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.

Judex (1916)

Originally posted to Facebook on 7/13/2016

Judex was our second film from 1916, and it took us a little longer than planned to finish watching it. It was another serial, directed by Louis Feuillade, who also directed Fantomas. It was twelve episodes long, most in the half-hour range, plus a prologue, so it really felt a bit more like binging on a television show than watching a movie. It had a few actors in common with Fantomas, and also with Les Vampires, an intervening serial which we did not watch. One of the most entertaining things about Fantomas was how insane it was -- python-proof armor, false prosthetic arms, and various ridiculous plot twists. This serial was more level headed and sensible -- making it a better film in many ways, but with fewer signature moments. Judex (played by René Cresté) in this film is essentially a vigilante, similar in some ways to Batman (and may be somewhere in the lineage of Batman’s influences, though that’s a bit murky.) Like Batman, he operates outside of the law, but with his own moral code. He is dressed in black, and wears a cape and prominent black hat -- which is what you’d expect from this kind of proto-super hero, but it does make it a little strange that his chief accomplice is his brother Roger, who dresses in a business suit, and tags along with Judex, a weird conventional grace note to a variety of eccentric adventures -- who probably could have been eliminated from the movie entirely with minimal rewriting. Judex’s primary target is a corrupt banker named Favraux, played by Louis Leubas, who also had a prominent role in A Child of Paris, which we saw a few months back. Given the running time, there is sufficient space to flesh out an assortment of other characters, including The Licorice Kid (an Artful-Dodger-type, named, so far as we could tell, for the fact that he is never seen eating licorice), Favraux’s young grandson (played, I believe, by a little girl who compulsively kisses everyone with whom she is in a scene), an incompetent detective and his fiance (the latter showing up late in the picture and mostly seen wearing a bathing suit, whether or not the situation called for it), and the female ringleader of a gang that is trying to recover Favraux’s money, played by the single-named actress Musidora, who also played Irma Vep in Les Vampires. The movie as a whole was entertaining and polished. It was lightweight, but not as tongue-in-cheek as Fantomas.

Next week we will watch our third film from 1916: Intolerance, one of the canonical “film-school” silents, and the first D.W. Griffith film we’ve watched since 1914’s Judith of Bethulia. It is not a serial, but it is a very long film at over three hours, so I hope we’ll be able to finish it in a single weekend, but we’ll see. The list, as always, is here: https://bit.ly/2lZtfmT

Fantomas (1913)

Originally posted to Facebook on 3/23/2016

We continued our chronological movie watching with Fantomas, our second film from 1913. This was a serial, with five parts, each hovering somewhere between an hour and ninety minute. We watched them over two weekends. It was produced at Gaumont, the same studio as Child of Paris and Mystery of the Kador Cliffs, and was directed by Louis Feuillade. The movie takes its name from its central character, a criminal mastermind played by René Navarre, who is being hunted by Juve (Edmund Breon), a police detective, and Fandor (Georges Melchior), a journalist. It was extremely tongue-in-cheek, but not entirely a comedy. It’s difficult to explain the tone without spoilers, so let me give just one: Early on in the serial, Juve and Fandor have apprehended Fantomas at a restaurant. He agrees to come with with them, and gets his coat from the coat check. They walk out, Juve and Fandor each holding an arm. After walking a few blocks, Fantomas breaks free and runs off, leaving Juve and Fandor each holding a fake prosthetic arm that he’d apparently inserted into his coat as they were leaving. Fantomas eventually winds up back at the restaurant to finish his meal. One more: Juve is aware that Fantomas is going to try to murder him in his sleep, so he has Fandor hide in his bedroom. During the night, a car pulls up outside, and a python slithers out and into Juve’s bedroom via a window. After Fandor and Juve fight off the python, it flees back out of the window, and gets back in the car, which then drives off. Did I mention that Juve somehow suspected a python would be involved and wore a python-resistant suit in preparation? I shouldn’t give the idea that the serial is made up of non-stop nonsense. There’s a lot of procedural cat-and-mouse type action, and also lots of people dressing up in various disguises. But it is definitely interspersed with bizarre cliffhangers and escapes. It did peter out a little toward the end, in part because the fifth episode has not completely survived, and title cards explaining missing action have been added to compensate.

Next week we’ll watch our third film from 1913: The Last Days of Pompeii. The full list, as always, is here: https://bit.ly/2lZtfmT