RAIN (1928, NETHERLANDS), THE BRIDGE (1928, NETHERLANDS),THE SPANISH EARTH (1937), A TALE OF THE WIND (1988, NETHERLANDS)

Rain

Experimental Dutch documentary filmmaker Joris Ivens made this short film titled Rain at the end of the silent film era. It's about rain...Before the rain, during the rain and after the rain. The umbrellas do come out at some point.

Rain...I don't mind-The Beatles

The Bridge

Ivens also made another short film during this time about a bridge titled The Bridge (De Brug). The bridge is there. It's sturdy. There are trains passing on top of it and ships passing underneath. There are enough ships to make me think this film could have been called The Boat. But no, It's The Bridge.

Like a bridge over troubled waters, I will lay me down-Simon and Garfunkel

This Spanish Earth

Ivens made a later film in the 30's (with collaborator Ernest Hemingway) titled This Spanish Earth. This film is a documentary record of a village defending itself against the fascists during The Spanish Civil War and before the outbreak of World War II.

You will never find peace with these fascists

You'll never find friends such as we

So remember that valley of Jarama

And the people that'll set that valley free-Woody Guthrie

A Tale of the Wind

If Joris Ivens wanted to end his creative and physical life making a film in which he searches for wind (and providing an appropriate bookend to Rain from sixty year before), then by all means he has my blessing!

All we are is dust in the wind-Kansas

The answer my friend is blowin' in the wind-Bob Dylan

Everyone knows it's Windy-The Association

Joris Ivens 1899-1989

DR. JEKYLL AND MR. HYDE (1920), THE PENALTY (1920), THE CABINET OF DR. CALIGARI (1920)

1920 Halloween Triple Feature!

John Barrymore and his great profile
as Dr. Jekyll

Today's super scary Halloween triple feature features films that were made about 100 years ago as I look at the old Gregorian calendar on the wall. Isn't that pretty scary in itself?

The first film is Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, starring screen legend John Barrymore. The film is of course based on the 1886 Robert Lewis Stevenson book of the same name. Barrymore plays the good Dr. Jekyll who helps out the poor when he isn't doing experiments that may give him answers to questions that may be left unanswered. He is egged on by his future father-in-law to search for the dual nature of good and evil in man, and boy does he find it! He finds a potion that turns his saintly doctor Jekyll into the wicked Mr. Hyde. (Granted, Mr. Hyde might be more fun than Jekyll at the right type of party). Then the fun begins as Mr. Hyde causes havoc much to the consternation of his better half. You know this isn't going to end well.

The special effects aren't too bad, especially the shots of the difference between Dr. Jekyll's skilled doctor hand and the claws of Mr. Hyde. I also like Hyde's distorted looks, which are grotesque but clearly still human and quite the contrast to the actor known as "The Great Profile."

John Barrymore as the hideous Mr. Hyde!

Lon Chaney as Blizzard in The Penalty

The Penalty, directed by Wallace Worsley, is a melodramatic but involving tale of a boy who has the lower part of his legs removed by doctors he overhears saying afterward that the removal may not have been necessary. He grows up and takes the name Blizzard and becomes a bitter criminal mastermind who wants to get revenge on the man who took his legs.

The film ends with his blackmail of the doctor to give him legs, but the doc operates on his head instead. Blizzard's mind is now cleared of evils thoughts and he tries to do good, but is shot down by an associate, the ultimate paying of the penalty.

Blizzard is played by Lon Chaney, who was and is one of the most admired stars of the silent era. His ability to get into a role physically as well as mentally is renowned. The Man of 1,000 Faces uses his own face for The Penalty, it's his body that is the distortion here. For this role, he had his legs strapped as his knees sat in buckets to mimic being an amputee.

Chaney also starred in an adaptation of another

Gouverneur Morris story

called  Ace of Hearts  in 1921.

The unveiling of the somnambulist Cesare by

Caligari in The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari

Warm...Rohrig...Weinmann...Weine

The alliteration of those names helped me to remember them all for my History of Film class I took in the 80's when we went over silent films, expressionism and The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari in particular. But what are the importance of these names? Herman Warm designed the delightfully expressionistic sets for the movie. Rohrig and Weinmann painted these sets. And Robert Weine was the director of this tale of madness...exploitation...and SONAMBULISM!!

But the film offers more than it's unusual design. It is the forerunner of films that try to throw the viewer narrative curve balls. Is the story we think we are seeing, the real story? Is the narrator reliable? Is the one we see as evil, really good? Or is the narrator the only one who sees that he isn't good? What are the hints that what we are seeing isn't what we may think it is at first?

I think of Caligari when I see films like A Beautiful Mind, The Sixth Sense and most recently Shutter Island (I'm sure Martin Scorcese is a student of Caligari). Even if you've seen variations on the themes of Caligari done many times since, any student of film should see the original. 

And don't forget those names...Warm...Rohrig...Weinmann...Weine...Warm...Rohrig...Weinmann...Weine...I am calling you...I am your master...awaken for a moment from your dark night!

I had the privilege of re-watching Caligari this month at the local Crescent Theater featuring the live band The Invisible Czars playing along with the film. Great job, guys!

Happy Halloween!

1929 BEST PICTURE OF THE YEAR!

This is my choice (choices) for Best Picture for the year 1929.  My criteria is that I can only use films that are on the 1001 list. To make it a little easier on myself, I am using the rules of the first Academy Award and name a winner for Best Picture (won by Wings for 1927-1928) and Best and Unique and Artistic Picture (won by Sunrise from 1927-1928). 

The 1001 list gives you pretty slim pickin's for some years and too many choices for other years. With only four movies, this is definitely a slim year.

And the nominees on the entries from every edition of 1001 Movie You Must See Before You Die are...
Blackmail
The Man with the Movie Camera
Pandora's Box
A Throw of the Dice

And the winner for the Best Picture of 1939 is…Pandora's Box

                 Pandora's Box                    

Close choices here, but I'm giving this to the hedonistic adventures of Lulu (Louise Brooks) in G. W. Pabst's tale of a wild woman. It's certainly an interesting story and Brooks is pretty iconic in this role. A Throw of the Dice is an entertaining epic and as for Hitchcock's experimental Blackmail, I'll have lots of awards in this category in later years for Mr. Hitchcock.

Pandora's Box

And the Award for Unique and Artistic Picture of 1929 is...The Man with the Movie Camera

The Man with the Movie Camera

The experimental The Man with the Movie Camera is about the only film from this list from this year that could win this category. This film invites you into a movie theater and begins to show you a world outside the realm of traditional cinematic language. The shots of the late twenties Soviet Union is even more interesting without the confines of traditional narrative. Director Dziga Vertov shows the mechanics of society through machinery, trolleys or people just going to work. I also like the fact that Vertov appears with his camera throughout, reminding us this is a movie in case we begin to forget.

The Man with the Movie Camera

1928 BEST PICTURE OF THE YEAR!

This is my choice for Best Picture for 1928. My criteria is that I can only use films that are on the 1001 list. To make it a little easier on myself, I am using the rules of the first Academy Award and name a winner for Best Picture (won by Wings for 1927-1928) and Best Unique and Artistic Picture (won by Sunrise from 1927-1928).

And the nominees for every entry from 1928 from every edition of 1001 Movie You Must See Before You Die are...

The Crowd
The Docks of New York
An Andalusian Dog
The Passion of Joan of Arc
Steamboat Bill, Jr.
Storm Over Asia

And the winner for Best Picture of 1928 is...The Crowd

The Crowd

As tempting as it is to give out these early awards to Buster Keaton movies, I'm going with King Vidor's The Crowd for this one. One of several excellent pictures of the last real year of silents, this film depicts a couple and their struggle to survive under tight circumstances in real and stark terms, and showed a technically adept filmmaking style that we didn't seem to see too much during the early talkies.

 The Crowd

And the Award for Unique and Artistic Picture of 1928 is...Joan of Arc

Joan of Arc

You can make a case for Luis Bunuel's influential An Andalusian Dog for this award for this year, but I'm going with Carl Theodor Dreyer's intense epic of the last days of Joan of Arc. It's a truly harrowing and draining piece, though you probably have to be in the right mood before sitting down to watch this one.

Joan of Arc

1927 BEST PICTURE OF THE YEAR!

I have decided to name my choice for Best Picture for the year of the first Academy Award (1927)  My criteria is that I can only use films that are on the 1001 list. To make it a little easier on myself, I am using the rules of the first Academy Award and name a winner for Best Picture (won by Wings for 1927-1928) and Best and Unique and Artistic Picture (won by Sunrise from 1927-1928). I'll see if I want to continue doing it for other years.  

And the nominees from all the entries from every edition of 1001 Movie You Must See Before You Die released in 1927 are...

Metropolis

Sunrise

The General

The Unknown

The Jazz Singer

Napoleon

The Kid Brother

And the winner for the Best Picture of 1927 is…The General

 The General

I'm a big Buster Keaton fan so I'd feel a little bad not going with The General for this one. It may be the best comedy feature film of silent cinema. Funny, poignant, exciting and crafted by a genius at the top of his game, I'd be hard pressed not to go with this film despite some other great films from this year. 

 The General

And the Award for Unique and Artistic Picture of 1927 is...Napoleon

Napoleon

This was a difficult choice. I'm still not sure I'm doing the right thing in taking the more consistent film Sunrise out of the slot it won in the first place! Fritz Lang's Metropolis might have snagged this award for me if the field had been weaker. No...no...I'm sticking with Napoleon. There is so much greatness in this film with it's epic storytelling, editing and the way Gance used a cast of thousands so effectively...maybe even more so than D. W. Griffith before him. The way the story is presented could only have been done as a silent. The film would have had to have been too slowed down to accommodate dialogue. I guess this was one less hurrah for silent epic cinema. The version I saw was enhanced greatly by the score from Carmine Coppola.

There are frustrations in that there are certain parts that could have been edited in the middle...Napoleon appears too noble and Godlike throughout and we see the rise of Napoleon...but wouldn't it have been nice to see the fall? I know Gance had planned to make subsequent Napoleon movies that never came to be...but it's still frustrating. Napoleon gets my award anyway.

Napoleon

NAPOLEON (1927, FRANCE)

"With his silent productions, he (Abel Gance) made a fuller use of the medium than anyone before or since."
-Kevin Brownlee, The Parade's Gone By 

Albert Dieudonne as Napoleon

There is indeed much greatness in Abel Gance's 1927 silent film Napoleon. It contains unprecedented epic storytelling (at least from any silent I've seen) and skillful editing that must have been artistically revolutionary at the time. He also used a cast of thousands very effectively...maybe even more so than D. W. Griffith before him.

The way the story is presented could only have been done as a silent. The film would have had to have been slowed down to accommodate dialogue in a talkie. This speed of storytelling is part the uniqueness of silent cinema, which unfortunately was about to be lost forever within about a year of Napoleon's release. But Napoleon certainly sends the silent film out with a bang. 

However, there are frustrations with this film as well. Certain parts seem like they could have been edited in the middle to help with story flow. Also, Napoleon Bonaparte appears too noble and Godlike throughout. We see the rise of Napoleon...but wouldn't it have been nice to see the fall? I know Gance had planned to make subsequent Napoleon movies that never came to be...but it's still frustrating.

The version I saw was the Zoetrope 1980 restoration, which was restored by film historian Kevin Brownlow and is enhanced greatly by the score from Carmine Coppola.

Abel Gance's Napoleon

Quotes from two auteurs who never managed to make their Napoleon film dream come true...

"He did all kinds of admirable things. I'm not a mad Napoleon fan, but there's no denying his genius. A very complicated man. But had he never been born, there are millions of people who wouldn't have died. There were unnecessary wars that he fought for his own glorification, which makes him a villain in the last analysis."
-Orson Welles from My Lunches with Orson with Henry Jaglom, edited by Peter Biskind

"There has never been a good or accurate movie about him. Also, I find that all the issues with which it concerns itself are oddly contemporary-the responsibilities and abuses of power, the dynamics of social revolution, the relationship of the individual to the state, war, militarism, etc., so this will not be just a dusty historic pageant but a film about the basic questions of our own times, as well as Napoleon's."
-Stanley Kubrick from Stanley Kubrick: A Biography by Vincent Lobrutto

Blog note: This is the final silent film for me from the 1001 list.

THE ADVENTURES OF PRINCE ACHMED (1926, GERMANY)

Well defined characters

in The Adventures of Prince Achmed

The Adventures of Prince Achmed is listed in most sources as being the oldest surviving animated feature film. The entire sixty-five minute film is done with silhouetted cutouts from the major innovator of the technicque, Lotte Reiniger. The story itself is a variation of 1001 Arabian Nights, but since the only copy I could find of this was with German subtitles, it proved a bit difficult to keep up with some of the plot. No matter. It's really the technique that is the thing here as Reiniger labored over every frame and the overall making of the film took several years.

A good companion to Achmed is the hour long documentary Lotte Reiniger: Inventor of the Silhouette Film (1999). This allows you to see her creative process, her friendship with director Jean Renoir, her reliance on kindly benefactors and her lifelong creative and romantic relationship with her husband, filmmaker Carl Koch.

Sidenotes:

My mother always had silhouetted profiles of her children hung up on the wall. I'm glad this film brought back that memory.

Herman's Hermits had a hit with the song "Two Silhouettes on the Shade" in 1965--but that's neither here nor there.

That's two non-English language films in a row I've posted without a English translation...Maybe not a bad way to watch some things.

A frightening creature
in The Adventures of Prince Achmed

THE BIG PARADE (1925)

Tom O'Brien, John Gilbert and Karl Dane lead The Big Parade

New York Times critic Mordaunt Hall called The Big Parade the Best Movie "without doubt" of 1925 in his end of the year review from that year. The story features three American men who go off to fight in the first World War. They are spoiled rich kid Jim (John Gilbert) and working stiffs Bull (Tom O'Brien) and Sam (Karl Dane). Despite the differences in class of the three men, they bond and we see them train together, fight together and (in some cases) die together. The movie was directed by Kind Vidor, who gives much of the credit for the film's success to screenwriter Laurence Stallings.

The film has been cited in some sources (501 Movie Directors) as the most financially successful film of the silent era. I heard another source say it was second to Birth of a Nation, but either way The Big Parade was extremely popular.

So it was a popular film and a critical hit. The one thing that stopped it from being seen more over the years was, of course, that it was a silent and once talkies came around...well more people raved about All
Quiet on the Western Front just five years later...where you can hear the bombs...

King Vidor did make his mark in talkies as well, directing prominent pictures for over thirty years after The Big Parade. Leading man John Gilbert wasn't so lucky when the sound era came around. His star waned and he died of a heart attack in 1936.

But the reputation of The Big Parade stands. Most critics hail it as a masterpiece...though curmudgeonly critic David Thompson says The Big Parade is''often slack and clumsy." You can't please everyone, I guess. 

DR. MABUSE, THE GAMBLER (1922, GERMANY)

Mabuse in disguise

in Dr. Mabuse, The Gambler

I feel lucky that when I was growing up there were many opportunities to see silent features and shorts on television. It was clearly the silent comedies I gravitated too because many of the great gags by the comedy masters were timeless and actually enhanced by having no dialogue to get in the way.

Silent dramas were a different matter. I thought (and sometimes still think, honestly) viewing a more serious film without the aid of the verbal cues we are use to isn't always easy to do. Dr. Mabuse, The Gambler is a good example. The plot is a lot to keep up with. We have Dr. Mabuse, the criminal mastermind and master of disguise and all his henchman and all the people he dupes and we have law enforcement trying to put the pieces of the puzzle of his many crimes together and it requires a lot of concentration (at least it did for me) to keep it all straight. The movie is also well over four hours long, depending on what version you happen to watch.

But I hung with it and the plot, even though I wasn't catching as much as I would have liked in the beginning, about an hour in to Mabuse the style and the visual language of the story eventually began to click with me and I enjoyed the second half of the film very much. I'd even go as far to say that I found the overall viewing experience of Mabuse quite rewarding, as director Fritz Lang was clearly a master of the medium even at that early stage of his career.

Mabuse returns: Lang brought back the Mabuse character in sound films in 1933 (The Testament of Dr. Mabuse (1933) and The Thousand Eyes of Dr. Mabuse (1960).

Rudolf Klein-Rogge: Klein-Rogge (Dr. Mabuse) played important parts in several Lang films, including: Metropolis, Spies, and The Testament of Dr. Mabuse. His first screen credit is in the classic Cabinet of Dr. Caligari as "Man with the Knife."

Favorite title card: "Eat cocaine, limp dick!"

Dr. Mabuse deals while surrounded by a couple of his henchmen

in Dr. Mabuse, The Gambler

THE GREAT WHITE SILENCE (1924, GREAT BRITAIN)

 R. F. K. Scott and his band of explorers

in The Great White Silence

The Great White Silence is documentary filmmaker Herbert Ponting's film shot during the British Terra Nova Expedition of 1910-1913, where the crew of that ship embarked on a voyage of discovery to the South Pole. This film is certainly of historical importance just for  footage of the journey itself and also just by being one of the first major documentary films (Would make a fine double feature with Nanook of the North). It has also become noteworthy in recent years because of the restoration of the film by the British Film Institute.

The film itself is one of triumph of tragedy,

The triumph is the journey itself. These stout, hardy men of the Terra Nova play hard (boxing bouts and getting sporty haircuts) and work hard (You try to sail to the South Pole!). They encounter icebergs larger than the eye can see and many other natural wonders. The boys even have time for skiing and football! We see seals, penguins, whales and other creatures of the sea, all set to celluloid by the intrepid Mr. Ponting.  It's a success right? They're going to make it, right?

That brings us to the tragedy, which is really the heart of the film. The main band of five, led by Captain R. F. Scott have to make their way all the way to the South Pole on the icy surface of Antarctica. The hazardous journey does indeed culminate at the South Pole...but only for the men to discover when they arrive that they were barely beaten there by a crew of Norwegians led by Roald Amundsen, who apparently found a short cut to the pole! (Damn Norwegians!) So much for planting the Union Jack! (But they do it anyway...God Save the Queen!)

That was disappointing...only it was about to get worse. The band had to make it all the way back to the boat under conditions that were brutal. They persevered and came close, but sadly, conditions that made travel eventually impossible overtook the crew and they never made it back. Captain Scott and most of his crew were eventually found frozen in their tent by a search party.

Scott became a posthumous national hero in Great Britain.

The United States Research Station of the South Pole is named the Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station, recognizing both crews of discovery.

March of the Penguins, 1911

in The Great White Silence

LA ROUE (1923, FRANCE)

"With his silent productions, J'Accuse, La Roue, and Napoleon, he (Abel Gance) made a fuller use of the medium than anyone else."-Kevin Brownlow, The Parade's Gone By

"What is marvelous about Napoleon and La Roue is the narrative enthusiasm, the sweeping exposition of events, and the way the images reveal interior feelings through dynamic editing."-David Thomson, A Biographical Dictionary of Film

-------------------------------

I knew about Abel Gance's Napoleon, but I had no knowledge of his epic drama La Roue (The Wheel).

But it really is a masterpiece of early cinema...the production design, the use of editing and dramatic storytelling.

And plotwise, it features a doomed romance...make that two doomed romances...make that three.

Of course, the fact that the plot borders on incest may be a little uncomfortable for some...

But there are trains...Lots and lots of trains!

And what about Severin-Mars, the star of the movie who is listed as dying in 1921...two years before the release of La Roue? Not even a Wikipedia article about the man?

I think he should at least warrant a Wikipedia article....Maybe I'll write one.

And a special mention to the engineer's loyal dog Toby. I had to at least mention Toby.

I'm just sitting here watching the wheels go round and round

I really love to watch them roll

No longer riding on the merry-go-round

I just had to let it go-Watching the Wheels, John Lennon

A THROW OF DICE (1929)

Seeta Devi loves a man with an addiction
in A Throw of Dice

"Beautiful though the scenes of India are in Throw of Dice, a Hindu silent film now at the Fifty-fifth Street Playhouse, this present offering is not comparable with that fine pictorial achievement Shiraz, the poetic tale of the Taj Mahal." -New York Times Review, January 6, 1930.

-------

I had never heard of the movie Shiraz mentioned in the above review, but by the rave Shiraz received there and the fact that the British film Institute recently restored it made me think that the 1001 list may have chosen the wrong Franz Osten film.

That being said, it was interesting to see A Throw of Dice. It has great costumes, a cast of hundreds and lots of elephants. It is interesting that such a grand setting is basically wrapped around the simple story of two kings vying for the love of a beautiful woman. One of the kings is ruthless and the other has a gambling problem that the other king is willing to exploit for his own end. The fact that this silent epic was released after talking pictures had been established may have prevented it from being a greater success. -C. Cox, 1001: A Film Odyssey

Fast foward to 2008 after, A Thrown of Dice-

“There’s hardly a frame in the 1929 film  A Throw of Dice  that doesn’t provide a surge of visual pleasure. Produced by the German director Franz Osten and the Bengali lawyer and crusading nationalist Himansu Rai, the movie itself seems poised between two cultures, balancing the highly developed technique of German silent filmmaking and the rich iconography of Indian tradition. Jungles and palaces, elephants and tigers, princes in silk and servants in rags were photographed on location in Rajasthan and presented with the meticulous lighting, enveloping depth effects and rhythmic editing patterns of the Weimar cinema at its height.”-Dave Kehr, New York Times, July 15, 2008

Well, it only took about eighty years, but it looks like The Times finally got around to giving the movie a positive review! 

And next time I'm in New York, I definitely got to see see what is playing at The Fifty-Fifth Street Playhouse!

THE THIEF OF BAGDAD (1924)

Could the suitor to the princess really be nothing but a common thief?
Douglas Fairbanks in The Thief of Bagdad

"It is an entrancing picture, wholesome and beautiful, deliberate but compelling, a feat of motion picture art which has never been equaled and one which itself will enthrall people time and again. You can see this film and look forward to seeing it a second time."-New York Times, March 19, 1924.

--------

I can certainly see why this fanciful updating of the Arabian nights was such a hit with audiences in 1924. It starred the biggest action star of the era (Douglas Fairbanks) and is epic in presentation, but never forgets to be fun. The plot of the film involves Fairbanks as the thief in the title, who seeks to amend his ways when he falls for the princess of Bagdad. The film features such later staples of films as magic carpets, invisibility cloaks, a battle against some pretty scary spiders and other monsters and an elaborate competition against rival suitors. It might be difficult for modern audiences to view The Thief of Bagdad without thinking of similarities between this and Disney's Aladdin. At least it was for me.

Yes, it is true that 1924 special effects aren't going to hold up that well, but I think the effects are pretty fun even now and work well within the framework of the story. If you tend to get bored with silent film dramas, this one may be a good one to watch to try to shake yourself out of it.-C. Cox, 1001: A Film Odyssey

The thief (Fairbanks) and the Princess (Julanne Johnston) 

discover a whole new world on their magic carpet in

The Thief of Bagdad

EARTH (1930, SOVIET UNION), CHESS FEVER (1925, SOVIET UNION)

Earth

"Alexander Dovzhenko's ode to the beginning of collectivization in the Ukraine is a riot of delirious imagery of swaying wheat fields, ripening fruits, and stampeding horses. The arrival of a tractor is greeted with joy by the peasants who begin to imagine new lives for themselves, but surviving landowners try to assassinate the inspiring young head of the party's village committee. His death, though, only makes the viallagers stronger in their resolve; in a mind boggling finale, Dovzhenko brings together themes of birth, harvest, progress and solidarity as the dead man is reunited with the land he loved so well."-Richard Pena, 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die

Workers of the world...you have nothing to lose but your tractors...but if you lose your tractors, you lose your means of production...and if you lose your means of production, you lose your livelihood and if you lose your means of livelihood...you may lose your life. This is collectivism at it's most inspirational, comrades. I first saw this movie thirty years ago and it is a powerful silent piece regardless of your political point of view.-Comrade Cox, 1001: A Film Odyssey

Chess Fever

After all the heavy films of the Soviet silent era, I decided to end the with a comedy called Chess Fever. This is a funny short film about a man whose addiction to chess is causing all sorts of problems between him and his fiance. Many of the gags are well done and it speaks comically to the Russian obsession during this period (and still today) with the game. It even features a supporting role for the then current World Chess Champion Jose Raul Capablanca!-Comrade Cox, 1001: A Film Odyssey

Until next time, comrades!