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Reviews
Häxan (1922)
all over the place
Benjamin Christensen's `Haxan' is a smorgasbord of narrative styles. Sometimes he lectures using still drawings to show the medieval world's fear of sorcery; elsewhere he employs state-of-the-art special effects and campy performances to depict a fun-filled fantasy world. He gravely dramatizes the plight of poor women during medieval times, and then gleefully demonstrates witch hunters' torture practices. He continues to bounce from point of view to point of view even at the end of the film, when he alternates between smug jokes and serious attempts to draw connections between medieval inquisitors and modern psychiatry. Where does Christensen stand? It is no accident that he stars as the devil. For him, both the subject of witchcraft and the process of filmmaking are a playground over which he asserts complete dominion. He enjoys himself too much to worry more than momentarily about morals.
Rating: 7
Der müde Tod (1921)
if only movies today used their sfx so well
Contemporary audiences must have been awed by the spectacle of the three exotic adventure episodes within `Der Mude Tod', but the imagery Fritz Lang employs in the bookends is the most fascinating aspect of the film today. Charlie Chaplin and Buster Keaton had already occasionally used clever camera tricks, but Fritz Lang's film revels in special effects. Through editing and double exposure, he makes it look even now as though ghosts are disappearing through a garden wall, or that two lovers' souls are exiting their bodies. The most exciting thing about Lang's magic, of course, is that his images act as a foundation for beautiful, poetic ideas. His unusually sympathetic portrayal of Death is just one example of why the outer story resonates so much more than the obvious melodrama in its middle. Lang seems to argue that, while love cannot overcome death, it retains a power which even death would respect and envy.
Rating: 8
The Kid (1921)
Dreamy
SPOILERS BELOW
Cinema has long been known as the place of dreams, and Charlie Chaplin may have been the first person to recognize it. His `Shoulder Arms' turns out to be a soldier's fantasy, and now `The Kid' startlingly segues into the dream world of Chaplin's beloved tramp. Dreams are not limited to the same restrictions as reality; Chaplin uses the tramp's fantasy to present images in action that the audience previously could only imagine. Specifically, the characters resemble angels and devils who fly freely through the frame. Chaplin employs only this one extremely clever trick, but the possibilities at which it hints leave the viewer breathless.
Rating: 7
The Idle Class (1921)
funny stuff
SPOILED JOKES BELOW
With `The Idle Class' Charlie Chaplin emphasizes one of his favorite habits. He invokes laughter at the expense of his characters by limiting their perspective, and then stuns his delighted audience members by using the restrictions of the camera frame to play the same trick on them. Thus he produces scenes in which only the viewers know that the rich socialite wears no pants, or that the tramp has hit the wrong golf ball. Zany humor ensues, but it's only a warm-up for the moment when the socialite turns his back to the camera, apparently hiding tears for the wife whom his alcoholism caused him to neglect, only to at last face the audience and reveal that his heaves are merely the result of him trying to uncork a bottle.
Rating: 6.5
Way Down East (1920)
Griffith the moralist
SPOILERS BELOW
D.W. Griffith's major theme is the plight of women. In `Broken Blossoms', a title card notes that women have only two courses, marriage and prostitution, neither of which is enticing. Griffith's women, usually played by Lillian Gish, are almost entirely powerless; at any moment they can fall victim to the violent, sexual appetites of men. In `The Birth Of A Nation', a woman is chased off a cliff by a would-be rapist. In `Intolerance', only an unexpected gunshot prevents a man's wife from being sexually attacked by his boss. Griffith, despite frequently being labeled a racist, is at heart a moralist, and he intends for his films to help men sympathize with women so that they can better protect them. `Way Down East' may be the strongest case in point. It opens with the director's explicit plea for men to properly treat the opposite gender. It then introduces an unusually powerful Griffith female character, a woman with sex appeal, only to spend the next two hours demonstrating how easily even this woman can be victimized. Griffith, with the help of an extraordinary performance by Gish, succeeds in building sympathy for the girl, but by requiring that her naivete, frailty, and dependence be such a large part of her appeal, Griffith renders woman all the more powerless.
Rating: 7.5
One Week (1920)
keaton still trying to find his way
`One Week' is important as an early attempt by Buster Keaton to formulate a signature filmmaking style, but as entertainment it didn't impress me much. The bits with the storm and the train surely required some unprecedented editing ingenuity, but neither sequence is nearly as clever or funny as Chaplin's work from the same period, let alone Keaton's later films. It's nice to see how Keaton started, though (and to see how much nudity filmmakers dared to show back then).
Rating: 6
Das Cabinet des Dr. Caligari (1920)
inspiration for Lynch's "Mulholland Drive"?
SPOILER BELOW
The twist ending in `Das Kabinett Des Doktor Caligari' impels the viewer to consider a great number of interpretations of the preceding narrative. One possibility is that Francis' story is an alibi concocted by his subconscious to free him from the guilt he felt after committing horrible crimes. The identities of the victims reveal Francis to be the most likely suspect; curiously, his story makes several different efforts to liberate him from suspicion. For instance, Francis promises Alan that no woman will affect their friendship. When Jane is attacked, only two people are awake: Cesare and Francis, who conveniently is shown to be spying on Dr. Caligari. I think it's also noteworthy that Cesare shares Francis' love for Jane, as well as his frustration at her unwillingness to acquiesce to his advances. Perhaps the relationship between Caligari and Cesare is a metaphor for the torment and self-loathing caused to Francis by his inability to control his own malicious impulses. Painting himself as a mere puppet, Francis frees himself from blame.
Rating: 9
Broken Blossoms or The Yellow Man and the Girl (1919)
Griffith scales down
SPOILER BELOW
D.W. Griffith's tragedy `Broken Blossoms' is heartfelt but also exaggerated and calculated. The girl's dire situation may have earned more sympathy had Griffith and Lillian Gish less strongly emphasized the character's pitifulness. Griffith's plea for respect for the Chinese man may have drawn more praise had it not seemed so much like a defensive response to criticism of `The Birth Of A Nation'. Nevertheless, Griffith demonstrates good storytelling habits and an improved visual sense. The tale unfolds so simply, in just a few unglamorous sets, that when Burrows at last erupts into a violent rage, tearing apart the two apartment rooms, the images are powerful and lasting. I wonder if Stanley Kubrick consciously recalled Burrows' axe-wielding terror when he directed `The Shining', one of the most haunting films ever made.
Rating: 6.5
Shoulder Arms (1918)
a big step forward for chaplin
SPOILERS BELOW
`A Dog's Life' was most noteworthy for its excellent comic timing. In Charlie Chaplin's other movie from 1918, `Shoulder Arms', the silent film genius focuses on an entirely different brand of humor. His war comedy specializes in surreal, exaggerated set pieces in which Chaplin demonstrates unprecedented creativity and mastery of composition. When the soldier's bunker gets flooded, the water level reaches just the right height so that Chaplin can execute his gags most successfully. In a later scene, the soldier dresses up as a tree, a disguise that belies Chaplin's much increased ingenuity and goofiness. Naturally, when the enemy discovers his ruse, the soldier darts straight for the forest. The ensuing chase is a visual marvel: Chaplin not only hides the soldier from the Germans, but he uses the forest to mask the soldier from the audience, as well, such that the camouflaged soldier stands unblocked in the middle of the frame yet somehow remains invisible. All the while we thought our little hero was pulling a fast one on the German army; to our delight, the joke is on us, too.
Rating: 8
A Dog's Life (1918)
master of comic timing
By the time he made `A Dog's Life', Charlie Chaplin was already a master of cinematic comic timing. Editing techniques had not developed to the point at which they would be much help to Chaplin's physical comedy gags, so laughs required expertly handled choreography. Chaplin must have rehearsed countless takes to get each scene just right. The incredible opening sequence, seemingly shot all in one take, is particularly amazing. Chaplin and his fellow actors synchronize their movements perfectly so that, no matter what action they undertake, they always arrive on opposite sides of the fence at the exact same moment. Additionally, they make each movement at a natural pace so that, rehearsed though they may be, their motions always seem spontaneous and believable. You never get the sense that Chaplin or the policemen are speeding up or slowing down.
Rating: 6.5
Intolerance: Love's Struggle Throughout the Ages (1916)
bigger isn't always better
`Intolerance' is likely D.W. Griffith's most ambitious film and, in the evolution of cinema, perhaps the boldest production ever assembled. In order to illuminate mankind's proclivity for intolerance, Griffith interweaves four separate stories from four very different time periods. I admire Griffith's gusto, but he aims too high. Although all four episodes address the same themes and occasionally add extra levels of significance to each other, only two are dramatically potent. The film would have benefited greatly had Griffith chosen to skip over his parables of Jesus' crucifixion and the French Revolution. He then would have had greater room to expand his commentary on modern injustice and to have more fun with his huge, elaborate Babylonian sets.
Rating: 7
The Tramp (1915)
not funny enough
`The Tramp' is significant for establishing Chaplin's working-class character in the popular consciousness, but it lacks the ingenuity and surprise of Chaplin's later films. The tramp's trademark appearance and mannerisms became universally beloved, but they are not what made Chaplin great. His genius is in his vision of how to use filmmaking techniques to confound and endear his audience. Here, the closest he comes is when he devises umpteen ways to tell a joke using a pitchfork. Many of them just aren't that funny.
Rating: 5.5
The Birth of a Nation (1915)
Griffith's greatest fear
SPOILERS BELOW
D.W. Griffith makes sure his landmark film contains every African-American stereotype invented, but he focuses most strongly on blacks' purported lust for white people. It seems that Griffith perceives miscegenation as white folk's greatest threat. In perhaps the most famous scene in `The Birth Of A Nation', Flora Cameron (Mae Marsh) jumps off a cliff to her death rather than endure rape by a black man. Griffith presents her fall as a noble decision; the white woman's virtue, her purity, must be maintained at all costs. Griffith paints Negroes with all sorts of negative qualities, but his two most unlikable characters, importantly, are offspring of sex between the races. Congressman Stoneman (Ralph Lewis) is smitten with a mulatto maid who clings to him hungrily. Their relationship is meant to symbolize the perversity of the North's Reconstruction policies. Stoneman's trusted protégée, meanwhile, is also of mixed heritage. Silas Lynch (played in blackface by George Siegmann) is a power-hungry backstabber who fantasizes about becoming a black emperor of the South. Griffith's narrative renders Lynch most frightening, however, when the political upstart attempts to force Stoneman's daughter (Lillian Gish) into marriage; such behavior is treated as the apex of Lynch's ability to emasculate white men. It is no accident that the Ku Klux Klan and other racists so frequently proclaimed their desire to keep pure the Aryan race. They saw the threat to their political and social power foremost as a rabid sexual ambush.
Rating: 6
Nanook of the North (1922)
Terrific looking film, especially for 1922
Robert J. Flaherty's `Nanook Of The North' may be the first film about man's relationship with nature. Flaherty helps establish man's successful adaptation to his environment by filming extraordinary hunting and fishing scenes consisting largely of medium shots. The few close-ups of the Inuit generally portray the successful hunters smiling as they eat their kill. Flaherty contrasts these moments with sequences communicating the Inuit's struggles with the natural world. Here, he uses long shots: Nanook and his family become tiny black specks barely visible in the large, white frame. In the foreground the viewer sees bitter gusts of wind ruling over the desolate landscape. Flaherty's technique is simple but very effective. Not only does he depict man as a mere part of his environment, but he emphasizes how powerless man may feel amid the cold indifference of nature. At the same time, the hunting and feast sequences establish Nanook as a smart, tough survivor, a surprising victor over nature's harsh elements. In this way, Flaherty makes Nanook into a heroic figure.
Rating: 9.5
L'arrivée d'un train à La Ciotat (1896)
first art film?
Previously, scientists had used film to record actions or even to tell stories. This brief (50 second) movie is probably the first to incorporate a sense of composition similar to that employed by a skilled photographer or painter. It consists of an unusual, diagonal shot of travelers awaiting the arrival of a passenger train. As they board, their reflections appear handsomely in the train's exterior. Before `L'Arrivee D'un Train A La Ciotat', moviemaking was a scientific experiment. The Lumiere brothers turned it into art.
Rating: 10
La sortie de l'usine Lumière à Lyon (1895)
shows Lumieres' curiosity about world around them
This one-minute film is arguably the first movie ever made. Other inventors had previously filmed actions - like Edison's motion photography of a sneeze - but the Lumiere brothers developed equipment that tremendously advanced the medium. At the time, of course, their `cinematograph' must have bewildered their peers, including their subjects. In this first instance, the brothers record employees leaving their factory, some of whom understandably struggle to hide their awareness of the camera. The Lumieres attempt to make the film more entertaining by introducing animals and a bicycle, but `La Sortie Des Usines Lumiere' doesn't nearly match the ingenuity of their later films. The most interesting aspect of this short film is the brothers' selection of a familiar working class ritual as their subject. Their choice is the initial evidence of their curiosity about all of the world's people, a quality that makes viewing their experiments immensely rewarding and fascinating today.
Rating: 8