film was directed by Carl Theodor Dreyer -- who continued directing up through the sixties -- and starred Maria Falconetti as Joan, who had made two films in the teens, but none subsequent to this movie. Falconetti was in her mid-thirties at the time of the film, and could potentially be taken for younger, but was clearly not 19 -- which in some ways downplays the absurdity of the trial, during which the film is almost entirely set. The film mentions at the very beginning how remarkable it is that we have the actual court proceedings from six hundred years ago -- essentially a transcript (which is available at https://bit.ly/2LgRkli as well as many other places.) And the majority of the film is drawn from that transcript. The closest reference point I have to the events in this movie is Shaw's Saint Joan -- which also liberally used that same transcript. But Shaw's play is much wider ranging -- including Joan's rise and fall, and, while it includes Joan's misery near the end of her life, it also has Shaw's characteristic wit and charm, as well as musings about Joan as an early emblem of Protestantism and nationalism -- whereas this movie covers only the last few days of her life.
The movie reminded me in some ways of Martin Scorsese's Silence, both because of the religious interrogations, but also because I suspect one's reaction is necessarily going to be colored by one's own religious beliefs. If you view Joan's visions as, in some sense, true, and believe that she is really communicating with the divine in some way -- then she is a martyr. If you view her as very likely mentally ill and delusional -- which is my perspective -- then her cause and beliefs become less important than her mistreatment. In fact, the most interesting thing to me about her life is not so much her trial and conviction -- it is how a teen-aged girl was able to lead such an enormous movement at a time there were very few women of any age in positions of power. Shaw addresses this a little in his play (entertainingly if not particularly convincingly) but this movie is single-mindedly focused on her faith and anguish, emphasized by a barrage of close-ups, both of her and her interrogators -- with just enough dialog and change of scenery to keep it from being monotonous, a line which it does occasionally cross. It is the kind of approach that is well-suited for silent movies, and the uniqueness -- at least as far as the films we've seen so far in this project -- of having long uninterrupted interrogation scenes gives it an intensity which I am sure is part of its lasting appeal.
Next week, we'll return to 1927, watching 7th Heaven, our tenth and final film from that year. It will be the second film we've seen directed by Frank Borzage, and also the second film in which we've seen Janet Gaynor. The list as always is here: https://bit.ly/2lZtfmT
Before seeing our final film from 1927, we instead saw The Passion of Joan of Arc. It was our second film from 1928, since I have now retconned Harold Lloyd's Speedy into this project (which we saw back in August of 2016 when we were still working our way through 1916.) Like the earlier film, the reason we saw Joan of Arc out of order was that it was playing at the Alamo -- where, in addition to seeing it on the big screen, I actually won a raffle for the Blu-Ray just prior to the showing -- though to be fair my chances were quadrupled since Bianca and the kids were there as well.
The film was directed by Carl Theodor Dreyer -- who continued directing up through the sixties -- and starred Maria Falconetti as Joan, who had made two films in the teens, but none subsequent to this movie. Falconetti was in her mid-thirties at the time of the film, and could potentially be taken for younger, but was clearly not 19 -- which in some ways downplays the absurdity of the trial, during which the film is almost entirely set. The film mentions at the very beginning how remarkable it is that we have the actual court proceedings from six hundred years ago -- essentially a transcript (which is available at https://bit.ly/2LgRkli as well as many other places.) And the majority of the film is drawn from that transcript. The closest reference point I have to the events in this movie is Shaw's Saint Joan -- which also liberally used that same transcript. But Shaw's play is much wider ranging -- including Joan's rise and fall, and, while it includes Joan's misery near the end of her life, it also has Shaw's characteristic wit and charm, as well as musings about Joan as an early emblem of Protestantism and nationalism -- whereas this movie covers only the last few days of her life.
The movie reminded me in some ways of Martin Scorsese's Silence, both because of the religious interrogations, but also because I suspect one's reaction is necessarily going to be colored by one's own religious beliefs. If you view Joan's visions as, in some sense, true, and believe that she is really communicating with the divine in some way -- then she is a martyr. If you view her as very likely mentally ill and delusional -- which is my perspective -- then her cause and beliefs become less important than her mistreatment. In fact, the most interesting thing to me about her life is not so much her trial and conviction -- it is how a teen-aged girl was able to lead such an enormous movement at a time there were very few women of any age in positions of power. Shaw addresses this a little in his play (entertainingly if not particularly convincingly) but this movie is single-mindedly focused on her faith and anguish, emphasized by a barrage of close-ups, both of her and her interrogators -- with just enough dialog and change of scenery to keep it from being monotonous, a line which it does occasionally cross. It is the kind of approach that is well-suited for silent movies, and the uniqueness -- at least as far as the films we've seen so far in this project -- of having long uninterrupted interrogation scenes gives it an intensity which I am sure is part of its lasting appeal.
Next week, we'll return to 1927, watching 7th Heaven, our tenth and final film from that year. It will be the second film we've seen directed by Frank Borzage, and also the second film in which we've seen Janet Gaynor. The list as always is here: https://bit.ly/2lZtfmT
Sunday, June 2, 2019
The Red Mill (1927)
Originally posted to Facebook on 6/24/2018
The Red Mill was our ninth film from 1927, and our second starring Marion Davies. It was directed by Roscoe "Fatty" Arbuckle under the pseudonym William Goodrich, which he used after his career was virtually destroyed in 1921-1922 by the famous scandal and subsequent trials. The Red Mill was one of the more high profile films he made in his post-scandal career, though at the time of his death of a heart attack in 1933, his fortunes had begun to improve, and he had even begun acting under his own name again.
This film is essentially a romantic comedy, unusual only in its foreign setting. Marion Davies stars as a servant in a tavern who falls in love with Owen Moore, a well-off visitor to Holland. There are a variety of shenanigans and misunderstandings, and a prominent secondary plot about another romantic couple played by Louise Fazenda and Karl Dane. Dane looked familiar to me, and, looking him up afterwards, I realized that I recognized him as one of John Gilbert's friends in 1925's The Big Parade. He apparently was also in 1926's The Scarlet Letter, which we saw at the Packard Theater in Culpeper, but I have less clear memories of him in that. He has a surprisingly long Wikipedia page that tells the cheerful story of his career decline during the sound era -- due to his Danish accent -- and subsequent depression and suicide in 1934.
There is not much surprising in this film, excepting maybe a slightly suspenseful ending sequence. Dane and Fazenda play their parts a shade broader than Moore and Davies, but nobody in this film is pitching their performance at any great level of subtlety. Davies is as charming as you would expect her to be, given that this is essentially a vehicle for her, as was the previous film we'd seen her in, 1922's When Knighthood was in Flower. That too was a romantic comedy, but it also had some aspirations as a period piece, and depicted events that vaguely lined up with the historical record. This movie has no such aspirations, but is in the main pleasant and agreeable.
Next week, before finishing up 1927, we're going to skip ahead to 1928, watching The Passion of Joan of Arc, our second film from that year, directed by Carl Theodor Dreyer and starring Maria Falconetti. The list of upcoming films, as always, is here: https://bit.ly/2lZtfmT
The Red Mill was our ninth film from 1927, and our second starring Marion Davies. It was directed by Roscoe "Fatty" Arbuckle under the pseudonym William Goodrich, which he used after his career was virtually destroyed in 1921-1922 by the famous scandal and subsequent trials. The Red Mill was one of the more high profile films he made in his post-scandal career, though at the time of his death of a heart attack in 1933, his fortunes had begun to improve, and he had even begun acting under his own name again.
This film is essentially a romantic comedy, unusual only in its foreign setting. Marion Davies stars as a servant in a tavern who falls in love with Owen Moore, a well-off visitor to Holland. There are a variety of shenanigans and misunderstandings, and a prominent secondary plot about another romantic couple played by Louise Fazenda and Karl Dane. Dane looked familiar to me, and, looking him up afterwards, I realized that I recognized him as one of John Gilbert's friends in 1925's The Big Parade. He apparently was also in 1926's The Scarlet Letter, which we saw at the Packard Theater in Culpeper, but I have less clear memories of him in that. He has a surprisingly long Wikipedia page that tells the cheerful story of his career decline during the sound era -- due to his Danish accent -- and subsequent depression and suicide in 1934.
There is not much surprising in this film, excepting maybe a slightly suspenseful ending sequence. Dane and Fazenda play their parts a shade broader than Moore and Davies, but nobody in this film is pitching their performance at any great level of subtlety. Davies is as charming as you would expect her to be, given that this is essentially a vehicle for her, as was the previous film we'd seen her in, 1922's When Knighthood was in Flower. That too was a romantic comedy, but it also had some aspirations as a period piece, and depicted events that vaguely lined up with the historical record. This movie has no such aspirations, but is in the main pleasant and agreeable.
Next week, before finishing up 1927, we're going to skip ahead to 1928, watching The Passion of Joan of Arc, our second film from that year, directed by Carl Theodor Dreyer and starring Maria Falconetti. The list of upcoming films, as always, is here: https://bit.ly/2lZtfmT
Chicago (1927)
Originally posted to Facebook on 6/19/2018
Chicago was our eighth film from 1927, and would be familiar to modern audiences because of the 2002 movie of the same name. There are actually several versions of Chicago, all based on the 1926 play, which was in turn loosely based on actual events. Fifteen years after this film, there was a 1942 version titled Roxie Hart starring Ginger Rogers. Then there was the 1975 Broadway musical, and its 1996 revival, which is the second longest running Broadway show ever. I haven't seen the 1942 movie (though perhaps we'll get a chance as part of this project if we ever make it out of the twenties), but I have seen the 2002 film and the Broadway version, and it is surprising how similar this film is to both of those.
The plot concerns Roxie Hart (played by Phyllis Haver), who kills a man presumed to be her boyfriend (played by Eugene Pallette, whom we saw way back in 1916's Gretchen the Greenhorn.) The subsequent trial becomes a media circus, and her husband (Victor Varconi) hires a shady lawyer to defend her (played by Robert Edeson) who thrives on the tabloid nature of the case, coaching Hart to exploit a gullible public and jury. This is also the outline of the other versions I've seen, perhaps the biggest difference being that the part of Velma Kelly, a defendant in a similar case, is much smaller in this movie. Additionally Hart's husband is a more sympathetic character than in the later versions.
But it is still quite cynical about the press, and the judicial system, and human nature in general -- though it does have a bit of a moralistic streak that is less prominent in the later versions. I'm not sure it has an exact analog among the American films we've seen, which as a group are generally more sincere, but its cynicism is also different than the cynicism of the German expressionists -- than Dr. Mabuse or The Last Laugh, for instance. Those films had a heavier hand, and usually a tinge of melancholy or even of anger. Chicago's cynicism is lighter and more buoyant, and definitely has a stronger comedic streak.
Excepting Pallette, who had a relatively small role, none of the main characters are played by actors we've seen before, nor have we previously seen anything by the director, Frank Urson. Despite that it gives every appearance of being a top-shelf studio picture, and Haver particularly gives an entertaining, showy star performance as the selfish, shallow Hart. I'm sure there is some story or other as to why Phyllis Haver did not have the career of some of her better-remembered contemporary actresses, like Clara Bow or Marion Davies, but I don't think you would have been able to guess it based upon this film. She also has the distinction of playing one of the leads in 1927's The Way of All Flesh, the only lost film with an Oscar winning performance (by Emil Jannings.)
Next week we'll see our ninth film from 1927, The Red Mill, directed by Roscoe "Fatty" Arbuckle under a pseudonym. It will also be the second film we've seen starring Marion Davies. The list, as always, is here: https://bit.ly/2lZtfmT
Chicago was our eighth film from 1927, and would be familiar to modern audiences because of the 2002 movie of the same name. There are actually several versions of Chicago, all based on the 1926 play, which was in turn loosely based on actual events. Fifteen years after this film, there was a 1942 version titled Roxie Hart starring Ginger Rogers. Then there was the 1975 Broadway musical, and its 1996 revival, which is the second longest running Broadway show ever. I haven't seen the 1942 movie (though perhaps we'll get a chance as part of this project if we ever make it out of the twenties), but I have seen the 2002 film and the Broadway version, and it is surprising how similar this film is to both of those.
The plot concerns Roxie Hart (played by Phyllis Haver), who kills a man presumed to be her boyfriend (played by Eugene Pallette, whom we saw way back in 1916's Gretchen the Greenhorn.) The subsequent trial becomes a media circus, and her husband (Victor Varconi) hires a shady lawyer to defend her (played by Robert Edeson) who thrives on the tabloid nature of the case, coaching Hart to exploit a gullible public and jury. This is also the outline of the other versions I've seen, perhaps the biggest difference being that the part of Velma Kelly, a defendant in a similar case, is much smaller in this movie. Additionally Hart's husband is a more sympathetic character than in the later versions.
But it is still quite cynical about the press, and the judicial system, and human nature in general -- though it does have a bit of a moralistic streak that is less prominent in the later versions. I'm not sure it has an exact analog among the American films we've seen, which as a group are generally more sincere, but its cynicism is also different than the cynicism of the German expressionists -- than Dr. Mabuse or The Last Laugh, for instance. Those films had a heavier hand, and usually a tinge of melancholy or even of anger. Chicago's cynicism is lighter and more buoyant, and definitely has a stronger comedic streak.
Excepting Pallette, who had a relatively small role, none of the main characters are played by actors we've seen before, nor have we previously seen anything by the director, Frank Urson. Despite that it gives every appearance of being a top-shelf studio picture, and Haver particularly gives an entertaining, showy star performance as the selfish, shallow Hart. I'm sure there is some story or other as to why Phyllis Haver did not have the career of some of her better-remembered contemporary actresses, like Clara Bow or Marion Davies, but I don't think you would have been able to guess it based upon this film. She also has the distinction of playing one of the leads in 1927's The Way of All Flesh, the only lost film with an Oscar winning performance (by Emil Jannings.)
Next week we'll see our ninth film from 1927, The Red Mill, directed by Roscoe "Fatty" Arbuckle under a pseudonym. It will also be the second film we've seen starring Marion Davies. The list, as always, is here: https://bit.ly/2lZtfmT
The Unknown (1927)
Originally posted to Facebook on 6/15/2018
The Unknown was our seventh film from 1927, and our fourth starring Lon Chaney. It co-starred a very young Joan Crawford, and was directed by Todd Browning, later famous for directing Dracula and Freaks. After the relatively normal Tell It to the Marines (from 1926), Chaney again plays a bizarre protagonist in a film obsessed with disfigurement, revenge, and humiliation -- playing his role with characteristic charisma, serious but also vigorous. In this case he plays a supposedly armless circus performer who throws knives with his feet. In reality, though, he is not armless, and has somehow concealed that from the rest of the troupe, including Joan Crawford, with whom he is in love. She does not reciprocate, and in fact ends up falling in love with another circus performer played by Norman Kerry. Crawford holds up her corner of the love triangle well enough, though nothing about her performance particularly prefigured her subsequent long and successful career. She was, like almost every other actor in Chaney's movies, overshadowed by the man himself -- and in fact she later credited Chaney as an influence on her acting.
The plot takes a few bizarre twists that I won't spoil, but it is in keeping with Chaney's earlier movies in that it is surprisingly dark, and would probably be rated PG-13 even today. But the darkness is quite unlike, for instance, the dark cynicism of the German films we've seen, which usually at least gestured in the direction of having some sort of intellectual pedigree. Chaney's films are much more visceral, and make no apologies for showing the grotesque or fetishistic, and do so without suggesting that we are actually watching an allegory about the modern world, or anything so high-minded.
This film is a little pulpier and less polished than his other three films, and probably the least well-made, but they are all in the same neighborhood, quality-wise. The Unknown would probably appeal to the same audiences entertained by 1920's The Penalty or 1924's He Who Gets Slapped. I think Tell It to the Marines showed that he easily could have portrayed normal roles as well, had that been his desire, and perhaps had he lived we would have seen him in more of those types of parts. He died only three years later, though, at the age of 47, so it is impossible to know what he would have achieved (or not) in the sound era (outside of 1930's The Unholy Three, his only talkie), or under the Hays code.
Next week we'll see our eighth film from 1927, Chicago, which comes from the same source material as the stage and screen musical of the same name. The list, as always, is here: https://bit.ly/2lZtfmT
The Unknown was our seventh film from 1927, and our fourth starring Lon Chaney. It co-starred a very young Joan Crawford, and was directed by Todd Browning, later famous for directing Dracula and Freaks. After the relatively normal Tell It to the Marines (from 1926), Chaney again plays a bizarre protagonist in a film obsessed with disfigurement, revenge, and humiliation -- playing his role with characteristic charisma, serious but also vigorous. In this case he plays a supposedly armless circus performer who throws knives with his feet. In reality, though, he is not armless, and has somehow concealed that from the rest of the troupe, including Joan Crawford, with whom he is in love. She does not reciprocate, and in fact ends up falling in love with another circus performer played by Norman Kerry. Crawford holds up her corner of the love triangle well enough, though nothing about her performance particularly prefigured her subsequent long and successful career. She was, like almost every other actor in Chaney's movies, overshadowed by the man himself -- and in fact she later credited Chaney as an influence on her acting.
The plot takes a few bizarre twists that I won't spoil, but it is in keeping with Chaney's earlier movies in that it is surprisingly dark, and would probably be rated PG-13 even today. But the darkness is quite unlike, for instance, the dark cynicism of the German films we've seen, which usually at least gestured in the direction of having some sort of intellectual pedigree. Chaney's films are much more visceral, and make no apologies for showing the grotesque or fetishistic, and do so without suggesting that we are actually watching an allegory about the modern world, or anything so high-minded.
This film is a little pulpier and less polished than his other three films, and probably the least well-made, but they are all in the same neighborhood, quality-wise. The Unknown would probably appeal to the same audiences entertained by 1920's The Penalty or 1924's He Who Gets Slapped. I think Tell It to the Marines showed that he easily could have portrayed normal roles as well, had that been his desire, and perhaps had he lived we would have seen him in more of those types of parts. He died only three years later, though, at the age of 47, so it is impossible to know what he would have achieved (or not) in the sound era (outside of 1930's The Unholy Three, his only talkie), or under the Hays code.
Next week we'll see our eighth film from 1927, Chicago, which comes from the same source material as the stage and screen musical of the same name. The list, as always, is here: https://bit.ly/2lZtfmT
Sunrise (1927)
Originally posted to Facebook on 6/7/2018
Sunrise was our sixth film from 1927, and our fourth by F.W. Murnau. Along with a few other awards, it won the first Oscar for Best Unique and Artistic Picture, while Wings won the similarly-themed first Outstanding Picture Oscar. The former award was eliminated after the first Oscar ceremony in favor of the latter, so Sunrise remains the only winner of this strange pseudo-Best-Picture Oscar. The film's story concerns the male lead (George O'Brien) who lives in the country with his wife (Janet Gaynor) but is cheating on her with a woman from the city (Margaret Livingston.) Gaynor is probably the best remembered today, though O'Brien was a successful actor of the era as well. None of the three leads acted prominently beyond the late forties, but all three lived into the 1980s, dying in the space of a single year-long period in 1984-1985.
From a technological standpoint this was, I believe, the first Movietone feature we've seen, which means that, while it was still a silent film and did not have synced sound, the soundtrack was recorded on film, and we saw and heard essentially the same thing as audiences at the time. This included actual voices in crowd scenes and in background songs, but nothing synced to a particular actor or that was particularly important to the plot. Still, it is a tangible step towards the end of silent films, which we are rapidly approaching.
It is difficult to discuss the film without giving away some of the plot. Specifically, early in the film, Livingston advises O'Brien to kill his wife, and he reluctantly agrees. But at the crucial moment Gaynor realizes what is happening, and her terror and panic cause a change of heart in O'Brien, resulting in the two of them going into town and rekindling their love. It is a little bit like John Lennon's "Starting Over," if there had been an early stanza or two about the singer's adultery and plans to murder his wife. This was Murnau's first Hollywood movie after leaving Germany, and the film in some ways reflects that -- the adultery and attempted murder is filmed and performed expressionistically with grim Germanic foreboding -- while the scenes in the city are light-hearted and optimistic -- more stereotypically American. That they mesh together at all is a tribute to how well each of them work on their own. Gaynor won the first Best Actress Oscar for her roles in this and two other films during this time period -- acting Oscars not yet being tied to a specific film -- and she does give a strangely interesting performance in an essentially passive and reactive role. Her character, even after realizing that her husband in a weak moment may cheat on her and try to murder her, is remarkably accepting, and I think the movie's solution to this seemingly odd reaction is just that she loves and is willing to forgive him. I feel like the film might have been a little stronger -- without changing the overall plot -- if it had somehow acknowledged that this was not an entirely healthy attitude on her part. But the movie wants to portray Livingston as entirely bad, and Gaynor as entirely good, which gives it a certain strength and simplicity, but also means that the audience has to accept the two female leads as archetypes, rather than as psychologically realistic. It also has the result of largely absolving O'Brien of responsibility for his actions, leaving the blame on Livingston, in almost exactly the same way that John Gilbert's guilt was pinned on Greta Garbo in 1926's Flesh and the Devil. In fact, both films have a similar scene where the male lead turns on and attacks the woman that has, in the films' authorial view, lured him into behavior he now regrets.
But, even with these flaws, the movie is made up of many excellent moments and sequences that eclipse, for me, its larger problems. This movie was made with the polish and sure-handedness that marked the best silent films from the last half of the twenties. Although I am very much looking forward to sound, and to the films of the thirties, there's a part of me that wishes the silent film era had lasted just a little longer, perhaps five years. It feels as though the changeover happened just as the best filmmakers from the era had reached a certain level of mastery, and I strongly suspect that we lost a number of excellent movies as a result.
Next week we see our seventh film from 1927, and our fourth Lon Chaney film, The Unknown, which features a young Joan Crawford. The list, as always, is here: https://bit.ly/2lZtfmT
Sunrise was our sixth film from 1927, and our fourth by F.W. Murnau. Along with a few other awards, it won the first Oscar for Best Unique and Artistic Picture, while Wings won the similarly-themed first Outstanding Picture Oscar. The former award was eliminated after the first Oscar ceremony in favor of the latter, so Sunrise remains the only winner of this strange pseudo-Best-Picture Oscar. The film's story concerns the male lead (George O'Brien) who lives in the country with his wife (Janet Gaynor) but is cheating on her with a woman from the city (Margaret Livingston.) Gaynor is probably the best remembered today, though O'Brien was a successful actor of the era as well. None of the three leads acted prominently beyond the late forties, but all three lived into the 1980s, dying in the space of a single year-long period in 1984-1985.
From a technological standpoint this was, I believe, the first Movietone feature we've seen, which means that, while it was still a silent film and did not have synced sound, the soundtrack was recorded on film, and we saw and heard essentially the same thing as audiences at the time. This included actual voices in crowd scenes and in background songs, but nothing synced to a particular actor or that was particularly important to the plot. Still, it is a tangible step towards the end of silent films, which we are rapidly approaching.
It is difficult to discuss the film without giving away some of the plot. Specifically, early in the film, Livingston advises O'Brien to kill his wife, and he reluctantly agrees. But at the crucial moment Gaynor realizes what is happening, and her terror and panic cause a change of heart in O'Brien, resulting in the two of them going into town and rekindling their love. It is a little bit like John Lennon's "Starting Over," if there had been an early stanza or two about the singer's adultery and plans to murder his wife. This was Murnau's first Hollywood movie after leaving Germany, and the film in some ways reflects that -- the adultery and attempted murder is filmed and performed expressionistically with grim Germanic foreboding -- while the scenes in the city are light-hearted and optimistic -- more stereotypically American. That they mesh together at all is a tribute to how well each of them work on their own. Gaynor won the first Best Actress Oscar for her roles in this and two other films during this time period -- acting Oscars not yet being tied to a specific film -- and she does give a strangely interesting performance in an essentially passive and reactive role. Her character, even after realizing that her husband in a weak moment may cheat on her and try to murder her, is remarkably accepting, and I think the movie's solution to this seemingly odd reaction is just that she loves and is willing to forgive him. I feel like the film might have been a little stronger -- without changing the overall plot -- if it had somehow acknowledged that this was not an entirely healthy attitude on her part. But the movie wants to portray Livingston as entirely bad, and Gaynor as entirely good, which gives it a certain strength and simplicity, but also means that the audience has to accept the two female leads as archetypes, rather than as psychologically realistic. It also has the result of largely absolving O'Brien of responsibility for his actions, leaving the blame on Livingston, in almost exactly the same way that John Gilbert's guilt was pinned on Greta Garbo in 1926's Flesh and the Devil. In fact, both films have a similar scene where the male lead turns on and attacks the woman that has, in the films' authorial view, lured him into behavior he now regrets.
But, even with these flaws, the movie is made up of many excellent moments and sequences that eclipse, for me, its larger problems. This movie was made with the polish and sure-handedness that marked the best silent films from the last half of the twenties. Although I am very much looking forward to sound, and to the films of the thirties, there's a part of me that wishes the silent film era had lasted just a little longer, perhaps five years. It feels as though the changeover happened just as the best filmmakers from the era had reached a certain level of mastery, and I strongly suspect that we lost a number of excellent movies as a result.
Next week we see our seventh film from 1927, and our fourth Lon Chaney film, The Unknown, which features a young Joan Crawford. The list, as always, is here: https://bit.ly/2lZtfmT
Napoleon (1927)
Originally posted to Facebook on 5/20/2018
Napoleon was our fifth film from 1927, and was directed by Abel Gance. Clocking in at over five hours, it took us most of January to get through. It was divided into four parts, beginning with Napoleon's childhood and ending with him at age 26 -- well before he seized power and about 20% of the way through his Wikipedia page. This movie is at its strongest and most compelling during the portions that deal with the French Revolution, both because it is an inherently interesting story, and also because of the stylishness with which it is told. At this point in our project, we have seen all manner of innovative camera-work, so I can't say whether this film definitely invented any particular technique, but it does feature a wide variety of effects -- extremely quick cutting, division of the screen into quarters and ninths, the camera swinging through meeting halls, and most famously the triptych scenes near the end, with an aspect ratio of 4 to 1. The latter effect was impressive, but the kids, after being initially appreciative, began to complain as it wore on, since it resulted in a dramatically smaller picture on our normally-proportioned TV screen.
We had previously seen 1923's Scaramouche, also set during the French Revolution, but while that was a fictional (though intelligent) Hollywood entertainment, this movie aspires to historical accuracy. As a result, it loses focus on Napoleon periodically, and spends a fair amount of time with Marat, Danton, and Robespierre. Napoleon is at times as much a spectator as the viewer, a feeling perhaps best captured in a memorable scene during the storming of the Tuileries Palace, shown from the standpoint of Napoleon upstairs in his apartment or study, looking out at the mobbed streets, contemplating his future and the future of the Revolution.
I tried to sell the film to Allison as a bit of a sequel to Hamilton, since Lafayette had returned to France by this time, leaving room for the suspiciously similar-looking Jefferson to leave for America. I don't think Lafayette was ever actually portrayed on screen though. I also pointed out that Napoleon had been dead for just over a hundred years when this film was released -- as compared to almost two hundred years now, so he was somewhat less of a distant historical figure for Gance than for modern viewers.
Napoleon is played by Albert Dieudonne, who gives an intense and focused performance, though not a particularly varied one. There is a scene not long after Thermidor when Napoleon is at a party, and Josephine says of him "He is really charming, this Buono-parte." The kids and I remarked at the time how wildly off-base this seemed, because, whatever the other virtues of Dieudonne's performance, it is not charming. After Marat, Danton, and Robespierre disappear from the scene, both the inherent dramatic appeal and the fancy camera-work start to fade -- excepting the triptych mentioned above. An excellent film of normal length could be cut from the first two parts (though it could not sensibly be entitled "Napoleon.") I am not so sure that is true of the third and fourth part.
It is also notable how insanely hagiographically Napoleon is portrayed. I haven't read enough of the history of this period to weigh in definitively, but I think it is safe to say that any approach to Napoleon that regards him as a wholly admirable figure is not an entirely mainstream view -- though of course most assessments of Napoleon take into account the period after he turned 26.
Next week we return with Sunrise, our sixth film from 1927, and our fourth by Murnau, the first since he relocated to Hollywood. The list, as always, is here: https://bit.ly/2lZtfmT
Napoleon was our fifth film from 1927, and was directed by Abel Gance. Clocking in at over five hours, it took us most of January to get through. It was divided into four parts, beginning with Napoleon's childhood and ending with him at age 26 -- well before he seized power and about 20% of the way through his Wikipedia page. This movie is at its strongest and most compelling during the portions that deal with the French Revolution, both because it is an inherently interesting story, and also because of the stylishness with which it is told. At this point in our project, we have seen all manner of innovative camera-work, so I can't say whether this film definitely invented any particular technique, but it does feature a wide variety of effects -- extremely quick cutting, division of the screen into quarters and ninths, the camera swinging through meeting halls, and most famously the triptych scenes near the end, with an aspect ratio of 4 to 1. The latter effect was impressive, but the kids, after being initially appreciative, began to complain as it wore on, since it resulted in a dramatically smaller picture on our normally-proportioned TV screen.
We had previously seen 1923's Scaramouche, also set during the French Revolution, but while that was a fictional (though intelligent) Hollywood entertainment, this movie aspires to historical accuracy. As a result, it loses focus on Napoleon periodically, and spends a fair amount of time with Marat, Danton, and Robespierre. Napoleon is at times as much a spectator as the viewer, a feeling perhaps best captured in a memorable scene during the storming of the Tuileries Palace, shown from the standpoint of Napoleon upstairs in his apartment or study, looking out at the mobbed streets, contemplating his future and the future of the Revolution.
I tried to sell the film to Allison as a bit of a sequel to Hamilton, since Lafayette had returned to France by this time, leaving room for the suspiciously similar-looking Jefferson to leave for America. I don't think Lafayette was ever actually portrayed on screen though. I also pointed out that Napoleon had been dead for just over a hundred years when this film was released -- as compared to almost two hundred years now, so he was somewhat less of a distant historical figure for Gance than for modern viewers.
Napoleon is played by Albert Dieudonne, who gives an intense and focused performance, though not a particularly varied one. There is a scene not long after Thermidor when Napoleon is at a party, and Josephine says of him "He is really charming, this Buono-parte." The kids and I remarked at the time how wildly off-base this seemed, because, whatever the other virtues of Dieudonne's performance, it is not charming. After Marat, Danton, and Robespierre disappear from the scene, both the inherent dramatic appeal and the fancy camera-work start to fade -- excepting the triptych mentioned above. An excellent film of normal length could be cut from the first two parts (though it could not sensibly be entitled "Napoleon.") I am not so sure that is true of the third and fourth part.
It is also notable how insanely hagiographically Napoleon is portrayed. I haven't read enough of the history of this period to weigh in definitively, but I think it is safe to say that any approach to Napoleon that regards him as a wholly admirable figure is not an entirely mainstream view -- though of course most assessments of Napoleon take into account the period after he turned 26.
Next week we return with Sunrise, our sixth film from 1927, and our fourth by Murnau, the first since he relocated to Hollywood. The list, as always, is here: https://bit.ly/2lZtfmT
The Black Pirate (1926)
Originally posted to Facebook on 5/13/2018
The Black Pirate was our seventh and last film from 1926, and the fifth film we've seen starring Douglas Fairbanks -- the first since 1922's Robin Hood. It is a landmark of a sort, in that it is the first film we've seen that was filmed entirely in color. Color in this case means 2-strip Technicolor, which is the same process that was used for parts of 1925's Ben-Hur. As with that film, the color doesn't look completely natural, but it is obviously an early example of a coming change that would end up being almost as significant as the addition of sound. Unlike the switch-over to sound, though, which happened over just a few years, the industry change to producing almost exclusively color films took place over several decades. In fact, looking over my list of potential upcoming films, I'm not sure we'll start seeing full-color films on a regular basis until the late thirties.
The film itself is a straight adventure movie, not too different in style from Fairbanks' Robin Hood, but simpler and more focused. Fairbanks is in full swashbuckling mode here, perhaps a little less hyperactive than in Robin Hood, but still doing a lot of jumping and climbing and sword-fighting. He plays the victim of a pirate attack who, in order to survive and get back to civilization and avenge his father (who died in the attack), temporarily becomes the pirate leader -- an accomplishment that seems like it ought to be a little more difficult than portrayed. His main antagonist is another pirate, played by Sam De Grasse, who was also Prince John in Robin Hood. Billie Dove plays the love interest, but I imagine it was a rather unrewarding role for her, as she is given very little to do. This film holds up decently well as entertainment, but I'm not sure it would be terribly well-known today without the element of color. That novelty never quite wears off, and the sight of a blade dripping red with fake blood certainly has a kind of immediacy which has no exact parallel in the films that we've previously seen.
Next week we return to 1927, picking up with our fifth film from that year, the monumental Napoleon directed by Abel Gance. I have also updated the list (https://bit.ly/2lZtfmT) to add our planned films from 1928, including Speedy, which we saw at the Alamo in Winchester in 2016, and which I have decided retroactively was part of this project all along. Unfortunately I have once again exceeded pretty dramatically my goal of four films a year, but I am working on getting that back on track so we can maybe finish this project before Ben goes to college.
The Black Pirate was our seventh and last film from 1926, and the fifth film we've seen starring Douglas Fairbanks -- the first since 1922's Robin Hood. It is a landmark of a sort, in that it is the first film we've seen that was filmed entirely in color. Color in this case means 2-strip Technicolor, which is the same process that was used for parts of 1925's Ben-Hur. As with that film, the color doesn't look completely natural, but it is obviously an early example of a coming change that would end up being almost as significant as the addition of sound. Unlike the switch-over to sound, though, which happened over just a few years, the industry change to producing almost exclusively color films took place over several decades. In fact, looking over my list of potential upcoming films, I'm not sure we'll start seeing full-color films on a regular basis until the late thirties.
The film itself is a straight adventure movie, not too different in style from Fairbanks' Robin Hood, but simpler and more focused. Fairbanks is in full swashbuckling mode here, perhaps a little less hyperactive than in Robin Hood, but still doing a lot of jumping and climbing and sword-fighting. He plays the victim of a pirate attack who, in order to survive and get back to civilization and avenge his father (who died in the attack), temporarily becomes the pirate leader -- an accomplishment that seems like it ought to be a little more difficult than portrayed. His main antagonist is another pirate, played by Sam De Grasse, who was also Prince John in Robin Hood. Billie Dove plays the love interest, but I imagine it was a rather unrewarding role for her, as she is given very little to do. This film holds up decently well as entertainment, but I'm not sure it would be terribly well-known today without the element of color. That novelty never quite wears off, and the sight of a blade dripping red with fake blood certainly has a kind of immediacy which has no exact parallel in the films that we've previously seen.
Next week we return to 1927, picking up with our fifth film from that year, the monumental Napoleon directed by Abel Gance. I have also updated the list (https://bit.ly/2lZtfmT) to add our planned films from 1928, including Speedy, which we saw at the Alamo in Winchester in 2016, and which I have decided retroactively was part of this project all along. Unfortunately I have once again exceeded pretty dramatically my goal of four films a year, but I am working on getting that back on track so we can maybe finish this project before Ben goes to college.
Saturday, June 1, 2019
Faust (1926)
Originally posted to Facebook on 5/9/2018
Faust was our sixth film from 1926, and our third directed by F.W. Murnau. It was also our first German expressionist film since Metropolis, a few months earlier. Of course Metropolis was actually from 1927, but we had seen them out of order because we'd had the chance to see Metropolis on the big screen at the Alamo.
The movie stars Gösta Ekman as Faust, while Emil Jannings, whom we saw in Murnau's 1924 film The Last Laugh, plays the devil. Ekman would die in his forties in 1938, and Jannings would die in 1950 -- and make no movies during his final five years because of his Nazi affiliation during the war -- but the female lead Camilla Horn lived until 1996, and was appearing regularly in movies and TV up through the late eighties. (Bruce Springsteen also wrote a song about her, in a weird bit of trivia.)
In tone this film is probably closer to Murnau's 1922 film Nosferatu than The Last Laugh. It tells the familiar Faust story, with Jannings' devil granting Ekman his desires in exchange for his soul. The early parts of the film are dark and atmospheric, and the initial summoning scene in particular is quite strong and dramatic. Unfortunately not long after Faust signs his contract with the devil that intensity starts to seep away as Jannings becomes less threatening than comical. Ekman begins pursuing Horn, and Jannings in parallel pursues Horn's aunt as a distraction. Jannings' scenes in this section of the movie are broad and hammy and strangely light-hearted, given that Jannings is supposedly the incarnate force of ultimate evil. The movie rallies a bit in its final section, but overall it reminds me a bit of Lang's 1921 film Destiny, in that some striking scenes and images are undermined by stretches of not-terribly-amusing comedy.
Next week is our seventh and last film from 1926, The Black Pirate. It will be our first truly color film, and our fifth film starring Douglas Fairbanks. The list, as always, is here: https://bit.ly/2lZtfmT
Faust was our sixth film from 1926, and our third directed by F.W. Murnau. It was also our first German expressionist film since Metropolis, a few months earlier. Of course Metropolis was actually from 1927, but we had seen them out of order because we'd had the chance to see Metropolis on the big screen at the Alamo.
The movie stars Gösta Ekman as Faust, while Emil Jannings, whom we saw in Murnau's 1924 film The Last Laugh, plays the devil. Ekman would die in his forties in 1938, and Jannings would die in 1950 -- and make no movies during his final five years because of his Nazi affiliation during the war -- but the female lead Camilla Horn lived until 1996, and was appearing regularly in movies and TV up through the late eighties. (Bruce Springsteen also wrote a song about her, in a weird bit of trivia.)
In tone this film is probably closer to Murnau's 1922 film Nosferatu than The Last Laugh. It tells the familiar Faust story, with Jannings' devil granting Ekman his desires in exchange for his soul. The early parts of the film are dark and atmospheric, and the initial summoning scene in particular is quite strong and dramatic. Unfortunately not long after Faust signs his contract with the devil that intensity starts to seep away as Jannings becomes less threatening than comical. Ekman begins pursuing Horn, and Jannings in parallel pursues Horn's aunt as a distraction. Jannings' scenes in this section of the movie are broad and hammy and strangely light-hearted, given that Jannings is supposedly the incarnate force of ultimate evil. The movie rallies a bit in its final section, but overall it reminds me a bit of Lang's 1921 film Destiny, in that some striking scenes and images are undermined by stretches of not-terribly-amusing comedy.
Next week is our seventh and last film from 1926, The Black Pirate. It will be our first truly color film, and our fifth film starring Douglas Fairbanks. The list, as always, is here: https://bit.ly/2lZtfmT
Tell It to the Marines (1926)
Originally posted to Facebook on 4/25/2018
Tell It to the Marines was our fifth film from 1926, and our third starring Lon Chaney. He co-stars with William Haines -- Chaney playing a Marine drill sergeant and Haines playing a young recruit. The obligatory scenes of training camp and difficult postings are present, though overall the film paints a rather rosy picture of Marine life. The female lead is a Navy nurse played by Eleanor Boardman, who is the focus of a sort of a love triangle. Chaney, refreshingly, has enough self-awareness to see that he is a generation older than her, and his attraction is relatively friendly and platonic. This is by far the most normal character we've seen Chaney play, though he is as charismatic as always. Haines, maybe surprisingly, is able to hold his own, and their interplay is the strongest feature of the movie. Haines also tries to impress Boardman, and takes her on a date where he keeps her much longer than promised, and refuses to drive her home, and is otherwise generally obnoxious. Of course she is publicly furious with him, but the movie decides that she in fact likes him after all. This is not necessarily an impossible development, but the movie seems to think it altogether natural -- which sadly is only the first of several errors of judgment. The second is telegraphed by the credits, which list Warner Oland as "Chinese Bandit Leader." Oland, of course, was a Swede who later played Charlie Chan in a series of movies throughout the thirties. But even before that moment could unfold, Chaney and Haines ship out, and are stationed on an island, presumably in the Pacific. There Haines meets and becomes involved with Carmel Myers (whom we'd earlier seen in Ben-Hur as an Egyptian who attempted to seduce Ramon Navarro), appearing in darkening makeup as an islander. These scenes are even worse than the later scenes with Oland, which themselves are not so great.
The frustrating thing about this film is that it has some very strong sequences with Chaney and Haines that are weighed down by the flaws described above. Chaney is at times a boss, a mentor, a rival, and a friend to Haines -- and Haines matches Chaney with a well-calibrated initial irreverence that eventually matures into a certain amount of depth. In the end it is too flawed to recommend, but it certainly has some of the pieces of a good movie.
Our film next week is Faust, our sixth from 1926, and our third directed by F.W. Murnau. The list, as always, is here: https://bit.ly/2lZtfmT
Tell It to the Marines was our fifth film from 1926, and our third starring Lon Chaney. He co-stars with William Haines -- Chaney playing a Marine drill sergeant and Haines playing a young recruit. The obligatory scenes of training camp and difficult postings are present, though overall the film paints a rather rosy picture of Marine life. The female lead is a Navy nurse played by Eleanor Boardman, who is the focus of a sort of a love triangle. Chaney, refreshingly, has enough self-awareness to see that he is a generation older than her, and his attraction is relatively friendly and platonic. This is by far the most normal character we've seen Chaney play, though he is as charismatic as always. Haines, maybe surprisingly, is able to hold his own, and their interplay is the strongest feature of the movie. Haines also tries to impress Boardman, and takes her on a date where he keeps her much longer than promised, and refuses to drive her home, and is otherwise generally obnoxious. Of course she is publicly furious with him, but the movie decides that she in fact likes him after all. This is not necessarily an impossible development, but the movie seems to think it altogether natural -- which sadly is only the first of several errors of judgment. The second is telegraphed by the credits, which list Warner Oland as "Chinese Bandit Leader." Oland, of course, was a Swede who later played Charlie Chan in a series of movies throughout the thirties. But even before that moment could unfold, Chaney and Haines ship out, and are stationed on an island, presumably in the Pacific. There Haines meets and becomes involved with Carmel Myers (whom we'd earlier seen in Ben-Hur as an Egyptian who attempted to seduce Ramon Navarro), appearing in darkening makeup as an islander. These scenes are even worse than the later scenes with Oland, which themselves are not so great.
The frustrating thing about this film is that it has some very strong sequences with Chaney and Haines that are weighed down by the flaws described above. Chaney is at times a boss, a mentor, a rival, and a friend to Haines -- and Haines matches Chaney with a well-calibrated initial irreverence that eventually matures into a certain amount of depth. In the end it is too flawed to recommend, but it certainly has some of the pieces of a good movie.
Our film next week is Faust, our sixth from 1926, and our third directed by F.W. Murnau. The list, as always, is here: https://bit.ly/2lZtfmT
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