Summary 1910-1919

Originally posted to Facebook on 1/22/2017

Late last year we finished up our chronological viewing of the 1910s, and are now four films into 1920. I thought this would be a good time to single out the films that I most enjoyed or found the most interesting from that period. We watched nineteen shorts and thirty-one features, though the dividing line between the two was a little fuzzy at times, and included some ~45 minute "features." One of those shorter features that I liked was The Mystery of the Kador Cliffs [1912], directed by Léonce Perret and produced in France at Gaumont Studios. As I mentioned in the write-up, it could very easily have been adapted as an episode on the old Alfred Hitchcock show, and coming when it did at the dawn of features it seemed markedly more realistic than the shorts we'd been watching previously, which were largely melodramas or the tail-end of the Melies or Melies-inspired camera-trick films. Two other films, also from Gaumont, were the crime serials Fantomas [1913] and Judex [1916], both of which were over five hours in total length, and both of which were directed by Louis Feuillade. Judex is more consistent in tone, and is probably the better film; I could easily imagine it being rebooted for a modern audience. But Fantomas is more tongue-in-cheek, and more bizarre (for instance the drive-by attempt at murder via python, foiled only by the hero having the foresight to wear a python-proof suit.)

The two films that are likely on any in-depth film history curriculum -- and deserve to be -- are Cabiria [1914] and Intolerance [1916]. The shock of seeing the camera begin moving into a scene during Cabiria -- rather than just panning -- cannot be felt by a modern audience in the same way it must have been felt by a contemporary audience, but one can still apprehend that something new is happening. And it is has a number of elaborate and impressive set pieces as well -- including the dark and weird scenes where children are tossed into an oven embedded in the stomach of a statue of a local god. Intolerance builds upon Cabiria, and adds the famous Babylonian crane shots, as well as an insanely ambitious attempt to make a coherent movie out of four distinct time period. It doesn't completely succeed, and spends a lot of time burrowing down some weirdly misguided moral rabbit-holes, but it's an impressive film, both in its ambition, and in what it accomplishes. Both films are long, and periodically lose focus. Cabiria, though, at least, seems to always have entertainment on its mind, rather than trying to teach some questionable moral lessons.

Besides Feuillade and Leonce Perret, there were three other directors whom we saw more than once: D.W. Griffith, Cecil B. DeMille, and Victor Sjöström. Victor Sjöström is the only one of the three all of whose films I liked. Probably the best of his three films we saw was Ingeborg Holm [1913]. Like The Mystery of the Kador Cliffs, it was markedly more realistic than the films we'd been seeing up until that point, and stopped short of some of the sentimental cliches it could have employed, at least up until the very end. It was Dickensian in a sense, in that it told a story about an individual's misfortunes, but also had a focus on the institutional failures that had played a role.

The final feature I'll mention was the one that I personally found the most entertaining from this period: the Douglas Fairbanks feature When the Clouds Roll By [1919], directed by Victor Fleming. It was the funniest of the various comedies we'd seen -- including the films we saw by the canonical three silent comedians -- Chaplin, Keaton, and Lloyd. To be fair to those three, all of their greatest work came in the twenties, and only Chaplin was making features in the 1910-1919 period. Fairbanks, too, probably did his major work in the twenties, but by 1919 he was already well established, and this film features his typical athleticism along with some intricate stunts and some fancy editing. Also it helps that he and his leading lady actually seem to like each other, always helpful in a romantic comedy, and surprisingly missing in a lot of the films we saw from this period (and even today, really.)

As far as shorts are concerned, I can't say there was anything that really stood out for me. Griffith's The Girl and Her Trust [1912] was a good short from the period just prior to features becoming common. I understand there were several other versions with a similar story that Griffith and others shot, but this was the one we saw, and it was a good straight-forward western, sort of a natural evolution of The Great Train Robbery. The Immigrant [1917] was probably the best of the Chaplin shorts we saw, especially the first half which was set shipboard. From Hand to Mouth [1919] by Harold Lloyd was also intermittently amusing. Lloyd's films don't have the touch of obsesssiveness that Chaplin's and Keaton's do, but he does have more of an everyman quality that makes his protagonists a little more sympathetic.

So that's it for the teens for a while -- probably forever in that concentrated a dosage. I'm looking forward to the twenties quite a bit, because I'm expecting the films to be better and stranger and more ambitious, which certainly seems to be the case four films in.

Cabiria (1914)

Originally posted to Facebook on 5/4/2016

Cabiria was our final film from 1914, and, I believe, the third ancient historical epic we’ve seen, after The Last Days of Pompeii and Judith of Bethulia. Like The Last Days of Pompeii this was an Italian film, and had at least one actor in common with that film. It is most famous for its use of a moving camera. After all of the other silent features and shorts that we’ve seen over the last several months, in which camera motion was limited to an occasional pan, or a camera fixed to a train or other moving vehicle, it was truly jarring to see the camera zoom into a scene or glide from one part of the set to another. I don’t know how quickly this was adopted by the movie industry at large -- even today a lot of films are rather static -- but one can only imagine how electrifying it was to audiences at the time. The storytelling itself was not as anywhere near as innovative, but it was an improvement on the previous two epics of its kind that we’d seen. Like The Last Days of Pompeii, this movie also featured an exploding volcano -- Etna this time -- and the collapsing buildings and general destruction were similar to the earlier film, but more extensive and convincing. The sets in general were also more lavish, including particularly the temple of Moloch. The sacrificing of struggling children one-by-one, with the priest throwing them into an oven set into the belly of a demon statue was surprisingly decadent and dark. (The prayers to Moloch referred to him as a great devil and used other insulting terms, which the kids pointed out was perhaps not the best way to win his favor, regardless of how many delicious children you sacrifice to him.) Alli must have just had a unit in school about Greek architecture, because she pointed out various columns and identified them as Doric or Ionic. At one point there were two columns carved into the shape of giant cats. I asked her what type of columns those were. “Ionic,” she said. “Anytime it’s carved into something, it’s Ionic.”

Sad to say, there were a number of characters representing various ethnicities who were played by actors who had darkened their skin. This was fairly distracting, and required periodic pausing of the TV to provide explanations to the kids. At another point a greedy and cowardly innkeeper has what appears to be Hebrew lettering outside of his inn, indicating that this was probably supposed to be a negative Jewish portrayal. The plot was also at times a little confusing, and the title cards were overly verbose, and often written in a weird high-flown poetic style that was not always clear. The movie’s namesake, Cabiria, is a little girl who is separated from her Roman parents at an early age, and ends up with the Carthaginians. She, however, does not get much screen time, and her story is interrupted with other plot arcs, and a fair amount of overly detailed geopolitics. At one point Hannibal’s elephants are shown, and at another Archimedes makes an unexpected appearance with his ship-burning mirrors. (Though who better than Archimedes to send the movie off onto a tangent?)

So, anyway, that concludes 1914 for us. In the real world WW1 was just beginning, but we’ve seen no reference to that in any film to date. I imagine we’ll see it soon. Next week we begin 1915 with Regeneration, an early gangster feature -- some claim it as the first -- directed by Raoul Walsh, who went on to direct many famous films well into the sound era. I’ve also added films from 1916 to the spreadsheet, which is shared here: https://bit.ly/2lZtfmT

Tillie’s Punctured Romance (1914)

Originally posted to Facebook on 4/29/2016

Tillie’s Punctured Romance was our third film from 1914. It is claimed that this was the first feature-length comedy, and would therefore also be the first feature film of many of the comedians present, including Chaplin. It is definitely the first film we’ve seen that contained a significant number of people that are still somewhat famous today. Charlie Chaplin, of course, is the most famous, but it also contained Marie Dressler, who starred in many silent films, and had a resurgence in popularity in early sound films twenty years later, winning an Oscar for Best Actress, and being nominated for another. Also present was Mabel Normand, who was a popular silent star, and Edgar Kennedy, who I remember as the food vendor tormented by Harpo and Chico in Duck Soup, but who also appeared in many films up through the forties. However, this assemblage of talent sadly does not result in anything very funny. There were a few moments where I smiled, such as when people were throwing bricks at one another, or when Chaplin slapped a newspaper boy, but in general it is full of people chasing each other, and falling down and knocking each other over, to such an extent that it becomes monotonous. Chaplin does not play his Tramp character, though he looks somewhat similar. Instead he plays a character given in IMDB as “The City Stranger,” who woos Marie Dressler because he thinks she is rich. Mabel Normand plays his actual pre-existing girlfriend, who is not terribly happy about the whole situation. Marie Dressler is also not happy when she finds out that Chaplin already has a girlfriend. They both express their frustration via violent and repetitive slapstick. So, anyway, something of a disappointment. On the plus side, the film print was bright and clear, which was the first time that’s been true for a couple of weeks. Also, I liked the title -- even without knowing you’d almost guess that “Tillie’s Punctured Romance” was a silent movie title, or failing that a single by The Decemberists.

Next week we watch our final film from 1914: Cabiria, which apparently was one of the first films where camera movements beyond simple pans began to be used routinely. The spreadsheet, as always, is here: https://bit.ly/2lZtfmT

The Perils of Pauline (1914)

Originally posted to Facebook on 4/25/2016

Peril of Pauline was our second film from 1914. It took a little longer for us to watch than planned. It was almost three and a half hours, broken up into nine episodes, so we watched several episodes last weekend, and then watched the remaining ones in the evening throughout the week. The plot was actually rather similar to The Mystery of the Kador Cliffs, which we watched a month or so back. Pauline (Pearl White) is the ward of Koerner (Paul Panzer), and has a large inheritance, which he presumably would keep were she to die. So he engineers various schemes to kill her. However unlike The Mystery of the Kador Cliffs, which handled this situation with some vague ambitions of naturalism, The Perils of Pauline uses it strictly as plot device for a series of tongue-in-cheek adventure stories. It is worth noting that the version we watched -- the only surviving version -- is significantly different from the one audiences saw in 1914. Originally it was almost seven hours long, broken up into twenty episodes. The version that we saw was re-edited down to nine for the European market in 1916. The structure was episodic though, so there is no great loss in continuity, but the print we saw is not in the greatest shape, and the speed at times was not adjusted properly, so action on the screen was often too fast. On top of that, The Perils of Pauline was marred by intermittent negative portrayals of various ethnic groups. Episode 2 had Pauline menaced by Native Americans, who are depicted as primitive and superstitious. In episode 3 Harry (Pauline’s fiance, played by Crane Wilbur) disguises himself by darkening his skin. In episode 5 and then later in episode 8 Koerner works with a group of malevolent gypsies to murder Pauline. All of this subtracted from the experience of watching the film, and Ben particularly was pretty vocal about how terrible the Native American episode was. All in all, Fantomas -- which is probably our most natural reference point for comparison, being the only other serial we’ve watched -- was superior in many ways, in that it had a clearer print, appropriately adjusted speed, and a refreshing lack of ethnic slurs.

The two serials were different in other ways as well. For instance, while both films were equally ridiculous and tongue-in-cheek, the approach in Fantomas was largely deadpan, whereas in Perils of Pauline everyone is openly enjoying the romp. Also, the stunts in Perils of Pauline were quite extensive in a way that wasn’t true in Fantomas -- there is an airplane crash, people climbing down a rope from a hot air balloon, car crashes, horses tumbling over with riders, and a variety of other dangerous looking action. Presumably at this time period a large fraction of it was probably achieved by putting people in real danger. There is also a brief striking shot taken from an airplane, showing the ground below, including a moving train. (Keep in mind the airplane had just been invented ten years earlier.) I can’t really recommend this film, but one can see how the light tone and the stunt-work might have contributed to its popularity. Trivia: Louis J. Gasnier, one of the two directors, directed some of the early Max Linder shorts, and later in his career directed Reefer Madness.

This next item on the list is our third film from 1914: Tillie’s Punctured Romance, which is the first film in which we’ll see Charlie Chaplin, as well as a bunch of other early comedy stars. The spreadsheet, as always, is here: https://bit.ly/2lZtfmT

Judith of Bethulia (1914)

Originally posted to Facebook on 4/13/2016

This week we watched our first film from 1914: Judith of Bethulia. It was D.W. Griffith’s first feature length film, and starred Blanche Sweet in the title role. Lillian and Dorothy Gish were also in the film, but in very small roles. Unfortunately the copy we saw played a little faster than it should have, which was a bit distracting, and in addition was not the greatest print in the world. The movie itself was a biblical epic, somewhat in the vein of The Last Days of Pompeii, but on a slightly smaller scale. The story involved the town of Bethulia besieged by the Assyrians, and Judith (of Bethulia) deciding to go to the enemy camp and somehow trick or convince Prince Holofernes (the military leader of the Assyrians, played by Henry B. Walthall) to relent. The movie lasts about an hour, but still feels padded. Judith, for instance, somehow acquires feeling for Holofernes (although nothing on screen makes that particularly plausible) and spends some screen time agonizing on whether to “betray” him. Also, two secondary characters -- Naomi and Nathan, played by Mae Marsh and Robert Harron -- are introduced, and then basically disappear for most of the film. There is also lots of ostensibly (but not very) decadent dancing before Holofernes, which after about the third appearance got a little tedious. Of course, it is quite possible that the film we saw is a somewhat butchered version of the original, but judging on what we viewed, it is not anywhere near as good as the shorts we saw from Griffith a few months ago, nor as good as some of the other features we’ve been seeing recently. The kids were a little surprised by the climactic scene (which I won’t spoil, in case someone is right in the middle of the Septuagint), so at least that moment still has something to recommend it. The kids also didn’t ask any questions when the prince assigned his “chief eunuch” to Judith, and I didn’t volunteer an explanation.

Next week we’ll watch The Perils of Pauline, which was a serial from 1914. It’s not quite as long as Fantomas though, and we hope to cover it in a single weekend. The list of our upcoming films is here: https://bit.ly/2lZtfmT