Movies 1909 - 1910

Originally posted to Facebook on 2/9/2016

This week we watched films from 1909 and 1910, specifically the following:

Princess Nicotine; or, The Smoke Fairy
The Devilish Tenant
The Sealed Room
A Corner in Wheat
A Christmas Carol
The Unchanging Sea
King Lear
Frankenstein

Running lengths continue to increase. The eight films' total running length this week was 96 minutes, longer than any previous weekend, and 1910 was the first year where none of the films we watched were less than ten minutes. There was only one George Méliès film this week (The Devilish Tenant), but three by D.W. Griffith, and two by J. Searle Dawley, at Edison.

The Devilish Tenant is very much in line with many other George Méliès films we've seen -- lots of camera tricks, interior or painted sets, and with a supernatural tormentor, another Méliès trope. However, although it had familiar elements, it was a fairly polished example of its kind. Princess Nicotine, although not by Méliès, shows his influence, and is driven by camera tricks also.

The two Edison films (A Christmas Carol and Frankenstein) both draw on familiar plots to assist in the storytelling, which is a common theme of this early period. The actor, Charles Ogle, who plays Bob Cratchit also plays the monster in Frankenstein, though he is so heavily made up in the latter that it is impossible to tell. A Christmas Carol is the more traditional telling of the two. The three ghosts have been downsized to one, who has to shoulder triple the workload of presenting past, present, and future. Also there is a subplot I don't recall from any previous telling, in that his nephew can't marry because of his financial situation. Other than that, all of the normal plot points are hit fairly economically in the eleven minute running time -- though this is perhaps overstated because the version we saw did not appear to have the speed corrected properly, and the movement was faster than it should have been. Frankenstein, on the other hand, took many more liberties with its well-known source, and the ending was a bit arbitrary and under-explained.

The other film with a familiar plot that we saw was King Lear, which was an Italian production. I told the kids the basic story ahead of time so that they could follow the film better. (Ben asked if it had a happy ending. I told him it doesn't. He also pointed out -- and I'm paraphrasing a bit -- that deciding who should run a kingdom based on who you think loves you the most is not a good system of governance.)

The three Griffith films each told a relatively lesser known story (though a few were still adaptations), and did so without using the audience's background knowledge as a crutch. The stories were mostly clear, either through the direction, acting, or title cards. A Corner in Wheat and The Unchanging Sea were on fairly realistic sets or set locations, and The Unchanging Sea managed to telescope twenty years into its running time, which, excepting maybe Joan of Arc and Ben Hur, is the first time we've seen that on screen, and certainly the most effectively. I can't really recommend any of them as great masterpieces, but they are all interesting and clearly told stories.

Next weekend, because of increasing film lengths, we will only be watching four films, all from 1911. The link, as always, is here: https://bit.ly/2lZtfmT

Movies 1905 - 1906

Originally posted to Facebook on 1/25/2016

This week we we watched films from 1905 and 1906. The films were:

The Black Imp
The Kleptomaniac
The Nihilist
The Night Before Christmas
Dream of a Rarebit Fiend
Aladdin and His Wonder Lamp
The 400 Tricks of the Devil
The Story of the Kelly Gang

The length of the films continue to grow, and for that reason we split the viewing into two nights, watching the 1905 films on Friday, and the 1906 ones on Sunday. The films took a cumulative 84 minutes this week, compared to 75 minutes last week. We are well and truly on the Méliès downslope at this point. Only two films this week were his, while three were from Edwin Porter, at Edison. The main plot of both Méliès films (The Black Imp and The 400 Tricks of the Devil) involved supernatural forces tormenting people using the evil power of camera tricks. (This has been the plot of a lot of the Méliès films we've seen, and Alli even commented, "He uses the devil a lot.") The Black Imp was the only film this week less than five minutes, and the only film that had just a single set. The 400 Tricks of the Devil was, by contrast, quite long at 17 minutes, and involved many sets, and many things disappearing and re-appearing, and a weird flying skeletal horse, and a lot of other confusing craziness. As has happened a couple of times, there was a recently created audio narration on the DVD which might have explained more of what was going on had we not muted it.

Of the other films, Aladdin and His Wonder Lamp was quite Méliès-like, with lots of camera tricks and painted sets. It also appeared to have the first moving camera proper that we've seen, though it was just a shift from a set on the left to a set immediately adjacent to it, and then a shift back. It also had a coherent and recognizable plot, particularly to anyone who's seen the 1992 version of Aladdin several hundred times. Of the Edison films, the strangest was Dream of a Rarebit Fiend, which involved a fantastical drunken dream of the title character. Based on Wikipedia it was based on a bizarre contemporary comic strip which every week showed the disturbing dreams of someone who had eaten too much rarebit. (I believe I have only had rarebit once, and can report no memorable dreams as a result. But I suppose eating it only once does not qualify me as a fiend.)

The last film we watched was The Story of the Kelly Gang, an Australian film for which I could only find an Australian DVD, so we had to watch it downstairs on a region-free DVD player. It was 18 minutes long, but was apparently only a portion of one of the first truly feature length films, the majority of which has now been lost. The 18-minute version we saw seemed to tell a coherent enough story, though, so I'm not sure where the other forty minutes would have fit.

Next week we move on to 1907 and 1908. The link, as always, is here: https://bit.ly/2lZtfmT

Movies 1903 - 1904

Originally posted to Facebook on 1/16/2016

Friday night we watched films from 1903 and 1904.

Life of an American Fireman
The Great Train Robbery
Alice in Wonderland
Fairyland: A Kingdom of Fairies
An Interesting Story
The Mermaid
The Living Playing Cards
The Voyage Across the Impossible

I believe we have now reached peak Méliès, with five films last week, and four this week, but decreasing numbers in the weeks ahead. In a way this is too bad, because so far his films have been the most consistently entertaining and professional. But it also became clear that he had a certain stage-bound style, though of course the sets changed much more rapidly than on a stage, and he also deploys a certain repertoire of camera tricks. But, by contrast, the other four films we saw this week all have scenes shot outside, and in many cases scenes that are shot at an angle to the action. The Great Train Robbery even had shots from the top of a moving train. We also saw our first title cards in Alice in Wonderland, but they still do not appear to be very common. Most of the films this week, excepting only The Mermaid and The Living Playing Cards, had a connected multi-scene narrative, and the number of scenes per film is continuing to grow from previous weeks. Life of an American Fireman had an interesting pair of sequences, the first of which was a fireman rescuing a woman and a small child from the interior of a burning house, followed by a sequence showing the exact same set of actions from the outside -- including the fireman climbing up and down a ladder. (The firetrucks were all pulled by horses, by the way, which the kids found striking.) The Voyage Across the Impossible was a full twenty minutes, the longest film we've seen to date, and, looking ahead, the longest we'll see for several more weeks. It irritatingly had narration on the audio track, which we finally muted. (Ben was more irritated than me. "This is vandalism!" he said.) A Kingdom of Fairies was almost as long, at sixteen minutes. Overall, the total length of all eight films was 75 minutes this week, compared to 53 last week, and even less on previous weeks.

Next week we move on to 1905 and 1906. The link to our viewing plan is here: https://bit.ly/2lZtfmT

Movies 1901 - 1902

Originally posted to Facebook 1/9/2016

This week we moved into the twentieth century, covering four films each from 1901 and 1902. They were:

The Devil and the Statue
The Man with the Rubber Head
Bluebeard
History of a Crime
Uncle Josh at the Moving Picture Show
Gulliver's Travels
Jack and the Beanstalk
A Trip to the Moon

At this point we seem to be an an "all Méliès, all the time" mode, and will be for several more weeks. Five of the eight films were from Méliès this week. The new special effect since last week appears to be double exposures that show people at different sizes. This is used in The Devil and the Statue, The Man with the Rubber Head, and Gulliver's Travels. In the first two it actually shows people shrinking and growing. Five of the eight had multiple sets and what I would consider a connected storyline, as compared to only two of eight from last week. Ben said at one point during Bluebeard, "People must have been better at understanding movies in those days, because I have no idea what is going on right now." This was during a period when Bluebeard and someone at a royal court were angrily gesturing at one another. I have not seen a title card as yet -- I assume that will be coming soon -- but one thing I've noticed is that many of the films, particularly the longer ones, seem to rely upon stories that are already well known, which aids comprehension. Gulliver's Travels and Jack and the Beanstalk definitely draw upon common knowledge, and Ben and Alli were both familiar with the story of Bluebeard as well -- more so that I was -- and they were a little more braced for the macabre site of Bluebeard's new wife discovering the room where his old wives' surprisingly fresh looking corpses were hanging from the ceiling.

At fifteen minutes, A Trip to the Moon was a full five minutes longer than any other film we've seen to date. The particular print we saw had the 1902 hand-coloring restored throughout, but had a score that was distractingly modern. Also, it did not seem to be entirely committed to scientific accuracy, nor did there seem to be any embryonic concept of the Prime Directive brewing in 1902. But I can't really criticize a movie where old men fight moon creatures with umbrellas.

Next week we'll move on 1903 and 1904, including The Great Train Robbery, maybe the second most iconic film from this period. The link to the viewing plan is: https://bit.ly/2lZtfmT

Movies 1893 - 1898

Originally posted to Facebook on 12/28/2015

I started the chronological movie watching a week early. We watched the following films:

1893 - Blacksmith Scene
1894 - Annabelle Butterfly Dance
1895 - The Execution of Mary, Queen of Scots
1896 - The House of the Devil [La Manoir Du Diable]
1897 - The Haunted Castle [La Chateau Hante]
1898 - The Burglar on the Roof
1898 - Four Heads are Better Than One
1898 - The Temptation of St. Anthony
1898 - The Astronomer's Dream [La Lune a Un Metre]

All of them were approximately a minute or less excepting The House of the Devil and The Astronomer's Dream, which were about three minutes each. The kids seemed most entertained by The Astronomer's Dream, which was indeed kind of crazy, and featured a maniacal-looking moon which ate people and furniture. Of the Edison films, three had no special effects at all, while the The Execution of Mary, Queen of Scots had a single substitution splice. The Méliès films of course are filled with substitution splices. Four Heads are Better Than One however also used some sort of double exposure trick to show a man repeatedly removing his head. Also interesting was The Haunted Castle, in which one of the character's cape was hand painted red throughout.

Next week we'll be watching four films from 1899 and four from 1900: https://bit.ly/2lZtfmT