The Art and Culture of Movies

Griffith's Social Drama as Wish Fulfillment

2012-01-23T22:41:00.002-05:00

One of the hundreds of films that D.W. Griffith cranked out for Biograph during the period between 1908 and 1913, ONE IS BUSINESS, THE OTHER CRIME (1913) is typical of his urban melodramas, dealing with social problems of the early 20th century. It’s a fairly routine picture, but what’s remarkable is how Griffith guides the otherwise routine story, and its predictable trajectory, into a last-minute transformation that would not seem out of place in a Frank Capra film.

Griffith sets up the dichotomy of the poor couple vs. the rich couple. The poor but honest man goes out to look for work. Meanwhile, the rich man accepts a bribe in exchange for his vote on a bill that will benefit corporate interests. Unable to find work, the poor man resorts to burglary. He ends up in the house of the rich woman, who holds him at gunpoint while he begs for mercy. At the same moment, she discovers the bribery note addressed to her husband, and decides to spare the poor man. She shames her husband into returning the bribe, and into giving the poor man a job with his company!

What’s most interesting about these early social dramas, and especially those by Griffith, is how explicitly they set up the inequality faced by different classes, while also offering idealistic and overly-simplistic solutions to the problems depicted. Still, it’s remarkable how bold Griffith was in tackling this problems head-on through the infant medium of film. Regardless of how he arrives at his conclusions, such films would almost certainly have spoken very strongly to audiences at the time, seeing familiar inequality and injustices depicted with such brutal honesty. The conclusions of these early 20th century social dramas can almost be seen to function as wish fulfillment.

Mabel's Busy Day (1914)

2011-12-14T11:14:00.001-05:00

Another Keystone using the “racetrack” as a backdrop for their antics, MABEL’S BUSY DAY is nominally centered around Mabel Normand. Even at this point, 18 films in to his Keystone output, Chaplin was still seen as a supporting clown, as evidenced by the prominence of Normand’s name in this film’s title.

Mabel Normand was one of the greatest assets to the Keystone studio during this time; perhaps its biggest star, her natural charm and brilliant comic timing made her a favorite with audiences. She was also a highly skilled comedy director; she both wrote and directed this film. Her career was unfortunately later tainted by scandal (she was close to film director William Desmond Taylor, whose murder, along with a number of other high-profile scandals, would rock the industry in the early 20s). But to see even a relatively minor film like MABEL’S BUSY DAY is to see the charm, vitality and comic skill that made her a major star.

Here, she plays a hot dog vendor, who bribes policeman Chester Conklin to let her onto the racetrack grounds in order to sell her wares. Into this setting wanders Chaplin as a racetrack tout, cutting in line, entering the grounds without paying, and kicking a policeman to the ground when he tries to stop him. Meanwhile, Mabel’s customers are stealing hot dogs left and right, so Charlie intervenes, offering to protect her business, and promptly makes off with the entire tray of sausages, giving away free samples to the entire crowd! Confronted by Mabel and cop Chester Conklin, Charlie tries to explain everything, but a fight breaks out with Charlie and Mabel duking it out, as officer Conklin is repeatedly knocked down into the crowd of bystanders every time he tries to intervene. Finally, her entire business destroyed, the exhausted Mabel breaks down in tears as Charlie, exasperated from fighting, embraces and consoles her.

The film is interesting as an example of Chaplin playing a character other than his “tramp” persona. The costume is slightly fancier than usual, and he sports a boutonniere that suggests an air of false sophistication. At no point in the film does Chaplin work toward audience sympathy, instead playing a completely selfish (but hilarious) scoundrel, never thinking twice about kicking a policeman or stealing a hot dog. It’s fun to watch him interact with the various characters around the race track, too: early on, he annoys a trio of women watching the races, thoughtlessly blocking their view, then leaning on one woman’s shoulder before casually picking her purse. Chaplin’s skill at finding the humor in such bits of business is crucial to getting laughs from this kind of material. It certainly differs from his later interaction with the baby in THE CIRCUS, to give just one example, where we can sympathize with his character for stealing bites of the baby’s hot dog because we know he is a hungry tramp. Here, though, his actions are so thoroughly self-serving that they take on a kind of absurd quality that is quite funny in the universe of Keystone.

It’s interesting to speculate how much of the appeal of these “on location” comedies derived from the fun of watching the Keystone clowns interacting in recognizable, every day settings. Although of course many of the Keystone comedies, not to mention comedies from other studios during this period, utilized extensive location shooting around the Los Angeles area, the use of actual public events as a backdrop for the proceedings does make for a bit of interesting contrast, and serves to emphasize the craziness of the goings-on within the environment. There’s a moment in MABEL’S BUSY DAY, for instance, where Charlie mercilessly kicks and pummels a policeman as the crowd of actual bystanders looks on from the distance.

While MABEL’S BUSY DAY is a minor effort, it still contains the charm and verve that makes the work of master clowns like Chaplin and Mabel Normand so appealing almost a century later.

The Knockout (1914)

2011-12-13T09:01:00.000-05:00

Roscoe “Fatty” Arbuckle was arguably the most popular comedian working at Keystone during the time that Chaplin was with the studio. An incredibly gifted comic performer and director, Arbuckle had a unique style that he developed within the roughhouse environment of Keystone. Unlike many of the interchangeable grotesques, Arbuckle took advantage of his size to project a boyish charm that belied his imposing physique. For example, in his introductory shot in THE KNOCKOUT, he emerges from a bakery carrying his dog, and the two share a doughnut. This imagery – pairing the comic with an animal sidekick - would later be used by Chaplin to establish audience sympathy in THE CHAMPION (in which he attempts to share a sausage with a dog), and in A DOG’S LIFE, which features a number of such scenes. It also helps, perhaps quite literally, to establish the clown as “underdog”.

THE KNOCKOUT is first and foremost an Arbuckle comedy, one in which Chaplin puts in what basically amounts to a supporting appearance. A fairly elaborate two-reel affair, the film begins with Arbuckle engaging in extended, roughhouse slapstick with a couple of tramps posing as pugilists to earn some extra cash. Arbuckle himself goes in to the ring to fight Cyclone Flynn (Edgar Kennedy) who offers to split the purse if Fatty throws the fight. He refuses, and the big fight is the highlight of the second reel. To add to the pressue, sheriff Mack Swain informs Fatty that he’s betting heavily on him, “so win or I’ll kill you.” Chaplin appears as the referee – taking a bow before the audience prior to falling backward in the ring, and accidentally taking a punch or two to the face when moving between the two pugilists. Things build to a frenzied climax when Fatty, getting knocked out and losing the match, angrily whips out two six-shooters, which he begins firing into the audience and chasing the rival boxers! The Keystone cops get word that a maniac is on the loose, and give chase with typically ineffective results. The chase leads the men through a high society party, in which they tear through in the middle of a musical performance. Finally, Fatty and the cops engage in a rather unbalanced match of tug-of-war, which ends with Fatty dragging the entire of team policemen down the street.

This description of the film exemplifies the way in which Arbuckle’s comic universe could get exceedingly cartoonish, even by Keystone standards. He uses a number of creative devices, including a rooftop chase and a number of shots taken with a moving camera, to heighten the lunacy. Arbuckle was a master at creating this sort of controlled chaos. Even as he roars through the streets firing his guns at anything that moves, there is a method to his madness, at the center of which is his clearly defined character. Like Chaplin, Arbuckle recognized the need for the audience to at least identify with him as a character beyond the broadest slapstick mugging, which no doubt contributed to Arbuckle’s immense popularity with audiences before his career was cut short by an unfortunate scandal in 1921. Combined with his creative use of filmic technique, Arbuckle takes a place beside Chaplin as perhaps the leading slapstick comic filmmaker of the WWI era. It is uncertain, however, who directed THE KNOCKOUT; a number of sources credit Charles Avery, while other, more recent sources credit Mack Sennett. It is fair to say that, regardless of who directed the film, it demonstrates much of the technique and craftsmanship that Arbuckle himself would later develop further.

There is an interesting moment where Arbuckle, witnessing a tramp harassing girlfriend Minta Durfee, mugs angrily and moves toward the camera until his face fills the frame in a giant close-up that is at once menacing and comical. There is also a closeup of Minta Durfee used in a reaction shot in the first reel, as well as a later close shot of an anxious Mack Swain cheering on the boxing match from his ringside seat. In fact, THE KNOCKOUT contains several moments where the framing suggests greater care than the average Keystone comedy of this period. Subtle but creative use of camera angles, and the use of medium shots to bring the audience a little closer to Arbuckle, serve as evidence of this. These little moments are crucial in establishing the connection between the clown and the audience; Chaplin clearly knew this, and used such moments sparingly throughout his career. While some critics have seen this as evidence of Chaplin’s lack of technique, it is rather a sophisticated use of such techniques by limiting their use, thereby increasing their effectiveness when used.

The Fatal Mallet (1914)

2011-12-11T08:25:00.001-05:00

THE FATAL MALLET is perhaps the roughest and the most shapeless of the Chaplin-Keystone comedies. The plot, such as it is, revolves around rivals Charlie Chaplin and Mack Sennett, battling Mack Swain for the hand of Mabel Normand.

In a rural setting, rube Mack Sennett is busy flirting with Mabel, when Charlie spies them, and initiates the rivalry by hurling a brick at the couple. As Charlie and Sennett battle it out, burly Mack Swain swoops in and walks off with Mabel. The two men join forces against their common enemy, and after Swain gives chase, they hide in a barn where they find a mallet to use as a weapon. Knocking Swain out and dumping him in the barn, Charlie moves in on Mabel, and after Swain regains consciousness, both he and Sennett retaliate against Charlie, with the three of them fighting on the bank of a pond. Both Swain and Charlie take the plunge, leaving Sennett as the nominal “champion” of this particular rivalry.

The plot description alone gives an idea of how arbitrary much of the action is in this film. It seems to move beyond the usual farcical premises of the Keystones of this period and brings to mind the senseless violence of the Jules White-Columbia two-reelers of thirty years later. Rarely can any of the characters go more than a few seconds without hitting, smacking or otherwise assaulting whoever happens to be standing closest at that particular moment. The arbitrary nature of the “rivalries” between the three men indicates how their allegiance can turn on a dime. And even a young boy (played by Gordon Griffith) who shows infatuation with Mabel is subject to a swift kicking by a jealous Charlie!

There is little time for character development in a film like this. Like the film directly before this (A BUSY DAY), THE FATAL MALLET was directed by Mack Sennett. It has the appearance of a casual, almost improvisational effort dashed off in a single day. There is some indication, even in a roughhouse, knockabout effort like this, that Chaplin was trying to emphasize little bits of business to set him apart from the broad grotesques of the Keystone lot. There is the moment when he sizes up the young boy before delivering the swift kick that knocks him to the ground. There is also the moment in the barn when he holds rival Sennett at bay with the mallet, assuming a “tough guy” stance and posture, jerking quickly forward to intimidate his rival, that recalls his confrontation with the driver of the orphanage wagon at the conclusion of the chase sequence in THE KID. Ultimately, these little moments are fleeting, and only stand as a mere hint of the carefully crafted comedy that Chaplin would begin developing later on in his tenure at Keystone.

*Note: Chaplin’s next Keystone comedy, HER FRIEND THE BANDIT, is considered lost; therefore, I will not be reviewing it in this series.

A Busy Day (1914)

2011-12-01T20:39:00.003-05:00

In the development of many comedians’ screen personae, the trajectory of reaching their mature screen character seems to be a case of “One step forward, two steps backwards.” While some comics (Buster Keaton in particular) seemed to emerge almost fully-formed from the get-go, others took a little longer to arrive at the characters that audiences would forever remember them for. Chaplin falls into the latter category, and A BUSY DAY is an example of this phenomenon at work.

Coming off of the characteristic and well-constructed CAUGHT IN THE RAIN, Chaplin’s next appearance was in this loosely constructed comedy shot at an actual parade, with a largely improvisational feel to it. This was a fairly standard Keystone approach - to choose an actual public event (a racetrack, parade, etc.) and turn the comedians loose to wreak their unique brand of havoc in otherwise "natural" surroundings. Here, Chaplin plays the lead character in drag, but aside from this switching of genders, the film is largely a re-tread of situations he had already explored more creatively in earlier efforts, and even partially recycles the premise of KID AUTO RACES AT VENICE, with Chaplin-in-drag interrupting the filming of a newsreel. The story revolves around Chaplin's jealous rage when he spots husband Mack Swain flirting with another woman (Phyllis Allen), and goes on a rampage, fighting with Swain, the police, and other bystanders before finally getting kicked off the pier and into the water.

A BUSY DAY was directed by Mack Sennett, who also appears in the film as the newsreel director. Sennett’s presence behind the camera may explain the hectic pace and uncharacteristic humor. That said, A BUSY DAY still delivers laughs in the best knockabout tradition of Keystone.

Home Movie Day in New York

2011-10-23T14:01:00.006-04:00

Last weekend, on October 15th, I had the pleasure of volunteering at the Queens Museum of Art for Home Movie Day in New York. I had helped out with projection at last year's event (held at Light Industry in Brooklyn), and was glad to be a part of it again this year.

I always look forward to volunteering for Home Movie Day, as it greatly helps to increase awareness of the importance of film preservation. This year's theme - appropriately enough, given the location - was the 1939-40 World's Fair. A number of really interesting films about the World's Fair were screened, including some of the Museum's collection.

Home Movie Day is a great reminder of how fragile our film history is, and the importance of preserving not only the physical film itself, but the memories and records of ourselves that these films hold.

Caught in the Rain (1914)

2011-10-08T10:07:00.006-04:00

The first film whose direction can definitely be attributed solely to Chaplin, Caught in the Rain is an example of the kind of farce comedy set-up that had been a staple of the theater and was finding its way into film.

The premise is simple: after Chaplin is caught flirting with Mack Swain's wife in the park, the inebriated tramp then follows the couple to a hotel where they are staying. Swain's wife is a sleepwalker, and in the middle of the night she sleep-walks right into Chaplin's room, causing an expected reaction of outrage from Swain. The Keystone cops are called in to apprehend the tramp.

There are two scenes in particular that show Chaplin's hand in the direction. The first occurs when he arrives at the hotel and makes a nuisance of himself in the lobby. The second is when he is undressing to get into bed, removing all of his clothes to reveal his pajamas underneath. In both cases, Chaplin allows the entire scene to play out in a full shot, held for an inordinately long duration (by Keystone standards), which captures the full detail and nuance of his performance without unnecessary cutting away.

From a plot standpoint, there is a crucial device here that points to Chaplin's mature characterization. Rather than aggressively making his way in to the hotel room where Mack Swain's wife is sleeping, Chaplin makes his character a victim of circumstance, with the wife's sleepwalking as a device to bring them both into the same room together without any bad intentions on either characters' part.

Even small touches such as this point to the techniques that Chaplin was employing that set him apart, and would help to establish the audience sympathy that would make him a superstar.

Caught in a Cabaret (1914)

2011-09-24T14:29:00.004-04:00

Caught in a Cabaret is the first Chaplin film that really feels like a Chaplin film. In it, he introduces a number of his favorite themes, as well as stylistic approaches, that give it the feeling of being the first film over which he had a strong degree of creative control. Indeed, it is the earliest film whose direction can be certainly attributed to Chaplin, though he actually co-directed the film with Mabel Normand.

The situation is set up that Chaplin is a lowly waiter in a rough cafe in a bad part of town. While on his lunchbreak, he saves society girl Mabel Normand from being menaced by a thief. Her parents and friends take Chaplin for a hero, and he is their guest at a garden party in which he is hilariously out of place, passing himself off as "Baron Doobugle, Prime Minister of Greenland". He must leave in a hurry to get back to the cafe as his lunchbreak is almost over. Mabel's jealous boyfriend tracks him back to the cafe, and sees his real identity. The boyfriend then returns to the garden party and suggests that they go "slumming", whereupon he brings them to the cafe and Mabel becomes enraged when she learns that the Prime Minister is really just a waiter.

In terms of performance, Chaplin gives his most nuanced, subtle performance yet. He immediately sets himself apart from the rest of the zanies in the cafe in which he works with his methodical bits of business. He is first seen, while waiting tables, stopping by the table of one customer to pour several unfinished drinks into one glass, which he drinks himself. He also playfully flirts with other female characters here in a genteel manner, rather than the aggressive pursuits seen in earlier films. There is none of the grotesque mugging directly in to the camera as there was in earlier films; everything here is played in full-shot to capture the whole of Chaplin's performance. One of the most remarkable aspects of Chaplin as performer is the way he always used his entire body - never just mugging or simply taking a fall. Rather, he puts his entire body to the service of every gag, his posture, stance, and facial expressions combining to produce a total comic effect.

There is a leisurely pace to the film, too, aided no doubt by the fact that it is a two-reeler, giving Chaplin more time to develop plot and pacing. Chaplin allows himself a little "sidekick" in the form of a dog, a nice touch that looks forward to Scraps the mut in A Dog's Life. There is some of his trademark hostility toward children, such as kicking a boy to the ground after he comes entangled with the dog's leash. There is also a fight between Chaplin and fellow waiter Chester Conklin that displays that almost balletic approach he would take to such rough slapstick, even at this early point in his career, combined with a kind of playful, "it's only a game" spirit that he would repeat with John Rand in The Pawnshop. Similarly, his tangle with tough Mack Swain in the cafe (which ends with Chaplin knocking him out with a mallet) looks forward to his later resourceful triumphs over big bullies like Eric Campbell in the Mutual series and Malcolm Waite in The Gold Rush.

The film is a study in comic contrasts as well. Chaplin, as the waiter, appears to be at first more refined than the characters surrounding him, wiping down tables with a rag - until he stops, and blows his nose into the rag, before continuing to use it to wipe down the tables! This is also the first Chaplin film to deal explicitly with class difference. Though a staple of comedy from this period, no comedian went further to the roots of the class differences in the United States at this time than Chaplin did. It is in this respect that Caught in a Cabaret marks one of his most important films in his development as a filmmaker.

Twenty Minutes of Love (1914)

2011-09-20T19:26:00.003-04:00

This was the first film in which Chaplin reputedly had a hand in the direction and writing. It's difficult to say (the direction has variously been credited to Joseph Maddern and even to Mack Sennett), though various historians have pointed out that it's quite likely that Chaplin did at least have a hand in the story construction, since he practically remade the film at Essanay a year later as In the Park.

Either way, Twenty Minutes of Love is a slight little film, one of the many "park" comedies cranked out by Keystone. There are the usual mix-ups and confusions, but Chaplin's performance is already showing signs of his mature characterization, such as when he observes a young couple necking on a bench in the park, and, so overcome with a mix of frustration and repulsion, absentmindedly embraces and kisses a tree!

Twenty Minutes of Love also marks the first time that Chaplin's character is really at the center of the chaos. While he certainly creates mischief wherever he goes, he's almost like the calm eye of a comic hurricane, with just the perfect mix of innocence and an impish, sometimes devilish quality. There had been strong traces of this in his earlier appearances as the Tramp - his turns as comic heavies didn't allow for this kind of development - but here he seems more close than ever to being fully formed (which would finally happen with his next film).

Mabel at the Wheel (1914)

2011-08-31T09:25:00.000-04:00

Even though it’s completely uncharacteristic (Chaplin is a top hatted, goateed villain who goes around pricking people with a pin), Mabel at the Wheel may very well be one of the sheer funniest films Chaplin appeared in during his tenure at Keystone, and is by far the most elaborately mounted production he’d appeared in up to this point. In a role clearly meant for Ford Sterling, Chaplin hams it up as a cartoonish villain that almost seems like a forerunner of Jack Lemmon’s Professor Fate in The Great Race. At two reels, this must have seemed like a veritable comic epic at the time, especially given the scale of the racetrack scenes, and the talent involved in the film (in addition to Chaplin and Mabel Normand, Chester Conklin and Mack Swain put in appearances, along with a cameo by Mack Sennett himself as a rube spectator).

Mabel Normand is the nominal star of the film, but it’s unquestionably Chaplin’s film all the way. It’s as if he just decided to go for broke, saying, “You want me to play Ford Sterling? Fine. Then I’ll out-Sterling Sterling!” He plays the entire performance at full energy, never missing an opportunity to mug into the camera, sticking out his tongue, crossing his eyes, and gesticulating wildly. There’s a fun scene in the beginning when Chaplin, attempting to steal Mabel away from her racecar driver boyfriend, takes her out for a spin on his motorcycle, and not even noticing when she bounces off the back into a mud puddle. This one also includes a great brick-throwing scene that gets really violent, sort of a brick-throwing battle to out-do all brick-throwing battles. The second reel of the film takes place at the racetrack, where villainous Chaplin orders his two henchmen to kidnap Mabel’s boyfriend. She takes over at the wheel, though, and saves the day by winning the big race. It’s here where Chaplin really amps up the performance, stealing the show from every single performer who happens into the same frame as him.

If it sounds as if I'm praising Chaplin for the exact qualities that I have criticized Ford Sterling for in previous reviews, it is worth noting that here, the strong elements of parody in the plot call for this kind of over-the-top take on the character. Sterling was a gifted comedian with a flair for exaggerating mugging, but his performance style rarely varied, at least during his time at Keystone. In some films his performance style worked fine; in others, less so. Chaplin's ability to vary between subtle character humor and this sort of exaggerated parody demonstrate the range he brought with him when he came to the movies from the stage.

Mabel at the Wheel may not be characteristic Chaplin (quite an understatement), but it remains one of his best non-“Tramp” performances, and a good example of what the Keystone crew was capable of when everyone was firing on all cylinders.

The Star Boarder (1914)

2011-08-29T08:23:00.000-04:00

Chaplin is back in his usual makeup and costume here. With a more structured plot than we’ve seen in the Chaplin-Keystones up to this point, Chaplin and his flirtatious landlady are unknowingly caught in a private moment by a boy with a camera. When the photo turns up in a Magic Lantern show that the boy projects that night for the amusement of the other boarders, the landlady’s jealous husband is none too pleased. Less farce than situation comedy, this is a good example of how a more structured plot allowed for better character development and for getting more mileage out of the situations as opposed to the off-the-cuff, improvisational approach. Still, it can’t help feeling like a warm-up for better things to come.

Cruel, Cruel Love (1914)

2011-08-25T06:20:00.002-04:00

Any film that opens with Chaplin playfully flirting has to be good, and Cruel, Cruel Love contains easily one of his finest performances from these really early shorts. Though sporting a top hat and slightly wider mustache than usual, there are strong traces of Chaplin’s great performances to come in films like Monsieur Verdoux. He gets a chance to play a character that might, in the hands of other, less-skilled performers, be labeled a “villain” or “heavy” role. Instead, Chaplin injects just the right mixture of charm and vulnerability, while at the same time overplaying things just enough to heighten the parody of the situation. Rather than aping Sterling, as had been called on to do in some of his early appearances, here Chaplin makes the character his own.

There’s a fun scene in which Chaplin is fooled by his servants into believing he’s swallowed poison, and has a delirious vision of himself in Hell being poked and prodded by two devils, gesticulating and overplaying to expert comic exaggeration. There’s also some effective cross-cutting, as both the doctors, and Chaplin’s love interest, race to his home before the poison takes effect. Overall, this is a highly effective parody of stage melodrama and contemporary film making, and perhaps the first film in which Chaplin is able to demonstrate his range as an actor.

His Favorite Pastime (1914)

2011-08-23T17:56:00.004-04:00

Though Chaplin’s character is pretty unlikable here, he does get some good comic by-play with the patrons of a bar toward the beginning of the film, including Fatty Arbuckle as a fellow drunk desperate for a drink. Arbuckle turns up in smaller parts in a couple of these early Chaplin-Keystone comedies, and it’s always a shame that he isn’t given more screen time to interact with Chaplin, as their scenes together hint at the skillful comic interplay that would become apparent when they were finally co-starred together in The Rounders.

The scene where the inebriated Chaplin lets himself in to the woman’s home looks forward to the solo drunk act of One A.M. two years later, with his cane getting hooked on the furniture and trying to make his way up the staircase serving as a kind of warm-up for ideas he would explore and expand on later.

Tango Tangles (1914)

2011-08-19T09:38:00.005-04:00

Another one with a largely improvisational feel, here Chaplin appears out of makeup and usual costume, playing a drunk at a dance hall. There’s not much more to the set-up than Chaplin and Ford Sterling fighting over a girl on the dance floor, with much of Sterling’s trademark arm-flailing, frenetic gesticulations and nose-biting. The film ends when the two men collapse from exhaustion. Tango Tangles is primarily of interest for the chance to see a very young-looking Chaplin without his usual makeup engaging in the usual roughhouse stuff, apparently filmed at least partially on location at a real dance hall. Arbuckle actually almost steals the show with his understated performance style and impressive pratfalls. To paraphrase what Theodore Huff said about By the Sea, Tango Tangles is a slight effort enlivened by a certain impromptu charm.

A Film Johnnie (1914)

2011-08-16T15:13:00.004-04:00

This is the first of the Keystone comedies that uses the studio itself as a backdrop for the comedy. This one fails to take full advantage of the possibilities provided by turning Chaplin loose on the Keystone lot, and feels like a dry run for better things to come. After falling madly in love with the Keystone Girl (Virginia Kirtley) that he sees on the screen in a nickelodeon, Chaplin shows up at the Keystone studio, where he wanders around the set wreaking havoc, firing a six-shooter at the actors and crew. Interesting mostly for its glimpses behind the scenes of the studio, this still feels like a rushed effort that demonstrates little characteristic Chaplin humor. It does, however, contain perhaps the most extreme and exaggerated comic mugging that he ever performed on film. It’s also fun to watch his brief interaction with an out-of-costume Fatty Arbuckle and Ford Sterling as he hangs out in front of the studio, asking for handouts. Chaplin would return to this same basic idea several times in later films, including one at Keystone, with more success.

Between Showers (1914)

2011-08-12T07:57:00.000-04:00

This is another one that feels like a throwaway effort, presumably shot very quickly to take advantage of the heavy rainfall that had hit LA, as indicated by the puddles on the road in the film. The premise is utterly ludicrous: Ford Sterling’s umbrella is broken, so he decides to steal one from a cop, who’s too busy making out with his girlfriend to notice. Then, in what feels like it could be a completely different film, Sterling tries to help a pretty girl cross a large puddle of water that has formed in the gutter from a torrential rain, and pretty soon he and Chaplin are fighting each other viciously for her attention. At some point, policeman Chester Conklin returns to get his umbrella back, linking the ongoing fracas between Sterling and Chaplin back to the opening scenes of the film. That’s about all there is to this one, plot-wise.

It’s the little touches by Chaplin that make it worth watching. By this point, he clearly had figured out that if he wanted to stand out from the rest of the Keystone zanies, he had to downplay his comedy with a degree of subtlety. That’s the thing here – Sterling seems to be trying too hard to be funny, and Chaplin appears to walk away effortlessly with the film’s best moments (one example: when a bystander is knocked into a pond and cries out for help, Chaplin leans over and cups his ear with his hand, as if he can’t understand what the man is saying!) Sterling’s wild gesticulations, jumping up and down, and mugging endlessly through each shot reveal a limited bag of tricks. This isn’t to say that Chaplin couldn’t mug just as shamelessly as the rest of them though – one of the delights of his performance here is when he will turn to the camera and giggle, as if he’s just done something terribly clever. He also shows what a scene-stealer he could be by extending many of his pratfalls for full effect by rolling backward or twisting his legs around in the air.

All in all, a minor, throwaway effort with some of the touches that Chaplin would bring in to full effect later in his tenure at Keystone.

Mabel's Strange Predicament (1914)

2011-08-09T14:41:00.001-04:00

A fairly typical bedroom farce, this one is significant as the first time Chaplin used his “Tramp” costume (though this film was actually released after Kid Auto Races at Venice), and also demonstrates that – even though he’s essentially a supporting player here – he had the ability to steal the show from such established performers as Mabel Normand and Chester Conklin.

Bedroom farce might at first seem all wrong for Chaplin, but he actually gets a lot of mileage out of the situations here, and would return to elements of farce all throughout his career, right up to A Countess From Hong Kong. Certainly at Keystone, bedroom farce was one of the standard plot setups that would get used over and over again. Here, Chaplin wisely plays the rather calm center of the frantic goings-on surrounding him. As a drunk staying in a hotel, his inebriated state provides the perfect excuse to wander around obliviously, stopping only to flirt with any girl who happens to cross his path. It’s easy to pinpoint why Chaplin walks away with the film – shamelessly mugging for the camera and inserting little bits of business wherever possible, he’s easily the most interesting part of the film, and his absence is always felt when the scene shifts back to the other characters. Mabel Normand’s appealing performance adds much to the proceedings, livening things up whenever Chaplin isn’t on-screen. She’s one of the only few other performers in these films who comes across as a real character, as opposed to the grotesque types of Sterling, Conklin, et. al.

Perhaps the most notable part of the film are the scenes toward the beginning taking place in the hotel lobby, where director Henry Lehrman wisely lets the camera roll while Chaplin does his stuff, rather than insisting on a frantic pace. The scene where the drunken Chaplin interacts with guests in the lobby before trying to get himself seated in a chair demonstrates what made him so unique compared to every other performer on the Keystone lot.

Kid Auto Races at Venice, Cal. (1914)

2011-08-06T07:46:00.008-04:00

Watching Kid Auto Races at Venice, Cal., two things immediately come to mind: the irony that the crowd watching the film being made is watching the man who, within the year, would become the most famous person the world had ever known, and yet watch his antics here without the slightest clue as to who he is. The other is that the film, despite its obvious importance as the first public appearance of Chaplin's "Tramp" character, really lacks any strong comedy. The last time I blogged about this film here, I praised it for kidding Keystone's own habit of taking advantage of public events as a backdrop for their comedies, and for demonstrating an awareness of the medium itself by having Chaplin play directly to the camera.

Watching it again, though, the fact that the same basic idea is repeated over and over becomes all too clear. It really is the cinematic equivalent of an infant who's discovered a home movie camera and starts making obnoxious faces. By the time the film arbitrarily ends on a giant close up of Chaplin pulling faces into the camera, it's clear that this was a throwaway effort, made to take advantage of a public event that could serve as a backdrop. It also had the unintended advantage of allowing Chaplin to test out his character in front of a "live" audience. This is the first in a series of the Chaplin-Keystone comedies shot at a racetrack, and could have benefited from a fun impromptu feel, but the film ultimately suffers for a lack of inventive comic business, made even more apparent through endless repetition.

Making a Living (1914)

2011-08-05T07:46:00.005-04:00

Chaplin's first film only occasionally demonstrates the little comic flourishes that would contribute to his later acclaim. With a breakneck pace and lots of rough, crude slapstick, Chaplin hardly has time to be "Chaplin" in this film, and instead spends most of it frantically pursuing or being pursued by rival Henry Lehrman. The plot, such as it is, seems to revolve around showing as many situations as possible in which Chaplin's character makes his rival's life miserable, stealing his girlfriend, his job, etc. and always followed by a massive fight between the two of them.

Making a Living is really too rough and crude to stand as an example of the kinds of trademark bits of business that would make Chaplin's performances so unique, even in the weeks and months to come at Keystone, though there are a few moments that look forward to his later work, such as when the down-and-out Chaplin compares himself to a scruffy bum, maintaining an air of dignity that the bum mocks. This pose of dignity, of course, would later become a trademark of his tramp character. There's another particularly funny moment in which Chaplin - eager to get his plagiarized story into the papers before his rival finds out - feverishly distributes copies to all of the newsboys on their bicycles who are getting ready to make their rounds.

Chaplin and director/co-star Lehrman reportedly hated each other, and it's fair to assume that these tensions spilled over in to their first couple of collaborations together, perhaps limiting the comic potential of the ideas. Still, Chaplin earned quite a bit of praise for his performance in this film, most famously when an anonymous critic referred to him in a review as "a comedian of the first water" (Moving Picture World). Seen today, Making a Living is important as the first work of an important artist, but ultimately offers little more.

RIP Peter Falk (1927-2011)

2011-06-25T10:20:00.005-04:00

Like so many actors who become closely identified with a single role, the full scope of Peter Falk's work is all too often overlooked. While many remember him as Columbo in the successful TV series, he left behind an incredible body of work that ranges from rollicking comedy to moving drama. With a career spanning nearly 50 years, Falk made an indelible mark on every film in which he appeared.

As Jack Lemmon's flunky, Max, in Blake Edwards' tribute to the great slapstick comedies of Hollywood's Golden Age - The Great Race (1965) - Falk demonstrated his skill at broad comedy. In John Cassavetes' Husbands (1970) and A Woman Under the Influence (1974), Falk displayed his depth as a dramatic actor.

To me, Falk's finest performance was that of Sam Diamond in Neil Simon's Murder by Death (1976). In this one role, he manages to do something incredibly difficult for an actor: he manages to embody all the stereotypes of the character type he is playing (the Bogart-like private eye), while at the same time, managing to totally subvert the character, lampooning it and turning it on its head. Holding his own against such greats as Peter Sellers, David Niven and Elsa Lanchester, all of whom have fun kidding their respective "sleuth" characters, Falk takes his performance to a whole other level, not just kidding but totally subverting the character of the detective that was so central not just to American film, but to notions of American culture and ideals, in the post-war era.

Younger audiences may best remember Falk as the grandfather who narrates the story of Rob Reiner's The Princess Bride (1987), which remains something of a cult favorite. That same year, he appeared as himself in Wim Wenders' haunting, sublime Wings of Desire, a story about angels wandering the streets of Berlin, with an interesting twist in which Falk's character is revealed to be an ex-angel himself! The film also confirmed Falk's stature on an international level.

The term "underrated" gets thrown around a lot, often carelessly, but I do not think it would be inaccurate to say that Peter Falk is underrated as an actor. While he will certainly be missed, hopefully his passing will inspire viewers to seek out his work and re-discover the depth and humanity he brought to all of his performances.

Georges Méliès and "Tonight, Tonight" (1996)

2011-06-09T22:10:00.010-04:00

It often seems that the most inventive film and video work being done today can be found in music videos. With their brash displays of techniques, often exhibiting a very wide range of influences, music videos can be an exciting conglomeration of stylistic flourishes borrowed and pieced together into a post-modern pastiche.

"Tonight, Tonight" by the Smashing Pumpkins is a good example of pastiche at its most effective. The video (which is already all of 15 years old!) combines visual elements from several films by early French cinema pioneer and magician Georges Méliès. Despite obvious references to Méliès' most famous film, A Trip to the Moon, the video actually appears to have been most strongly influenced by his 1904 film, The Impossible Voyage, with its lead characters traveling across a celestial sky in a large, futuristic aircraft. Two of the passengers jump from the aircraft and fall gracefully to the surface of the moon using their open umbrellas. The umbrellas prove to be useful when they are attacked by the Selenites, the moon's inhabitants who can be vanquished by the blow of an umbrella. After taking off in a rocket, the two land in the sea, where they encounter animated fish that recall the undersea creatures of Méliès' Tunneling the English Channel.

Remarkably, the Victorian fantasy of Méliès blends almost seamlessly with the MTV-era music of the Smashing Pumpkins. The visual motifs (the man in the moon, a fantastic lunar surface, comets and crescent moons) are not only inspired by Méliès' films, but also manage the impressive task of capturing the spirit of his work, conveying a real sense of wonder and discovery that is wholly appropriate to the song. The video's designers do a credible job of matching the tones of the hand-coloring process used on a number of Méliès' films. The music and visuals of the piece are completely of a whole. Though separated by nearly a century, the imagery and stylistic flourishes of Georges Méliès and the music of the Smashing Pumpkins synthesize very effectively.

The Immortal Count: The Life and Films of Bela Lugosi

2011-06-08T22:27:00.006-04:00

I recently had a chance to pick up a copy of “The Immortal Count: The Life and Films of Bela Lugosi” (University Press of Kentucky, 2003), by Arthur Lennig. One of the preeminent film biographers, Lennig (whose other works include the insightful and revealing “Stroheim”) manages to give readers a good sense of Bela Lugosi the person, and how this Hungarian actor came to be so powerfully associated with a single role. For an actor whose career spanned nearly half a century, I have always felt that film writers are too quick to discuss Lugosi’s work only in terms of his most famous roles. This attitude, while understandable, overlooks the breadth of his acting roles over the years, including memorable turns in such films as the manic comedy, International House, and Ernst Lubitsch’s Ninotchka.

Lennig draws on extensive research and interviews with those who knew and worked with Lugosi over the years to draw a complete picture of the actor. A particular revelation of the section dealing with Lugosi’s work in the theater is just what a diverse series of roles he played early in his career. Apart from his becoming so strongly associated with the role of Dracula, Lennig conveys the frustration Lugosi felt as a foreign actor in Hollywood, typecast in heavy roles.

Particular attention too is given to the relationship between Lugosi and Boris Karloff. Universal, seeing Karloff as the “next Chaney” (who had been such a moneymaker for the studio in the 1920s), treated Karloff as the crown jewel of the studio, while Lugosi was rather unceremoniously cast aside following Dracula. There was apparently a bit of bitterness between the two, though neither expressed this publicly (the two would work together, memorably, in The Black Cat, made for Universal by Edgar G. Ulmer in 1934).

In addition to the light shed on Lugosi’s early career, his later years are given similarly in-depth treatment. Lennig covers Lugosi’s battle with and eventual recovery from drug addiction, as well as his infamous work with Edward D. Wood Jr. (a series of films which, thankfully, Lennig does not belabor). Such films as Bela Lugosi Meets a Brooklyn Gorilla are also discussed. This period probably represents the nadir of Lugosi's career.

It is rather poignant how deeply Lugosi cared about his most famous role. While he would describe it as both a blessing and a curse, the role of Dracula certainly made Lugosi into an icon. If he had played no other role, it is probably safe to say that Lugosi's name would still be remembered by film fans just as strongly today. In addition to the meticulous preparation he went through in getting into character for the part, it is also interesting how he handled the issue of self-parody in films like Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein, in which he plays the Count straight as the two comedians pull their comic business. Lennig reports that Lugosi was put-off by the lackadaisical attitude that Abbott and Costello took to their work (and attitude shared, incidentally, by others who worked with them, including Buster Keaton). Whatever else can be said about Lugosi's appearance in the film, it certainly reinforced his iconic status.

"The Immortal Count" stands as one of the most solid, well-researched and enlightening film biographies I have read in some time. Arthur Lennig manages the impressive task of revealing the actor behind one of the most iconic roles in all of cinema. The reader comes away with a revealing account of Bela Lugosi, the man and the actor.

The Saucy Chambermaid (1908)

2011-06-06T21:33:00.006-04:00

Among the many films available for viewing through Europa Film Treasures, there is a unique subject from 1908 titled Das Eitle Stubenmädchen (The Saucy Chambermaid). According to the notes on the site, the film was made in Austria by the Saturn company, and directed by Johann Schwarzer.

Unlike the hardcore erotic films that began appearing in the period following World War I, there was still a certain amount of credibility attached to such projects in the early cinema. Georges Méliès, for instance, produced a number of “blue” movies. Such films were a staple of early American programs as well, though it should be noted that films from the Edison company, for instance, rarely if ever displayed the kind of out-and-out nudity present in films like The Saucy Chambermaid (I can find no example from the Edison catalog).

That said, the film still plays like something of a dirty joke. The scene is a bedroom. On the floor is a nude marble statue in a reclining position. The maid enters to clean the room with a feather duster and, spotting the statue, proceeds to undress herself bit by bit, comparing herself to the statue in the process. As the maid assumes the reclining position similar to that of the statue, she is surprised when the man of the house enters the room. She springs to her feet, dashing in to the next room and begging for mercy as the man laughs uproariously in wicked delight. He calls the maid back in to the room to retrieve her clothes, which he withholds from her until she gives him a kiss. Grabbing her clothes, she finally makes her way in to the adjoining room as the man follows, laughing all the while.

Typical for the period, the film is framed entirely in wide shot, and plays out with actors entering and exiting the frame through doors. While more explicit than similar “blue” movies coming out of the United States at the time, The Saucy Chambermaid is still restrained compared to films that would follow in the coming decade. The fact that its production company, director, and year and country of origin have been documented demonstrates the degree to which it was still seen as very much a “legitimate” production. The hardcore erotica of the post-war period is typically devoid of any kind of production information, with any information about its makers and performers lost entirely to time.

Of course, the erotic film, in 1908 still a staple of “gentlemen’s clubs” and burlesque, would gradually go underground until eventually it existed totally off the radar of any recorded history of film (it has only been relatively recently that there has been any research into those films at all). As the films became increasingly graphic, and as venues sought to appeal to a more and more sophisticated clientele, “blue” movies were forced off the program. According to the notes on the Europa Film Treasures site, Saturn Films was eventually shut down by a court order in 1911, following demands by Viennese officials and Catholic groups. Films like The Saucy Chambermaid would have no doubt begun to be seen as quaint, at least from a purely technical standpoint, as it retains the single shot and proscenium staging of the earliest film subjects, and lack the narrative and spatial qualities that were making for far more exciting films in the work of leading pioneers of the period.

The Saucy Chambermaid retains its dirty sense of humor and stands as an example of the erotic film at a time before it was abandoned by exhibitors in the quest for more respectable and sophisticated entertainment.

The Marx Bros. at MGM: The Big Store (1941)

2011-06-01T23:38:00.006-04:00

A good case can be made that The Big Store (1941) is the worst film the Marx Bros. were ever associated with. I maintain that it least returns their characters to an appropriate, contemporary setting, where they are able to wreak havoc on high society types, in this case against the backdrop of a ritzy New York department store. In that regard, it is at least a step up from the previous year’s Go West, which had placed the brothers in a totally unfamiliar and inappropriate Western setting. But the film still suffers from a dearth of good comedy sequences, protracted musical numbers, and commits the particularly unforgivable mistake of making the Marx Bros. co-stars with the leading man in their own film – in this case, crooner Tony Martin.

Unlike their previous two films for MGM, which had been directed by ex-vaudevillian Eddie Buzzell, The Big Store was helmed by experienced comic craftsman Charles F. Riesner, who had started with Chaplin’s company as an actor and associate director, before going on to direct comedians like Buster Keaton (with whom he worked on Steamboat Bill Jr. in 1928). While the film is well-crafted, it lacks the comic bite and surprise that marked their earlier efforts with men like Norman McLeod and Leo McCarey, who really knew how to keep the pace going. Given such sub-standard material to work with, it is hardly fair to blame Riesner for the film’s short-comings.

Setting the film inside a lavish New York department store was a step in the right direction after the choice of putting the brothers into a Western parody the year before. The problem is that, unlike an opera house, the department store is not a sufficiently pompous or portentous target for their chaos. That said there are some good gags to be had with Groucho as the floorwalker, insulting the customers (his innuendo toward an older couple in the bed department is particularly fun). One rather significant problem that the writers at MGM never quite seemed to solve was how to make the viewers really care about the plight of the romantic couple. It worked in A Night at the Opera, if only because Kitty Carlisle’s entire singing career was at stake. But starting with A Day at the Races, the dilemmas facing the romantic couple became increasingly irrelevant to the point where, by the time of The Big Store, one has to ask the question, “who cares?”

The film demonstrates a marked improvement over Go West in its casting. Margaret Dumont makes a much-welcome return in this, her final appearance with the Marx Bros., as Martha Phelps, owner of the department store. Douglass Dumbrille, so perfect as the heavy Morgan in A Day at the Races, here plays Mr. Grover, the crooked store manager who immediately becomes a target of Groucho’s barbs. While much credit has been given to Margaret Dumont over the years, it really is worth noting just how much supporting actors bring to these films by standing in for various pretentious “types” for the Marxes to skewer.

Unfortunately, The Big Store is also the most “music-heavy” film of the MGM period, with a wide range of numbers. Some, like “Sing While You Sell”, would have been more enjoyable had they been reduced in length; as it is, the number goes on entirely too long, even managing to find time for an interlude in which Virginia O’Brien delivers her deadpan, jazzy rendition of “Rock-a-bye Baby”. Others, such as “If It’s You”, crooned by Tony Martin to Virginia Grey, are pleasant enough. I am perhaps in the minority when I say that I enjoy and even look forward to the musical numbers in the Marx Bros. comedies – they were, after all, an integral part of their Broadway shows and musical comedy background. The difference is that, in these later MGM films, the songs are featured seemingly for the sole purpose of being plugged to sell sheet music, rather than contributing to the entertainment value of the show. Thankfully, Chico does get two chances to show off his unique piano skills (including a duet with Harpo), and Harpo has one of his best harp solos in any of their films, playing with his reflections in surrounding mirrors. The most outrageous music number has to be the infamous “Tenement Symphony”, a well-meaning if rather cloying piece preaching racial harmony among the diverse ethnicities in New York’s lower east side. As with every other aspect of these last three MGM films, the number suffers from being ludicrously over-produced, with Martin accompanied by an entire boys’ choir and symphony orchestra!

Which, when you get right down to it, sums up the problem with the final three films the Marx Bros. made for MGM. The studio seemed to be willing to spend exorbitant amounts of money on everything but quality comedy writers. The Big Store in particular feels like a second-rate (though still costly) MGM musical in which the Marx Bros. provide the comic relief.

The Marx Bros. at MGM: Go West (1940)

2011-05-30T20:06:00.013-04:00

With Go West (1940), the studio at least had the sense to allow the Marxes to test their material out on the road again. Unfortunately, the final results hardly seemed to justify the effort. Go West remains one of the dullest and uninspired films the team appeared in. Frustratingly, it actually opens with a very solid and funny scene, of the kind in which Chico and Harpo manage to pull one over on Groucho (in this case, while waiting at a train station to make the journey west). If the rest of the picture had managed to sustain the level of wit present in its opening scene, it might very well have turned out to be a perfectly enjoyable comedy. Instead, Groucho (in particular) gets mired down in painful one-liners that turn his normally fearless and cavalier screen character into a coward.

The unfamiliar setting of the old West no doubt works against the film as well, since the Marx Bros. were always more at home in contemporary surroundings, where they could wreak havoc on the established order of society. The writers fail to get any real mileage out of the Western genre as a subject for parody, instead simply dropping Groucho, Harpo and Chico into a routine Western backdrop without really making them integral to it. Add to this the fact that far funnier Western satires had already appeared – most notably Laurel and Hardy’s Way Out West (1937) – and Go West seems even more tired and ineffective in comparison. Throughout the 1940s and 50s, nearly every major comedian appeared in a Western parody at some point, though perhaps only Bob Hope’s Paleface films approached a level of real brilliance.

The generally humorless supporting cast doesn’t help matters any, either. Robert Barrat is hardly the comic foil that Sig Rumann was for the Marx Bros. in their first two MGM films. Walter Woolf King, who had appeared as a sufficiently unlikable heavy in A Night at the Opera is wasted here. And the romantic couple is bland and colorless to the point of being almost totally forgettable, making it even harder than usual to get invested in the film’s subplot (though leading man John Carroll is granted a nice tune, “Riding the Range”, which allows for a fun moment when Groucho and Chico join in).

As a result of its lackluster plot and performances, Go West plods through its 80 minute running time before arriving at its climax, involving a fast-action chase on a locomotive. Like the finale of Laurel and Hardy’s County Hospital and W.C. Fields’ Man on the Flying Trapeze, what makes this scene work so well is the obvious use of special effects and sped-up action, combined with casual cutaways to Groucho’s throwaway one-liners. It's not a bad comedy scene, though it perhaps seems better coming after so much lackluster material during the preceding 80 minutes.

Ultimately, Go West suffers from all the constrictions and restrictions of studio-era production, and is characteristic of the kinds of challenges presented by trying to produce a free-wheeling comedy within the confines of MGM’s factory system.

Cave of Forgotten Dreams (2011)

2011-05-27T18:27:00.008-04:00

Watching CAVE OF FORGOTTEN DREAMS, one cannot help feeling an almost spiritual connection with the past. Not just a connection with the paintings discovered on the walls of the long abandoned Chauvet cave in the south of France, but with those who painted them – a long-forgotten group of people about whom we know nothing, other than what they tell us through their art.

Except that they’re not forgotten. Not really. Werner Herzog’s film is a testament to the endurance of the human spirit and its capacity for creativity and self-expression. And though the cave paintings that he lovingly showcases in 3-D were, in fact, created over the span of several thousand years by various artists, the fact that the oldest of them are said to represent the earliest human artistic endeavors is staggering and humbling at the same time.

Humbling, in the sense that not only does the cave serve, however inadvertently, as an archive of these earliest known artistic endeavors, but also in that it provides a kind of communal space where the past meets the present, as a contemporary artist (Herzog) comes into direct contact with the first generation of artists. One of the most haunting moments is a feeling that Herzog describes having experienced himself when entering the cave: an overwhelming sense of interrupting the artists in the middle of their work, as if he can feel their eyes upon him as he makes his way through their studio. It perhaps takes an artist, in this case a filmmaker like Herzog, to fully articulate the kind of connection that these paintings provide to the culture that created them. It is quite moving to think that these paintings, seen only by small groups of people tens of thousands of years ago, and shut off from view for nearly 30 millennia, are now receiving their widest audience exposure yet through the recorded image of the motion picture.

It is as a filmmaker that Herzog makes his most insightful observations about the paintings themselves, noting the use of multiple legs on a depiction of a bison to create the illusion of movement. Herzog also observes how the play of light and shadow, cast from the torches of these early artists on to the cave wall, would have provided the sensation of motion, just as the battery-operated torches of Herzog and his crew demonstrate. As Herzog describes the ways in which these paintings would have been observed, there is a reverence and wonder in his voice that suggests a very real spiritual connection between himself and his predecessors of 32,000 years ago.

At one point in the film, it is suggested that, at one time, the cave probably served a religious purpose, as indicated by an altar on which rests a cave bear skull. How appropriate, then, that the cave still provides a kind of spiritual connection with those who first explored the human’s capacity for artistic expression and who continue to speak to future generations that look upon their work.

"Making Movies in New York: 1911"

2011-05-26T00:55:00.006-04:00

The Museum of the Moving Image, located in Astoria, Queens, is hosting a series of films called "Making Movies in New York: 1911". Curated by noted film historian Richard Koszarski, the author of "Hollywood on the Hudson" and "Fort Lee: The Film Town", the series will encompass a wide range of films by directors such as D.W. Griffith, J. Stuart Blackton, Alice Guy Blaché, and Ralph Ince. Live musical accompaniment is to be provided by Donald Sosin.

Of particular interest is a June 4th screening of A Tale of Two Cities with Maurice Costello, and The Battle on June 5th, directed by D.W. Griffith and an interesting precursor to The Birth of a Nation.

Part of the appeal of this series will no doubt to be able to see how filmmakers creatively used the landscapes of New York in the days before moving west to Hollywood. One of the most remarkable aspects of filmmaking in the US, prior to the centralization of Hollywood as a production center, is how many areas in the New York and New Jersey area were made to stand in for such a diversity of locations, not to mention how scattered the studios were up and down the East Coast and throughout the rest of the country (Vim in Jacksonville, Lubin in Philadelphia, Essanay in Chicago, and so on).

I will be particularly interested to see if The Battle was recognizably filmed in Staten Island, as a number of sources claim that The Birth of a Nation was filmed in the Park Hill area of Staten Island for its battlefield scenes. This claim seems highly unlikely for a number of reasons, but it would be interesting to discover whether or not another Griffith-Civil War picture was, in fact, shot in that location during the period when he was still working on the East Coast. While I have found no primary sources that support the claim that The Birth of a Nation was shot in any part of Staten Island, it is quite possible - even likely - that it is another Griffith-Civil War film that was indeed filmed there and became confused over the years with his more famous Birth of a Nation.

Now it's only a matter of figuring out which one!

The Marx Bros. at MGM: At the Circus (1939)

2011-05-06T00:35:00.039-04:00

When the Marx Bros. signed on with MGM in 1935, producer Irving Thalberg suggested a new formula designed to “fix” the disappointing box office results of their last Paramount comedy, Duck Soup, which had come out in 1933. Thalberg proposed softening the edginess of their comedy, and adding elements such as romantic sub-plots and musical numbers, to broaden their appeal, particularly with female moviegoers.

As perhaps the biggest of the major studios, MGM had a bad track record when it came to producing comedy. The studio managed to do fine with classy, romantic comedies like Dinner at Eight and The Thin Man, but really character-driven stuff, centered around the distinct persona of the leading comedian, seemed to be beyond them. The most notorious case of MGM neutering a really unique comedian occurred with Buster Keaton, who joined the studio in 1928. After turning out one genuinely great film for them (The Cameraman, which – not coincidentally – was the last silent feature over which he had a great degree of creative control), he was shoehorned into increasingly inappropriate vehicles that turned his screen character into a bit of a dimwit, peppered with excruciating one-liners rather than pratfalls, until finally he was teamed with Jimmy Durante, whose rambunctious screen persona overshadowed Keaton’s on-camera.

However, with the release of the Marx Bros.’ first MGM film, A Night at the Opera (1935), it was Thalberg who was vindicated by the box-office receipts. The film itself is really a masterpiece of construction – an expertly structured and well-written comedy that manages to balance its different elements very well. Their follow-up film for the studio, A Day at the Races (1937), continued much in the same tradition, albeit somewhat less successfully (critics of the film rightly cite the “Water Carnival” sequence as an over-produced distraction that brings the film to a halt).

While it’s easy in hindsight to criticize Thalberg’s decision to water-down the Marxes’ comedy to heighten their box office appeal as a crass commercial move, it must be said in his defense that he recognized the need for top-flight writers like George S. Kaufman and Morrie Ryskind, who had worked with the brothers on the stage and whose scripts had served as the foundation for their first two screen hits, The Cocoanuts (1929) and Animal Crackers (1930). Thalberg also recognized the benefit of sending the Marxes on stage tour, to test scenes that had been written for the film, in order to see how they played before a live audience. This was an incredibly wise decision on Thalberg’s part, and both A Night at the Opera and A Day at the Races benefit from the expert timing and polish that the Marxes were used to developing through their work in vaudeville and subsequently on Broadway night after night.

Sadly, during production of A Day at the Races, Irving Thalberg passed away at a tragically young age. The Marx Bros. made one rather lackluster picture on loan-out to RKO, Room Service (1938), an adaptation of a Broadway show that lost much in its translation to the screen.

When the brothers returned to MGM in 1939, things had changed.

Without Thalberg, the Marx Bros. were effectively powerless to fight for top-notch writers and directors, not to mention the ability to test their material on the road before filming, all of which had been so crucial in the success of their first two films with the studio.

Between 1939 and 1941, they would star in their final three films for the studio. These films have been almost unanimously panned as artistic and comedic flops - overproduced, expensive vehicles lacking the wit and charm of the earlier Marx Bros. comedies. While the films certainly fall short of the highest standards of films like Monkey Business, Horse Feathers and Duck Soup, let alone their first two films at MGM, they nonetheless contains moments of comedy that are too good to ignore completely.

Their first picture upon returning to the studio was At the Circus (1939). While hardly one of their best efforts, the film isn’t without its charm, and it still maintains a certain energy that manages to carry it through its dull moments.

The film was directed by Edward Buzzell, a former musical comedy performer (his best-known performance today is probably the delightfully bizarre 1930 2-color Technicolor short, The Devil's Cabaret). The script was by Irving Brecher, who had previously written the vaudeville-flavored New Faces of 1937 starring Milton Berle and Joe Penner at RKO. The problem with Brecher's script isn't that it lacks decent comedy scenes, only that the plotting is too loose to really get invested in at any level (A Night at the Opera and to a lesser extent A Day at the Races at least presented a well-structured plot with just enough sense of conflict to hold interest in it). The other qualm with Brecher's writing style is that the jokes could really be performed by almost any group of comedians, so that there are fewer of the really characteristic moments that could be found in the first five films the Marxes made for Paramount. The film was produced by Mervyn LeRoy, who produced The Wizard of Oz for MGM the same year. On a side note, the film's main titles - featuring caricatures of the Marx Bros. - were drawn by noted cartoonist Al Hirschfeld.

The plot finds circus owner Jeff Wilson (played by popular singer Kenny Baker) struggling to save his company from impending bankruptcy, turning down persistent offers to be bought out by villainous businessman John Carter (James Burke), and trying to make good so that he can marry his sweetheart Julie Randall (Florance Rice). Groucho, as attorney J. Cheever Loophole, is brought in to protect Jeff while the whole circus is en route to via train to their next destination. Of course, Carter’s henchmen have infiltrated the troupe, Jeff Wilson gets knocked on the head and his $10,000 stolen, and Groucho is too busy cracking wise to do much of anything about any of it.

In order to save the circus, Groucho secures them a booking at a big society party given by Jeff’s aunt, Suzanna Dukesbury, without telling her exactly what kind of a show it is that she’s paying for. Things almost fall apart when the maestro, Jardinet (played by that great character actor, Fritz Feld), arrives to conduct the symphony orchestra that had originally been booked to entertain at the party. Groucho instructs Chico to give him a big send-off. He leads him to a giant floating bandstand, where Jardinet begins conducting his orchestra, while the bandstand promptly untied from the dock and set afloat!

The show must go on, and the curtain finally goes up on the circus, leading to a climax in which the villains try to disrupt the performance. This scene suffers from some fairly obvious uses of back projection and stunt doubles, which take away from the fun somewhat. It's really a kind of comic free-for-all, with even the circus gorilla (played by Charles Gemora, so memorable as Ethel in Laurel and Hardy's The Chimp) attempting to steal back the stolen money. Even as she watches her society party fall apart at the seams, one gets the impression that Margaret Dumont is having more fun than she lets on, particularly when she ends up getting shot out of a cannon!

The film’s big fade-out laugh comes with the unforgettable image of Jardinet set adrift on the floating bandstand, where he continues to furiously conduct the orchestra, totally oblivious to the fact that they are sailing off down the river.

While the film has some excellent gags such as this, it is also filled with moments that come very close to being solid comedy scenes, but never really reach their potential. Chico and Harpo sneaking in to the room of the circus strong man while on the train, Groucho, Harpo and Chico interrogating the midget circus performer in his tiny room, and the scene in which Groucho tries to get onto the circus train without his badge all have the basic ingredients that could have made for strong comedy, but they never quite come together. In short, the set-up is there, but the scenes lack the strong payoff of a really strong comedy sequence.

A scene was shot, but deleted, that introduced Groucho's character prior to the train sequence. The sequence took place in a courtroom, and while it might have slowed the pacing of the film's beginning down a bit, it's a shame the scene doesn't survive, as any courtroom scene with Groucho is guaranteed to be a laugh riot.

At the Circus is aided by a strong supporting cast – including Margaret Dumont as wealthy dowager Suzanna Dukesbury – that add a lot to the fun. Nat Pendleton is good as the circus strongman (probably a reference to his performance as Eugene Sandow in MGM’s The Great Ziegfeld). Eve Arden has a great turn as Peerless Pauline, whose act consists of walking on the ceiling with a pair of specially-made shoes. She and Groucho share a fun scene in which he tries to retrieve stolen money from her. After Groucho catches her stuffing the cash in her brassiere ("There must be some way I can get that money without getting in trouble with the Hays Office"), he suggests that she demonstrate for him how to walk on the ceiling. However, she talks Groucho in to donning a pair of the shoes as well, and ends up leaving him stranded, hanging upside-down from the ceiling!

This scene is reflective of a strong current of exasperation running throughout the comedy of At the Circus. Groucho is basically prevented from succeeding at any of his tasks because of he is constantly being one-upped or thwarted by another character. Groucho's entrance in the film is a scene in which he has been offered a job by his old friend Chico, traveling with the circus troupe to protect the owner. However, when Groucho arrives and attempts to board the train that is about to depart, Chico refuses to let him on since he doesn't have the requisite badge. Groucho is repeatedly pushed back out into the pouring rain. Another such instance is the interrogation scene, where all Groucho needs to secure a confession is to get the circus midget (Jerry Maren) to give him one of his cigars, so that he can match it to the one found at the scene of the crime. His efforts to get the necessary sample are repeatedly thwarted by Chico, who keeps pulling out cigars of his own to offer to Groucho. Then there is the already-mentioned scene with Peerless Pauline. These are the kinds of scenes that always made for the most memorable Groucho-Chico exchanges in earlier films. Here, though, it's as if the entire universe has it in for Groucho!

The film has at least one moment of unparalleled brilliance – the “Lydia the Tattooed Lady” musical number, performed by Groucho, and written by the team of Harold Arlen and E.Y. Harburg, who would write “Somewhere Over the Rainbow” the same year. Along with “Hello, I Must Be Going”, it would become one of Groucho’s favorite songs to reprise over the years on his appearances on television talk shows. Aside from its brilliantly witty lyrics, the song is also a marvel of orchestration (when Groucho sings the lines about "She once swept an admiral clear off his feet/the ships on her hips made his heart skip a beat", the arrangers very carefully included the "Sailor's Hornpipe" within the orchestration). And even though it has been the target of many jibes over the years from fans of the Marxes, “Two Blind Loves” is actually an enjoyable little tune, made all the more charming by Kenny Baker (who is nowhere near as bad in this film as some critics have made him out to be). Chico is allowed an energetic piano solo, performing "Beer Barrel Polka" to the obvious delight of the train passengers (and the audience). Aside from Groucho’s “Lydia”, the best musical number in the film is Harpo’s jazzy and soulful rendition of “Blue Moon”, accompanied by a vocal chorus of black gospel singers. It is both beautiful and haunting.

If At the Circus was a generally amusing comedy punctuated with a few moments approaching greatness, then the Marx Bros.’ following film was an inversion of that – a generally dull picture that only occasionally provided solid laughs.

Porter's Chase Comedy

2011-05-01T22:36:00.012-04:00

A prototypical “chase” comedy, How the French Nobleman Got a Wife Through the New York Herald Personal Columns (1904) demonstrates just how quickly things were developing in these early years of cinema. Directed by Edwin S. Porter for the Thomas Edison Company just one year after The Great Train Robbery, it is heavily influenced by the French farces of the early period, and is most interesting today for its use of the chase to structure its narrative.

This was, in fact, not even the first version of this same idea produced that year. Biograph had produced the first version earlier in 1904, and then after Edison’s version appeared, the Lubin company would make their own version. Such copying was not at all uncommon during this period, and it provides for an interesting comparison between the different versions to see minor variations on the same idea.

The premise finds a French Count placing an ad in the personals, “object: matrimony”, instructing the bride-to-be to meet him in front of Grant’s Tomb. The next day, the Count is shocked when dozens of women show up, expecting to marry him. In a sequence that may have very well inspired the second half of Buster Keaton’s Seven Chances twenty years later, the outraged women give chase, over hill and dale, across streams, over a fence, finally pursuing the Count into a stream, where he gives up. One of the women wades into the stream, consoling him, and then walks off camera with him. The film ends once the characters (and the story) have effectively run out of steam and exhausted themselves.

Much of the film’s running time is devoted to the chase, which seems drawn out and protracted by the standards introduced several years later by Griffith and especially – in the comedy film – by Mack Sennett. The chase had emerged in the British cinema through films like Daring Daylight Burglary and Desperate Poaching Affray (both 1903), in which it served as a way to link shots taken in a variety of locations, as well as to propel the narrative events forward. Porter borrowed the chase structure from the British, and the inclusion of the comic elements into this structure suggest the influence of the French farces produced by the Pathé company, particularly those of Ferdinand Zecca. Of course, given that the film itself is a remake of the version directed by Wallace McCutcheon for Biograph (Personal), Porter was really working from an established model to begin with.

Instead of building the tempo through editing the way that Sennett did at Keystone, Porter instead holds on a static shot of each set up as all of the characters make their way through the frame, not cutting away until the final participant has exited the frame. The pursuers move in a long line straight through the frame. There was still an expectation at this time that all of the action must be presented in its entirety in order to maintain a sort of cognitive logic for the viewer. Similar concerns were expressed over the use of cutaways such as the closeup, which early producers feared would confuse audiences accustomed to seeing actors presented in full proscenium framing. Like so many other conventions, the chase would eventually fall out of favor due to over-use, and it was really through the work of D.W. Griffith at Biograph, and especially his protege Mack Sennett, at Keystone, who would revitalize the chase and help transform it not only in to a staple of American comedy film, but a crucial part in the development of editing action sequences.

A final note: the film is interesting for its use of locations. By 1904, the Edison company had re-located to the Bronx, where a new studio space was constructed (their Manhattan location, which they moved to in 1901 – a small, glass-roofed studio on top of a building - was a short-term solution to finding more space and better open-air lighting conditions). Biograph’s version had been shot in Asbury Park, New Jersey, but Porter filmed in front of a New York landmark, Grant’s Tomb. It’s interesting, purely for the sake of comparison, to see how barren the surrounding area was in 1904, compared to today, when the Tomb is surrounded by trees.

Love in the Film

2011-04-27T22:20:00.007-04:00

William K. Everson's greatest gift as a writer was his ability to convey his love of whatever films or filmmakers he happened to be writing about. I had the honor of working as an archivist for his papers during my time at New York University, and it was always inspiring to read his thoughts on the films he showed over the years at both the Theodore Huff Memorial Film Society and the New School series.

His 1979 book, Love in the Film, is an interesting look back at the great romantic films covering the entire history of the medium up to the time it was written. Although all the standards are there (Seventh Heaven, A Farewell to Arms, Brief Encounter), what makes the book most interesting are the obscure and offbeat films that Everson goes into detail about, including works from the 20s such as Clarence Brown's Smouldering Fires and William DeMille's Conrad in Quest for His Youth, plus lesser-known films such as James Whale's excellent but often overlooked 1931 version of Waterloo Bridge, Lewis Milestone's Hallelujah I'm a Bum (certainly an offbeat choice!), and Zoo in Budapest.

Everson organizes the book by decade. There is a strong emphasis on the 1920s through the 1940s, with the period from the 1950s onward represented by only four films (and only one film - Annie Hall - from the 1970s). For each decade, Everson provides an overview of prevailing trends, attitudes and values reflected in the films that he goes into more detail about in their individual entries. His approach, as with other of his books, involves a largely interpretive form of criticism, providing a context in which to appreciate how these films deal with the theme of love. Everson's always-insightful reviews provide a way of digesting the films and understanding the relationship between such a diverse list of titles spanning so many decades.

Like his later Hollywood Bedlam, a look at screwball comedy, Love in the Film is organized in a "filmography" format that makes it easy to consider each film individually and on its own terms. Everson avoids the trap of having to connect similar threads and themes from film to film into a thesis, instead examining each film separately.

For collectors of film books like myself, Love in the Film is a welcome addition - not only for Everson's always-worthwhile insights - but also as a guide for obscure and overlooked films to seek out. Everson's descriptions certainly convey his enthusiasm for each title, and make readers want to go see each of these films for him or herself.

The Life and Death of a Hollywood Extra

2011-04-07T21:10:00.008-04:00

While researching Hollywood films that depict the moviemaking process for what is shaping up to be a book-length project, one of the most intriguing figures I've come across is Robert Florey. Florey, of course, has already been championed - by William K. Everson and others - as an interesting if off-beat director of B-pictures. What I find so intriguing about Florey is that he made at least three films dealing with Hollywood itself. The first of these, his experimental 1928 short, The Life and Death of 9413 - A Hollywood Extra, sets the tone for the other two, which were mainstream releases by a big studio (The Preview Murder Mystery and Hollywood Boulevard).

This short was co-directed by Slavko Vorkapich, later to become known for his work editing montage sequences for MGM. The main credits are starkly simplistic, and I got a chill reading the credit "Camera work - Gregg"; Gregg being Gregg Toland at the beginning of his highly innovative career.

The film's opening is similar to that of the opening of Hollywood Boulevard, with Florey's trademark canted camera angles showing looming buildings - tall, Expressionist structures that look like they could have come straight out of a UFA production. While Hollywood Boulevard uses actual Hollywood locations, it conveys the same sense of being overwhelmed. The Life and Death of a Hollywood Extra owes something to the Soviet and German "city symphonies", in its focus on a single time and place and its characters representing clearly-identifiable "types", but is firmly in the avant-garde tradition, filled with heavy-handed symbolism and Expressionist settings (only a handful of shots appear to have been taken on location at all). The film presents a nightmare vision of the "becoming a star" trope that was so popular at this time in films like Souls for Sale and Ella Cinders. In researching the films of the silent era that depict Hollywood and the filmmaking process, the overall view of Hollywood seems to be surprisingly darker than it would be later in the 30s (at least until A Star is Born, in 1937). Part of this is no doubt due to the then-recent scandals involving stars like Fatty Arbuckle and Wallace Reid. Souls for Sale, in particular, plays off the image of Hollywood as a kind of moral wasteland, with the father of its young star-struck protagonist preparing sermons in which he condemns the town. The Life and Death of a Hollywood Extra is very much made from the point of view of "outsiders", albeit ones who want to break in to the business just as badly as the characters they depict.

As the film is ultimately more a showcase for its technique rather than its content, it is not particularly enlightening in terms of investigating what it says about the industry at that time. Of its two directors, Vorkapich went on to have what could arguably be considered the more "successful" career, establishing himself with a particular skill at the biggest of the studios. Florey would never rise above the level of B-pictures, but always demonstrated an astonishing degree of inventiveness and stylization in most of his work.

Taken strictly on its own, The Life and Death of 9413 - A Hollywood Extra would not be a terribly interesting insight into the filmmaking process itself, but because three of its makers went on to have established careers in the Hollywood film industry, it can be seen as an example of their work before they were reigned in by the commercial demands of the studio system.

The Adventurer (1917)

2011-04-03T22:45:00.003-04:00

This past weekend's screenings of the Silent Clowns Film Series included a comedy that has long been one of my favorite of the Chaplin-Mutuals, The Adventurer, produced in 1917.

The film was Chaplin's final Mutual comedy. Some critics have found significance in the fact that, as with his final Essanay and First National comedies, Chaplin here plays a convict escaping from prison. Nonetheless, Chaplin himself described the Mutual period as the happiest years of his professional career. It's easy to see why - the sheer unbridled joy, creativity and enthusiasm is evident in every one of the dozen comedies he made for the company in 1916 and 1917.

As a convict on the run, Charlie is forced to hide out among a bunch of high society types, giving him plenty of opportunities to lampoon the upper classes. Every figure of authority and order is fair game for Charlie - one of the prison guards, who is supposed to be on the look out for the runaway prisoner, is shown hiding out in the kitchen, flirting with the cook! Once his cover is finally blown, he leads the guards on a wild chase through the house that includes one of his best-choreographed gags: catching the heads of heavy Eric Campbell and the prison guard in a pair of sliding doors.

What really comes through in these earlier Chaplin comedies his sense of playfulness. Charlie here is almost like a playful puppy. This is no more evident than in the opening sequence in which he eludes prison guards on the beach by digging his way through the sand, popping his head up between the guard's legs, and ducking in and out of caves on the beach, each time eluding his pursuers by a hair. There's a wonderful moment where Charlie, thinking he has finally eluded the guards by scurrying up the side of a cliff, casually tosses rocks down at the guard below. As he does so, another guard approaches him from behind, stepping on his hand. Charlie looks down, seeing only the guard's shoe. Realizing that he's been caught, Charlie quickly covers the guard's shoe with sand before taking off again.

Chaplin's career would next take him to First National, where he began tackling increasingly heavy subject matter. His films would become a bit more mature, a bit more focused on character and plot. But the carefree abandon of the Mutual comedies continues to make them one of the most cherished and beloved bodies of work in screen comedy.

Europa Film Treasures

2011-03-27T12:01:00.004-04:00

Europa Film Treasures is one of the most important sites for film researchers to ever hit the web. This is a collection of early and silent cinema from around the world that has been made available for streaming online. The films include works by directors as diverse as Georges Meliés, Julien Duvivier, and John Ford (whose previously lost Bucking Broadway is one of the films available).

Collections such as this provide an invaluable tool to researchers looking into cinema's early years. With an ever-increasing number of these films being made available, we can begin to see what a rich and diverse cinema existed in the first two decades of the medium. Real beauty emerges in some of these early gems, which contain an incredible amount of innovation, invention and joy.

Bucking Broadway, from 1917, is outside the traditional timeframe of "early cinema", yet it is a film that pre-dates the corporatization of the Hollywood film business that really began in earnest in the early 20s, and would come to define the business model of the entire medium by the end of that decade. It is one of the earliest feature films by its director, John Ford, and captures the breathtaking scenery of the American west with an epic quality that, even this early on, shows the skilled hand of a master craftsman on his way to becoming the Great American Filmmaker.

The films don't stop with the silent era, though; the archives have films going all the way up to the 1970s. The trove of early cinema available here (and - as far as I know - isn't yet available elsewhere) will be a huge boon to researchers, and will have the effect, hopefully, of exposing new viewers to the breadth of artistry present even in the earliest moving pictures, such as this amazing example from 1907, made by Segundo de Chomon, Les Kiriki.

Perhaps the most amazing part is that, as Lloyd Fonvielle recently argued in "The New Nickelodeon Era", the best model for online video in our current time should be precisely that of the early cinema and the way films were exhibited in the Nickelodeons. In that sense, the Europa Film Archives is a great example of this idea at work. Not only are these films of great historical value being brought to 21st century spectators on their computers and mobile devices, but they are, in the process, providing an excellent model for content moving forward.

Muybridge and the Illusion of Motion

2011-03-16T22:37:00.010-04:00

Michael Brown's sculpture, "Unsupported Transit (aka Ghost Horse"), is an interesting example of the ways in which art and new media can be used as critical tools.

The artist's website describes the project as follows:
"Reverse cutouts of Muybridge's galloping horse overlaid on ten small mirrors; Light Emitting Diodes (LEDs) aimed at each mirror produced a reflected image of a galloping horse onto a frosted glass dome. With sequenced flashing LED's and precise overlapping of the reflections an animation of the galloping horse is created" (http://www.onsights.com).

I first encountered Brown's sculpture when I contributed a video to the NPR Muybridge contest in the spring of 2010, held in conjunction with the "Helios" exhibit at the Corcoran Gallery. My entry, titled "24 Frames", examined the notion of the "frame" in the age of new media by breaking down a second of digital video footage, captured on an SD card in a Lumix camera, into 24 consecutive frames. The video image, of course, records at 30 fps (or, to be more precise, 29.97), and in fact, in digital video, there is no more "frame", only a series of zeroes and ones. By returning the digital image to the standard "24 frames" of the celluloid film stock, I hoped to reveal the amount of information that each frame can hold. This, of course, was directly inspired by Muybridge's notion of the individual images that he had to capture separately in order to create the illusion of movement.

But where my project involved a digital image, Brown's sculpture (which, incidentally, was the winning entry in the contest), returns the viewer to the pre-cinematic mode of spectatorship that was, of course, the only means of spectatorship available to audiences of the 1870s and 80s. Therefore, it might be more appropriate to term his work "non-cinematic", but even that is misleading, as his principles of motion provided the very foundation, along with other models, on which the cinema itself was built. As I argued in a recent paper on Muybridge's contribution to the project of documentary, his work as all too often been written about only as it relates to the cinema. Rather than thinking of him merely as a precursor to "real" movies, it's worth exploring the amazing contributions Muybridge made to the capturing of motion outside the cinema as we know it. As I noted in an earlier post about Muybridge’s contributions to the Panorama, his work presented ways of viewing images that are still not entirely possible within the cinema. Similarly, Brown’s “Unsupported Transit” offers, in its sculpture form, a unique experience that cannot be replicated by film.

Michael Brown's "Unsupported Transit" takes Muybridge's most famous motion study and turns it into a self-reflexive study of the medium itself. Significantly, the video that Brown posted to YouTube for the Muybridge contest is simply a recording of his sculpture. Like Muybridge's work, Brown's sculpture itself stands as a work of art. The beauty of the piece is that it re-creates the illusion of movement totally independent of the recorded moving image itself. A still image - that of a silhouette of Muybridge's horse photograph - is mounted in such a way that when the light from the diodes reflects off of it, it creates the illusion that it is in motion. By taking this approach, Brown forces the spectator to confront the very artificiality of the moving image itself. What is a movie, after all, but a series of still images that are granted the illusion of life when played back at a certain speed, just like the illusion created by the lights hitting the still image of Muybridge's horse.

Aside from providing a neat link between the 19th century series photography and new media, Brown’s sculpture also demonstrates the way in which these tools can be used, self-reflexively, to comment on the nature of the medium itself, and the properties inherent to each form (be it moving pictures, photography, sculpture, or light show) that are unique to each and provide a distinct experience in themselves.

Slippery Jim, Zecca and the Trick Film

2011-03-09T20:22:00.006-05:00

Slippery Jim, made by Ferdinand Zecca and released by Pathé in 1910, is a fantastic trick film and comedy that demonstrates just how inventive the French cinema had gotten by the second decade of the 20th century. A crime caper and action comedy, it blends elements of animation and live action in a way that looks forward to the work of Canadian animator Norman McLaren, the social satire of Chaplin and Rene Clair, the slapstick comedies of Blake Edwards and Richard Lester, the surrealism of Monty Python, and – yes – even the cool existentialism of Jean-Luc Godard. Quite a lot for a little film barely running ten minutes!

The title character is a crook who we first meet as he is brought in to the prison warden’s office and given a stern warning. The police officers seize from him a number of stolen items. Slippery Jim is both cool and collected; there is something in his casualness that almost echoes the performance of Jean-Paul Belmondo in Godard’s Breathless fifty years later.

In the prison yard, we are introduced to Jim’s ability to transform himself – including making himself paper thin, a trick he uses to escape from a padlocked chest in which the officers lock him in order to contain him. Next, they try tying him up in a sack and throwing him in the river (!), but Jim makes a Houdini-esque escape as he slips out of the bag, unties the ropes around his wrist with his teeth, and quite literally leaps to the surface.

Making his escape, he assembles a bicycle out of materials pulled out from under his coat, and rides off from the pursuing policemen. In an incredible sequence, courtesy of double exposure, he appears to ride his bicycle over the tops of the moving train cars. Finally, pedaling feverishly alongside an embankment, his bicycle takes flight, doing incredible somersaults in the air before the policemen’s eyes (even Spielberg didn’t go that far in E.T.). Seeking refuge in a flat, Jim eludes the police by making himself invisible and then slamming them both behind a door, flattening them like pancakes. Jim next transforms himself into a serpent-like creature, slithering along the street and right back in to the warden’s office. Just when it looks like it’s back to jail for Jim, he slips right through the prison bars, leaving the entire police force locked up instead.

Ferdinand Zecca’s films retain their power to amaze, some moreso than others. Slippery Jim is definitely an example of just how creative, inventive and unabashedly delightful Zecca’s work could get. Like his contemporaries, Georges Melíes and Segundo de Chomon, Zecca used narrative as a mere framing device on which to build a symphony of gags, tricks and zany effects.

It’s worth noting that by 1910, the cinema was well out of its infancy, and well past the novelty-driven early period that Tom Gunning has called “The Cinema of Attractions”. Even though stories were very often present, even in the simplest subjects, nearly right from the very beginning, the element of spectacle and surprise certainly dominated in the works of “trick” filmmakers, many of whom – like Zecca – hailed from France. It’s also worth pointing out that just two years earlier, D. W. Griffith had made The Adventures of Dollie in the US, which was a major step toward implanting the narrative model as the dominant one. Within a few years, films like Slippery Jim would seem largely out of place as the art of cinema moved increasingly toward longer, more complex and more logical, linear narratives.

The film’s cool comic protagonist recalls Buster Keaton, as of course do the film’s technical effects. Slippery Jim’s quick dodging of the law recalls Chaplin’s run-ins with authority, and his resourcefulness recalls Harold Lloyd. And of course the comic policemen who give chase to Jim throughout the film are a model for the Keystone Cops, making this film a clear progenitor of American slapstick comedy. Prison was a favorite theme for many of the American clowns of comedy’s golden age – Laurel and Hardy got a lot of mileage out of prison gags and settings in The Second Hundred Years, The Hoosegow and Pardon Us. Keaton wound up in prison in Convict 13, and Chaplin would serve time in the big house in The Adventurer, The Pilgrim, and Modern Times.

As the American cinema was moving toward an increasingly narrative-driven model when this film was made, the Hollywood incarnations of the trick film often turn to farce as a means of providing the story, parodying popular melodrama and dramatic conventions of the day. Zecca throws narrative concerns into the dustbin, using only a threadbare story with a chase structure, which he had used before in films like The Policemen’s Little Run and The Runaway Horse.

The trick film lives on in the work of animators and the avant-garde. Many of the techniques that Zecca uses here, especially stop-motion animation of live figures, turns up in the work of Norman McLaren and Jan Svankmajer. The scene in which Slippery Jim flattens two policemen by slamming them behind a door uses an interesting technique that looks forward to Robert Zemeckis’ Who Framed Roger Rabbit, in which Christopher Lloyd is flattened and then re-animated after being crushed by a steam roller!

Zecca’s influence lives on, then, in the most unlikely of places.

The Wrong Door

2011-03-07T21:44:00.011-05:00

I’ve hesitated writing about this film for a long time, because ultimately, what can one say about a film that consists of little more than a single bathroom joke?

I had come across this film on Google Video as part of the TVDays.com collection (curated by Ira Gallen) while doing research on some area of early cinema. I was immediately struck by such sheer, joyful vulgarity in a film made in 1904! I’d never heard of the film before, and a quick search revealed that it was called The Wrong Door, that it dated from 1904, and that it had been directed by Ferdinand Zecca, one of the more creative and innovative pioneers working in France during the early period. Although it wasn’t relevant to the material I was researching at the moment, I filed it away as something I absolutely had to return to.

Flash forward to March 2010. I was preparing a paper on narrative in early cinema for the NYU Graduate English Organization conference. In the paper, I argued that there was a story element present in even the most “spectacle”-driven films. One of the film makers whose work I examined in the paper was Ferdinand Zecca.

In trying to come up with a video clip with which to illustrate an example of the kinds of films I was discussing in the paper, my mind suddenly returned to The Wrong Door. What better film to illustrate the idea of a simple story designed as a foundation on which to rest the film’s comic punchline? At just over a minute, it was also the perfect length for the conference presentation. My only question: how would the audience respond?

When I arrived at the conference, I asked my friend Yair Solan - who was one of the conference organizers and a fellow silent film historian himself – whether or not he thought the film would go over well with the academic English department crowd. By sheer coincidence, he knew the film, having seen it at the Slapsticon festival a couple years earlier. And he hadn’t forgotten it! With his encouragement, I showed the film at the end of my presentation, completely unsure how the audience would react.

The reaction was a mix of shock and uproarious laughter. It is a little shocking to see a film from this period that is so blatantly and cheerfully vulgar. Another person I showed it to recently described it as a kind of forerunner of the vulgarity of such contemporary filmmakers as the Farrelly Bros., who have turned shock into shtick. There’s little in The Wrong Door that leaves anything to the imagination.

The film consists of two camera angles: an exterior shot of what appears to be a train station, and an interior shot of the telephone booth. Interestingly, the signs are printed in English, and the labeling of the “Water Closets” suggest that the film is supposed to take place somewhere in England, with the lead character a rube of some kind, probably visiting from France (where the film was made).

The rube enters the frame, shuffling along and holding his grumbling stomach, before asking a porter where the restrooms are. The porter points toward the doors labeled “Water Closets”. Right next to them, however, is a door labeled “Telephone”. Guess which door the rube enters?

Once inside, he looks at the telephone confused, mistaking it for the toilet. He walks up to it, pulls down his pants, sits on the ledge, and relieves himself. Outside the telephone booth, a man is knocking on the door, waiting to use the phone. The rube opens the door of the booth, looking relieved, and makes his way offscreen. The man, who has entered the phone booth, backs out quickly, holding his nose.

There is relatively little information available on the film. The film takes place in front of a painted backdrop, suggesting the cheaper production values characteristic of its production company, Pathe, as opposed to the higher production values of Gaumont.

The character of the rube is dressed in checkered pants, ill-fitting jacket, bandana tied around his neck, and a derby, suggesting a sort of rural bumpkin, or even comic tramp. In my research on the film, I have been unable to determine whether or not this was a recognizable comic character that appeared in other Pathe comedies of the period. There was certainly an abundance of comic characters in the French cinema during this period – the Bout-de-Zan films by Louis Feuillade, the Onésime films by Jean Durand – so it is quite possible that this character that Zecca featured in The Wrong Door appeared in other films as well.

There has been speculation over the fact that the signs in the film are written in English. At first I considered the possibility that the film had been shot in an alternate version with English signs for English-speaking audiences, but then realized that the gag only makes sense if the rube character is unable to read the signs. The signs, then, are naturally in English because the French rube has arrived in England, presumably by train (hence the setting of the film in a train station). This seems the most plausible explanation.

What is especially unique about this subject is its extremely short length, suggesting it was made to be shown as a sort of “filler” on the program. The fact that it consists of just a single gag would support this, though it’s also a little difficult to imagine this film being shown alongside other comedies. Even something like Zecca’s The Inquisitive Janitor (1901), with its implications of voyeurism and sex farce, doesn’t even begin to approach the level of vulgarity of The Wrong Door.

The film certainly holds up as an example of the tendency in early cinema to emphasize the “effect” – in this case comic – using the story as a set-up for the final punchline. As one of my fellow panelists at the English conference commented after the film was shown, it was certainly an “edifying example”.

"Nostalgia as Historiography: Robert Youngson and the Compilation Film, 1957-1970"

2011-02-27T10:47:00.004-05:00

A video of my presentation, Nostalgia as Historiography: Robert Youngson and the Compilation Film, 1957-1970, at the 2011 NYU Cinema Studies Conference (26 Feb. 2011).

"Robert Youngson and the Compilation Film" to be Presented on Feb. 26th

2011-02-16T23:31:00.013-05:00

I am pleased to announce that I will be presenting my paper, Nostalgia as Historiography: Robert Youngson and the Compilation Film, 1957-1970, at the NYU Cinema Studies conference on Saturday February 26, 2011, as part of the “Nostalgia and Cinematic Exhibition” panel, from 3:30 pm – 4:45 pm. The conference will be held at the Michelson Theater in the Tisch School of the Arts building at 721 Broadway, 6th floor (room 648).

The paper examines the influence and impact of Robert Youngson’s compilation films made between 1957 and 1970, including The Golden Age of Comedy and When Comedy Was King. Many silent comedy fans can trace their interest in the subject back to the Youngson films. As I argue in the paper, Youngson’s films served not only as exercises in nostalgia, but also as film historiography, providing viewers with information about the comedians and films that Youngson showcased in these films. In the pre-cinema studies days, Youngson’s work served an important purpose in reviving interest in the silent clowns, particularly Laurel and Hardy. In addition, I will be presenting video clips from Youngson’s films.

If you’re interested in this comparatively under-explored aspect of film historiography, and happen to be in New York that weekend, please come out to the conference. Feel free to stop by and say hello after the panel!

Muybridge and New Media

2011-02-08T22:45:00.015-05:00

At first glance, the work of 19th century "series" photographer Eadweard Muybridge might seem the least likely model for 21st century new media, but on a recent trip to MoMA PS1 in Queens, I encountered an installation that drew in my mind an immediate parallel between Muybridge and video gaming culture.

The exhibit is called Long March: Restart (2008), designed by Feng Mengbo. It is truly a sight to behold: two parallel, wall-length video game projections on a staggering scale. The spectator, standing between the two projections, becomes completely engulfed and overwhelmed by the scale of the images. The website for PS1 describes the exhibit as follows:

“Lifting imagery from classic games like Street Fighter II and Super Mario Bros., along with propaganda motifs from Communist China, Mengbo invites visitors to direct the hero-a Red Army soldier-via a wireless controller and combat the various enemies in his digital path.” (http://ps1.org/exhibitions/view/320)

This kind of Panoramic presentation recalls the photographic displays of Eadweard Muybridge who, in 1878, captured Panoramic views of San Francisco on an unprecedented scale. Even today, Muybridge’s work continues to astound for its sheer size. Wall-length Panoramas depicting the city of San Francisco provide the spectator with a sense of presence, conveyed through scale, that offers an experience that still cannot quite be captured in the cinema.

Similarly, Mengbo’s Panoramic video game projections provide a sensory experience that is almost unsettling in how involving it becomes for the spectator. Like Muybridge’s work, it is best understood as a hybrid of different options currently available in the visual culture of the 21st century. It combines the interactivity of the video game with the scale of 19th century Panorama photography, and provides the spectator with an experience that the cinema is still incapable of replicating. And, like other works of 19th century media, it combines a variety of cultural influences that are immediately recognizable for the spectator. A friend whom I attended the exhibit with commented how the sound effects that accompany the projections, taken from the Super Mario Bros. video game, have practically been etched into our mind from many hours spent playing the games in the past.

The Panorama provides another example of how looking backward to past models such as Muybridge provide a guide for moving forward in cutting-edge work in emerging, new media.

The Black Pirate (1926) at the World Financial Center

2011-02-05T12:10:00.008-05:00

The World Financial Center in Manhattan is an unlikely venue for a screening of a silent film, but the February 4th show of The Black Pirate, one of Douglas Fairbanks’ most enjoyable swashbucklers, was a thrilling experience.

The music was provided by the Alloy Orchestra. The Alloy has been accompanying silent films with their unique sound (heavy on the percussion!) for some time now. I had first heard them live with The Black Pirate at the 2003 Maryland Film Festival in Baltimore. It was a pleasure hearing them accompany the film again, this time in New York. The audience cheered and applauded Fairbanks' most impressive stunts, such as the sliding down the sail, and the exciting moment as he is lifted to the top of the deck by the crew. Fairbanks performs with such an irresistible charm and sense of humor that it's impossible not to get swept up in the fun.

The main draw of The Black Pirate is its 2-strip Technicolor. Fairbanks and his team took extensive time in shooting makeup tests to make sure everything looked as good as possible. The effect is like a beautiful watercolor painting. Indeed, Fairbanks and his production designer, Carl Oscar Borg, were inspired by the paintings of pirate ships that were popular during the 19th century, and sought to recreate that look using the limitations of the 2-strip process to their advantage. Research, headed by Arthur Woods and Dwight Franklin, aimed at capturing the details of the pirate lore with an astonishing degree of historical accuracy. The scale and expense of the production paid off, as Fairbanks ended up with one of his best pictures – combining the light humor that had made him so popular on the stage, with the swashbuckling and elaborate stunt work that made him a favorite of movie audiences throughout the 1920s.

The cast is really strong, too. Billie Dove is Fairbanks’ love interest in this one, as the Princess whom he helps save from a fate worse than death at the hands of the pirates. Sam DeGrasse, one of the best villains of the silent screen, provides the perfect amount of menace as the pirate lieutenant who has his eye on both the girl and the title of captain. Anders Randolf is perfect in his brief but memorable role as the pirate captain (Randolf, a skilled painter as well as actor, also designed the pirate costumes for the film). And Donald Crisp provides the comic relief as MacTavish, an old pirate who allies himself with Fairbanks’ character early on in the picture.

Seeing the film in the Winter Garden at the World Financial Center was a unique experience. It’s a good reminder of the fact that these films play best with an audience, and there’s a certain energy that comes from seeing the films with a live audience that is impossible to recapture when viewing the film at home.

Upstream (1927)

2011-01-30T20:49:00.005-05:00

Recently discovered after being lost for more than 80 years, Upstream is a delightful light comedy that is distinctly Fordian. His theme of the family manifests itself neatly in the form of the family unit provided by a theatrical troupe, staying in a New York boarding house.

Earle Foxe stars as Eric Brashingham, “the last – and least” of a long-line of an acting family. He is in love with Gertie Ryan (Nancy Nash), but has a rival in actor Jack LaVelle (Grant Withers). Brashingham is called on to star in a London production of “Hamlet” – the producers don’t care that he’s a rotten actor, they just want the Brashingham name attached to the show. An old actor boarding with the troupe (movingly played by Emile Chautard) coaches Brashingham for the big performance. Surprisingly, Brashingham is a huge hit, and becomes the sensation of the theatrical world. However, he quickly finds that his behavior has alienated him from his long-time friends and colleagues.

The film is filled with customary Ford humor. A real highlight is the vaudeville comedy team “Callahan and Callahan” (Ted McNamara and Sammy Cohen) who provide many of the film’s best moments. And that grand old comedian, Raymond Hitchcock, has a wonderful supporting part. He’s a perfect fit for Ford’s stock company, and it’s a pity he died just two years after this film was made.

There had been much talk that this film demonstrated the Murnau influence on Ford’s visual style, but there doesn’t seem to be much in the film to support that idea. Murnau’s style did seem to influence Ford’s approach to filming Four Sons the following year, but Upstream seems to be fairly conventional by the standards of 1927, even though it was shot by Charles G. Clarke, who would also photograph Four Sons.

The film seems to be in keeping with other light comic work that Ford was doing in the late 20s, such as Riley the Cop (1928). It’s an interesting reminder of the wide variety of genres he was working in before becoming more established with Western and war films later on in his career. Comedy, of course, would remain an important part of Ford’s style throughout his career. Here, he demonstrates a light directorial touch that would serve him well again with the fun (and undeservedly underrated) comedy, The Whole Town’s Talking (1935), with Edward G. Robinson.

Following its rediscovery in New Zealand in 2010, Upstream had its re-premiere in Los Angeles. The film was screened at the newly-renovated Riklis Theater at the Museum of the Moving Image (in Astoria, Queens). The new music score was composed by Donald Sosin, and was performed by Sosin on piano along with violinist Susan Heerema, clarinetist David Tasgal, and drummer Ken Lauber. Joanna Seaton wrote lyrics for a new title song to the film, and performed vocals for a couple of other numbers used in the accompaniment (including “Give My Regards to Broadway”, “Oh You Beautiful Doll”, and “Auld Lang Syne”).

Return to the Kingdom of Shadows

2011-01-15T21:09:00.012-05:00

During a recent trip to MoMA PS1 in Queens, New York, I came across an interesting exhibit that reminded me that the basic principles that first enchanted audiences with early cinema more than a century ago are still at work today.

The work was Peter Campus’ “Shadow Projections” (1974), and brings contemporary spectators back to the Kingdom of Shadows that audiences first entered at the end of the 19th century. The work features a kind of “shadow projector”: a white screen, with a light on one side, and a projector shining light onto the other. Standing in front of it, the spectator not only sees his own shadow, but a detailed projection of themselves with visible features. It’s quite uncanny, really, how detailed the shadows appear when projected onto the screen.

As I was at looking at the exhibit, a child ran right up to the little screen, absolutely fascinated by what he was seeing. He was absolutely taken with the way his movements were replicated on the screen by his shadow! I couldn’t help thinking that this is a child who has only known a world with HDTV, CGI movies, digital photography, video games with 3-D graphics, various electronic devices for viewing online video, and so on. And yet, he was positively fascinated with the pure motion of a shadow against the screen. During my time at the exhibit, children and adults alike expressed a similar fascination – something so simple, yet with an undeniable ability to captivate.

It’s not too much of a stretch, then, to imagine the same kind of fascination that spectators at the first film screenings would have felt. Upon seeing his first movie in 1896, Maxim Gorky said:

“Last night I was in the Kingdom of Shadows. If you only knew how strange it is to be there. It is a world without sound, without color. Everything there – the earth, the trees, the people, the water and the air – is dipped in monotonous grey. Grey rays of the sun across the grey sky, grey eyes in grey faces, and the leaves of the trees are ashen grey. It is not life, but its shadow, it is not motion but its soundless specter.”

The desire to depict motion can be traced back as long as man has set out to depict the human experience through art. Cave paintings depicting animals with multiple legs are said to represent the illusion of motion. The “shadow play”, of course, has a long history, dating back to ancient China, with shadow puppetry emerging during the Han Dynasty.

It is only a short technological leap to the Zoetrope and the Magic Lantern, both of which enchanted audiences in the 19th century. Shadows remain an essential part of the cinematic experience – from animated works like Lotte Reiniger’s The Adventures of Prince Achmed to the celebrated sword fight sequence in The Adventures of Robin Hood.

Peter Campus’ Shadow Projector returns the moving image to that “soundless specter” by reducing the image to its bare essentials. Stripped of the bells and whistles of computer graphics, 3-D imagery, color, sound, and other artificial enhancements, the shadow reminds us what first drew audiences to early cinema in the first place, and indeed, why we still refer to them, after all, as “movies”.

When I see - even in the media-saturated visual culture of the 21st century - the fascination that just watching the movement of one’s own shadow projected on a screen can still provide, as it did for that child at PS1, it demonstrates that the study of early cinema is more relevant than ever.

True Grit (2010): A "Revisionist"-Revisionist Western

2011-01-02T15:39:00.007-05:00

The Coens’ film of True Grit is a sort of “revisionist”-revisionist Western.

The Western as a genre has always been evolving, frequently alternating between being driven by historical and literary source material (The Covered Wagon, Cimarron, Shane) and the star-driven Westerns (films with Tom Mix, William S. Hart, Harry Carey, John Wayne). The genre had already “died” after about 1931, when it became almost the exclusive property of the Saturday morning kiddie matinee (with the exception of DeMille’s prestige The Plainsman in 1936), but was revived in 1939 with the release of John Ford’s Stagecoach, which made John Wayne an A-list star. The genre continued to evolve in the coming two decades – growing increasingly darker, with deeper character study, and finally – by the time of The Searchers in 1956 – questioning the very theme of revenge that had been a backbone of so many Western stories.

By the time the first screen version of True Grit was released in 1969, it was already seen as something of a “return” to a genre that had largely changed shape, especially in the wake of the Sergio Leone – Clint Eastwood “Man with No Name” trilogy. Starring John Wayne, and directed by a stalwart studio craftsman – Henry Hathaway – the film was a welcome return to the genre – a revenge story in the classic tradition – and it was perhaps that feeling of familiarity in an otherwise tumultuous year for Hollywood that helped earn Wayne his one and only Oscar for his performance as Rooster Cogburn.

The Western has continued to change shape quite a bit since 1969. There were the revisionist Westerns of the early 70s (McCabe and Mrs. Miller, Little Big Man), the parodies (Support Your Local Sheriff, Blazing Saddles) and eventually the return to the genre in the guise of gentler, “purer” vision of the West (Dances with Wolves). Of course, the Western has never really disappeared from television, whether in the form of “Gunsmoke” and “Bonanza” or TV movies starring the likes of Tom Selleck and Chuck Norris, and of course the genre received a big boost with the series “Deadwood”, starring Jim Beaver. Perhaps, as Janet Staiger suggested, what all of this goes to show is that the Western, like all genres, is really just continually blending and morphing with elements of other genres, in which case trying to pinpoint a “pure” example of the Western genre becomes pointless.

Which brings us to the Coens’ film of True Grit. Part revisionist Western, and part Classical throwback, the film works surprisingly well, thanks in no small part to the quirkiness of the Coens’ direction (their style is much more subdued here than usual, but still present in key ways). The performance of Jeff Bridges is rather remarkable, too. He’s no larger-than-life personality like John Wayne, but he takes the role of Rooster Cogburn and turns it into a real character. Part of the skill in his performance is how well he blends gruffness, humor and even sentiment, often within the same scene. In her big-screen debut, Hailee Steinfeld is perfectly cast as the 14-year-old Mattie Ross, who seeks out US Marshal Rooster Cogburn, a man possessing – she is told – “true grit”, to help her get revenge on Tom Chaney (Josh Brolin), the man who shot and killed her father.

So far, a conventional “revenge” setup. What’s interesting, though, is the way in which Mattie becomes a character of equal importance in the film’s narrative, rather than just a catalyst for the events of the narrative. The story, in fact, is told through her eyes as an adult, giving it all a poignant touch. Both headstrong and determined, she insists on accompanying Cogburn on his journey, since she is paying his salary and demands to see justice served. Cogburn is reluctant, and in fact starts off on the journey without her, but she catches up with him, much to the chagrin of a Texas ranger, LeBeouf (Matt Damon) who is also pursuing Tom Chaney for his own reasons and has joined forces with Rooster Cogburn to bring him in. The story takes a negative view of revenge, demonstrating the senselessness and danger of it, albeit nowhere near the same extent as a film like The Searchers.

Like so many Hollywood “remakes”, the publicity for the film feels it needs to justify its existence by emphasizing that it’s truer to the book, a more faithful adaptation of Charles Portis’ novel, and so on. This is one of the few remakes that does not need such justification, as the film works on its own terms. Presumably, this promotional aspect is partly to help convince people that they’re not just watching a “new version of an old John Wayne movie”, but that it’s a unique work on its own terms. It is, but of course, it’s also hard to escape the influence of the earlier version.

The second half of the film is not without its problems, however. There are a few moments that feel just too convenient, including one cliché of the action film that just refuses to die: that is, the moment when the protagonist is cornered by the villain during a confrontation, and there is absolutely no possible escape, when just at the last possible moment, there is an eleventh-hour rescue by another character. How many times have we seen the set-up, for instance, where the protagonist is just about to be shot, point blank, by the villain, and when we hear the gun shot that we assume is coming from the villain’s weapon, the villain slumps over dead, and behind him we see the protagonist’s friend aiming his gun. As clichéd as this moment sounds, there is a similar moment in True Grit, and I must admit I found myself almost taken out of the film by this scene, because it’s simply such a lazy way of getting the protagonist out of danger.

As I said at the beginning of this piece, what struck me most about the film is that it is something of a “revisionist”-revisionist Western, essentially circling back to the Classical approach, both in its themes and in its style. The Coens make masterful use of long shots, encompassing the beauty of the scenery, and allowing the action to play out in well-staged action scenes that take full advantage of the choreography of the actors within the frame. The beauty of the American west is captured in a series of breathtaking shots that take on an epic quality rarely seen in contemporary films.

True Grit is a rare film from Hollywood these days. It manages to work creatively within the Classical style, to tell an interesting story in interesting visual terms, and to present living, breathing characters enhanced through performances of truly great actors. It is a tribute to, and a demonstration of, the versatility of Joel and Ethan Coen, whose personal style never intrudes on the overall vision they achieve with this film.

"The Muybridgizer"

2010-12-27T18:56:00.005-05:00

Apple has announced an interesting new iPhone app. Intriguingly called "The Muybridgizer", it merges 19th century series photography with the digital point-and-shoot technology of the 21st century.

The product description of the Muybridge describes it as follows: "The Muybridgizer allows iPhone photographers to take pictures inspired by the iconic works of early photographer Eadweard Muybridge. The release of the app celebrates the opening of a major exhibition of Muybridge’s work at Tate Britain (8 September 2010 – 16 January 2011)" (http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/muybridgizer/id390894338?mt=8).

New media critics are always quick to try to make connections between digital tools and early cinema; the Muybridgizer goes them one better, by explicitly referencing a pre-cinematic influence, and advertising the app as a direct descendent of series photography. The recent interest in Muybridge's work, both in the Tate and Corcoran exhibitions, as well as NPR's Muybridge video contest, demonstrate the continued interest in series photography in the digital age.

Why, however, should there be such an interest in series photography when even the most basic cellphones now have the capability to record full video?

The answer lies, I think, in a comment made by Mary Pickford, quoted by Kevin Brownlow as the concluding line of his seminal 1968 study of American silent film, The Parade's Gone By. Pickford says that "It would have been more logical if silent pictures had grown out of the talkie instead of the other way around." That is, art usually develops into abstraction and stylization rather than toward heightened realism. Perhaps with applications such as "The Muybridgizer", we're witnessing a similar "reduction" of the images, from continually recorded moving pictures, to a slightly more abstract series of still images. By emphasizing each frame as its own individual image, we're also witnessing greater concern with individual shots, rather than seeing them as part of a whole. By looking backwards at the experimentation and innovation of Muybridge, it can provide an inspiration for future models.

Edison's "A Christmas Carol" (1910)

2010-12-24T15:48:00.003-05:00

Produced in 1910, the Edison company’s version of Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol is one of the earliest adaptations of the classic holiday story, and demonstrates a high degree of production values, particularly in its use of double exposure to present the visions of Christmases past, present and yet to come. It was directed by J. Searle Dawley, one of the finest filmmakers working for Edison during this period (along with men like Wallace McCutcheon and John Collins). Marc McDermott turns in a very effective performance as Scrooge, predating Sir Seymour Hicks, Reginald Owen, Alistair Sim, Albert Finney, George C. Scott, Michael Caine, Kelsey Grammer and countless other screen Scrooges. He captures the character transformation remarkably well considering how heavily condensed this version of the story is. Charles Ogle, a staple of the Edison company during this period who would later turn in supporting performances in Paramount’s The Covered Wagon and The Ten Commandments (both 1923), does the most he can with his performance as Bob Cratchit, who only appears briefly in the beginning of the film, and then again in a flashback, before the final Christmas dinner sequence. Viola Dana, then a child actress with the Edison company, is also in the cast.

The events of the story are heavily condensed into the ten minutes’ running time, reflective of the way in which narrative films, even as late as 1910, continued to offer viewers a series of familiar tableaux from stories they would have already been familiar with from other media (either literary or theatrical sources, most often). From a narrative standpoint, there is little in the film that couldn’t have been done in 1903, when Edwin S. Porter was first expanding film narratives through the possibilities of editing. This is most evident in the cutaway shots to the carolers outside of Scrooge’s window.

The film opens as Scrooge is receiving “an appeal from the Charity Relief Committee”. The three men from the committee enter Scrooge’s office and are promptly turned away. Next, his nephew comes to wish him a merry Christmas, and is ordered out. Returning home that night, the face of his deceased business partner, Jacob Marley, appears superimposed over the front of his door. Marley’s ghost appears, warning Scrooge of “punishment hereafter unless he comes a different man”. The Spirit of Christmas appears, showing Scrooge his own youthful merrymaking; the family dinner of his employee Bob Cratchit, who offers “a toast to all the world – even Scrooge”; and finally, a frightening vision of his own death. He pleads with the spirit to allow him to change his ways. Awakening in his room, Scrooge is shaken, but is overjoyed to realize there’s still time to change his ways. He tosses a few shillings to some carolers outside his window, offers a generous donation to the members of the Charity Relief committee, gives his nephew his blessing for his forthcoming marriage, and finally, surprises the Cratchit family with a goose for Christmas dinner.

The Edison films of the latter half of the 1900s (particularly after Griffith’s directorial debut at Biograph) are too frequently criticized for their “primitive” or “stagy” qualities. Perhaps because Dickens’ story lends itself well to theatrical adaptation, the “proscenium framing” of this film does not cause it to suffer for a lack of cinematic flourish. The trick photography, including the superimposition of Marley’s face over Scrooge’s door, Marley’s Ghost and the Christmas Spirit, and of course the different visions of Christmas, all make effective use of double exposure. These effects are all the more remarkable for having been achieved in-camera, before the advent of optical printing. Dickens’ timeless tale is so moving, so essential to the spirit of Christmas, that even in this heavily abridged version, one cannot help being moved by Scrooge’s transformation, and the eagerness of those close to him to accept him and celebrate in his newfound joy.

Uncle Josh at the Moving Picture Show (1902)

2010-12-22T19:59:00.004-05:00

An interesting subject for a number of reasons, Uncle Josh at the Moving Picture Show, produced by the Edison Company and directed by Edwin S. Porter, shows the influence of both the European cinema, as well as the American recording industry. In this sense, it’s a good example of Charles Musser’s idea of the “intertextuality” of early film; that is, these early films have to be viewed within the larger cultural context of their time.

The “Uncle Josh” character was a popular one for Edison. The character appeared in a series of monologues on Edison records, written and performed by Cal Stewart. “Uncle Josh” was in the tradition of “hick” humor so popular at the time. The sketches tackled a number of hot topics of the day, including war, industry, new media, and feminism, all with a distinctly humorous slant.

Appropriately enough, the character was featured in a number of Edison films, too. These included such subjects as Uncle Josh in a Spooky Hotel (1900), which presents the character in a comic sketch that would later be repeated by Laurel and Hardy in their A Chump at Oxford (1940).

Uncle Josh at the Moving Picture Show, dating from 1902, is clearly inspired by R. W. Paul’s The Countryman and the Cinematographe (1900). In this film, a country bumpkin mocks a moving picture show until the image of an oncoming train proves too intense for him, causing him to run in fear. Porter’s film borrows on the same premise. It demonstrates an interesting early use of special effects photography, using the technique of matting to superimpose the images seen on the movie screen within the film. It’s slight self-reflexive, too, as the first title that flashes on the screen announces “The Edison Projecting Kinetoscope”. Uncle Josh is seen, sitting off to the side of the screen, in a box seat. The first subject, “Parisian Danger”, depicts a woman in a frilly dress who comes out and dances a can-can. Uncle Josh becomes so taken with the image of the woman that he leaps out of the box seat and begins dancing along with her image right in front of the screen!

Another self-reflexive moment follows; “The Black Diamond Express” is announced as the next film. This subject was an extremely popular one for Edison, so much so that several versions of it were filmed to help keep up with the demand. G.M. (“Broncho Billy”) Anderson, who was at that time appearing as an actor on Broadway, even incorporated the film in to one of his theatrical productions to capitalize on its success and to provide an additional thrill for the audience that was not possible in the medium of live theater. Here, Porter copies the moment from Paul’s film, with the oncoming train causing Uncle Josh to leap back in to his box seat in fear. Next up is “The Country Couple”, a comic piece in which a bumpkin is knocked on the head by a well-pump while flirting with a hick girl. Helping him to his feet, they embrace. Uncle Josh becomes enraged. He rolls up his sleeves, ready for a fight, and charges the screen, causing it to come crashing down. The theater manager attempts to eject Uncle Josh from the premises, but a fight ensues with the two of them rolling around on stage. Uncle Josh, star of a number of popular comedy records, meets his match in the new medium of the moving picture.

Despite its extensive use of trick photography, the film is shot in such a way as to give the illusion of taking place in a single take. In this sense, it is very much rooted in the tradition of storytelling that prevailed prior to the development of more complex screen narratives that Porter would be instrumental in bringing to American film over the course of the following year.

"Chaplin: The Last of the Clowns"

2010-11-29T21:22:00.007-05:00

Parker Tyler's "Last of the Clowns" must surely rank as one of the strangest books ever written on Charlie Chaplin. I had picked up a copy of the 1948 edition of the book (it was updated in 1972), and was surprised by just how impenetrable much of it is in terms of Tyler's interpretations of the symbolism he sees in Chaplin's work.

Tyler was a fine writer on film, with his largely impressionist style of criticism working quite well in books like "Classics of the Foreign Film", and "Sex in Films" (both good surveys of their respective subjects), but "Last of the Clowns" is a cryptic and enigmatic work that leaves the reader far too confused by the conclusions Tyler reaches. It is both unclear how he reaches these conclusions, not to mention just what some of his "conclusions" even mean in relation to Chaplin's work. Like Robert Payne's "The Great God Pan", the book seems to want to position Chaplin as a kind of mythical and larger-than-life figure, but does so on the most tenuous grounds. As Dan Kamin notes in his book, "Charlie Chaplin's One Man Show", Tyler never actually explains what is meant by his title, "Last of the Clowns".

Chaplin remains the most frequently written-about figure in the history of film, so it's not surprising that literature on his life and work varies so much. David Robinson's "Chaplin: His Life and Art" (1985) remains the standard for straight biography, and is exhaustively researched (so much so that it can be a little overwhelming). Theodore Huff's "Charlie Chaplin" (1951) provides both solid biographical information as well as eloquent narrative analyses of the films themselves.

Tyler's book remains of most interest to readers who are already familiar with the more authoratative biographical works on Chaplin, and who are already familiar with some of the better surveys of his filmography (Huff, and "The Films of Charlie Chaplin" both being good sources for the latter).

It would have perhaps been more interesting had Tyler written on Chaplin's individual films, where his analytical approach may have worked better. As it is, "Last of the Clowns" remains one of the more enigmatic books written on Chaplin.

The Red Spectre

2010-10-31T13:15:00.001-04:00

THE RED SPECTRE is one of the most impressive trick films, co-produced by Segundo de Chomon and Ferdinand Zecca, in the early years of the 20th century. Released by Pathé and dating from 1908, the film is a visual feast of images that would become iconic in the horror film genre over the following years.

In a fiery pit, a coffin stands itself on end, from which emerges the horrific figure of the Red Spectre, a skeletal figure with horns and cape. The sight of the coffin standing itself on end immediately recalls some of the fantastic stop-motion shots in Muranau’s NOSFERATU. The sides of the cave open up, revealing a small stage area where the Red Spectre uses a wand to conjure up five beautiful women to dance for him. They suddenly transform into small balls of fire that dance through the air. Next, he conjures up two urns in which burn two great flames that are transformed into women. Covering the urns with black tarp, he lays one of the women out across the urns, wrapping her in the tarp. Finally, he causes her to levitate and then disappear. He does this with the second woman, as well.

For his next impressive trick, the Spectre brings out three glass jars on a table, close to the view of the camera, in which three small women appear. This recalls similar imagery in films like HOMUNCULUS and THE BRIDE OF FRANKENSTEIN. Next, he brings out a small screen emblazoned with the Pathé cockerel, and as he slowly opens each portion of the screen, parts of the image of a woman holding a flower are revealed.

He then conjures up another screen showing three dancing women, then a closeup of one of the girls, and finally a grotesque comic couple in exaggerated makeup. After making the screen disappear completely, he begins stacking cube-shaped objects which arrange themselves into a stack against which is projected an image of a woman and a dog. Finally, he conjures up a whole chorus of dancing girls, one of whom he tries to lead away under his cape, but who turns the tables on him by pouring a jug of water on him, causing the Red Spectre to disintegrate. Standing over his skeleton, she takes his cape, putting it around herself, and descends into the fiery cave.

By 1908, trick filmmakers like de Chomon had discovered extremely sophisticated means of pulling off the kind of trick effects that impressed audiences so much. While technically a narrative film, compared with the narratives that were being told by films from the Edison Company in the US, for instance, THE RED SPECTRE hearkens back to the Melies tradition of spectacle. Pathé, of course, was known for the high quality of its trick films, and this is perhaps the finest example. Although by 1908 the rise of Nickelodeons in the US provided a place for films to be shown along with other films in a single sitting, it’s not at all difficult to imagine a film like this one being shown in a tent at a carnival or fairground. Certainly in Europe, where the choice of screening venues of films remained a bit more diverse throughout the first decade of the 20th century, it’s not at all difficult to imagine this film as just one more part of an evening’s entertainment; visitors to a fair-ground moving from one show to the other, perhaps a live performer, followed by a ride, followed by this incredible piece of visual trickery – all part of the larger visual arts canvas open to audiences of a century ago.

David Lean's BRIEF ENCOUNTER (1946)

2010-10-20T23:58:00.002-04:00

BRIEF ENCOUNTER is the most erotic movie ever made.

From the opening shot, with a train shooting along the express track of a nocturnal station, smoke billowing from its stack against a stark, black-and-white background, accompanied by the low, rhythmic piano and lush strings of Rachmaninoff’s “Piano Concerto no. 2 in C Minor”, David Lean’s artistry with images and Noel Coward’s artistry with words form one of the most incredibly passionate films in the history of the form.

The affair between Laura (Celia Johnson) and Alec (Trevor Howard) has ten times the amount of sexual energy than any of Hollywood’s empty “romantic” pictures of the last several decades, and of course is far more moving and powerful than any pornography ever could be. By what it doesn’t show, so perfectly internalized in the brilliant monologues delivered by Celia Johnson, the film manages to evoke all of the emotions, frustrations and endless regrets of unrequited love.

The supporting characters are necessarily somewhat limited to “types” due to the scope of the film, which focuses far more on its two main characters, but these supporting characters are remarkably effective and involving, particularly the working class couple played by Joyce Carey and the brilliant Stanley Holloway (two decades before immortalizing himself in the role of Alfred Doolittle in My Fair Lady).

It is perhaps a tribute to Lean’s skill as an editor that he manages to compress time so effectively and efficiently in this film. Although it depicts events that occur over the span of several weeks, Lean only shows what is absolutely necessary before moving on. At 86 minutes, it’s a briskly- but perfectly-paced film, never feeling rushed. The unique flashback structure is an effective means of arranging time within the film, and the voice-over, always a difficult technique, is used creatively enough to bring us into the minds of the Laura character, without ever feeling convenient or lazy as screenwriting.

Robert Krasker’s cinematography combines the Expressionist noir aesthetic so common of the period, but grants it a kind of soft-edged beauty that distances us from the usual, dark connotations of such high-contrast lighting. What it does retain, however, is the anxiety associated with Expressionist technique. The use of Rachmaninoff’s music is a brilliant artistic decision, creative and influential in its way as any film soundtrack featuring pre-existing, recognizable songs. The film seems to have been a fairly significant influence on Billy Wilder, who used Rachmaninoff’s “Piano Concerto” for comic but instantly recognizable effect in his film of THE SEVEN YEAR ITCH. Intriguingly, Wilder also commented on one of the most ambiguous parts of the film, that in which Alec brings Laura to the apartment of a friend for an illicit tryst, but is interrupted when the friend returns home early. This character so intrigued Wilder that he even wrote down an idea for a script based on this character: “Movie about the guy who climbs into the warm bed left by two lovers”, which eventually became THE APARTMENT in 1960.

There are few other films that reach the levels of conceptual and artistic perfection as that of BRIEF ENCOUNTER. It is quite possibly the most powerful emotional experience ever committed to film.

The Mysterious Cafe (1900)

2010-10-17T21:40:00.005-04:00

THE MYSTERIOUS CAFE is one of the Edison company’s rare forays into the “trick film”, at least before Porter joined the company. The set-up is quite simple: a comic, elderly couple (referred to as Mr. and Mrs. Spoopendyke in Edison promotional materials) enter a café, taking their seat at a table. The woman goes to take her seat when the chair disappears out from under her, causing her to land on the ground. The re-appears on top of the table, and when the man goes ot help his wife up, she disappears and immediately re-appears seated on the chair atop the table. Leaning against the table, it disappears out from underneath them, causing them to come crashing to the ground. More frantic scrambling ensues as the man, wife, and chairs continue to disappear and re-appear in various positions, with comic chaos ensuing. When they’ve finally had enough, they beat the poor waiter with an umbrella before wrapping him in the tablecloth and beating him further.

Dating from 1900, the film presents a very rudimentary narrative, of the kind that could have been found in a vaudeville sketch. The film adheres to the “proscenium framing” so common of the period, but differs in that it employs a significant amount of editing to achieve its trick effects. However, unlike the effects being employed by people like Melies and de Chomon in France at the same time, the effects in THE MYSTERIOUS CAFÉ are quite crude, and shatter the illusion of magic that the French trick films were able to create through careful planning and precise cutting. Also, the film devolves into roughhouse slapstick toward the end, and ends without a neat-wrap up.

While the Edison catalogue description promises that the film is “sure to provoke much merriment”, it lacks the light, whimsical charm of the French trick films that make those films such a wonder and a delight more than a century after they were made. Blackton and Smith reveled in film’s fantastic properties; in addition to making a number of trick films, they also re-created news events of the period using a series of simple yet ingenious tricks that managed to fool audiences of the time into believing what they were seeing was real. This film uses stock characters – American vaudeville archetypes – and combines them with the aesthetic of the French trick film with mixed results. Watching it, one cannot help thinking of Kevin Brownlow’s point that American films tended to appear drab and rather uninspired in comparison with their European counterparts. When Edwin S. Porter began making films for Edison, he was able to integrate the trick effects more successfully, particularly with the delightful DREAMS OF A RAREBIT FIEND (1906), which ranks with the best of Melies and de Chomon’s work in terms of technical effects if not pure whimsy and a sense of the pre-war innocence and fun that those French trick films convey so well. Perhaps the criticism of THE MYSTERIOUS CAFÉ boils down to the fact that it feels more like a clear imitation rather than a first-rate work of cinematic inventiveness.

The film itself was shot sometime between June 1899 and September 1900. Although it was released through Edison, the filming took place at the roof-top Vitagraph studio in Manhattan that was being employed by filmmakers J. Stuart Blackton and Alfred E. Smith during this period (before the Edison company opened its studio in the Bronx in 1904).

Recent Trends in DeMille Scholarship

2010-10-09T13:01:00.007-04:00

In a recent paper tracing the critical and public response to Cecil B. DeMille's 1915 film, THE CHEAT, I attempted to establish a connection between the promotion and publicity of that film by the Lasky Feature Play Co., and the emergence of DeMille as a cinema showman and "name" director. By examining period reviews, publicity items and promotional art, it became clear that DeMille's "Modern Drama" was a turning point in the director's career, one which would take him to unprecedented levels of recognition for a director.

It's always interesting to trace the reception of DeMille's work and of DeMille's image as a major Hollywood filmmaker, arguably its first "superstar" director. With the amount of film scholarship written on DeMille in recent years, it's worth revisiting some of the recent trends in this writing as to how DeMille and his status in the Hollywood film industry is represented. I will be presenting responses to a number of critical evaluations of DeMille's work, including Bob Birchard's Cecil B. DeMille's Hollywood and Scott Eyman's Empire of Dreams.

I wrote the following piece on April 21, 2008, in response to a book review by Richard Schickel that appeared in the previous day's edition of the LA Times. Schickel was ostensibly reviewing Simon Louvish's Cecil B. DeMille: A Life in Art, but in the process, revealed far more about his own prejudices toward DeMille's complex, often contradictory body of work:

The problem that any critic faces in attempting an objective evaluation of DeMille's work is that it's nearly impossible to sort out the political and popular baggage that his carries, just as it is almost impossible to attempt objective criticism of Steven Spielberg, or even Hitchcock and Kubrick. Their names alone evoke many pre-conceived ideas that make it difficult to step back and look at the films on an individual basis.

My response is not so much to the Louvish book (which I have not yet read),  but rather to Schickel's condescending review of the book, in which he trots  out a parade of tired cliches and criticisms about DeMille that are hard to  support when one actually takes the time to watch his films. Louvish is not  one of my favorite writers, but he does write with enthusiasm about his  subjects, and I applaud him for tackling the vast career of Cecil B.  DeMille, one of the most spectacular figures to ever work in the medium. I would disagree that DeMille "lost whatever claim to artistry he might have  made" when he turned to the spectacle film. Although he didn't become  associated with spectacle until at least "The Ten Commandments" and "The  King of Kings", and more fully with his sound-era historical epics,  DeMille's work was rooted in Victorian theatre where he had his first stage  experience. As for the image that DeMille perpetuated on and off the set, it  was merely a continuation of the showmanship that was an essential part of  Victorian spectacle (and, specifically, the work of DeMille's mentor,  producer David Belasco). Far from being a joke in the industry, DeMille was  one of its supreme masters, dating back to even his very first works.  Perhaps even before Griffith, DeMille was recognized for his groundbreaking  skill (granted, some of this may have been due to this theatrical  background). "The Squaw Man", "The Cheat", "Joan the Woman" and a number of  his other films from this period stand out among the works being done by  other directors.

When Schickel talks about DeMille being "laughed at" behind his back, he is,  of course, projecting his own superior attitudes toward DeMille's  undoubtedly old-fashioned but immensely successful popular spectacle. This  kind of thinking is what is precisely tired and worn-out. The DeMille model  is still alive and well in today's spectacle, only it isn't being done as  well anymore precisely because today's filmmakers are afraid to go to the  lengths that DeMille was willing to in order to create the largest scale  possible. Today's CGI-models and non-entity performers cannot compete with  the scale sets and larger-than-life performances that DeMille offered, no  matter how hard they try. It's easy for Schickel to take this dismissive  tone toward DeMille's work, but completely lazy as writing or journalism.  His 1956 version of "The Ten Commandments" stills draws 'em in every year  when it is shown on TV. (The one year that ABC decided to try showing their  own, CGI-filled version instead, protests were so loud that it was pulled  the following year and DeMille's version was given its place back on the  air). I popped in my DVD of "Unconquered" several months ago, just to check  out the image quality, and instead of just watching a few minutes, I  immediately put aside my plans for the evening and watched the entire 2 1/2  hour film, as I could quite literally not tear myself away from the spectacle and  adventure of it all. My favorite period of DeMille's work is his American history cycle from 1937-1952, in which he tackles the American West, the  building of the railroad, World War II, and even the American Circus in "The  Greatest Show on Earth", possibly the most clear continuation of Victorian  spectacle that directly paralleled DeMille's work in cinema.

Rather than describe DeMille's films as "elephantine works crumbling in the  desert", Schickel should instead see that DeMille is more relevant than  ever. He bridged the artistry of filmmaking combined with popular appeal to  create grand spectacle of the highest order. Schickel instead trots his  shopworn excuses for lazy criticism, casually dismissing DeMille out of hand  with minimal attention to his actual works to back up any of his derision.

FEEL MY PULSE (1928)

2010-10-05T19:28:00.005-04:00

The Silent Clowns series kicked off its "First Ladies of Laughter" series for the fall/winter 2010 season with a delightful Bebe Daniels comedy, FEEL MY PULSE, from 1928. The series had its first screening in a great new venue-The Bruno Walter Auditorium at the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts at Lincoln Center. As always, Ben Model provided great musical accompaniment, and the feature was followed by an informative Q&A with Bruce Lawton and Steve Massa.

The film is apparently one of Daniels' very few surviving late-20s Paramount features. A magnificent light comedienne, Daniels captures the zest and energy of the best screwball comedy actresses (Carole Lombard, Irene Dunne) combined with a great sense for physical comedy (and some of the moments of slapstick are quite impressive and expertly timed!) This is perhaps not surprising considering that director Gregory LaCava would later get such great performances out of many a performer in some of the definitive 30s screwball masterpieces.

The film's plot seems to exist solely as an excuse to set up one comic sequence after another. After being doted on and kept locked up in a germ- and excitement-free environment her whole life, Barbara Manning (Daniels) inherits a sanitarium on her 21st birthday, and upon arrival, it turns out it has been overrun by bootleggers, led by William Powell in a fun early performance. Richard Arlen is the reporter who has infiltrated the bootleggers to provide an "inside story" on rum-running. Realizing that Daniels will turn them all in to the police if she uncovers their operation, Powell and company must pose as a doctor and his patients, respectively, in order to continue their business. An exciting slapstick finale rounds things out, complete with a cute wrap-up gag that brings this slight but fun story to a close.

What's remarkable is how much of the humor of FEEL MY PULSE is conveyed through intertitles. By 1928, silent films had become increasingly reliant on titles to convey dialogue as opposed to the kind of descriptive, expository titles that had been more common in the 1910s and early part of the decade. As a result, there are scenes in FEEL MY PULSE that seem to cry out for sound. One finds oneself mentally "filling in" William Powell's voice. It was certainly perfectly-suited to his charming and debonair character, and even when playing a villainous character, as he does here, it's impossible not to like Powell. I've always argued that he was a more successful light comic than even Cary Grant, and there are a couple of moments in this film, such as a knowing glance at the camera at one point, where he virtually steals the show with his understated acting style.

Charles Sellon puts in an appearance, too. Most familiar to moviegoers as Uncle Ned in the Shirley Temple vehicle, BRIGHT EYES, and of course as Mr. Muckle in W.C. Fields' IT'S A GIFT (both from 1934), Sellon had a long career in silents, too. Another fun performance comes from Heinie Conklin, veteran of many two-reel comedies, here playing a perpetually intoxicated gentleman who shares a scene with Daniels in which she takes her first drink, with hilarious consequences. Bruce Lawton commented on how nice it was to see Conklin get this little scene to showcase his full comic talents. What's remarkable is how well-timed this scene is, even though it has to rely on intertitles for what could have been some really funny, wild drunken comic banter between the two. Conklin stays so perfectly in character throughout that his, and Bebe's, increasingly rambunctious singing and carrying-on becomes quite infectious, not unlike Laurel and Hardy's experience with laughing gas in LEAVE 'EM LAUGHING (1928). The final sequence is structured in a thrilling "race to the rescue" pattern that includes a marvelous visual gag that borders on the surreal-as Daniels subdues her pursuers with an entire bottom of chloroform, causing them to fall down the stairs (and in the case of one performer, to do a full back-flip) in slow motion, courtesy of undercranking.

Also on the program were two Harold Lloyd shorts in which Bebe Daniels acted as his leading lady. ALL ABOARD (1917) is an early Lloyd short with the "glass" character, and features some good comic by-play with Snub Pollard. ASK FATHER (1919) is a fun comedy with Lloyd trying to get an appointment with his girlfriend's father to ask his permission to marry his daughter. He faces repeated ejections from the office, and coming up with one ingenious method after the next to get past security. The film also contains the kind of gag that Lloyd frequently engaged in that I find takes away a bit from his work; specifically, using a convenient device for the sake of a gag. In this instance, there just happens to be a costume shop located right next to the father's office, giving Lloyd an excuse to gain quick access to a female disguise. The problem with such gags is that they do not arise naturally from the situation, but instead give a strong sense of feeling forced or convenient, especially since it is never referred to before or after in the film.

FEEL MY PULSE is a great example of the sophisticated heights to which silent comedy had scaled by the end of the 1920s. It's a rare treat to see Bebe Daniels in one of her feature films, and the film serves as a reminder of what a really underrated comic talent she was.

Information on the films in the "First Ladies of Laughter" series can be found at The Silent Clowns Website.

The March of Time

2010-10-01T23:34:00.007-04:00

Raymond Fielding's history of the landmark news series "The March of Time" is an essential work in understanding the developing role of documentary.

The March of Time used a series of re-enactments of current events to dramatize them and present them in a kind of heightened representation to audiences, first on radio and then in a series of newsreels that played theatrically. The landmark series was hugely influential in New Deal culture, not least of all on Orson Welles, who appeared on the radio version and of course would incorporate the "March of Time" newsreel style into his homage, "News on the March" in Citizen Kane.

Fielding does a remarkable job in contextualizing the March of Time newsreel within the standard news presentations of the day, and draws heavily on interviews with a number of subjects, including producer Louis de Rochemont, in examining the objectives of the series, its methods of presenting news through re-enactments, and the changing styles and expectations of documentary news recording that eventually rendered the March of Time obsolete.

In its methods of heightening representation through re-enactment and staging, The March of Time could be argued to be the last of the actualitie tradition, at least in the United States. There are strong similarities between the staged historial re-enactments of the Edison company, for instance, such as Shooting Captured Insurgents or The Execution of McKinley's Assassin which place them in a tradition that is totally alien to today's news formats, and also alien to prevailing documentary traditions, dating back to at least the Cinema Verité movement and the work of filmmakers like Jean Rouch and Edgar Morin, which call for "objective recording" at any cost (or, more accurately, the illusion of objective recording).

Fielding's research into this newsreel, and particularly its role in delivering current events to movie audiences of the period, is a fascinating look into the constantly changing ideas of what constitutes "documentary", and what audiences are willing to accept as factual reporting.

RIP Claude Chabrol (1930-2010)

2010-09-12T12:15:00.002-04:00

The Suburbanite (1904)

2010-09-06T19:21:00.001-04:00

The Suburbanite must rank as one of the finest early screen comedies. Produced by the American Mutoscope and Biograph company, the film demonstrates a level of inventiveness that was largely unmatched by the Edison company during the same year. Directed by Wallace McCutcheon, who split his directing responsibilities with Edwin S. Porter at Edison, the film is a remarkable display of pacing and narrative.

The film opens with a family moving to “a sweet little home in the country”, as the film’s opening title tells us. There follows an establishing shot of the family walking down a sidewalk toward the camera before entering their new home, which is framed on the left of the screen. It is an interesting use of spatial depth within the frame, but also demonstrates the tendency to let an entire shot run for an often unnecessarily long duration.

Next, a moving truck arrives, with the furniture precariously placed in the back. There follows a series of scenes of the moving men carelessly tossing the furniture of the truck and smashing it as it hits the ground. The film plays like an early slapstick comedy, with the moving men displaying a hilariously callous attitude toward their customers. There is the arrival of the mother-in law, and the hiring of a new maid, who proceeds to wreak havoc in the house until the police have to be called to haul her away!

The film’s exteriors were shot in Asbury Park, New Jersey, with interiors taken at Biograph’s 14th St. studio. Wallace McCutcheon is one of the more interesting filmmakers working in the pre-Griffith period. It’s difficult, too, to separate his contributions from those of Porter on the films that they collaborated on, but The Suburbanite is evidence of his ability to structure narrative and especially demonstrates a skill with comedy. McCutcheon’s name appears in connection with many of the more narrative-driven films on which Porter is also credited. Porter’s solo directorial efforts include films like Coney Island at Night and Three American Beauties, both of which are splendid visual spectacles (the latter including a gorgeous use of hand-tinting). On the evidence of The Suburbanite, as well as the Edison/Porter films on which he is credited, it is perhaps worth re-considering Wallace McCutcheon’s role in the continued development of editing-based narrative filmmaking.

Program Notes on NYU Fall 2010 Cinematheque #1

2010-09-04T16:52:00.009-04:00

Skyscrapers of New York City, from the North River (Edison, 1903)
3 minutes at 18 fps; photographed by Blair Smith.
One of the more interesting “early New York” subjects, this consists of a traveling shot taken from the Hudson River of the skyline of Manhattan. The film is mostly of interesting for its views of the harbor, which is seen most prominently. It takes on what is essentially a “travelogue” approach to showing the scenery, and could even be described as part of the “phantom ride” genre so popular during this early period. It offers an interesting distinction from later “city symphonies” in that it records the view in a single take without imposing a point of view or emphasizing certain “themes” through selective editing.

Interboro Subway and Grand Central Station (American Mutoscope & Biograph, 1905)
4 minutes at 24 fps; photographed by G.W. (Billy) Bitzer.
The best of the early New York films, this film presents audiences with a haunting trip along the Interboro subway line from 14th St. to 42nd St. The print screened came from the William K. Everson Collection, and featured narration by Paul Killiam (although it was screened silent). In the narration, Killiam notes that the film was shot late at night, after the subway had stopped running, to take advantage of the express track so that a second train could follow alongside carrying the lighting equipment. He also notes that the passengers seen waiting on the platform are in fact paid extras, which does explain why they seem so unfazed at the presence of the camera. As a side note, Killiam mentions that at that time in the history of the New York subway, men and women were required to ride in separate cars, and that hats were required in order to be permitted to ride the subway at all!

A third train, carrying the camera, was used to follow the train that we see on-screen. The film was shot by Billy Bitzer for the Biograph company. Although it can be characterized as a “phantom ride” film, this seems to be a more complex work, and comes relatively late in that tradition in any case. It also demonstrates perhaps the greater lengths that the Biograph company went in handling the logistics of this fairly complex production.

This film is also a good reminder that early films often contained far more elements of fiction than we often realize. On the surface an “actualitie”, this could equally be characterized as a piece of fiction if we take into account the extent to which it is “acted” and “staged”.

A Bronx Morning (1931)
11 minutes at 20 fps; by Jay Leyda
Jay Leyda made this film in the “city symphony” tradition that was so popular in late 1920s. Feature-length examples include Walter Ruttman’s Berlin: Symphony of a City (1927) and Dziga Vertov’s Man with a Movie Camera (1929). Leyda, of course, studied under Eisenstein and was thoroughly schooled in the tradition of montage editing, of which A Bronx Morning is a strong example within the American avant garde.

Owing perhaps something to the earlier Manhatta, Leyda's film is a study of the morning routine of the residents of the Bronx. It encapsulates the issues of modernity that were being dealt with in many avant garde and Modernist works in the cinema at this time. Unlike Manhatta, it takes on more of a pseudo-documentary approach, while maintaining an interesting, highly stylized visual approach to both the cinematography and editing.

However, whereas Paul Strand’s Manhatta focuses largely on large, imposing urban spaces and the concept of alienation and impersonalization, Leyda’s film tends to focus more on people, and emphasizes something of a community aspect among the Bronx residents whose morning routine he captures on film. And of course, Leyda’s films forgoes the prosaic intertitles of Strand’s film, which brings it closer to its subject and takes on a more genuine “participant” point of view as opposed to Strand’s “observer” one.

Pickup on South Street (20th Century-Fox, 1953)
78 minutes; produced by Jules Schremer; directed by Samuel Fuller; screenplay by Samuel Fuller from a story by Dwight Taylor; music by Leigh Harline; photographed by Joe MacDonald; edited by Nick DeMaggio; art direction, George Patrick, Lyle Wheeler.
Cast: Richard Widmark (Skip McCoy), Jean Peters (Candy), Thelma Ritter (Moe), Murvyn Vie (Tiger), Richard Kiley (Joey), Willis B. Bouchey (Zara), Milburn Stone (Det. Winoki), George E. Stone, Roger Moore, Heinie Conklin.
Samuel Fuller could always be counted on to deliver a strong, tight piece of cinema, and this film must rank as his finest work. This Cold War-era thriller finds newly-released pickpocket Richard Widmark implicated in a case of espionage when the purse he picks turns out to contain some microfilm with top-secret government information on it! Torn between looking out for himself and looking out for his country, Widmark puts his skills to use to outwit the bad guys and set things straight for himself with the law in the process.

Shot partly on gritty New York locations, Fuller keeps the pace moving at an exciting speed until it reaches its thrilling climax with a thrilling fight sequence in the subway. There are some scenes of nerve-wracking suspense, such as when Widmark must slip his hand into the jacket of the spy on the subway and steal his gun. Fuller also takes a subversive approach to the patriotism of the period, with Widmark initially more interested in looking out for his own interests than those of the law whom he’s being asked to cooperate with, and who also want nothing more than to throw him into prison for life. There’s the famous anecdote Fuller told about the controversial moment in which Widmark asks the cops, “Are you waving the flag at me?” after they invoke his responsibilities to his country as a reason for him to confess to his crime. Fuller mentioned that the original line was “Are you waving the god damn flag at me”? When studio chief Darryl F. Zanuck expressed concern over the blatantly un-patriotic nature of the line and suggested it be altered, Fuller responded sarcastically that he would change the line to “Are you waving the flag at me?” In any case, that’s how it ended up in the film, and is certainly an interesting moment considering the political tone of the period.

David Cronenberg: "Crash" and "eXistenZ"

2010-08-28T19:11:00.002-04:00

Crash is, in many ways, David Cronenberg’s most complex work, despite the fact that it works from the single premise of characters for whom car crashes become sexual experiences. EXistenZ represents a characteristic return to Cronenberg’s earlier work. In many ways, it is Videodrome with videogames in place of television.

Cronenberg’s decision to adapt and film J.G. Ballard’s novel is an interesting counterpart to his decision to film Naked Lunch, in many ways an equally unfilmable work. Crash presents a challenge in that in its subject matter. As Ballard is quoted as saying in the “Crash” article by Chris Rodley, it was “the first pornographic novel based on technology.” In the film, Cronenberg takes an objective view of sexuality and of intercourse in particular that is both very unusual but also refreshing to see in a film. It mirrors the same objectivity with which he presented the disease and disease-spreaders in his earlier films, particularly Shivers. In the Film Comment piece, Cronenberg draws a comparison of the film with Shivers as well: “I have to be aware of the voyeuristic element in all film. I was very conscious of that doing Shivers, seeing into peoples’ apartments”. In the “Crash” article, Cronenberg is quoted as saying “I want to show the unshowable. Speak the unspeakable”. His approach here is disturbing in that it shows a very controversial idea in such an objective light, which is most likely where the film’s critics based most of their outrage against it from. ExistenZ is a far less controversial film, but deals with voyeurism through electronic media, which is no doubt part of the appeal of “interactive” gaming as depicted in the film and as exists in the online community.

Cronenberg argues that the film contains a science fiction element. “The conceit that underlies some of what is maybe difficult or baffling about Crash, the sci-finess, comes from Ballard anticipating a future pathological psychology.” I agree with Cronenberg’s assessment in that he provides the film with a very cold, detached sense of time and place which adds to the almost science-fictional nature of the characters’ psychology. This is particularly evident in scenes taking placing on the highway, such as the finale, in which Catherine and James have sex on the side of the highway after experience a car crash, and the traffic goes on around them, uninterrupted and unnoticing. It is scenes like this that give the film this almost other-wordly, “sci-fi” element.

Crash is very much an existentialist film. The characters are all portrayed as being very much in control of their own lives, and choosing to participate in a dangerous pursuit of sexual pleasure. An example is the character of Vaughn, who is killed after driving his car over the railing onto the highway below. Also, the death of Seagrave earlier in the film while trying to re-create the Jayne Mansfield crash serves an example of the lengths to which these characters will go. Both of these scenes also present an interesting glimpse of the objectivity of the world around these characters. During the first crash when Seagrave is killed, the police seem not to care at all that pictures are being taken and that the characters pose in front of the wrecked vehicles. It takes the idea of “slowing down to look at a car crash” to extremes. After Vaughn’s death, there is a similarly unconcerned attitude from drivers passing by.

The film shares its presentation of the pursuit of sexual pleasure with Shivers, in which characters pursued sex to outrageous extremes after being infected with the parasites. Crash gives the viewer similar images, such as the staged car crashes between Vaughn and Seagrave at which a small audience turns out to watch as if it is both entertaining and sexually gratifying. In the Film Comment piece, Cronenberg addresses the issue of pornography, saying that while the book of “Crash” has been called techno-porn, which he defines as the “kind of obsessive, narrowly focused writing where sex and technology are discussed almost to the total exclusion of anything else”. What is accomplished in the film is a sense of isolation of the main characters from the “rest of the world”, in that their actions, in many ways very extreme actions, seem to draw no attention or response from those around them (who are always kept very much in the background at any rate). Intriguingly, the characters in ExistenZ lead a similarly detached lifestyle. In that film, they are constantly blurred between reality and the fictional world of the video game, which complicates matters. The concept of physical pain and infection is also blurred in both of these films: in Crash, death is seen as something to be achieved, and in ExistenZ, the concept of infection, in the scene where the pod disappears into Pikel’s spine, is dismissed with “Don’t panic, it’s just a game”. Unable to distinguish between the reality and fiction, even disease becomes completely ambiguous as to its ramifications on the flesh. In the “Cineaste” interview, Cronenberg mentions that he has “never been pessimistic about technology”. Indeed, while both films seem to deal with potentially horrifying aspects of their respective technologies, neither condemn it. In fact, there is a strangely triumphant feeling to the ending of both films representing at least a step toward a successful merging of flesh and technology.

The sexuality of ExistenZ is particularly interesting in comparison with Crash. In Crash, it is the idea of a car crash that is sexually arousing. In ExistenZ, that same response is manifested through the playing of a video game. This fits well with Cronenberg’s theme of sexuality in nearly every conceivable circumstance. Compared with Crash, however, it is far more subdued and less outrageous in its very ideas. Far from being a sci-fi concept, I would argue that the interaction between people in the actual 21st century gaming community is not that far removed from the relationship that forms between Pikel and Allegra in the film.

The issue of entertainment is a very subtly explored theme in Crash. The characters are essentially bored with their lives, which is why they seek new, “thrilling” sexual pleasures, which are also a form of entertainment. In the interview between Ballard and Cronenberg, it is mentioned that Ballard called the book a “grim report on the emergence of what he calls ‘nightmare logic’, in the affectless, media-saturated landscape of the late ‘60s”. In this sense, there is a somewhat prophetic element to the story in that, in the years since it was published in 1973, the options for entertainment through the media has reached new levels of saturation to the point at which every conceivable avenue has been explored in the name of entertainment, fun and pleasure. Cronenberg’s influence from Marshall McLuhan explains how he emphasized these points in his film adaptation, which manages to present the settings in a very bland, bleak kind of presentation, and stressing that the characters seek fun to outrageous extremes. The thrill and sexual pleasure of a car crash has become their only recourse to find something new. Cronenberg’s film is interesting when placed in a cultural and technological context, as it appeared just before the Internet, via the World Wide Web, became accessible to average computer users, and just prior to its transformation into the most heavily-saturated form of media in terms of sheer content and user interaction. The science fiction elements of the story and the film contain, like all good science-fiction, prophetic elements about human nature, society and technology that only become more relevant with time. Ballard offers an interesting viewpoint on the significance of the car crashes as related to sexuality: “Young men, in particular, have to grapple not just with the car as they drive, but with their own hot emotions. The car, the experience of driving, also plays into the hands of all kinds of unconscious fantasies-of transcendence, of death. I think the car plays a special role in the twentieth-century psyche for that reason.” The connection between technology and the individual is a very postmodern idea of how the user of the technology allows that same technology to define them and act as an extension of their psychology. Regarding the accusations of the film as pornography, Ballard says that “The sort of stylization that you see in, say, Mapplethorpe’s photography…doesn’t seem that far removed from the stuff you pick up in the Sunday supplement magazines these days”. He calls Crash part of the process of “normalizing the psychopathic”, which is what makes the film uncomfortable viewing for its critics, in that it takes situations that seem outrageous and even pornographic and normalize them. Cronenberg’s own take on it is that “it’s very clear to me that technology is us. So merging with technology-our bodies merging with metal-is us merging with us, with different aspects of ourselves.” Cronenberg’s statements reflect the blurred line between humanity and technology that has emerged so strongly during the late 20th century and only has become more blurred in the 21st century. These postmodernist ideas run through his work since Videodrome at least, and are very strong here. In ExistenZ, McLuhan’s influence permeates the film. It is an examination of these ideas of postmodern media throughout. In the film, Cronenberg gives us the “Realist” group, seeking freedom from the technology. Cronenberg compares them with Luddites in the Cineaste article, and also states that “I let the Realists have their say, but if you allowed them to have total power it would mean the end of art”. This assessment of the role of technology is essential to the film and to Cronenberg’s work in general. Destroying the technology is not the solution to the problems that manifest themselves in it. Like Max Renn in Videodrome, it is the merging of flesh and technology that allows for taking control of it. The notion of videogame designers as superstars gives us one example of this emphasis on the importance of media in the characters’ lives. In the Cineaste article, Cronenberg compares the videogame designer Allegra with an artist to explain her emotional investment in her work: “She’s allowed to. After all, it’s her game, she created it. Allegra is not just another game player. She’s an artist and this is her creation”. Cronenberg is essentially suggesting that there are different expectations between the artist and the audience. Certainly, the videogame designers in EXistenZ contain strong leadership qualities, elevating them to a quite powerful status within the story. ExistenZ also presents a concept that is quickly becoming a reality in real-world, 21st century technology-the issue of preserving knowledge/data that is stored in an electronic medium. In this case, Allegra’s game program is stored entirely on a pod that becomes fried after it is plugged into Pikel’s spine, and he experiences a neurosurge that fries the pod. The immediate panic and sense of permanent loss at the destruction of the pod containing this information addresses the serious question of the reliability of electronic media as a storage device, especially of precious knowledge that cannot be retrieved. In the film, this has a detrimental affect on the dissemination and continuation of ideas. Further postmodern media themes include the playing of video games becoming an emotional experience, which, again, in many real-world cases has proven to be a genuine problem, with humans becoming dependent through relationships formed entirely in an electronic setting. The Bioports are a perfect representation of the merging of flesh and videogame media. Allegra’s line at the ski lodge, “No one skis anymore”, is a perfect summation of the replacement of electronic media and video over all physical entertainment.

Crash is less oriented on the role of the scientist and science on technology, although it does contain strong and pervasive psychological examinations of its characters. The very idea of sexual pleasure through car crashes is, in itself, a variation on Cronenberg’s favorite idea of emergent evolution. The psychology of the characters, in a sense, has become “mutated”. Emergent evolution is also present in ExistenZ through the two-headed insect. It also presents an interesting variation on the character of the scientist, this time in the form of Gas, the mechanic, who becomes like a surgeon as he installs the pod into Pikel’s spine. His mechanic’s tools become like surgical tools, and the entire process is immediately reminiscent of surgery. Pikel is momentarily concerned about the sanitation of the tools, and the possibility of contracting a disease through infection. This also draws an interesting parallel between science and automotives, two of Cronenberg’s favorite themes. The imagery of sexual organs is also very strong in ExistenZ, right down to the small orifice on Pikel’s spine that recalls the vaginal opening in Max Renn’s stomach in Videodrome. The fear of inserting foreign objects into these openings is conveyed nearly every time they are seen in the film, such as when Pikel admits to never having had a Bioport installed due to a phobia of body penetration. Also, significantly, the orifice on Allegra’s back becomes sexualized for Pikel, who is not even sure how to react to it.

The theme of self-defense comes into ExistenZ moreso than in Crash. There are a number of moments, such as Pikel defending himself from the mechanic/surgeon, pulling away from Allegra at uncertain moments, and the fear of introducing foreign objects into his body. It is very much about protecting himself from the uncertainty and blurred reality of the videogame world as it is from the physical manifestations of the technology being installed on his body.

Cronenberg, since making Dead Ringers and certainly since Naked Lunch, has taken a more internalized approach to the characters’ psychology and transformations. As Andrew Hultkrans says in “Body Work”, “Cronenberg has distilled his primary theme-psychological and bodily mutation-dispensing with rebellious flesh and twitching viscera in favor of far more unnerving internal transformations”. Whereas in, say, The Fly, the transformation is almost entirely physical, or at least represented physically and externally, the transformation between psychology and technology, and sexuality and technology in Crash is almost entirely internal. Even the sexual release found in the crashes results from the ideas rather than the physical contact. This focus on the internal reduces the number of visual “horrors” that were present in the form of parasites, mutations, wounds, and physical transformations that played such a key part in Cronenberg’s work up through Dead Ringers, which was something of a transitional piece into the internalized sci-fi elements presented more thoroughly in the hallucinogenic imagery of Naked Lunch. Crash dispenses with the outrageous imagery in favor of outrageous ideas. Ballard states that “it’s the idea of the car crash that is sexually exciting-not the crash itself”. Cronenberg’s admitted fascination with cars and automotives lends the story a personal connection that helps the viewer relate with the psychology of the characters, of James and Catherine in particular, who are becoming more experienced in the sexualized car crashes. Cronenberg, however, states in “Body Work” that “I really had to suppress myself…in the sense that the movie is not at all a car-enthusiast movie”. While the film certainly takes an unconventional approach to cars and automotives, I would argue that Cronenberg’s knowledge of the subject lent the film a certain level of accuracy and personal investment that is reflected throughout. ExistenZ offers a fascinating variation on flesh-technology aspect of Cronenberg’s work, in that it visually returns to the style of Videodrome for it’s sci-fi imagery. While the science fiction of Crash was entirely psychological, in ExistenZ it returns to the visual, and in this particular case, a very vivid visual style that is unmistakably Cronenberg’s. The handgun directly recalls the flesh-gun of Videodrome. The video game controllers and consoles immediately recall the pulsating, fleshy videotapes in that earlier film as well. ExistenZ is Cronenberg’s most overtly visual film since at least Naked Lunch, and uses the visual storytelling expression possibly stronger than any of his work since either Videodrome or The Fly. Contrasting this with the psychological aspects of Crash, it appears as a much more highly stylized work. In true Cronenberg fashion, he forces the viewer to examine the psychological and internal differences between what distinguishes the “real” world from the “videogame” world. This is a contrast to most films that depict the world of the videogame in purely stylistic terms, such as Tron, but lacking the same psychological and internalized distinctions directly related to the characters and their communication and interaction with their surroundings.

Catherine’s relationship with the car crashes is the thrust of the story in Crash, in which she attempts to connect psychologically and physically to the crash sexuality. There is a moment in the film in which she and Vaughn have sex in the back of the car while her husband James drives, and there is a distinctly uncomfortable moment when she seems to realize that the she does not necessarily want the experience as much as she thought she did. She struggles to experience the pleasure of the incident, and the last scene of the film is a somewhat ambiguous statement of what she is trying to achieve. Her words can be interpreted as expressing a desire to die in the car crash, or to experience a sexual release through the crash. The sexuality in EXistenZ is permeated with fear, in many cases-of penetration, of disease, of expectations, etc. Pikel is an interesting character, in that his never having played a video game is subtly equated with sexual experience. In this sense, he is a virginal character like Seth Brundle in The Fly, and, like Seth, once he has had the experience, becomes over-the-top in his pursuits. This is another connection Cronenberg is making between the flesh and technology-that the experience of playing one of these video games is a sexual experience, and is presumably just as rewarding on different levels. The pursuit of freedom in ExistenZ drives the protagonists through the game world in an attempt to protect reality. This theme has many parallels to the “New Flesh” in Videodrome, which was also a story of a revolution in an existential vein. Indeed, Cronenberg’s existentialist philosophies are very strong in this film, offering an interesting view on the role of free will inside the videogame. Humans “speak” the language and dialogue of their characters, offering the ultimate manifestation of the flesh through the video image, and questioning what kind of free will can exist under such circumstances. Cronenberg addresses the controversy over depicting the human form in many middle Eastern cultures in the Cineaste piece: “There are also some religions that prohibit the creation of art using human imagery, because God made man in the image of himself and it’s sacrilege to portray God and therefore it’s also sacrilege to portray man”. In the world of postmodern media, this is becoming an increasingly difficult concept to uphold.

Crash succeeds as another remarkably visual film about the internal, much as Naked Lunch had been. Presenting a complex exploration of Cronenberg’s philosophies on sexuality and technology merged with Ballard’s original work, it is another successful adaptation reinforcing Cronenberg’s position as an auteur filmmaker. Finally, it challenges the viewer by presenting an objective viewpoint on subject matter that is most unconventional and uncomfortable in order to get inside the psychology of the character’s behaviors, telling both a compelling story about linking technology and sexual pleasure and the existential philosophies involved in the process, and offering a very relevant portrayal of postmodern ideas between humans and technology in the future. ExistenZ is a return to an earlier visual style for Cronenberg, but he merges this with the science-fiction psychological concepts explored in Crash to create a film that is both highly visually stylized and contains a detailed representation of the internal psychology of its characters and their manifestation of that psychology in the electronic medium of the videogame that they have merged with.
Sources:

Hultkrans, Andrew. “Body Work”. Artforum. Information Access Company, 1997.

Porton, Richard. “The Film Director as Philosopher: An Interview with David Cronenberg”. Cineaste. Volume/edition 24. Cineaste Publishers, Inc., 1999.

Rodley, Chris. “Crash”. Sight and Sound. British Film Institute, 1996.

Smith, Gavin. “Cronenberg”. Film Comment. Volume/edition 33. Film Society of the Lincoln Center, 1997.

Plus ca change, plus c'est la meme chose...

2010-08-24T11:35:00.006-04:00

From a "Harrison's Reports" of September 30, 1933:

On "The Power and the Glory":

"...Mr. Lasky's experiment on 'Narratage,' by which the action is presented topsy-turvy, does not seem to be a box-office smash success."

"Thus far Mr. Lasky has produced four pictures; every one of them has been an artistic success, but it seems that every one of them will prove a box office failure".

Source:
Harrison's Reports, "'About the Power and the Glory'", Vol. XV No. 39, Sept. 30, 1933.

Vaudeville, The Movies and 'Intertextuality'

2010-08-21T20:14:00.006-04:00

This demonstration film of the Edison Kinetophone, dating from 1912, presents an interesting challenge to a conventional idea of film history; specifically, the idea that silent films were somehow "deficient" and technically primitive because they lacked a soundtrack. This piece of film is strong evidence that the silent film was a unique art form unto itself that only ended because it moved toward theater at a crucial moment in its history.

Imagine, if the silent film had been totally supplanted by sound in 1912 when this film was made.

The first reaction that one might have to this thought is one of the cinema without Chaplin's pantomime, without the athletics of Douglas Fairbanks, without the passionate emoting of Valentino and Swanson, and without the visual innovations of Griffith, King and others.

The real tragedy, though, is that the sound film and the silent film were not able to co-exist, at least not for long. As W.E. Ramsey says in the film, the recording of picture and sound ensures that "those great actors and singers of today can be seen and heard 100 years from now". Consider what it would have meant to have sound films made of the Marx Bros., for instance, performing the sketches exactly as they did on the vaudeville stage. And W.C. Fields, and Ed Wynn, and Eddie Cantor. Consider being able to see and hear the great Bert Williams perform.

While many of these performers finally were able to take advantage of the sound film medium later in the 20s and into the 30s, today's audiences are only able to experience them in those later recordings. The Marx Bros. were in their 40s by the time they made their first film in 1929. Fields was 50. Imagine if their youthful and energetic performances from the vaudeville stage could have been captured for posterity. It's hard to imagine that, in the same year that Chaplin was perfecting his craft at Keystone, the Marx Bros. were performing in "Home Again". The surreal slapstick comedy world of the silent movies, and the dialogue- and music-driven comedy of the stage, seem worlds apart. Modern audiences tend to think of a 1914 Chaplin Keystone, and a Marx Bros. stage vehicle, as existing in different universes.

Yet, to the spectator of 1914, they were all part and parcel of the entertainment options available. As Charles Musser emphasizes in his historical approach of "intertextuality", no art form or cultural phenomenon exists in a vacuum. There's no reason that a spectator in 1914 could not have seen a Chaplin Keystone comedy in the afternoon, then headed to the local vaudeville theater to see The Marx Bros. perform that night.

The mind boggles.

The silent cinema of the 1910s, and the silent cinema of just a decade later, were quite different, however. The epic works of D.W. Griffith-"The Birth of a Nation" and "Intolerance", are visual works that stand apart from any previous model. Even though "The Birth of a Nation" was based on both a novel and a play, it stands on its own as an incredible achievement of a still-young medium. It's impossible to imagine the film with dialogue or sound of any kind.

Take an equally brilliant film from later in the 20s, though; "The Crowd", let's say. There are moments in the film that are purely visual and rely on the freedom of the silent camera, the image unchained from synchronized sound. The slow pan up the side of a Manhattan skyscraper, for instance, or the Coney Island sequences, are perfect examples. However, the domestic scenes between Eleanor Boardman and James Murray are certainly possible to imagine with synchronized dialogue.

In a late silent film like Lewis Milestone's "The Racket", or virtually any of the Josef von Sternberg films, you can practically feel the lack of dialogue. Although brilliantly photographed, Sternberg's late silents contain many intertitles, and even feature the characters talking to eachother in shot-reverse shot. This is a far cry from Griffith.

It was as if silent film was moving closer and closer to a point where it was about to merge with the spoken word of theatre. With the smash success of Jolson's talking films, it's no wonder that sound film caught on in lightning order during the 1928-29 period.

This is perhaps the key as to why Edison's experiments in sound never caught on. The time simply wasn't right. Walter Kerr records his own reactions to this phenomenon in his book, "The Silent Clowns", noting that while one could see and hear Eddie Cantor in a short film of 1922, he preferred to see Douglas Fairbanks in "Robin Hood"-a performance in a film that could only exist in the silent medium. While spectators would have had a yearly opportunity (at least) to see many of the great stage comedians touring in vaudeville, the Stock Market crash of 1929 brought an end to that, as vaudeville was scaled back massively, and many of its best performers went into the movies, instead. The silent film, of course, ended almost immediately. Because this entertainment was now consumed via mass media (film, radio, and later television), it also became homogenized in a way. We have no trouble thinking of Abbott and Costello and Jack Benny, say, as being part of the same entertainment scene in 1945. But trying to imagine Groucho and Chaplin co-existing in 1914 is a bit more difficult.

As the Edison Kinetophone serves as a reminder of, it's important to remember that these unique, distinctive art forms never existed in a vacuum, and instead are all part of the mix of the wonderful options of entertainment that audiences had available to them during the first thirty years of the 20th century.

"The Producers" on the Upper West Side

2010-08-03T21:15:00.003-04:00

Mel Brooks' 1968 comedy contains a sequence which must rank as one of the most sheer joyous and carefree that has ever been committed to film.

The sequence in questions occurs when Broadway impresario Max Bialystock (Zero Mostel) talks meek accountant Leo Bloom (Gene Wilder) into taking part in his scheme to over-produce a flop and abscond with the remaining funds after the show closes. The entire sequence takes place on the Upper West Side, as Max encourages Leo to come out of his shell for the first time in his life.

"The Producers" is joyous celebration of triumph in the face of failure, and no part of the film better encapsulates this philosophy than this sequence.

It begins with an establishing shot of the Manhattan skyline as the camera swoops down to Central Park. We cut immediately to a two-shot of Max and Leo walking along Central Park West. They exchange small talk, with Max coaxing Leo into the plan by encouraging him to informally call him "Max" rather than "Mr. Bialystock". Although his motives are to encourage Leo to take part on his scheme, a genuine friendship seems to be developing between the two.

Following this, Max suggests they dine "al fresco", at a hot dog cart. This scene does a remarkable job of capturing Max's theatrical sense of showmanship, as he tells the hot dog vendor to "tender our compliments to the chef", to which the vendor unceremoniously replies, "Please tender half a buck". As Max points out, "Everybody's a big shot". This is one of the key themes of the film ("When you got it, flaunt it"), contrasting the faded glory of the theatrical world of the Broadway impresario with the realities of the everyday.

The next several scenes are a wonderful montage of pure carefree carousing, establishing the friendship between Max and Leo, and the almost father-son relationship that develops between them. In an interview, Brooks once speculated that one of the reasons so many of his films deal with this theme of male friendship is that he never got to know his father well, who died when Brooks was still very young. In any case, it's certainly a major part of this film, and no part of the film does a better job in conveying this than the moment when Max emerges from a tunnel in Central Park, and beckons for Leo, who exits the tunnel holding a balloon. We next see them riding together on a carousel, and then on a boat out on the lake at Central Park, where Leo admits that he's finally happy for the first time in his life.

On top of the Empire State Building, Max shows Leo a breathtaking view of New York City, telling him, "Everything you ever wanted is down there!" At this point Leo has clearly begun his transformation. Following this is a brief comic cutaway to the outside of an adult movie theater, showing a film called "War and Piece". Leo is clearly in a state of shock, sucking on his thumb like an infant. Max tells him, "He who hesitates is poor".

This is followed by the triumphant climax to the sequence, in which Max and Leo are seated in front of the Lincoln Center Fountain at night. In a staggering long shot, Max convinces Leo to take his chances in the scheme. "But if we get caught, we'll go to prison", warns the nervous. "You think you're not in prison now?" Max asks, referring to his dull accounting job. Leo realizes this is his chance to break free. As the fountain erupts, he shouts "I'll do it". Triumphantly, he marches around the fountain, shouting "I'm Leo Bloom. I'm me! I can do anything I want!"

Few films capture a momentous burst of passion as well as this moment. The combination of Gene Wilder and Zero Mostels' performances, Brooks' dialogue, and John Morris' score, not to mention the powerful imagery of the Lincoln Center fountain at night, the moment is absolutely overwhelming.

"The Producers" rightly won an Academy Award for Best Screenplay. Not that such awards are any measure of quality, but this was truly one case where it was much deserved. This sequence remains a brilliant piece of filmmaking at every level, and does a remarkable job summing up character transformation and relationships, location, and plot points, all within a four minute succession of scenes. Both delightfully funny and economical as filmmaking, this sequence stands as a triumph in the career of Mel Brooks, and in the comedy film.

Douglas Fairbanks: The Making of a Screen Character

2010-08-02T21:05:00.009-04:00

Several months ago I had purchased one of two books in a series that was begun by the Museum of Modern Art in 1940, looking at key figures in film history. That book, "D.W. Griffith: American Film Master", by Iris Barry, reminded me that I had (or used to have) a copy of the companion book by Alistair Cooke, "Douglas Fairbanks: The Making of a Screen Character". Reading the Griffith book by Barry made me want to find my copy of the Fairbanks book, but despite digging through my book shelves several times over, I was unable to find it, and was convinced that, if I ever did in fact have a copy, it must have gotten lost.

Until this past weekend, when I moved my collection of books from my old apartment in Queens to my new place in Manhattan.

In the process of unloading the books, I came across my copy of Cooke's monograph on Fairbanks. Now that I've finally settled in, I've had a chance to read it again. What I find so remarkable about it is the obviously serious study given to Fairbanks' performance style and career.

In my review of the Griffith book, I mentioned that the facts presented are fairly rudimentary, although this is unfair because the book was intended as an overview of the career of its subject. The Fairbanks book provides an equally good overview of his career. In particular, Cooke is interested in exploring the aspects of Fairbanks' screen persona that made him unique. He discusses Fairbanks as a performer in the same tones usually reserved for Charlie Chaplin during this period of film scholarship. In addition, Cooke provides a good overview of Fairbanks' career, especially his early formative years when he arrived in Hollywood, working for D.W. Griffith among others, and establishing himself as a brilliant light comic.

Cooke discusses Fairbanks as both "The Popular Philosopher" and "The Athlete", apt descriptions of the two stages of Fairbanks career. Early on, established as a comic performer, Fairbanks' persona was an upbeat, irresistibly charming and humorous figure who mixed stunts and satire equally well. With "The Mark of Zorro" in 1920, Fairbanks shifted gears toward the swashbuckler genre, and made increasingly longer and elaborate costume films like "The Three Musketeers", "Robin Hood", and his masterpiece, "The Thief of Bagdad". Debate continues to this day whether or not Fairbanks lost something of his charm when he moved into these longer, more elaborate films, which tended to overwhelm him with enormous sets and casts of thousands.

Cooke's monograph does an excellent job at looking at both phases of his career. The book is a remarkably compact account of his career. Cooke even discusses some of his early sound work, but perhaps understandably, avoids going into too much detail on his later years (Fairbanks died just a year before this book was published).

One of the truly great movie stars, at a time when that truly meant something, Cooke's overview of Fairbanks and his shaping of his screen persona remains one of the most important pieces of appreciation of star image from Hollywood's silent era.

"Monsieur Verdoux" (1947)

2010-07-28T20:36:00.004-04:00

Few films seem to draw as sharply divided a reaction from viewers as black comedies, and this offering into the genre from Charlie Chaplin in 1947 is no exception. Watching it again, I was reminded just what a profoundly depressing film it is in many ways. Most black comedies "cop out" at the last minute by suggesting that it's only a movie, or some other device to provide an upbeat ending.

Not so with "Monsieur Verdoux".

Subtitled "a comedy of murders" and based on an idea by Orson Welles, who had suggested to Chaplin the possibility of doing a black comedy about Landru, the bluebeard serial killer, "Verdoux" was an extension of the ideas that Chaplin had explored in "The Great Dictator". The difference is that his 1940 satire on fascism was still recognizably a comedy, for all intents and purposes, despite some serious moments and a heavy-handed speech at the end. To make the subject more palatable, Chaplin wisely kept out the most gruesome aspects of the events he was dealing with (and to be fair, Chaplin later admitted to not being fully aware of the horrors taking place in concentration camps at the time).

With "Monsieur Verdoux", he explores everything from the Depression, to the rise of Nazism and fascism in Europe, and-as if this wasn't enough-hints at future Cold War conflicts! The film is Chaplin's most biting social indictment, and especially in its second half, is a relentlessly depressing and harrowing look at a man who has lost everything, including perhaps his sanity.

The film was attacked mercilessly by critics when it was released in 1947, but in the coming years came to be seen as something of a masterpiece. I would argue that it remains the one true masterpiece of Chaplin's sound period. (Bosley Crowther famously flip-flopped on his opinion of the film, dismissing it out of hand in 1947 but hailing it as one of the finest films ever made by the time it was re-released in 1964, and it included it in his book of the fifty great films in 1967).

Interestingly, despite its subject matter, the film is quite Chaplinesque. He gets to engage in playing many different identities, the kind of charade he engaged in since the Keystone days in films like "Caught in a Cabaret". The many moments of social critique can be traced to threads running throughout Chaplin's work at least going back to the comedy of class difference in "His Musical Career", and more explicitly in his 1917 Mutual comedy "The Immigrant", with its famous shot of immigrants being roped off like cattle.

One of the most brilliant aspects of the film is in the casting, especially Martha Raye as the blissfully ignorant Annabella Bonheur. At this stage of his filmmaking career, Chaplin had a knack for taking popular comics and giving them roles they could really sink their teeth into. In "The Great Dictator", for instance, Chaplin notably shared the screen with Jack Oakie, who had the role of his career as dictator Benzino Napaloni. In "Verdoux", Martha Raye is given the role she was born to play, and does so to perfection. There are those who claim that Chaplin was so concerned with his own image as a performer that he preferred to play opposite less experienced players who wouldn't upstage him. In this case, Raye proves a marvelous comic foil, and remains one of the most memorable aspects of the film.

Coming in 1947, "Monsieur Verdoux" must have seemed an absolutely terrifying film to audiences. After more than 15 years of Depression and war, audiences surely wanted to hope that it was all over, but Chaplin ends the film by almost implying that "you ain't seen nothing yet". It's no wonder the film was poorly received on initial release, especially considering the additional baggage of the Joan Barry scandal that Chaplin had just come out of. Such a bleak and cynical film would hardly be a big box office draw in any case, especially in 1940s Hollywood, but that just makes one appreciate all the more what a bold and masterful film it is.

It is one of Chaplin's most perfectly timed comedies, though, and some of the sequences are still hilarious despite their dark context. The wedding party scene, for instance, is an expertly timed piece of comedy, and all the players work in perfect rhythm with Chaplin's performance. As mentioned above, the scenes with Martha Raye are absolutely brilliant, particularly the one in which Chaplin attempts to murder her while out fishing on a boat. Watching Chaplin play Verdoux and his various aliases so perfectly, one realizes he truly was the most versatile of the "big three" silent clowns.

It is interesting to note that, this time around, Chaplin avoided using any of his old, "familiar" stock company-guys like Chester Conklin, or Hank Mann, or Henry Bergman (whom Chaplin had considered casting, but decided against because of the actor's poor health. Bergman died before the film was completed, but reportedly predicted it would be a failure). Chaplin's half-brother Wheeler Dryden turns up as a salesman, trying to sell Raye on the idea of investing in an apparatus that turns salt water into gasoline. And supposedly, among the wedding guests, is Tom Wilson, whose career with Chaplin went back to 1918, but I've never been able to spot him. (There is also a persistent rumor that Edna Purviance appears in the wedding scene as an extra, having been turned down for the role of Madame Grosnay which ended up going to Isabel Elsom, but there is no concrete evidence as to whether or not she appears in the scene).

If "Monsieur Verdoux" is a masterpiece, it's not always an easy film for viewers to accept. Aside from the difficulty of watching Chaplin play such a dark character, its bitter and depressing tone can be difficult to take. It is, however, a supreme example of black comedy, and one of the few such films that really goes all the way.

"So's Your Old Man" (1926)

2010-07-27T21:01:00.006-04:00

For many years, "So's Your Old Man" was one of the hardest W.C. Fields films to see (when I inquired about it on an online newsgroup in 2000, I was informed that only a single print of it existed in the Library of Congress). Apparently the film was recently restored by the LOC, and within the last year, it has been making the rounds at a couple venues, including the W.C. Fields exhibit at the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts at Lincoln Center. I was able to catch a screening of it at Film Forum, where it was shown in a pristine 35mm print (looking as good as it must have back in 1926!) and accompanied with a live piano score by Steve Sterner. It was shown as part of the "Hollywood on the Hudson" series, showcasing films made in the New York and New Jersey areas. (On a side note, I have to mention that the first ten minutes or so of the screening were once again marred by late arrivals and incessant moving about; why this is such a problem at Film Forum I'll never know).

What's remarkable is just how closely the film was remade by Fields in 1934, as "You're Telling Me". This silent film suffers in parts, as many late-silents do, by being a film that practically cries out for dialogue. This isn't even necessarily the case with Fields himself, but rather the expository scenes that rely heavily on dialogue to set up key plot points (there are several scenes that seem to go on too long, with the actors even talking to eachother in shot/reverse shot!) This tendency mars a lot of late-silents for me (Milestone's "The Racket" being another key example), and it's interesting to note that the 1934 sound remake might even be a more visual film than this one!

The premise is rather complicated: Sam Bisbee (Fields), a crackpot inventor, has perfected his latest wonder: a shatter-proof windshield. His daughter (Kittens Reichert) is engaged to be married to Robert Murchison (Charles "Buddy" Rogers, a year before his breakthrough performance in "Wings"). Mrs. Murchison (Julia Ralph) comes to call on Mrs. Bisbee (Marcia Harris, in a really funny performance) and is horrified when she meets her bumbling, coarse husband. The engagement is called off, and Bisbee heads off for Washington DC to make good by selling his shatter-proof glass to an auto company.

Once there, he proceeds to create disaster when his car is moved from the no-parking zone without his knowledge, and he proceeds to hurl bricks at the windows of an identical car that has parked nearby. With the police, and two angry auto owners, out to get him, Bisbee takes off and catches the train home. While on the train, he attempts to commit suicide, but fails repeatedly. This is one of the best-played scenes in the picture, with Fields reactions to his fellow traveler shaving with a dangerously sharp razor being some of the funniest moments in the film. On the same train is Princess Lescaboura of Spain, whom Bisbee meets when he believes she, too, is about to commit suicide. After talking her out of it, and explaining his own problems to her, she decides to help him by showing up in his hometown and restoring his standing in the community, saving the day for Fields' business deal as well as securing the happiness of his daughter.

Now comes the film's best scene: the golf tournament. This routine was filmed two other times by Fields, once in 1930 as "The Golf Specialist" (in which Al Wood played the caddy) and again in "You're Telling Me", this time with the great Tammany Young as his stooge. Here, though, Fields plays the scene with William "Shorty" Blanche, who'd appeared with Fields onstage in the sketch from which this scene was taken, and it's a real treat to see the two perform together. The scene works surprisingly well in the silent film format, and in some ways works even better because of the heightened emphasis on the visual nature of the scene, although one does miss Fields' muttering as he struggles with every conceivable obstacle.

The final scene, which was repeated in "You're Telling Me" and was later copied by Rodney Dangerfield in "Easy Money", has Fields bidding farewell to his family, who now look up to him as something of a hero, then sneaking off to the garage for a drink with his buddies. It's a delightfully satisfying conclusion to the film, and neatly wraps up this little comedy of wish-fulfillment very nicely.

This film was directed by the talented comedy director Gregory LaCava, a good personal friend of Fields'. It's tempting to view the film in light of the 1934 remake, because that version is one of Fields' best vehicles from that period, and works very creatively with sound in a number of scenes, including the shaving scene on the train, and the final golf tournament. Interestingly, one of the best scenes from the "You're Telling Me" that is totally absent from "So's Your Old Man" is the opening sequence in which Fields comes home, drunk, and uses one of his inventions to guide his key into the keyhole. This is a purely visual scene that would have worked well in a silent comedy, but it only goes to show the ways in which Fields was continually adapting and maturing his own cinematic style over the years. Even though Fields never took directing credit, he was heavily involved in all aspects of the construction of his films, and it's not an exaggeration to say that Fields' films improved as he had the opportunity to develop and expand on ideas he'd worked with before. A minor difference, too, is that in the remake, Fields' invention becomes puncture-proof tires rather than the shatter-proof windshields of the original. Another difference is in the pet that Fields picks out to bring home to his wife as a peace offering: in this film, it's a pony; in the remake, it's an ostrich. Frankly, the ostrich is much funnier, and the scene where Fields and the ostrich both bury their heads in the ground works much better than the scene in this film in which he and the pony munch on grass. One other delightful bit that is present in the remake, but not the original, is another highly visual scene in which Fields rolls a tire along the sidewalk, followed by a bunch of neighborhood kids. It's a fun, spontaneous kind of scene that adds a real dimension of sympathy to Fields' character.

It's perhaps unfair, though, to criticize any aspect of this film in relation to its sound remake. As a piece of silent comedy, it alternates between good moments of visual and physical humor (and Fields was still quite capable of rough physical comedy at this point in his career) and scenes that go on just a bit too long without the aid of spoken expository dialogue.

In "The Silent Clowns", Walter Kerr discusses Fields under his chapter on "The Demiclowns". He points to a key problem with Fields' work in silent films when he notes that "the comedian could not become whole-or a star of the first magnitude-until the visual and the verbal in him stopped interrupting each other, ceased occupying separate frames" (Kerr, 295). Fields may not have been an inherently silent comedian like Chaplin or Keaton, but his unique style of comedy was visual enough that many of his best sequences work in silence, such as the golf routine here, or the sleeping porch sequence in "It's the Old Army Game" (also 1926).

If Fields' comic persona only became whole with the added dynamic of sound, it could be said that Fields' whole cinematic art only achieved its mature style with sound, too. His silent comedies are delightful films in their own right, however, and "So's Your Old Man" works as a real crowd-pleaser, if tonight's screening at Film Forum is any indication. It was a rare treat to see America's greatest screen humorist in a tailor-made vehicle, in a splendid print with an appreciative audience.

Chaplin, Carl Davis and the Movies

2010-07-23T22:32:00.003-04:00

On a warm summer night at Prospect Park in Brooklyn, I had the pleasure of watching Carl Davis conduct his scores for three Chaplin Mutual comedies on a giant, outdoor screen at the bandshell, accompanied by the full sounds of the Brooklyn Philharmonic.

Hearing Carl Davis' music performed live, and conducted by the maestro himself, was quite possibly the greatest thrill of my life. Added to this was the fact that the performance had a huge turnout, with a large, receptive audience - perfect for the three Chaplin comedies.

The evening began at 6:30 as the gates to the bandshell were opened, and we were fortunate enough to get good seats about two rows from the front. The show itself began at 7:30, with an hour-long performance by the Two Man Gentlemen Band, a novelty act featuring banjo and upright bass. This was a fun prelude to the main attraction to follow.

Following a brief intermission, it was the perfect time of the evening to start the film program. At dusk, the giant screen was rolled down, and the hosts from Celebrate Brooklyn!, the organization who puts on this series, introduced Carl Davis.

Davis introduced each film, and there was an absolute sense of magic in watching this brilliant composer, whose scores were the very first that I ever heard accompany silent films, as he led the Brooklyn Philharmonic in accompanying these brilliant comedies. I first became acquainted with Davis' music through his arrangement of the Rimsky-Korsakov "Scheherazade" for Douglas Fairbanks' "The Thief of Bagdad". Although I was only 8 years when I first heard this score, its impact on my interest in silent film was indescribable. Even more influential was the mammoth "Hollywood" series, for which Davis provided many, many musical cues, including the hauntingly beautiful theme song. It's not an exaggeration to say that Davis was one of the most profoundly influential individuals on my entire life and work.

This brings me to perhaps the best part of the evening. As the third film began, Chaplin's "Behind the Screen", set at a Hollywood movie studio, Davis' score began with that immediately recognizable "Hollywood" theme. Sitting there, watching him conduct that piece live, brought tears to me eyes and reminded me of all the reasons why I love film, why I'm here in New York, why I've pursued this passion so relentlessly for the last 18 years of my life. Hearing it brought everything into a kind of immediate, crystal clear perspective that I'm really grateful for.

The films themselves went over great with the audience, especially "One AM". This copy even included the "mountain climbing" sequence, in which the intoxicated Charlie dons a Swiss mountain climber's get-up and uses a ski and pick-ax to make his way up the staircase. It's always wonderful to see films like that with an audience.

One moment summed up the entire evening perfectly. A friend, whom I had invited to the screening, and who had not yet seen a silent film all the way through, leaned over to me, during the scene in "One AM" in which Charlie is running in place on a rotating table, and whispered in my ear, "this is amazing!"

"The Circus"

2010-07-22T11:59:00.005-04:00

In the vast body of brilliant comic work created by Charlie Chaplin, "The Circus" holds a somewhat uncertain place, coming as it does between two his towering masterworks ("The Gold Rush" and "City Lights"), and being viewed by some as a trifle, lacking the big, epic themes and emotional punch of his best work.

Rather than seeing these as flaws, I would instead place "The Circus" among Chaplin's funniest films, though not necessarily one of his best. Watching the film again, it does have several major flaws that, while hardly detracting from the humor, do keep it from reaching the heights of his best work.

To begin with what works, it should be noted upfront that "The Circus" opens with what is arguably Chaplin's most clever and funny opening scene with the exception of the assembly-line sequence in "Modern Times". We first see the Tramp, "hungry and broke", hanging around the midway. After an altercation with a pickpocket, during which Charlie temporarily ends up with a newfound wallet and pocket-watch, police give chase, and everyone finds themselves in a fun house, with its amazing mirror maze sequence (which clearly inspired the finale of Orson Welles' "The Lady from Shanghai").

This sequence is so much fun that it's almost a disappointment when it ends. Thankfully, the rest of the films maintains the fast pace of the gags.

The film works quite well up until the point where Chaplin introduces a rival for the affection of the girl. Rex, the tightrope walker (Harry Crocker, Chaplin's assistant director) is a bland and lifeless character, which I suppose is part of the point, except that the audience is asked to cheer when he ends up with the girl at the end of the film! What's worse is the way Chaplin milks totally unnecessary sympathy for his character at the end, by turning him, quite pointlessly, into a martyr. It makes for a powerful ending shot (the Tramp wistfully kicks away the tattered remains of the circus hoop and walks off into the dawn sunrise), but it's a rather cheap emotion that feels as forced as any happy ending. For a really thorough discussion of this aspect of the film, see Lloyd Fonvielle's essay on it, "The Circus".

There's also a rather odd plot point-which others have pointed out-that is never satisfactorily resolved in the scene when Rex fails to report for work and Charlie has to take his place on the tightrope-where was his character that evening, and why does it not seem to cause any repercussions for him when he returns the next night? Again, it's a forced incident to move the plot along, but hurts the sense of consistency in the characters and narrative.

I suppose if I seem like I'm dwelling on the film's flaws, it's only because I've been so vocal in my praise for what works in the film in the past. It is a very, very funny comedy, with some wonderful recurring gags (the donkey that chases Charlie hither and yon through the circus grounds, the botched magician's routine, and my personal favorite, the audition scene, in which Charlie is instructed to "go ahead and be funny").

The film can also be seen as Chaplin's exploring some theories of comedy; problem is, they're all so wildly inconsistent that trying to extract some idea as to his actual theories on comedy from the film are impossible. He suggests, on the one hand, that good comedy is "accidental" and can't be worked at, which is total nonsense given his working methods. Then, it's suggested (once he finds himself dejected over the rivalry for the girl's attention), that you can't be funny if you're feeling depressed, which certainly doesn't hold up considering that Chaplin produced this, one of his sheer funniest films, during what was undoubtedly the most stressful and upsetting period of his life. So unfortunately, one can't really take away from the film any of Chaplin's actual thoughts on the art of comedy.

Seeing the film in 35mm (a sparkling new print, thankfully) at Film Forum was a great way to gauge how the film plays with an audience. Unfortunately, the audience I saw the film with didn't quite seem to know how to behave at a silent film, with a quiet chatter running for much of the film's duration, almost as if certain viewers were mistaken in thinking that a silent film needs some kind of running commentary. Chaplin's scores for both films work quite effectively. In fact, I marveled at his ability to write full orchestral scores that manage to stay completely in the "background" and never really call attention to themselves (the vocal title tune of "The Circus" notwithstanding).

This was even more distracting in the short that preceded the film, "The Idle Class". I'm not a big fan of the Chaplin First Nationals, but this film contains some delightful sight gags, especially the moment when Chaplin, as the wealthy idler, walks into the hotel lobby without his pants, and is forced to seek refuge in a phone booth. One of the stronger First Nationals, this one was marred by the stretch-printing that Chaplin employed for the 1971 re-release. Unfortunately, the Film Forum is running the "daddy" versions. For those unfamiliar, those are the versions of the films Chaplin prepared in the 1970s for re-release, and which are viewed by his estate as his "final word" on how these films should be seen. Some of the films suffer worse from others ("The Kid" loses a full reel). "The Circus" is fully intact; the major change being the title song that Chaplin composed and sings himself. It's a pleasant song, but it can be difficult to reconcile some of the decisions that Chaplin made in altering his work to make it more palatable to 1970s audiences.

All in all, "The Circus" demands attention within the body of work created by Chaplin, even if it doesn't necessarily hold up as one of his finest achievements. It's one of his most frustrating works, in some ways, because it is so clever, so funny, that one wishes the narrative elements could have come together stronger to make it one of his masterworks.

Use of Color and Scope in "The Leopard"

2010-06-29T16:48:00.002-04:00

The Leopard can be seen as another Visconti historical epic, like Senso, that uses a rich, sensual color design and widescreen Scope format beyond the qualities of spectacle. Visconti uses these elements to heighten the sense of historical presence, which is most notable for me in the use of extreme wide shots of the estate. There is an attention to detail which grants the film a level of historical accuracy and, it could be argued, a level of realism.

Stylistically, Visconti avoids the use of Expressionist lighting seen in films like White Nights and parts of Rocco and His Brothers. He also avoids the theatrical, dreamlike mise-en-scene of White Nights, opting instead for a more realistic portrayal of the environment. The result can be seen as a kind of cross between the “historical realism” of Senso and the Neorealism of Rocco. When we see the wide shots of the estate that Tancredi and Angelica have moved to after their marriage, for instance, the viewer is overwhelmed with a sense of the opulence and scale of the place. The closest example of this in Visconti’s work that we’ve seen thus far is the re-creation of the historical structures in Senso, although in The Leopard Visconti is working with the added benefit of the Scope frame to encompass a greater amount of detail with the frame.

The historical framework that Visconti is working in here covers a number of his favorite themes, including Transformismo, the Risorgimento, and even ideas about the Gramsci argument on “The Southern Question” that he explored in Rocco.

Georg Lukacs writes about the role of realism within the 19th century historical novel (Lukacs, 20). In this sense, Visconti’s use of Realism can be seen as both an extension of his earlier work within NeoRealist forms, along with the influence of the 19th century historical novel on his filmmaking. Lukacs also notes the importance the war and the depiction of the army play in these novels (Lukacs, 24). Visconti uses the epic scale of his film to depict several military scenes that relate directly to the historical and political context of the characters.

Aristarco writes that Visconti was the first filmmaker to “formulate a critical neorealism and the first to narrate films with the sweeping narrative scope of the novel” (Aristarco, 59). Perhaps the greatest contribution of the color and Scope elements can be seen in their depiction of decadence as represented by the kind of “old world” traditions of the Fabrizio character. Aristarco also identifies Visconti’s work as “decadent” (Aristarco, 61) because of his use of visual elements in films like this one and Senso. He also draws the distinction, though, that it is important to remember that these moments of decadence exist to emphasize the decadence of the world Visconti is depicting. (Aristarco, 61) In this sense, Visconti is using these decadent elements as a form of critique and a commentary on the lifestyles of the character he’s depicting, as well as a comment on the historical period of the Risorgimento.

In these ways, Visconti moves beyond using the epic and sensual qualities of color and the Scope image for the sake of spectacle and drama. They can be applied to his depiction of the historical time and place to create a heightened sense of realism, borrowing on traditions of the 19th century historical novel as well as his earlier work in the NeoRealist tradition. Additionally, by using elements of a decadent approach in his visual style, Visconti is commenting on the decadence of the world he is depicting, represented through opulent and extravagant mise-en-scene that reflects the old-world decadence of his characters, particularly the aging Fabrizio. This style, while it uses certain elements seen in both his Expressionist as well as NeoRealist earlier works, achieves a uniqueness in this film because of the level of epic scale he’s working at, particularly in regard to production design and mise-en-scene within the Scope frame.

Realism and Melodrama in "Rocco and His Brothers"

2010-06-23T16:45:00.002-04:00

Visconti’s combined use of realism and melodrama in Rocco can be seen as an integration of two stylistic approaches that interact in the film’s major dramatic scenes. The film opens very much in a style of Neorealism, complete with a kind of documentary-like quality in the scenes of the family arriving in Milan, and getting adjusted to life in the city. Visconti’s depiction of the family is reminiscent of the depiction in La Terra Trema, in that their living conditions reflect the social and cultural realities of the time and place. By using the characters to represent different options within the film’s narrative, Visconti is returning to another aspect of Neorealism that recalls his similar use of this character device in both La Terra Trema, as well as Senso, in which the two protagonists represented different sides of the political spectrum, investing the characters in all these cases with a strong connection to the historical time and place in which the film is set. The realism works in a number of ways: primarily, by providing a historical context for the melodrama, but also in heightening the moments of melodrama in ways not unlike what Visconti did with Senso, bringing the viewer closer to both the characters and their historical time and place through emphasis on historical detail.

Significantly, Visconti combines this Neorealist approach with strong melodramatic qualities reminiscent of both Senso and the more subdued White Nights. Perhaps the most challenging scene in this regard is the scene in which Rocco is forced to watch as his older brother, Simone, rapes the girlfriend. The character dynamics of the scene are in the melodramatic mould, with the idea of the characters forced to suffer extreme emotional trauma and humiliation (Visconti makes this scene particularly unsettling by conveying as much pain and humiliation of Rocco, forced to watch the rape take place, as for the rape victim herself). It is perhaps the added layer of Neorealism that makes the scene so totally difficult to watch, as Visconti is using this stylistic approach to bring the viewer closer to the characters and to the setting-in this case, what appears to be an abandoned industrial yard, emphasizing the grime and grittiness of the setting to match with the nature of the act taking place.

The relationship between Rocco and his brothers contains strong elements of the character dynamics of melodrama as well, including the sacrifices Rocco makes for his older brother. This idea of sacrifice comes in particularly strong toward the end of the film. When Simone has murdered Nadia, Rocco is torn as to whether to turn his own brother over to the police. The heightened performance style as the brother confesses to Rocco what he has done recalls the performance style of Senso, with the extreme display of emotion.

In his chapter on the film in Luchino Visconti, Nowell-Smith writes about the historical context of the film, with the depiction of the family moving from the South into Northern Italy, and the opposition they face in doing so (Nowell-Smith, 123). This depiction of a historical moment, with its ties to Neorealism as well as exploring the idea of “The Southern Question”, places the film within a similar position as Senso, in terms of how Visconti is using the historical framework as a base for melodrama, which can also be seen as an extension of the influence of both the 19th century historical novel as well as opera on his work. Like that film, Visconti’s characters are absolutely tied to the historical moment.
Nowell-Smith also suggests that the film is “not an entirely satisfactory one”, as it is both “an epic and a drama”. (Nowell-Smith, 135). I would argue that this in fact is one of the strengths of the film, that it is able to combine the historical (NeoRealist) and melodramatic elements so skillfully, using both techniques to heighten the film’s key sequences.

Work Cited:
Geoffrey Nowell-Smith, Luchino Visconti. (London: BFI Publishing, 2003).

McLuhan, Cronenberg and Postmodern Media

2010-06-22T22:58:00.001-04:00

The influence of Marshall McLuhan on the films of David Cronenberg has had a tremendous impact on the way Cronenberg depicts the media and his characters’ relationship to the media and technology with which they interact throughout his films. Both McLuhan’s and Cronenberg’s work carries with it very strong examples of postmodernism in how media shapes and defines the individuals who use and experience that media. By examining McLuhan’s theories on media, and on television in particular, and the way that Cronenberg depicts those same ideas in his films, we can see the influence of McLuhan on Cronenberg’s work, specifically through three of his films in particular, Videodrome, Crash, and eXistenZ. Before addressing the individual films, it is important to look briefly at McLuhan’s ideas, Cronenberg’s style as a filmmaker, and the concept of postmodernism as it relates to the media.

Marshall McLuhan’s influence on Cronenberg is quite direct: Cronenberg was a pupil of McLuhan’s in Toronto. He directly learned from McLuhan regarding the ideas and theories on the emerging electronic media of the mid-to-late 20th century, especially television. McLuhan (1911-1980) is generally regarded as the most prominent media theorist of the 20th century. His work has had a profound influence on the way media itself is produced and disseminated, as well as the influence the media has had on the way people define and represent themselves through that media. His writings include The Gutenberg Galaxy, which examines the way in which media and new forms of communication affect and influence social organization. McLuhan also proposed the idea of “electronic interdependence”, in which he said that the visual culture would be replaced by an aural one. This particular prediction is debatable given the rise of video and video-based media as a result of the personal computer in the late 20th century. But it still has relevance as it relates to the films of David Cronenberg. Understanding Media was the seminal work in which McLuhan proposed his “medium is the message” theory, that it is the medium itself that is the true conveyor of ideas and should be studied as such, as opposed to the actual content being carried through that media. By examining these ideas in relation to Cronenberg’s films, we will be able to see the influence.

David Cronenberg’s work is reflective of the qualities of an auteur director, commonly understood to be a director with a distinct style and consistent themes that reappear in his work. As first put forth by Francois Truffaut in his “Auteur Policy” in the Cahiers du Cinema publication as a way of viewing films to write criticism, and later as modified by Andrew Sarris in the US as the “auteur theory”, Cronenberg’s work fits into this description. One of the strongest themes in his work is the influence of ideas from McLuhan, especially regarding the interaction between humans (flesh) and media (technology). While variations on this theme appear in all of his films, it is most prominently and directly seen in three particular films, Videodrome, Crash, and eXistenZ. Cronenberg is also a “card carrying existentialist”, as he put it, and this theme is fused with his philosophies on media and how the characters shape themselves through media in taking control of their own lives in his films.

Cronenberg’s fascination with electronic media is described by the director in an interview that he gave around the time of the release of Videodrome, in which he describes the effect television had on him as a young person. In the article “Birth of an Auteur”, Serge Grunberg interviews Cronenberg, asking about his source of inspiration for Videodrome. “It came out of two things, I suppose. The first was remembering, as a kid, watching TV late at night…and when all the regular stations would go off the air you could get these distant, strange stations that were probably all American. But they were always very bad images, and they would fade in and out, and where they came from and what they were was very mysterious.” This air of mystery and strangeness is an important part of the film, in which Max Renn is entranced by the strange video signals of bondage and torture that are being pirated from an unknown signal (later found to be pre-recorded images taken directly from tape). In the same interview, Cronenberg also cites McLuhan as a major influence, basing the character of Dr. O’Blivion on his media mentor. Cronenberg attended the University of Toronto at the same time that McLuhan was teaching there. “I didn’t ever actually go and take any classes with him, but his influence as a teacher was very strong in the late 60s and early 70s.”

Postmodernism as a concept emerged around the same time as the television medium, in the mid-20th century. A reaction to Modernism, Postmodernism is a concept that envelopes many different ideas, partly as a rejection of the form and ideas of Modernism, but also to describe a knowing self-referential quality specifically as it relates to the media. It is this aspect of postmodernism that is most closely related to Cronenberg’s films and McLuhan’s theories on media. Postmodern media really emerged during the mid-20th century with the rise in accessibility of television. It was with this medium in particular that Marshall McLuhan would focus the majority of his theories. Perhaps the best quote that describes the postmodern relationship between the media and the user is one that comes from McLuhan himself: “With telephone and TV, it is not so much the message as the sender that is ‘sent’” (1). Indeed, the telephone and TV represent what McLuhan referred to as “cool” media-that which requires a more active involvement on the part of the user. The telephone represents a form of interactive media, a direct precursor to the Internet, which allows users to interact via the medium. Television represents a dissemination of ideas at an unprecedented scale. Almost from the beginning, television has been subjected to a kind of postmodern analysis and dissection of its affects on society. Aside from the writing of McLuhan, films have also attempted to analyze and explain television’s role in shaping society and its affects on how people perceive and define themselves and each other. Perhaps the earliest example is Elia Kazan’s A Face in the Crowd (1957), in which a boorish, vulgar and ugly folk singer, Lonesome Rhodes (Andy Griffith), becomes a national hero through his weekly television show in which he is presented as a “man of the people”, and is every notion is automatically taken as a word of wisdom. Rhodes influences and shapes politics and society based on his whims, and the TV medium also proves his undoing when he is unknowingly caught on camera exposing his true, hateful nature to his audience who has followed him loyally. The idea of a “media prophet” was also explored in Paddy Chavesky’s satire on the TV business, Network (1976, directed by Sidney Lumet), in which Peter Finch plays a news anchor gone mad who rants and raves on television, influencing large numbers of people who take his ranting words as calls to action. Perhaps the finest example of a film that explores TV’s affect on the individual prior to Cronenberg’s Videodrome is Hal Ashby’s satire, Being There (1979), in which a near-simpleton (Peter Sellers) who has been raised entirely on television is unleashed into the “real world”, and is only able to express thoughts that have been shaped and disseminated via television. And of course, every word he utters is perceived as profound knowledge-by doctors, politicians, even the President of the US. In the end, he is being groomed for the presidency himself when he walks out onto a pond and stands on the water, because television never told him it was impossible, and he doesn’t know any better, therefore he can.

Cronenberg’s first film to show a heavy McLuhan influence is Videodrome (1983). The film is filled with references to the Canadian television business and media. The character of Max Renn (James Woods) runs a local access station called Civic TV, based on the real City TV in Toronto, which saw a large boost in its ratings after it began airing pornography. Similarly, Renn is seen previewing a series of pornographic programs that he wants to potentially air on his channel. Interestingly, these programs are presented quite objectively, with little question raised about the extreme nature of their content. This brings to mind McLuhan’s idea that it is not the actual content itself that is important, but rather the medium through which it is broadcast.

In Cronenberg’s work, the technology, in this case the TV medium, is heavily sexualized, which is conveyed most significantly in the imagery of Max Renn’s vaginal orifice that appears in his stomach, swallowing his gun, and later “raped” when the “Videodrome” video cassette tape is penetrated inside him. Videodrome contains strong images linking sexuality and the media. Renn becomes turned on to watching the torture and fetish videos that are played over the Videodrome signal. He becomes involved with Nicky Brand, who introduces him to torture during their night together. For Nicky, it is a purely physical experience, one that she seeks strictly for her own pleasure. Renn, however, becomes concerned when Nicky leaves for Philadelphia, where she has found the Videodrome signal broadcasts from, in an effort to be included on one of the programs. Renn warns her that it could be dangerous. For him, it becomes an emotional experience, one that is shaped by his coming in contact with a new type of content being broadcast through the TV medium. His concern for Nicky is representative of McLuhan’s idea of the medium being the message. Through the safety screen of the TV, the video image and concept of torture is exciting and new to Max, who takes pleasure in airing a number of video programs like it. However, once that screen is removed, his emotional wall of defense goes up against the possibility of anything too dangerous or extreme happening to Nicky. His interaction with her video image represents this screen that he puts up intellectually and emotionally between himself and the torture videos that he enjoys watching from a distance. It is only when the experience becomes too real, causing hallucinations and affecting his perceptions of reality, that Renn is forced to take action by bringing about the “death” of Videodrome, and carrying on the revolutionary idea of the “New Flesh” as proposed by Dr. O’Blivon.

The perception of flesh and reality is further blurred when Renn attempts to meet Dr. O’Blivion in the flesh to discuss the dangers of Videodrome with him. He finally comes to the realization that he was killed by Videodrome much earlier, and lives on only through his electronic image-the “New Flesh”. This concept is really the most revolutionary, and indeed prophetic, in the film. Influenced by McLuhan’s concept of electronic interpendence, the concept really has no precedent, even in McLuhan’s writing, and has come to be more and more accurate over the last twenty years since Videodrome was produced. The personalization of the Internet, both with personalized sites like MySpace, and with streaming video sites such as YouTube, has made this concept a reality. These sites allow individuals the ability not only to define themselves through media, picking and choosing various songs, video clips, graphics, etc. in a kind of postmodern collage, but also to develop a complete electronic media “persona”, including the ability to directly address other viewers through video, such as direct address videos on YouTube and similar sites. While this at first may sound like an outrageous comparison, it is actually quite revealing to see the similarities between what Cronenberg was depicting in his 1983 film, and what was already becoming a reality as early as 2003 with the launch of MySpace, and finally coming into its full form with the launch of YouTube in 2005. Such interpersonal dependence has developed between individuals through these electronic venues that it is now being suggested as a medical addiction. The Internet could be considered the final step in what McLuhan addressed as electronic interpendence in The Gutenberg Galaxy and what Cronenberg presented through the character of Dr. O’Blivion and the relationships between humans and video representations of other humans in Videodrome.
The character of O’Blivion is similar to McLuhan in that he presents theories on how the media affects its audience. He is first seen in the film (as he will be seen throughout the entire film) as a video image, an electronic manifestation of his flesh. He appears on the talk show along with Max Renn and Nicky Brand, but only through a video image that is cut away to during the program. He only appears on TV, as he puts it, “on TV”. No one ever thinks to question his “reality” or his existence. They accept, essentially on faith, that he is who he claims to be, and that his video image is an accurate representation of the man himself. Renn is shocked to learn that O’Blivion has, in fact, been killed sometime earlier. Yet his video image, his “new flesh”, certainly conveys no less a representation of an actual, living person than either Renn or Nicky, who appear on the TV show in the “real flesh”. O’Blivion reminds them that the video reality is more real than real life. Video viewing is also depicted as being the “salvation” for the homeless and derelict, with O’Blivion’s “Cathode Ray Mission” providing a place of shelter where these unfortunates can come in and watch television for a few hours to integrate them in with the rest of the world. Interesting, then, how Cronenberg is depicting a situation in which virtually everyone, including the homeless, are being indoctrinated in how to think and act by viewing the same programs on TV. The “reality” being depicted on TV shapes and influences the way that this society will react in the future.

The film ends with a final transformation. Nicky, appearing on a TV monitor, tells Max that in order to make the final transformation to the “new flesh”, into the video realm, he must kill the “old flesh”-his physical body. The film takes the transformation between flesh and technology to a level that McLuhan would have seen as being perhaps an inevitable outcome in the integration of technology and media into human life.

On first viewing, Crash (1996), adapted from J.G. Ballard’s novel, may not seem to carry with it the influence of Marshall McLuhan. However, the society and characters that Cronenberg depicts in the film are, in a sense, influenced by a very absence of electronic media. Crash is a film that depicts what happens after full media-saturation occurs to the point where new, physical sexual explorations take place. It certainly takes a postmodern sexual concept, the thrill of sex through the “idea” of a car crash, as opposed to the actual impact itself (indeed, the scenes of sex in the film are presented in an oddly detached fashion, with the characters barely even making eye contact, and certainly without much apparent emotional investment in the experience). The media has certainly shaped the way in which Vaughn (Elias Koteas) seeks to re-create “celebrity car crashes”, as it were. Seagraves, a fellow participant, is found dead in a car crash dressed as Jayne Mansfield, obviously having died in an attempt to re-create Mansfield’s fatal crash. And when we first see Vaughn and Seagrave, they are in the process of re-enacting the James Dean crash for the pleasure of the audience. The media has glamorized these tragic deaths involving celebrities, making them seem dangerous and exciting. The society in which Crash takes place considers this a common occurrence, as Cronenberg makes a point of showing no reaction from drivers passing by to car crashes taking place on the highways. The characters attempt to find extreme new forms of sexual pleasure through these car crashes. An explanation for their psychology is that these characters represent a society that has been saturated with entertainment and “interactive” forms of media to the point that, in order to feel any kind of emotional or physical response even to sex, they need to take it to outrageously new physical extremes. The film is definitely postmodern in its depiction of how its characters interact with technology.

The film relates to a quote in Videodrome that occurs when Max and Nicky are guests on a talk show, and Max is criticized for programming content that leads to media overload and sexual malaise. Crash depicts a society for whom that has already happened. The film shares a very unique relationship between its characters and their technology. Cronenberg said “it’s very clear to me the technology is us. So merging with technology-our bodies merging with the metal-is us merging with us, with different aspects of ourselves.”(2) For the characters in Crash, the very real physical manifestations of their sexual ideas works in a similar way to the physical manifestation of the video image in Videodrome. In the same interview, Cronenberg also describes the element of addiction that will also show up in eXistenZ: “Addiction, to me, is a very interesting phenomena-especially biological addiction. Because there’s a sense in which addiction merges with evolution-when you incorporate some other chemical process into your body, and it becomes a natural and necessary part of your body, then you’ve changed yourself-you’ve really transformed” (3). While Crash at first would appear to depict a sexual addiction to car crashes, and at some level it does, it also depicts an addiction to thrill-seeking and seeking of sexual experiences which need to reach a new “high” due to the boredom with current, existing versions of those thrills.

When Vaughn and company have a screening of car crash videos, there is a strange, pornographic quality to them. Cronenberg comments humorously on the significance of these videos when it was pointed out that they are Swedish tapes: “Well, it’s Swedish porn and it’s also Volvo safety.”(4) The author of this same article raises an interesting comparison between Crash and Shivers: “Curious, then, that Crash’s prevailing spiritual malaise and its overthrow by death-wish hedonism returns us to Cronenberg’s first feature, Shivers, likewise set in a world of numbing urbanism and positing its condo inhabitants’ infection with aphrodisiac parasites as a collective liberation from their repressed existences”.(5) These quotes re-enforce the idea that the film is a depiction of what happens “after” the world of Videodrome has reached its breaking point.

Crash is significant in looking at the McLuhan influence on Cronenberg’s work for these reasons. It is truly a post-modern film, dealing with very post-modern themes on not just how media shapes individuals and societies in the present, but how it will affect those same people in the future. It fuses this idea with a kind of futuristic “sci-fi psychology” element to present its final depiction of a new extreme in seeking thrills and sexual pleasure.

EXistenZ presents a delirious, unrelenting view of McLuhan’s ideas as applied to the video gaming culture. The film is particularly timely in that it deals with the intense thrill-seeking associated with video gaming in the 21st century, as well as the communal aspect of online gaming, and even the sexualization of the games and the interaction with other players. With the exception of Videodrome, eXistenZ is Cronenberg’s most heavily McLuhan-influenced film.

The film addresses a number of ideas in the relationship between the players and the videogame media. The most obvious is the physical interaction with and manifestation of the game pods themselves. Cronenberg looks at the seeming need for new thrills through the video game, constituting a sort of addiction. It also presents the viewer with how the media represents videogame designers as the ultimate celebrity, the “creator” of an experience shared and loved by so many. Cronenberg depicts the sexuality of the shared video-gaming experience.

ExistenZ really can be viewed as Videodrome with video games replacing TV in the film’s plot and themes. It builds on McLuhan’s work by playing with his idea of the medium being the message. By changing the medium to the video game rather than the television, Cronenberg is using McLuhan’s idea as a starting point to explore how this new medium, which was really still in its comparative infancy at the time McLuhan died, has evolved over the last 25 years and has come to be as influential and defining in a postmodern culture as television has been. McLuhan would argue that as a different medium, it would carry with it a different set of expectations, effects and intent in the message it is carrying. He would also stress that the message itself is irrelevant, and that it is the medium which affects its users more than anything. Cronenberg depicted this idea in Videodrome when Bianca O’Blivion explains that the “Videodrome” signal can be embedded in anything-test patterns, station ID, bars and tone, etc. The content which it is disseminated is not inherently important, but the fact that it arrives to the viewer via the TV set is significant and in that case, life-altering.

The thrill-seeking element relates the film to Crash. The characters here all seek a new kind of thrill through the updated gaming systems. The film opens at a convention where a new system is being tested by its inventor, Allegra Geller.

Cronenberg plays with the sexuality of the gaming culture stereotypes and later in how the gaming is manifested with the characters. Allegra is portrayed as the designer behind a gaming system that seems to have an audience of primarily males. Indeed, the stereotypical “target” audience for videogames does seem to be primarily male. In contrast, the character of Ted Pikul is presented as the one character who has never played a video game and has never even had a system installed on his body due to a “fear of penetration”. Cronenberg is drawing incredibly clear parallels between the characters and reversing the stereotypical gender roles, with Ted as a sort of virginal character and Allegra as the dominant, experienced one, who has to introduce him to the pleasures to be found in playing the videogame. Following a medical procedure in which his spine is penetrated to allow his body to be connected to the gaming system, Allegra realizes that the “surgeon”/mechanic is actually involved in a plot to destroy her program, thus introducing a “disease” into Ted’s body that fries her gaming system, trapping her program inside. The film really covers all of Cronenberg’s favorite themes, and the sexualization of the gaming process is presented in a number of scenes. When Allegra hooks the pod into Ted’s spine, it is a very clear sexual image of the technology being inserted into the kind of vaginal orifice on his spine. When the game is played, it is done in a distinctly sexual nature-played on a bed, with Allegra removing her shoes as if undressing prior to the experience of playing the game. In a purely physical sense, the characters have become so devoted to playing the games that they allow their own bodies to be physically altered and to have foreign objects inserted into their bodies in order to be able to “connect” more fully with the video game world. This is significant in terms of the film’s depiction of a postmodern media, in that it influences not only the way the characters define themselves, but also how they treat their physical bodies.

In “The Philosophy of the Preservation of Video Games”, author Keith Feinstein quotes Marshall McLuhan: “The games of a people reveal a great deal about them”.(6) This quote is especially applicable to Cronenberg’s work on both Crash and eXistenZ. While the characters in Crash exhibit their malaise and oversaturation by finding physical manifestations of their sexual- and thrill-seeking, the characters of eXistenZ retreat deeper and deeper into a world where the lines between reality and the videogame world become blurred beyond all recognition. At one point, Ted Pikul is standing in the motel room, which appears to be “reality”, but in his words, does not feel like reality, but rather like the videogame world. He is completely unable to distinguish between his own reality and the reality created by the video game at this point. McLuhan’s idea of the games revealing much about the characters is a good approach to understanding not just how, but why they act out these fantasies that end up manifesting themselves, in the words of the Dr. O’Blivion character from Videodrome, as being “more real than reality”.

The theme of a revolution against the technology shows up in both Videodrome and eXistenZ. In the final sequence from eXistenZ, the new game designer is afraid of too many counter-gaming thoughts from Allegra and Ted, who lead the final revolution against the new game designers, much as the armed videogame enthusiast attacked Allegra in the beginning of the film.

These three films represent the influence of Marshall McLuhan’s ideas on media and its relationship with its audience on David Cronenberg’s work. The three films look at TV, video games, and the affect of media on characters after it has reached the point of saturation. McLuhan’s writing support the ideas that Cronenberg explores in each film, and each can be related to the idea of postmodernism.

1 McLuhan, Marshall. “The Man and His Message”. http://www.mcluhanmedia.com/m_mcl_manmessage.html
2 Hultkrans, Andrew. Body Work. Artforum International. Vol.35, Issue n7. Artforum International Magazine, 1997.
3 Hultkrans, Andrew. Body Work. Artforum International. Vol.35, Issue n7. Artforum International Magazine, 1997.
4 Smith, Gavin. “Cronenberg.” Film Comment. Volume/edition 33. Film Society of the Lincoln Center, 1997.
5 Smith, Gavin. “Cronenberg.” Film Comment. Volume/edition 33. Film Society of the Lincoln Center, 1997.
6 Feinstein, Keith. “The Philosophy of the Preservation of Video Games”. http://www.videotopia.com/edit1.htm, 1997.

Unconventional Distancing of Melodrama in "Senso"

2010-06-19T16:44:00.002-04:00

To respond to the question of how Visconti distances the melodrama, I would first turn to the description of the oppositions present in his work, and point to the fact that Senso, as a film, has a close relation to the tragic/opera/melodramatic field that stems directly from Visconti’s aristocratic background. In its grandest moments of melodrama, Visconti imbues Senso with a kind of operatic performance style that heightens the intensity of the emotional confrontations. This is most apparent in the sequence in which Alida Valli’s character confronts Farley Granger, who proceeds to torment and humiliate her beyond all reason. The heightened sense of melodrama acts as a kind of distancing measure between the viewer and the characters. In this sense, the scene, and the film as a whole, stands in strong opposition to the NeoRealist approach of the earlier Visconti films.

The representation of melodrama presents, through this heightened intensity and stylization, elements that could be seen as Modernist, and as a departure from traditional depictions of melodrama. Visconti’s placing of the melodrama within a historical context gives the character dynamics an added dimension and an awareness of and relevance to the historical period being depicted. In this sense, he seems to be using the seemingly standard melodrama as a means of conveying larger cultural and political issues implicit in the situations, not unlike his use of characters to represent different options in the NeoRealist tradition. The use of heightened music scoring during particularly intense moments of melodrama could be seen as a kind of self-consciousness that grants the subject a presentation that differs from standard melodrama depictions as seen in films of the period. Rather than presenting the subjects in a strictly straightforward manner, Visconti’s stylized emphasizing of music and color work to inform the viewer that Visconti is calling attention to certain emotional states at different points in the film.

Another departure from the norms of melodrama can be seen in the handling of the film’s conclusion. By having the female figure responsible for the death of the man, Visconti grants her character a sense of agency in determining the outcome of the film’s plot and melodramatic situations. The film is also unusual in its presentation of such a cruel and cowardly male protagonist, who completely sinks into despair as a result of his behavior. When he is finally taken before the firing squad in the end, the female character seems to feel extremely conflicted about her actions of informing on him, which provides one last layer to the character dynamics at work in the final moments that are unusual for the melodrama. Visconti seems to avoid the clear-cut emotional dynamics that usually operate in melodrama, and presents a stronger psychological element, including examining the effects of humiliation and revenge, as well as a sense of betrayal of personal integrity in the final act of informing on the deserting soldier. In other words, perhaps the most radical departure from standard melodrama, and one that fits in with Modernist concerns, is the added dimension of psychological states of the protagonists as a motivating force behind their emotions and actions.

Contradictions in "La Terra Trema"

2010-06-14T09:00:00.002-04:00

In viewing "La Terra Trema" within its political/cultural context, as well as knowing the intentions that Visconti brought to his approach in dealing with the themes of the film, there are a couple of contradictions in the film that can be seen as a tension between intention and execution of the ideas.

Considering the film in the context of Visconti’s affiliation with the Communist party, a contradiction seems to be present in terms of how he presents the failure of the fishermen to organize against the wholesalers. The political aspect seems to be subverted by the conditions under which the fishermen continue living, even after the younger men have decided to try to make the wholesalers meet their demands. The final scene, in which they are forced to take jobs in order to continue working at all, seems to subvert the political message that Visconti set out to convey earlier in the film. The voice-over narration also seems to contradict with the actions Visconti presents on screen. At one point, the voice over calls for unification, but this is at the same point that the fishermen are planning to separate themselves from the wholesalers.

There is also a stylistic contradiction related to the tensions between Visconti’s Neo-realism concerns and the heightened style that he uses in other sequences, which grant the film a visual style that seems at odds with its Neo-Realist form. This can be seen in the introductions of certain characters, including the romantic interest, which is handled in a stylized way reminiscent of shots used by Visconti in Ossessione. This approach contradicts the grittiness of the other scenes of daily life among the people in the fishing village. These moments also undercut the documentary-like approach that Visconti sets up in the opening moments of the film, indicating that it has been filmed on location with local actors, and speaking in dialect.

In terms of character, Visconti sets up the state employee as a contrast to the other residents of the fishing village, which seemed like a contradiction in terms of his depiction of the state in relation to the concerns being faced by the fishermen, although the voice-over narration describes him as having “time on his hands”, in order to provide a contrast between his work and the long hours of work put in by the fishermen. Viscconti also sets up a contradiction between the older and younger generations of fishermen, particularly in the scene in which a fight erupts in the wholesale market. He presents the older fishermen as more resigned, while the younger fishermen organize against the wholesalers. This follows the arrest of Antonio. Visconti also includes a line of dialogue during this scene in which one of the older fishermen says that “the whole town has turned to Communism”, which in itself seems a contradiction of the political ideas that Visconti is working with here; the contradiction lying in the depiction of the disorganized, frenzied crowd of fishermen and wholesalers erupting into a fight as somehow representative of Communism and the unification called for by the voice-over narration. Visconti seems to be suggesting that the younger fishermen are unable of organizing and effectively working together independent of the wholesalers, which is also represented in the scene in which they try to sell their catch of anchovies, and the wholesalers flat-out refuse to pay their price.

Finally, the film seems to suggest that the fishermen have become completely resigned, crawling back for their jobs in the end, and that their efforts to organize have been a failure. The voice-over narration presents a very bleak future for the characters (“tomorrows are all alike”).

Realism in "Ossessione"

2010-06-09T09:00:00.003-04:00

To respond to Visconti’s use of “realism” in Ossessione, it can be examined through thematic elements as well as stylistic techniques he employs. These are most evident in a several scenes, including additions he made to James M. Cain’s novel from which the film was adapted.

The realism in the depiction of sexuality is the most remarkable, especially in the scenes toward the beginning of the film. The way in which Visconti films the seduction scene, and the scenes in the bedroom, employ a kind of understated visual style that enhances the sexuality through a more realistic portrayal than is often seen, certainly in other films of the period as well as in contemporary examples. It is interesting to contrast the way Visconti shoots these scenes with the highly-stylized noir technique used by Tay Garnett in the 1946 American version of the story. In Visconti’s film, the sex scenes have a matter-of-fact and even ordinary presentation that only enhances the realism of their depiction.

Visually, realism can be seen in the gritty and unglamorous treatment of the characters’ lives. Contrasting the set design of the diner with that in Garnett’s 1946 version, it is immediately clear that Visconti’s technique emphasizes different visual elements, specifically the gritty living conditions of the characters. The unglamorous presentation of both the male and female protagonists simultaneously reinforces the realism of the visual style while also having the effect of heightening the sexual elements in their scenes together by giving it a kind of grittiness and powerful energy.

The influence can also be seen in the outdoor scenes taking place in a kind of street carnival, during the scene in which the man meets a young woman with whom he begins an affair. Visconti contrasts this behavior with the mise-en-scene of crowds moving through the street, balloons in the background, and ice-cream vendors, providing a contrast between the little street carnival and the actions of the characters.

Thematically, concerns of realism can be seen in the depictions of the tension and eventual breakdown of the relationship between the two protagonists. The effects of the man’s affair, and the wife’s reaction, deal with themes that are largely absent from films of the period, and are depicted in a way that avoid the heightened sense of conflict present in melodrama, instead presenting them in a matter-of-fact manner. There is no clear moral boundary drawn in either the acts of the affair or the murder. The tension in the marriage between the woman and her husband is another source for thematic depictions of realism, specifically in the scene in which she describes how horrible it is being married to him, and her reasons for marrying him in the first place, by emphasizing her sense of financial dependency that led to the marriage, similar to the way the man becomes indentured to him when he needs work at the beginning of the film.

I would argue that realism gives way to irony in the film’s ending, after the relationship between the two protagonists is reconciled, and driving off together, the car plunges over a cliff in a thick fog. From a narrative perspective, it seems Visconti is employing a great deal of irony in having the woman’s death occur at this very moment, in the same kind of “accident” in which they had murdered her husband, and finally, with the man being arrested at that point for “killing” the woman, even though this time it was a genuine accident. The coming together of these plot points at this very moment suggests a kind of ironic use of the narrative, rather than the concerns of realism that had been employed up to this point in the story.

"L'Argent" (Marcel l'Herbier, 1929)

2010-06-05T09:00:00.005-04:00

L’argent is a cautionary tale of the dangers of greed, on the one hand, but also an interesting comment on humanity in relation to business and technology. The character of the aviator recalled the engineer in L’Herbier’s earlier L’Inhumaine in that he has a close relationship with technology. In L’Inhumaine, it was the sports car that provided a sense of the danger of technology (most evident in the scene where the engineer kills himself by driving over a cliff), and in L’Argent, a similar moment occurs when the aviator’s wife hears a false report that his plane has plummeted into the sea in flames.

The design element, as in L’Inhumaine, also plays an important role in the scene taking place at the banker’s mansion, which features a similar design and blocking of the actors and mise-en-scene that L’Herbier used in his earlier film.

The most important theme of the film is the power of money to change people and lead to disastrous consequences. The character of the banker, however, provides an interesting contrast to this theme, because even as it appears that he has undergone a transformation of character during the final courtroom sequence, as he is left in the jail cell at the end of the film, the audience sees that he is still obsessed with financial schemes, and tries to get the guard to invest in one of them.

In the assigned reading on “L’Argent”, by Richard Abel, he notes the extent to which avant garde technique was incorporated by L’Herbier into the narrative structure (Abel, 514). To the extent that avant garde technique enhances the narrative qualities, the film makes for an interesting comparison with the purely avant-garde and surrealist cinema that we screened in the previous week’s class. L’Herbier, interested in many of the same techniques, puts those techniques to the service of telling his story and making his points regarding the danger of greed. Abel also suggests that the film “seems to call attention to the process of its own ‘writing’, to the diegetic process of its discourse” (Abel, 521). Interestingly, as I watched the film, I found myself a bit jarred by the presentation of the narrative, as L’Herbier took his time in setting up certain stylistic elements, such as the extended scene at the party, which showcases the design elements in a similar fashion to his earlier L’Inhumaine.

The Great Movie Shorts

2010-06-03T20:53:00.003-04:00

Leonard Maltin must surely be one of the most engaging writers ever to write on the subject of film. His book, “The Great Movie Shorts”, is an informative and fun history of the short films that were such an integral part of the film programs during the 1930s and 40s.

Maltin covers all the major series here, including such famous examples as Laurel and Hardy, Our Gang, Robert Benchley, W.C. Fields, The Three Stooges, Pete Smith, John Nesbitt’s “Passing Parade”, “Crime Does Not Pay”, and so on. In addition to his descriptions of each series, he also provides a full filmography of each entry into the series. It’s interesting, with the proliferation of short films that play in so many venues now-especially online-that the “movie short” itself should still be thought of as a thing of the past. It was already an endangered species by the mid-30s, when the “double feature” became the order of the day, although the short film evolved and adapted into new forms and lasted well into the early 1950s. One of the highlights of Maltin’s book is his use of quotes from interviews with many of the people who worked on these films (the book even contains a foreword by Pete Smith!)

Film lovers owe Maltin a huge debt of gratitude for this wonderful book. It belongs on the shelf of any serious movie lover.

"Hyas" and "Stenorhynchus and The Seahorse" (Jean Painleve, 1929-30)

2010-05-30T09:00:00.005-04:00

Jean Painleve’s “biology” films are an interesting compliment to the more overtly surrealist films of the period. Painleve uses remarkably crisp close shots of various undersea creatures, photographed in painstaking detail.

The surrealistic element comes in the form of his ironic use of intertitles and narration, which gives these sea creatures human characteristic, and also serves as a slightly bizarre contrast with the weird visuals we see on screen. The spider crabs in the first film are, for instance, extremely unusual looking creatures, but Painleve provides a commentary which serves to humanize them.

In the “Seahorse” film, there is a fascinating choreography of the seahorses throughout the frame (suggesting just how carefully Painleve documented his subjects and selected his shots, as there was obviously no way he could just “arrange” these animals). There is a balletic quality to the way they move. He compares the seahorses to other animals: he mentions them in relation to the monkey because of their prehensile tails, and compares them with race horses later on, when he double exposes shots of the seahorses over a racetrack. The “birthing” sequence is a fascinating violation of the kind of “cute” characteristics Painleve has given these animals, as he cuts open the belly of a seahorse in extreme closeup, revealing all of its inner organs. One can’t help but recall the slicing of the eyeball in Un Chien Andalou, only because this kind of authentic evisceration is so unusual in the cinema.

"Hairspray": A Cultural Analysis

2010-05-24T07:25:00.006-04:00

This piece was written for a course on Genre Theory and Criticism in the Post-Modern/Rock Musical at Towson University, 2007.

Genre films can be examined from a cultural standpoint by how they reflect aspects of the culture in which they were produced. In this respect, John Waters’ 1988 film “Hairspray” provides a rich array of examples for cultural analysis in the rock/postmodern musical genre of film. Genre is understood to be a framework of conventions that serve to categorize films by types, as well as provide a kind of agreement between the filmmaker and the audience as to what they can expect, maintaining a standard set of expectations while at the same time performing enough variation on those expectations to keep the work fresh. The four basic categories of genre are iconography, characters, narrative, and theme (Schatz, 14-35).

To briefly place “Hairspray” in the context of a textual analysis with these four basic categories, the iconography is that of the double diegesis in the musical film, and the transitions are handled in such a way that they are virtually seamless as the music comes from visible on-screen sources such as radios and TVs, and the numbers all take place in the same setting as the “dialogue” segments. The characters of the musical film are, according to Rick Altman, the couple-specifically, a heterosexual romantic couple (Altman, 13-29). They are personified in this film through Tracy Turnblad and Link Larkin. The narrative category follows very closely to Schatz’ idea of stasis, disruption, conflict, resolution, and new stasis, resolved through integration (Schatz, 14-35). The stasis of the beginning of the narrative is suggested by the racially segregated community, which has long accepted this practice, and also the segregation between the awkward, unpopular kids (Tracy, Penny), and the popular, socially prominent ones (Amber, Link). These situations are disrupted when Tracy decides to participate in a Corny Collins’ record hop, and quickly becomes the center of attention because of her talent as a dancer. Because of her appearance and social position, her performance on the show disrupts the standard practice of the program. There is also a hint of the racial tensions when two black youths are turned away from the segregated dance hall where the hop is being held. Conflict presents itself when it is announced that Amber’s father is being pressured to integrate his theme park, Tilted Acres.

The reaction of Tracy’s parents to the predominantly black music she is listening to also provides a sense of conflict. They initially are very concerned about her appearing on the show, but Edna and Wilbur (Tracy’s parents) soon become supportive when they see what a success their daughter is becoming. The youth panel that makes up the Corny Collins show, however, pose conflict to Tracy’s success by trying to keep from succeeding on the show. The racial tension comes to full force when there is a protest at the Tilted Acres theme park. The resolution is provided through the integration of the racial communities as well as of the social communities, and the characters are brought together in a sense of community during the final dance number. The theme of romantic union is symbolized between the unpopular, overweight Tracy finding romance in the popular, attractive Link. The theme of success is represented by Tracy’s becoming the lead dancer on the Corny Collins show due to her sheer talent and determination, with the idea of the “showmaking equals lovemaking” present between the romantic union and achievement of success (Giles, 14). Finally, the idea of community is firmly presented by bringing together the characters of different social backgrounds, and most obviously, through the integration of the previously racially segregated communities.

As described by Dominic Strinati, “Hairspray” does include some of the elements of postmodernism in its “confusion over time” (Strinati, 26) The film is a look back at an earlier time and place, in this case, Baltimore in 1962. It is mainly through the use of vintage rock and roll recordings that the film achieves its postmodern referencing back to that earlier era to provide a context for the story to unfold. This is also evident in the one new song written for the film, the title tune “Hairspray”, which is a 1980s rock song that is designed to sound like one from the 1960s. The film is very heavy on nostalgia, and also refer back to the visual “look” of films of that era. Waters work in general, especially from his 1980s period, exhibits a consciously-late 50s-early 60s look in the color design, reminiscent of Douglas Sirk. I would argue that “Hairspray” contains these elements of postmodernism and by referring to popular culture of the 1960s, such as the idea of the “Corny Collins’ show, with the host obviously modeled on Buddy Deane, and the references made by Divine to several Bob Dylan lyrics throughout the film.

“Hairspray” works as a cultural mirror, reflecting the prejudices of society and exposing them as folly. It also fits into the many of themes presented by Robin Wood. Wood presents a list of concepts that are present in genre: “Capitalism, the work ethic, marriage [legalized heterosexual monogamy], nature as agrarianism, nature as the wilderness, progress, success, the Rosebud syndrome, America as the land where everyone is happy, the ideal male, the ideal female, the settled husband, [and] the erotic woman” (Wood, 61-64). The film emphasizes capitalism in that it reinforces the idea of personal initiative through Tracy’s performance on the Corny Collins show and rising above her critics. The value of work is also shown between the two main families presented in the film, the Turnblads and the Von Tussles. When we first meet Edna Turnblad, she is hard at work ironing laundry, and when Wilbur is first seen, he is coming home from work at the joke shop that he owns. By contrast, the Von Tussles are seen as more leisurely, wallowing in the wealth their segregated theme park has brought them, and seem concerned with more trivial things. The “Rosebud Syndrome” is very prominently displayed in this film, emphasizing the “poor but happy” black community over the wealthy but paranoid, hateful and jealous upper class white community. Tracy’s family serves as a kind of median between the two, as they are more working class, and quickly overcome their prejudices against the black musicians and songs that Tracy has found a talent for dancing to. This is in stark contrast with the von Tussles, who fight for segregation at all costs. And of course, the Happy Ending is present in the bringing together of the community through song and dance.

The idea of genre as myth is quite applicable to “Hairspray”. The film confronts some very serious social conflicts and brings them to resolution through music. It presents certain ideals as well, such as the importance of happiness over money, success as a result of talent and hard work, and the importance of community and integration on all levels. As catharsis, the film defends the status quo in restoring the community that has been threatened by segregation and greed. “Hairspray” obviously supports the notion of integration as a result of the time in which it was made, but also because of it setting in the early 1960s-the height of the civil rights movement, thereby serving as a cultural mirror for two separate time periods. The dynamic between the semantics and syntax resulting in generic evolution as suggested by Altman fits “Hairspray” because it uses many traditional elements while combining them with a new theme of racial integration to produce a variation on the usual musical conventions (Altman, 27-40). Thomas Sobchack addresses the idea of realism in genre in his piece, “Genre Film: A Classical Experience”. He states that “Because the genre film is not realistic, because it is so blatantly dramatic, it has been condescendingly treated by many critics for its failure to be relevant to contemporary issues” (Sobchack, 102-113). Waters addresses this by presenting real world societal issues through the lens of nostalgia. By presenting the ideas this way, he lessens the immediacy and impact of them so that they do not interfere with the entertainment aspects of the story.

To address Hairspray from a cultural analysis standpoint, I’ll begin with Stephen Neale’s essay on “Genre”. Stephen Neale in “Genre” discusses the fact that genre films, unlike other commodities, must always strive to be different and unique while maintaining the conventions that categorize them as genre works, be it Western, musical, gangster film, etc. Neale states that “…if each text within a genre were, literally, the same, there would simply be not enough difference to generate either meaning or pleasure” (Neale, 50). “Hairspray” fits this definition by providing a fresh new theme in its narrative (racial integration in 1960s Baltimore), while maintaining the traditional elements of the musical, such as the dual focus of the romantic couple. The romantic dual focus is present between the characters of Tracy Turnblad and Link Larkin, the main romantic couple in the film. They come from different social standing-Tracy is an unpopular, socially awkward girl, and Link is the star dancer on the Corny Collins show, Baltimore’s hit music dance program that is the center of the film.

The double diegesis is handled in a way that presents all of the music numbers as coming from a visible source on screen-the music played on the Corny Collins show, allowing the transition between the “real life” and “musical” numbers to be more or less seamless, as they all take place in the same scene with the music coming from an established diegetic source. In one scene, for instance, we hear the music being played on the set of the Corny Collins show, and in the middle of the number, cut to a shot of a TV set being viewed by Tracy’s parents, and the sound transition goes from the stereo track to a more tinny, mono sound to keep the sound diegetic, sounding exactly as it would coming from the TV speakers as a source. P. Auslander, in his essay “Liveness”, addresses the desire to see the musicians actually “performing” their music, as proof that they can actually perform (Auslander, 61). “Hairspray” differs from this pattern because the musical numbers are presented as coming from records, or from the sound on the TV. Auslander argues that to see the music performed “live” gives it a sense of immediacy that has kept musical concerts popular for this very reason, and condemns artists who lip-synch. The desire to see the musicians pull off the recordings that have been assembled in the recording studio is a strong draw to live performances. This film, however, does not offer the audience that sense of live performance, even though the musical numbers come from sources within the scene. The use of original recordings of the 1960s pop songs is the primary reason for handling the performances this way. “Hairspray”’s categorization as a rock musical is based on these classic recordings that serve as the musical numbers in its musical framework.

“Hairspray”, in this sense, also relates to Jane Feuer’s piece on teenpics and musicals. The teenpic has become, according to Feuer, “a dominant Hollywood film category, a mainstay for the profitability of the industry” (Feuer, 123-138). This film can be classified as a teenpic for a number of reasons, including the age of the main characters, the struggles Tracy must overcome (popularity, school, arguments with her parents about the music she listens to, and young love). Feuer argues that the combination of the teenpic with the musical genre creates a “return” to the musicals of the classic period (of the Hollywood studio system, roughly 1929-1950) by returning the emphasis to the couple, romantic union of a heterosexual relationship, and a sense of community, all achieved through song and dance.

“Hairspray” closely follows the idea that Dennis Giles put forth in his essay “Show-Making”. Giles states that “Even though the musical labours hard to disguise its interest in sexuality, there can remain little doubt that the genre serves to provide a covert method of conceiving normally undiscussed aspects of intersexual relationships” (Giles, 14). In “Hairspray”, the idea that “showmaking equals lovemaking” is presented in the musical numbers that represent the relationship between the couple of Tracy and Link. Being able to dance together on the show represents a successful union for the couple. The sexual nature of the music is also humorously depicted in the character of Mrs. Pingleton (the mother of Tracy’s best friend, Penny), who is paranoid with fear about her daughter associating with the black youths in the music shop because of the sexual nature of the music they are listening to, and her fear of its influence on her daughter. “Hairspray” does not follow Giles’ idea of the “parent/child” relationship. There is no “maestro” figure acting as a teacher/parent figure to the ingénue. Tracy is presented as possessing a natural talent for dancing that quickly places her at the forefront of the ensemble on the TV show. She does not have to go through the process of “learning” to dance under the supervision of a mentor/teacher the way, for instance, the character of “Baby” did in the film “Dirty Dancing”.

Rick Altman addresses what he calls the “recycling process” in his essay, “Reusable Packaging”. Altman argues that the language we use to describe genre changes over time as new elements are appropriated and become synonymous with that genre. “Hairspray”, as both a teenpic and a musical, fits Altman’s description, as it can be read simply as a “teenpic”, because the association of the musical elements and conventions within the teenpic have become so readily identifiable with one another that the handle “musical” is no longer even required. He views genre as a process, suggesting that “the terminology involved seems to represent the permanent and stable result of synchronic categorization” (Altman, 1-36). Altman also argues that in its classical period, the marketing departments (and this relates to the concept of genre as the product of the production and economic system) were hesitant to label a film with one specific genre, as this could limit potential audience demographics. “Hairspray” also tries this “something for everyone” approach in its mix of comedy, dance and 1960s pop musical elements, romantic elements, and its conventions of the teenpic. The combination of these elements helps to broaden the film to a wider demographic, some of whom may not have been drawn in to see the film if it was simply labeled as a “comedy”, “teenpic”, or “musical”.

“Hairspray” is an example of what Janet Staiger calls the internal-hybridity of genre. Staiger states that “Films by U.S. feminists, African Americans, Hispanics, independents, the avant-garde, and so forth might be good cases of internal hybrids” (Staiger, 184-199). As both an independent and a gay filmmaker, John Waters’ direction of this film puts it in to the category of “internal hybrid”. He offers a commentary on the values that society holds to be “normal”. For instance, he challenges the physical stereotype of the dancers on the teen show as being conventionally attractive, by presenting his protagonist as overweight and not particularly attractive, but possessing great talent as a dancer. The idea of “Queer Theory” and gender in cinema, as discussed by Cherry Smith in “What Is This Thing Called Queer?” can be examined in “Hairspray” by the casting of the male actor, Divine, as Edna Turnblad, the protagonist’s mother, played entirely in drag. This unconventional casting is also played upon by dual role of Arvin Hodgepile, the greedy, racist TV station manager, also played by Divine (out of drag). The connection to the Queer Theory can be seen in Waters’ playing with gender stereotypes in his casting, with the purpose, to put it in the words of one anonymous statement quoted by Cherry Smith, “fuck with gender” (Smith, 277-285). Jane Feuer addressed the challenging of these notions in her writing on the film, stating that “The heroine is a self-affirming fat girl, the triumph of entertainment includes black youths, and the usually puritanical parental figure in played by Divine in drag” (Feuer, 123-138). David Ehrenstein, in “More Than Zero”, discusses the use of mainstream production values (specifically, in this case, of John Greyson’s film “Zero Patience”) to help present challenging or new ideas, “shot in widescreen, color, and Ultra-sound stereo” (Ehrenstein, 84). Waters presents these ideas that challenge mainstream notions of gender, popularity and beauty in such a way that the film is not overtly radical, but also maintains the status quo without calling for a radical change. His use of mainstream, high production values and cinematic conventions serves to make the presentation of these more palatable to mainstream audiences, and also to help “blend” them in with the conventions of the musical and teenpic that he is incorporating.

In “Adventure, Mystery and Romance”, J. Cawelti discusses the use of literary formulas such as character stereotypes and plot formula. He states that a “literary formula is a structure of narrative or dramatic conventions employed in a great number of individual works” (Cawelti, 5-20). “Hairspsray” follows the conventions of the plot of the musical by using both broadly depicted character stereotypes (the overweight, awkward young girl, the rich snobs, etc.) and plot formula involving the boy-meets-girl story line that Cawelti cites as a literary staple. In his essay, Cawelti cites a quote from Harry Berger: “Man has two primal needs. First is a need for order, peace security, for protection against the terror or confusion of life, for a familiar and predictable world…but the second primal impulse is contrary to the first: man positively needs anxiety and uncertainty, thrives on confusion and risk, wants trouble…human spontaneity is eaten away by sameness: man is the animal most expert at being bored” (Cawelti, 16). This idea of the need to break away from the boredom of day-to-day routine is a major theme in “Hairspray”, which takes place in a changing world, as exemplified by a number of lines of dialogue in the film that make reference to the changing times of the new decade. Throughout the film, there is the sense that the characters are living on the brink of a time of major societal change. The need for the risk and uncertainty of the future is a theme that is brought to the forefront in the younger people pushing for integration in the community, demanding societal changes. There is, however, the paradoxical need for a “familiar and predictable world”, which the film accomplishes by setting the time period from a nostalgic standpoint as the early 1960s. Waters is making a nostalgic film, a return to a “simpler” time, which is also a time of great cultural and social change, as exemplified by the rock music and racial integration. In this way, the film adheres to Cawelti’s ideas of formula “constituting an imaginary world in which the audience can encounter a maximum of excitement without being confronted with an overpowering sense of the insecurity and danger that accompany such forms…in reality” (Cawelti, 16). In other words, the audience can experience the tumultuous cultural changes from the comfortable position of nostalgia. As a result, the film is not a truly “radical” work. The inclusion of these cultural elements do not detract from the film’s overall function as escapist entertainment. In the context of the film, at least, it is seen as a “temporary” conflict that can be completely resolved by the time the film ends 90 minutes later. This is important to emphasize because the classification of the film as both an escapist entertainment and containing these elements of real-world conflict are not mutually exclusive-it is in how the film deals with that conflict that essentially confirms its position as escapism. The nostalgic elements far outweigh the cultural/social change elements, and in any case, the conflicts in the film are solved through music and wrapped up in 90 minutes, leaving the audience feeling that all of the character’s problems (not to mention the social/cultural conflicts) have been resolved. This is ultimately an escapist ending, as it ends the film with a feeling of “utopian society”, as Dyer proposed.

“Hairspray” offers an escapist entertainment, presenting a sort of “wish-fulfillment” that is supported by Richard Dyer’s argument of the musical as “utopia” in “Entertainment and Utopia” in “Only Entertainment”. Dyer argues that “the fact that professional entertainment has been by and large conservative in this century should not blind us to the implicit struggle within it, and look beyond class divisions of sex and race, we should note the important role of structurally subordinate groups in society-women, blacks, gays-in the development and definition of entertainment” (Dyer, 16-33). “Hairspray” supports this idea in its presentation of integration, challenging of conventionality of gender and popular notions beauty, by presenting a sort of “utopian” society in which these barriers are brought down in the name of equality. This provides an escapist element to the film. The film also is represented in Dyer’s “categories of utopian sensibility”. The category of “dreariness-intensity” is present in the contrast between Tracy’s mundane, working class home life, and the intensity (excitement and drama) of dancing in the show-business environment of the Corny Collins Show. The idea of “exhaustion-energy” is present between Tracy’s disenchantment with her school work (which leads to her being placed in a “special” class), and the energy she finds in her work dancing on the show. The idea of “scarcity-abundance” is depicted in the “before and after” of Tracy’s becoming a local celebrity. Her mother exhibits concern for spending money on fancy, fashionable clothes that she would not have previously been able to afford, but now can thanks to Tracy’s new-found celebrity (a modeling job with a local department store includes Tracy’s choice of dresses from the store). Finally, the idea of “fragmentation-community” is plainly presented in the segregation of the community at the start of the film and the coming together of the community at the show at the end of the film, symbolized through dance. These elements support Dyer’s categories of entertainment as utopia.

In conclusion, “Hairspray” functions as a rock musical that serves as a cultural mirror of the society in which it was produced. It presents notions that challenge the mainstream without being a radical film.

Schatz, Thomas. Hollywood Genre. Random House: New York, 1981, 14-35.
2 Altman, Rick. Film/Genre. BFI Publishers: London, 1999. 13-29.
3 Schatz, Thomas. Hollywood Genre. Random House: New York, 1981, 14-35.
4 Giles, Dennis. “Show-Making”. Movie, no. 24, Spring 1977, 14.
5 Strinati, Dominic. An Introduction to Theories of Popular Culture. Routledge: New York, 1995. 226.
6 Wood, Robin. Ideology, Genre, Auteur. Issues No. 1, January-February, 1977. 61-64.
7 Altman, Rick. “A Semantic/Syntactic Approach to Film Genre.” Cinema Journal, Vol. 23, No. 3, Spring 1984. 27-40
8 Sobchack, Thomas. Genre Film: A Classical Experience. University of Texas Press: University of Texas At Austin, 1995. 102-113.
9 Neale, Stephen. Genre. British Film Institute: London, 1980. 50
10 Auslander, P. Liveness. Routledge: New York, 1999. 61.
11 Feuer, Jane. The Hollywood Musical, 2nd ed. Indiana University Press: Indiana, 1993. 123-138.
12 Giles, Dennis. “Show-Making”. Movie, no. 24, Spring 1977, 14.
13 Altman, Rick. "Reusable Packaging: Generic Products and the Recycling Process." Refiguring American Film Genres: History and Theory, ed. Nick Browne. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998. 1-36.
14 Staiger, Janet. Film Genre Reader III. University of Texas Press: University of Texas at Austin, 2003. 184-199.
15 Smith, Cherry. “What Is This Thing Called Queer”? The Material Queer: A LesBiGay Cultural Reader, ed. Donald Morton. Westview Press: Colorado, 1996. 277-285.
16 Feuer, Jane. The Hollywood Musical, 2nd ed. Indiana University Press, 1993. 123-138.
17 Ehrenstein, David. “More Than Zero”. Film Comment. 29 #6. Nov-Dec, 1993, 84.
18 Cawelti, J. Adventure, Mystery and Romance. University of Chicago Press: Chicago, 1976. 5-20.
19 Cawelti, J. Adventure, Mystery and Romance. University of Chicago Press: Chicago, 1976. 16.
20 Cawelti, J. Adventure, Mystery and Romance. University of Chicago Press: Chicago, 1976. 16.
21 Dyer, Richard. Only Entertainment. Routledge: New York, 1992. 16-33.

A Pictorial History of the Movies

2010-05-23T15:42:00.009-04:00

One of the aspects of film historiography that I find most interesting is how attitudes toward certain films, filmmakers, actors, etc. have changed over the decades. For this reason, I was particularly intrigued to come across Deems Taylor’s “A Pictorial History of the Movies”, which he published in 1943. Taylor, a music critic and composer, is probably best remembered today as the host of Disney’s “Fantasia”, for which he provided the spoken introductions to each segment. Taylor’s book was cited by Martin Scorsese, in his “Personal Journey Through American Movies”, as the book that really turned him on to reading about the cinema. He recalls borrowing it, repeatedly, from the New York Public Library, and the temptation to cut out some of the photographs that Taylor uses throughout the book to illustrate the history of film. Scorsese confesses that “once or twice, I did give in to that urge” (Scorsese, “A Personal Journey with Martin Scorsese Through American Movies”, 14).

The photographic illustrations are one of the finest aspects of the book. Taylor provides many publicity photos, production stills, and other photographs that provide the basis for his captions. Taylor’s history begins with the very earliest films. On the page opposite his introduction, he even provides an example of a cave drawing of a running boar that was a very early attempt to illustrate motion through images. His chapter on “Birth and Infancy” is extremely informative, including an interesting mention of the first films projected before an audience-not, as popularly believed, the Lumieres’ screening in Paris in 1895, but rather Latham’s demonstration in 1894 of a boxing re-enactment taken on the roof of Madison Square Garden (Taylor, 4). This is significant, because this early screening is still often overlooked today when talking about the first public screenings of motion pictures. Taylor goes on to provide good descriptions of the many competing film companies in the early years, Griffith’s acting work at Edison and subsequently Biograph, and finally, the move West to Hollywood. From this point, Taylor takes a largely chronological approach to film history, with an emphasis on American film. As he is only covering the years up to the time of the book’s publication (1943), he is able to devote much time to more obscure players and titles that tend to be overlooked in more recent histories. It's also particularly strong in terms of attention to facts, especially when compared with the works of early historians like Ramsaye or Kracauer.

Taylor’s introduction gets at the brilliance of his approach to film historiography, indicating that he clearly saw film as the art form it is, and at the same time, highlighting American films of all styles and genres. In other words, he didn’t buy into prevailing attitudes which tended to see all Hollywood output as an embarrassment. Taylor’s “history” includes popular Hollywood films that are also representations of the medium at the peak of its artistic possibilities. From this standpoint, the book is extremely valuable and even influential, as it would be another decade, at least, before certain French critics would begin to expound on the “art” of Hollywood cinema. By looking at both the wildly popular and in some cases extremely obscure films, Taylor’s history is an excellent overview and appreciation of the medium up to that point.

D.W. Griffith: American Film Master

2010-05-22T11:39:00.012-04:00

Iris Barry’s monograph on D.W. Griffith remains one of the key works in film appreciation. Published by the Museum of Modern Art in 1940, it was the first in-depth study of the genius and innovation of the man who has been described as “the father of film” (http://www.pbs.org/wnet/americanmasters/episodes/d-w-griffith/about-d-w-griffith/621). Barry’s monograph takes the form of a biographical examination of Griffith’s early life and career before moving on to discussions of his key works. Although some present day readers might find the work lacking in the kind of detailed information found in more recent biographies on Griffith, such as that of Shickel, the importance of Barry’s monograph cannot be overstated.

What’s most remarkable about this monograph is how well it gets at the key points of Griffith’s contributions to cinema. Barry manages to pack more into this monograph than many book-length biographies do. Too, there is thankfully none of the unwarranted hostility toward Griffith for being supposedly “old fashioned”. This monograph was a pioneering effort which was published in conjunction with MOMA’s Griffith exhibition in 1940. Although original editions are apparently quite rare, it has been reissued by MOMA in a facsimile that reproduces the design of the original publication.

Mr. Flip

2010-05-21T22:52:00.003-04:00

Ben Turpin is one of the iconic figures of silent comedy, immediately recognizable by his crossed eyes and brush mustache. He had one of the longest careers of any of the silent clowns, dating back to 1907, and lasting until his death in 1940 (his final appearance was in Laurel and Hardy’s “Saps at Sea”, in which he played the cross-eyed plumber who can’t understand why all of the faucets in Oliver Hardy’s apartment are performing the opposite functions!) Turpin’s star really began to rise after he was paired with Charlie Chaplin in the first two comedies Chaplin made for the Essanay company in 1915. Turpin worked most memorably for Mack Sennett’s studio, where he appeared in a series of parodies of popular dramatic films of the day.

Turpin’s career began at the Essanay studio in Chicago. He worked as a janitor at the studio as well as performing in comedies. One of his earliest efforts is “Mr. Flip”, from 1909, in which he plays an obnoxious man who pesters every woman he comes in contact with. It’s a crude comedy, to be sure, but also possesses a certain charm in its simplicity and good-natured gagging.

The film opens with Turpin, appearing quite dapper with a boutonniere and straw hat, as he enters a shop. He immediately begins flirting with the female clerk, and she resists his effort until a moving man comes by with a dolly cart which he uses to carry Turpin out of the scene. Next, he enters a manicurist’s shop, and after flirting with one of the manicurists, the other puts a pair of scissors up through the bottom of his chair, which he sits down on, causing him to jump up in pain and flee the scene. There is an interesting moment of a close-up insert shot when we see the second manicurist inserting the sharp end of the scissors up through the bottom of the chair. Turpin goes on to flirt with a telephone operator, hair dresser, waitress, and finally a bakery clerk, who throws a pie into Turpin’s face!

“Mr. Flip” is an interesting, early screen comedy, predating the Keystone comedies as well as those of Chaplin. The closing “pie-in-the-face” gag is the earliest one I have yet identified in watching many of the early comedies. What is perhaps most interesting about the film, at least from a formal standpoint, is that it is shot in wide proscenium-style shots that capture the entire scene, which was certainly the prevailing style at the time. It’s worth comparing this with the editing of the Keystone comedies, which increased the pace of the shots greatly. Turpin’s style of comedy, crude and largely physical, would be quite influential in the comedy styles that would emerge in the coming decade.

Although Turpin never quite achieved the status of such leading clowns as Chaplin, Keaton or Lloyd, he remains an important figure in screen comedy, particularly for his work in the early years of the medium.

The Little Match Girl (Jean Renoir, 1927)

2010-05-20T09:00:00.002-04:00

Jean Renoir’s film is an interesting departure from the previous surrealist films screened, in the sense that it tells a more or less complete narrative. The match girl clearly falls into a dream state in which she enters a kind of giant toy shop, and interacts with the toys, including the captain of the wooden soldiers, but is then menaced by Death, who appears out of a jack-in-the-box wearing a kind of “pirate” outfit with a Death skull on his hat. A chase ensues, and the girl “falls back” to reality, where onlookers (and the audience) find her frozen to death in the alley after she has used up all the matches she had to keep warm.

Where this film departs, too, is in its use of more clear imagery. Rather than racing from one surrealistic image to the next, Renoir allows the viewer to take in the remarkable “living toys”. The tragic ending provides a fascinating, stark contrast with what has come before.

"Two in the Wave"

2010-05-19T21:47:00.003-04:00

This fascinating documentary explores the cultural and historical context from which the French New Wave movement was born, and focuses on its two most iconic figures, Francois Truffaut and Jean-Luc Godard, from their friendship and early work as collaborators (as critics for “Cahiers du Cinema” and on “Breathless”, Godard’s first feature for which Truffaut provided the story treatment), through the height of the New Wave as an international influence on the medium, and their eventual falling out. At the center of this turbulent friendship was Jean-Pierre Leaud, whom Truffaut had introduced to audiences in the sublime “The 400 Blows”. Leaud would, of course, go on to reprise that film’s lead character of Antoine Doinel in several other films for Truffaut, but also yearned to expand his acting chops by working for Godard on a number of occasions, perhaps most memorably in "La Chinoise".

When Godard and Truffaut began to part ways, it was perhaps inevitable that Leaud would get caught between them, forced to choose sides. In fact, the documentary reveals that it was a mean-spirited letter Godard wrote to Leaud after the release of Truffaut’s “Day for Night” (in which Leaud had a major role) that ended their friendship as much as anything. The film also examines the political climate in France, including the ousting of Henri Langlois from the Cinematheque Francaise and his subsequent reinstatement following the protests held by members of the film community in France who rightly observed Langlois’ importance in making films available; this is juxtaposed with the May 1968 protests which Godard felt the filmmakers should join forces in with the students in order to show their support. It was in this political moment that Godard and Truffaut began to part ways, as Godard felt cinema should be used as a political tool, and Truffaut felt that it was a violation of the art form to put it into service of a political angle.

Exploring the political, cultural, social and artistic contexts in which these amazing artists rose to prominence, the documentary does a remarkable job capturing their personalities and their relationship. Individually, Godard and Truffaut created some of the most profound, powerful, sublime and influential work the medium has yet seen. This documentary is a tribute to their art. To paraphrase the tagline of Truffaut’s “Day for Night”, “Two in the Wave” is a documentary for people who love movies.

Why Mrs. Jones Got a Divorce

2010-05-17T21:40:00.003-04:00

One of the many pre-“Great Train Robbery” narrative films in American cinema, “Why Mrs. Jones Got a Divorce” (Edison, 1900) is interesting because of how it handles its entire narrative within a single shot; in this case, it’s a proscenium-style wide shot that encompasses all of the characters and action within the frame.

The film takes place in a kitchen, where a maid and a young boy are preparing dinner. The maid is kneading flour into dough, when the husband of the house enters. The boy, hiding behind the wall in the adjoining room, observes the husband and the maid flirting, as the maid embraces him. The husband’s back is turned to the camera just enough so that the viewer sees the maid’s flour-covered hand prints on his back. She goes back to kneading the dough as the boy exits through the front door, calling his mother in, presumably to inform her of what he has observed. The wife scolds the maid, then confronts her husband, who protests her accusations until she points out the hand prints on his back. The husband gets down on his knee to beg forgiveness, but the wife picks up the bowl of flour from the table and proceeds to dump it on her husband’s head! The husband flees, and the wife grabs the maid, ejecting her through the front door and knocking over the kitchen table in the process. The wife exits the scene through the front door as the film comes to an end.

This final action is interesting, because it conforms to the convention of many of these early narrative films that the characters must exit the frame at the end. Having characters forcibly ejected by being thrown, kicked or pushed out of the scene was a common technique. In this case, even though there is no narrative logic for the wife to exit the scene, she does so anyway in order to provide closure to this short sketch. The film itself is a kind of farce comedy, as evidenced by the description in the Edison rental catalog, which describes it as “a very funny picture” (http://memory.loc.gov). It is a domestic comedy, the type of which would later be made especially popular by the Vitagraph company, and the type of which would also serve as a basis for the plots of a number of American slapstick comedies, especially those produced by the Keystone company. In this sense, the film can be seen as influential in its own way, establishing a kind of screen comedy that would go on to have a very long life in the cinema.

Although far from the complex narratives that would appear even just a few years later, especially in the films of Edwin S. Porter, “Why Mrs. Jones Got a Divorce” is still a good example of early storytelling in the cinema. This film was part of a larger series of films revolving around the “Jones” character. James White served as producer, which at that time was really an all-round description of the film’s maker. This series, which dates back to 1899, is evidence of the popularity for telling stories even in this earliest period.