Movies 1911

Originally posted to Facebook on 2/15/2016

This week in our chronological movie watching, we saw the following films from 1911:

Baron Munchausen's Dream
The Miser's Heart
Merchant of Venice
Richard III

This is the first week that, due to increasing film lengths, we've limited ourselves to a single year. The four films we saw from 1911 total 71 minutes, compared to 96 minutes for the eight films we saw last week from 1909 and 1910. In a few weeks, we will have arrived at more-or-less modern feature films. One of the films this week is a late work by George Méliès, another is by D. W. Griffith, and two are adaptations of Shakespeare: one from Italy, and the other from England.

The Méliès film (Baron Munchausen's Dream) continues in the vein that we're used to. In it, Baron Munchausen falls asleep and is tormented in his dreams -- dramatized by lots of special effects and indoor painted sets. There is one weird effect in which there is clearly a false mirror in which different actors are mimicking the Baron and his servants' actions. I was waiting for this to have a payoff -- where the reflection starts to diverge from reality -- but that never happened. Eventually the devil shows up, at which point Allison said, "Yep! There's the devil!" I think that's a good commentary on the film in general; when eight-year-old girls are calling out your clichés, perhaps you have settled into a bit of a rut. It does have the normal fantastical imaginative Méliès elements, but I think it is fair to say that, by 1911, it is of a piece with similar films that we have seen many times before. Also, I always thought the point of Baron Munchausen was than he was a notorious liar and embellisher, not that he had strange dreams. The first place I remember being aware of Baron Munchausen was Terry Gilliam's 1988 film, which I dragged my parents to, hoping that it would be as good as Brazil. Bizarrely, there was also a well-liked Baron Munchausen film made in 1943 in Nazi Germany. According to Wikipedia it was meant as escapism, so it isn't propagandistic in an overt sense. It's streaming for free on Amazon Prime where I took a quick look, and it certainly looks interesting.

Richard III was longest film we've seen to date, at 23 minutes -- the previous longest having been Méliès' Voyage Across the Impossible from 1904. But given this film's approach of including so much from the play, it probably needed to be longer still. I've seen Richard III on stage a couple of times, so I'm pretty familiar with the story, and I tried to fill the kids in on what was happening, but plot developments were coming so fast and furious that at a certain point I just had to say, "Ok, I'm not really sure why he's murdering this guy." The film is also very stage-bound, and the only point during which I remember them doing anything that couldn't be done on stage was when Richard III was dreaming of all of the people he's killed; the film had them appear one after another using substitution splices. Overall I can't imagine this film being intelligible in anything but broad outline to anyone who hadn't seen the play or another version of the movie. By happy coincidence, one of the films we're seeing next week is a 1912 American version of Richard III, which is 55 minutes long and will not only be by far the longest film we've seen, but will hopefully give the plot enough space to play out.

The Merchant of Venice was created by the same Italian group that was responsible for King Lear from last week. The actor that played Lear now plays Shylock, and the actress that played Cordelia now plays Jessica. It has other actors in common as well, and also the same director. None of them are distinctive enough that I would have known this without checking IMDB, but the look of the two films are similar. It wasn't quite as stage-bound as Richard III, and there were some attempts to evoke Venice. As with Lear I gave the kids a quick rundown, including trying to outline the anti-semitism and why this is a controversial play. Given the kids' ages, I'm generally avoiding obvious controversy -- for instance we aren't planning to watch Birth of a Nation -- but I think they were able to contextualize this one. Unlike Richard III, this film stripped out most of the subplots, or reduced them to allusions. The story of Shylock's loan and the subsequent trial were the main focus.

The Miser's Heart was directed by Griffith, and was the fifth film of his we've seen, and probably the best to date. It's about two thieves who try to rob an old man, and threaten the life of a little girl who lives in his apartment building in order to convince him to open a safe. The little girl couldn't have been more than three or possibly four (i.e. 109 if she were alive today), and Ben said, "How is she remembering to do all of these things?" I told him that one of the advantages of silent films was that the director could be giving her explicit verbal instructions as the film was rolling. As with the other Griffith films we've seen, this one is no masterpiece, but it is the most movie-like of the four films this week. This is partially because there is an understandable plot, shot in such a way to make it clear what is going on. Also, there are several differentiated characters, and, although there are no close-ups as yet, the film is shot a little closer to the actors than the other movies. We are moving closer to the era of features, so we won't be seeing many more shorts like this, but apparently Griffith shot hundreds of them in these pre-teen years, and must have developed a good idea as to what worked and what didn't.

Next week, we move on to 1912. Because of increased running length, we'll be seeing only two films, including the American version of Richard III mentioned above. We'll be watching the other two films from 1912 the subsequent week. The link, as always, is here: https://bit.ly/2lZtfmT

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